Motive CRO on moving up-market and leading an org of 3,000+

Jason Bay: You know, moving up market is one of those things that sounds really great in theory, right? Hey, we're going to be more enterprise, we're going to sell the larger logos, they're going to want to pay us more, there's going to be larger deal sizes, we're going to bring in an enterprise sales team, start to roll out an enterprise sales motion. And again sounds really great in theory, but executing that and in my experience across the 250 plus sales teams that we've worked with in the last five or six years, I've seen a lot of unsuccessful rollouts moving up market. And in this episode, what we're going to talk about and I'm going to talk to a CRO that has a, an org of 3,000 plus reps and they made this really big move up market and we're going to dig into it and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Before we get to that, my name is Jason Bay, I'm CEO at Outbound Squad. You're listening to the Outbound Squad podcast. We're all about helping you turn complete strangers into paying customers. So if outbound pipeline generation is a focus for you or your team and you're working with, you know, AES that need to do more self sourcing, reduce reliance on marketing and SDRs, or you have an SDR team that you need to be a little more strategic and you're moving up market, maybe you're expanding across your customer base and you need to build pipeline. You're uh, definitely in the right place. We, we work with a lot of really great companies like Shopify, Zoom, Rippling Gong and a ton of startups. They're just building out their first sales teams and our average client increases qualified pipeline by more than 20% within 90 days. So we're, we're very good at building out the playbooks, the process, the structure, training the team on it, training the leaders, et cetera. And ah, today I'm really excited because we get to talk to Adam Block who is the CRO at motive. Uh, he runs a 3,000 person Ah, revenue organization. There's a ton of folks. Um, I met Adam originally when we worked with Medallia who if you've seen in the news, Medallions has gone through some major stuff, uh, recently unfortunately. Um, but I met him back in his Medallia days when he was a leader there. He moved over to Emotive to become VP of Sales and now CRO. And we talked about everything from like why they chose to move up market, how they protected what was working, because that's a common mistake when we're moving at market is we forget that, hey, the bulk of our business is mid market and SMB. How do we make sure that we don't harm the parts of the business that are already working? How do we rewire the culture for Outbound? How do we think about the talent? What metrics should be we, uh, should we be looking at? And there's just a bunch of really great stuff that we talked about. Uh, I have two things to offer you before we get to the interview.

Adam Block: 1.

Jason Bay: 1 is our outbound masterclass. It's free. I sat in a studio for six or seven hours and recorded about three hours of content. It's our very best stuff on what's working with outbound right now. And it's free. Outboundsquad.com masterclass if you're an SDR account executive or a manager, it's super tactical. You're really going to like it. So it's outboundsquad.com masterclass. And the other thing is, if you're listening to this and you're like, you know what, My team is moving up market right now as well, and we need to be more strategic about that. We need to really think about how we capture the attention of the executives that we're trying to book meetings with. And you want some help with that. We've helped a ton of teams really break into larger enterprise accounts, and we would welcome a conversation with you. So reach out to me directly. My email is Jason outboundsquad.com Let me know who you are, what you're running into, and see if it makes sense to chat. All right, let's get to the interview. So I'm excited to talk to you. We sort of met during your time at Medallia. We were on a lot of large group calls together. But, uh, right before this call, we did a. A prep and we got to sort of talk one on one. So I'm, I'm really excited to dig in with you on this end. I thought a good place to kind of set the stage. I always like to ask people, like, why sales? How did you get into sales? It's usually on accident for most people. But what's the story for you?

Adam Block: Uh, not an accident. Never a doubt. Okay. So when I was a kid, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I think most entrepreneurs, not every one of them, but most entrepreneurs have that sales bone. And so when that didn't work out, um, then, uh, going into sales leadership, uh, was a natural thing and frankly, it has never been in question. So it wasn't that I wanted to be, um, a doctor. And I ended up becoming, uh, a sales guy on accident. Um, it was very much that, uh, I did and still do feel the entrepreneurial spirit. Uh, and I live that through leadership and sales. That.

Jason Bay: Why, like, was there any s sort of decision that you made intentionally to get into more of an executive role? Because I feel like that CRO jump is like a lot of folks, like being a VP of sales, right?

Adam Block: They do.

Jason Bay: Like, was there anything intentional for you about that jump to CRO?

Adam Block: So for me, again, when you have spent your life thinking about being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, I think it comes a little bit more naturally. Um, I had a couple of businesses when I was younger, um, and then I ran sales and marketing directly reporting to the vice, to the CEO of a small business for years, uh, in Lexington, Kentucky. Um, started when maybe we had about $3 million a year in ARR. And when I left it was north of 10. And so you could imagine it's a big job to be the leader. This effectively the CRO of a small business like that, that doesn't have references, that doesn't have a bonafide, uh, marketing effort, that doesn't have SDRs, that doesn't have account management. It is. Everybody is doing all the things and then you build those over time. Um, so I was very unusual, uh, going from entrepreneurial, uh, entrepreneur to being a VP of, uh, sales and marketing, to then being an ic. And so when I became an ic, which was at Medallia for the first time ever, um, I had success. But that was hard for me. It was hard to go from, you know, being a leader until the age of 30 something to being, uh, an IC. But, uh, once I learned and medallion taught me a lot, the people there were wonderful. The motion was absolutely incredible. The approach, the process, the rigor, um, and, um, once I learned how to apply those things with the world's largest businesses, um, it was really, uh, explosive when I went back into leadership. So that was the most successful part of my career, was moving back into leadership and now having a more complete picture, ah, as a leader and a seller.

Jason Bay: Yeah, that's one thing that sticks out to me about your career arc in that it wasn't like you were selling 20 years ago and you haven't sold a deal since then. Um, I would imagine the folks in your org, you seem pretty grounded in what sales is. We're talking in 2026. But what it means to sell in 2026, especially at the enterprise level.

Adam Block: Well, Jason, you and I have known each other for years, and you have often focused on the prospecting side of this, making market contact. And now it's, you know, you have broadened, um, some of the approach and things that you focus on. But if you think about that particular, um, discipline, the ability to make market contact, it's something that we all have to participate in if we're going to be successful. Um, and I ask this question in interviews a lot. You know, how do you get in touch with people? I mean, everybody wants attainment and everybody wants to have a forecast before that. And before that you got to have pipeline, progression, and before that you gotta have new pipeline. But it starts by meeting people and having conversations. And so, um, when I ask folks that question on how they go about it, I'm not looking for something special. What I'm really looking for is whatever it takes. You know, I mean, I, I email them, I call them, I use my connections, I go to events, whatever it is. And so that side of me learned that really young and then put it to practice as an individual contributor. And I've never let it fall off as a leader. And I think that does keep you grounded if you're willing to help make connections and you're willing to help advance a deal and you're there to help win. Uh, and in my world, I own the customer journey after that now. And so when they go into the implementation and, and they go into the ongoing account management and customer success organizations, um, all of that is part of our revenue team here at Motive. Uh, and so I have to be very involved with these organizations to give them confidence, um, that we're gonna support them long term.

Jason Bay: Love that. One more question. Cause I'm curious before we dig into today's topic. There isn't exactly like a training program for CROs. There's. That I'm aware of. At least a lot of folks tend to learn how to be a sales executive. Some for mentorship, you know, trial and error. Like, um, what's the journey been like for you going from VP of sales to CRO? Like, was there mentorship along the way? Like, how did you learn how to do some of the stuff that you're responsible for now?

Adam Block: Great question. Um, so the first, uh, pillar here is surrounding yourself with great people that you can trust. Because inevitably there are going to be more components when you're CRO than when you are a vice president of sales. And it means something different to Every company, it could be marketing and it could be partnerships, which in my case it is. It could be strategy and operations, things like deal desk and territory assignments. Um, so having great leaders and people that I can trust and people that trust me, um, to build together and make changes and be bold, um, it comes from uh, a great place. And there was a book in the early 2000s called Good to Great by Jim Collins. And it was about the companies that had beaten the market for 15 straight years. One of the things that he talks about that is a principle or an observation that those organizations have in common is that their leadership teams can go into a room and have real discussions. They can have healthy conflict. They, they can even have unhealthy conflict, maybe in the room. But when you leave the room, you're going to be aligned. So we don't want product and sales arguing. We don't want um, strategy and the folks that are putting the quotas together and the uh, territories at odds with the vice president of sales for Canada. Right. So the more that we can bring those folks together and have honest communication, that's really what it's all about. I will say though, from a practical sense, um, a CRO role is fundamentally a different job. You have to work with the executive team, you have to work with the board, you have to work with potentially external stakeholders, uh, investors, um, and uh, you are much more engaged on planning and budgets and those kind of things. So it's critical that you recognize that you can no longer be purely sales leader. It just won't support the, the organization the way they need you to do it.

Jason Bay: Yeah. Love it, Love it. So let's dig into today's topic around moving up market and I think a good place to start as much as you're able and willing to share, uh, with motive. How did you guys come to the conclusion like this is the thing that you need to do right now? Because it's not an, as you know, this is not an easy thing for an organization especially your size, uh, to do. How did you know it was the right time?

Adam Block: So motive, this was about three and a half years ago was uh, we had thousands of employees. Um, the vast majority of our business was uh, what you can call down market. It was mid market, commercial and SMB. And um, what the catalyst was for the, for the decision from the board, from our, our founders to move up market was, was really by necessity or by demand if you will. Our uh, technology had really improved and so two things were happening. The first is that we were being um approached by larger and larger companies. Um, so instead of working with an organization that might spend uh, $100,000 max or $80,000 max or 20, these were organizations that were going to spend millions a year to solve bigger problems. And they had big requirements. Architecture, infrastructure and integration layer, the strat, the reporting and analytics. Right. The security components. Um, so they had these requirements for more of an enterprise grade platform. And we had built that so that we could service those types of companies. The other thing that was happening is Motive was formerly called Keep Truckin' and the Keep Truckin name was supporting trucking companies. That was the majority of our customers, uh, for years until we started finding fit product market fit with other industries. So um, we had to learn about those industries. We had to add features into our platform. Uh, we had to gain subject matter expertise, we had to change pricing in some respects. Um, but. And we changed our company name Motive. Right. So uh, now we're in agriculture, oil and gas, construction, manufacturing, food and bev, field services and public sector international. Um and so those two opportunities, much larger companies and a much broader set of industries, um, is what um, inspired or I'll say started uh, the move up uh, market and the TAM was just obvious at that time. So that, that's really where the decision uh, was made to invest in. The go to market side of it was once we had strong product market fit and demand that we were observing got ah it.

Jason Bay: So existing demand product market fit with new industries. And a big part of this that you've talked about was okay, we're going to decide that we're going to move up market but you have this huge base of business that is you know as you refer to down market. How did you think about protecting and making sure that this doesn't cannibalize or that we don't ignore like our, like the majority of our business that is working right now was this like a, uh, hey, we're going to experiment with this on the side and here's what we're going to see. What happens. Was there a new department that got rolled or a segment that got formally rolled out with that? How did you guys think about that? Part of,

Adam Block: was not trivial. Um, it was something we wanted to take very intentionally um, into our planning process. Um, so we had over a hundred thousand customers, customer accounts. Okay. Um, those accounts had many users or whatever, you know, depending on the size of the organization. So when we made this decision to invest more heavily in what I'll broadly refer to as enterprise from a Go to Market perspective from sales, from solution engineering and all the various other supporting functions. Um, the first principle was something that we have heard from the doctor's oath, right. When you first become a physician and that is do no harm, right? I mean you've got to support the folks that dance with the one that brought you as they say, right? And so, um, so we wanted to make sure uh, that uh, that they were, we weren't just taking and reallocating capital without supporting those organizations, uh, to fund the upmarket growth. Uh, we were very intentional with how we were going to resource them and how we were going to support them. Uh, and so there uh, was a lot to that. There was a lot to how we were going to price there. We invested a lot into the operation. Uh, and we had to change things, we had to change some of our processes. And it's certainly as you're going to introduce an enterprise motion, um, we're going to attract a different talent pool, we're going to have different compensation structures. We were going to have uh, organizations leveraging our technology that we're going to implement differently. Much like I was talking about before, they would require different integrations, they would require a different implementation process because it might not be 20 users coming online at once, it might be 20,000 users coming online over a period of months or a year, whatever it may be. So we had to think through the benefit of going up uh, market and how that was going to add value to our customers everywhere. And I think that's something that we did beautifully. Um, our customers in uh, these various segments from SMB to commercial to mid market to enterprise to strategic and then any other of the markets like Public Sector International have all benefited from the investments that we've made to support large, complex, multinational uh, organizations.

Jason Bay: So there's like a bit of a flywheel that's, that's working there. How are, if you could take us back, like how are you feeling during this time that the company is making this transition? Like were you really excited about this? Were you like what were you, what were you feeling?

Adam Block: Well, uh, I was brought on board to do it, so um. Yes, of course.

Jason Bay: So you were like let's go.

Adam Block: That's right. Um, we had uh, there was a period of time, uh, in the not so distant history where we had less than 10 AES in this enterprise business and today it's hundreds and that's crazy. And so it was a lot of change. Um, not everybody loved every step of the way. But I would encourage your listeners to do something and that is if you are a leader, if you are a vice president of sales, and certainly if you're taking on something that is a massive build or a rebuild, a turnaround or an acceleration motion, you've got to be in lockstep with the board, with your executive team. That's something that I took back big care to do during my recruitment and uh, sh, who is our CEO and founder and, and uh, and my boss, um, he and I always had a very strong connection and understanding that um, that, that I needed some autonomy, uh, that there were going to be some changes, uh, and not, uh, everybody was going to be comfortable with it. Um, but he was behind it. And with that support you can get a lot done. Um, otherwise bureaucracy can get in the way. Folks get wrapped up in rules of engagement or where's the segment line going to be or um, you know, what's my territory optimization? People just get wrapped up in a lot of different things. And they're all interesting, but the truth is they change. Once you have 20 AES, that's very different than when you have 75 and that's very different from when you have 200. Having an account management model that supports the customer is different than keeping the account with the new logo rep. And these are all evolutionary components of what we had to do here at Motive. Uh, but uh, I am very thankful for my peers and partners on our executive team and the other departments and for the board, uh, and certainly for shway. But it really started with that. I mean you've got to be bold. Um, and if, if you don't have the uh, the charisma and the conviction, uh, and the drive uh, to, to do it, it's going to be tough. Um, and I will say I also was very fortunate in that many folks who I had known from my past made the decision to come and join me again along the journey. Uh, that gave me a lot of wind in my sail, give me confidence that my leadership style was working for them in the past and we could do this thing again. Uh, I knew that they were going to be great in their role. So, uh, hiring no doubt is in a bill, the single most important thing, because having folks that don't work out is very hurtful and detrimental to the business.

Jason Bay: One, um, kind of side question related to that. Do you have any tips for as a CRO, building relationships with the other executives or with board members? Is there anything that you are really intentional about with those relationships?

Adam Block: Oh, without doubt. I mean I, first and foremost I would fight politics with everything you've got. Okay, so try not to be political in these things. Try not to scrap for a particular task or responsibility or whatever it may be. Things are going to fall where a discussion leads them. And I think that uh, that has allowed me to have very genuine responsibility relationships with people. Because you're just very honest at that point. If, if, if, if you don't have a political agenda, um, then folks are much more willing to work with you and partner with you about whatever the challenge is. Um, as an example, um, implementation. So implementation at Motive sits in the revenue organization. Doesn't have to, it doesn't work that way with every single company we've chosen for it to sit there, maybe one day we will choose for it to sit somewhere else. Um, the technical support organization sits under product. Um, again that was a decision we made and so we put it there so it has faster product feedback loop. Um, I find my product partners to be very supportive. Um, I find our chief HR and ah, legal officer and her department to be very, very supportive. Uh, I find finance to be very supportive. And I think a lot of this stems from having very genuine and human relationships with folks. Um, the board is a little different. Um, the board is supportive of course, if things are going great, um, and they want everybody to do well. Um, but I've been very fortunate to have had a lot of success here at Motive. Um, we've transformed the business from being predominantly down market business to being now an overwhelmingly upmarket business. Um, that's what we came to do. Uh, and so now um, we are very collaborative on it and they're helpful if you reach out to folks and ask them to help. I don't care if they're your partner. Um, they could be the person that oversees security, they could be the person that oversees the supply chain. They could be a board member who's part of an organization that has a lot of expertise in our field or in technology. Or maybe they're part of a VC or private equity firm. Uh, they are all willing to help. You just gotta ask.

Jason Bay: Yeah, love it. Asking for help. Let's talk about the culture piece because there is something that you talk about around like rewiring the business for Outbound. And let me know if your experience has been different at Motive. But I'm assuming this Enterprise motion has been very heavily driven through Outbound because that's usually how enterprise works, right? You don't have the senior stakeholders coming through and filling out a demo request typically on a contact form like you got to go out and create these relationships. What was that journey like? Just from a culture standpoint. And like, hey, we were going to turn into a business that hunts. I got to think about, like, do we have the right talent on board for this? I'm sure you thought about, like, uh, account structure and territory structure and comp plans and like, all of this kind of stuff. Like, what were some of the big components there that you, that you guys had to tackle to really rewire the business to be more outbound, focused.

Adam Block: You're absolutely right. And it was a journey. Uh, it wasn't a snap.

Jason Bay: You have all your hair still, dude.

Adam Block: I mean, yeah, it's a, uh, Um, I. Here's what I'll say is that, um, finding people that, that trust leadership and treating them excellent and giving them an opportunity to succeed earns you the right to make changes as you go, and they will be cool with it. Okay. And so we did that many times. Um.

Jason Bay: Ah.

Adam Block: And one of the ways that we did it. I'll start off with the territory. Well, when I got here, of course there were enterprise AES that had hundreds of accounts. That. That's what they had, hundreds accounts. And they were searching more for buy cycles. Um, more so than searching for engagement with an organization that would be a great fit for us in time. Because maybe they're not going to buy next month, maybe they're not going to buy next year, but maybe it's, um, FedEx, maybe it's Cintas, maybe it's Halliburton, Maybe it's some giant organization that's worth engaging with over time. Yeah. Because you have a big problem to solve and your technology can do it. Um, so we reduced book sizes many times. And what's interesting is that I don't recall a time in my career that we reduced book sizes for strategic or enterprise AES that they didn't have more success. And so it's counterintuitive because as an ae, you want more accounts. You always want more accounts. So there was always a bit of friction about. Around that. Um, we also had some changes when it came to the arrangement of territories. Think about an organization.

Jason Bay: Uh, can I pause you real quick, Adam, please? Uh, I want to. Yeah. I want to jump back to. So reducing book sizes. You said you've never seen it not have a positive effect. Can you talk a little bit more about why? Because that is like, super counterintuitive.

Adam Block: Yeah, it's. It's an interesting thing in, um, commercial. Which commercial for us are deals that are thousands to a few Tens of thousands. And then mid market goes up from there and enterprise goes up from there. Um, in our market the TAM is so big, there are so many accounts, um, that you're constantly calling folks in the commercial business but in enterprise or strategic specifically you're talking about the world's biggest companies. And so you can't focus on um, some Ferguson or something. Right? You can't, you can't do that when you have them alongside of 75 other accounts. You're simply not going to do a proper account plan. You're not going to have the right executive engagement. Uh, you're not going to be doing things like account based marketing or driving uh, uh, engagement to an event or talking to many people. Because an organization like Ferguson is going to uh, require an understanding of their business at a m much broader, deeper level. And you have to talk to the various Personas that your technology is going to touch. And in our case we're a very big platform. We're predominantly used to save lives, to save money, to help organizations become more productive. Um, and so there's a lot of people in an organization that care about that problem. Um, so it is, it is impossible um, to win, uh, and introduce your technology in a meaningful way if an organization like that, that can spend millions of dollars to solve those problems and, and they will happily do that if it solves their problems, um, as one of many, many, many customers. And it just, you're just simply going to work on whatever is hot in that moment versus the uh, depth it takes over time uh, to engage that organization and showcase your value. But to answer your question very directly, um, I said what I said and that is uh, it's a tough thing for folks that are sales leaders to realize more accounts more of the time is bad. Most of the time you do not want more accounts. Um, and I, I don't recall a ah, time that I've ever reduced book sizes and didn't see productivity go up.

Jason Bay: Yeah, I was taught the martini glass shaped pipeline. You know, instead of a pipeline you want it to look more like this. And it sounds like that's the philosophy where like there's a forcing mechanism for the rep to go really deep on an account because they don't have as many accounts. So um, I didn't want to gloss over that. I thought that was a really important detail.

Adam Block: You know what's interesting is we have some AES that only have one account. Wow. Uh, right. Because they're so big and they can first off their customer requires that kind of Attention because of how big they are and how big their business is with Motive and just how much influence we can drive and value we can drive with that organization. So some of them have whole teams associated with an organization, um, here at Motive. So it's uh, uh, if anything, you know, we, we went from a situation where you have hundreds of accounts to now some people have a single account and even some of them have entire teams supporting that one account and they continue to expand and have great success. So if um, you're out there listening, I, I can assure you if you're especially in an enterprise motion or a strategic motion, um, the fewer accounts somebody has, the higher the likelihood is that they're going to pay attention to those accounts and have success.

Jason Bay: How did you think about org structure in terms of like sdr, AE kind of pairing and like how did you think about how to staff the org, I guess and what that would look like? I always wonder, is there a special calculator out there that people like you

Adam Block: use for shit like this or is it just like how do you. That's not where you start. Um, so I think first thing is innovation is key, right? So we are constantly testing different things. Now motive had scale as far as the number of people working here. When I showed up we already had thousands of employees. So we were able to try some new things, um, in with a luxury that some organizations simply don't have. And so one of the things that we decided to do um, was build a um, A ah, graduation system or a farm system, our own internal farm system. And this is something I've been very, very passionate about. We branded it. It's a big part of how we attract younger talent or more junior talent. They can come in as uh, maybe an AE in our SMB organization, graduate to the lower end of commercial, graduate to the higher end of commercial. They can come in as an sdr. Maybe they're, maybe they worked retail or they were a teacher. Maybe they were our college graduate. Um, and they, we do those programs all the time right now. But our SDR program is meant to teach you how to engage with people. It's not send 7,000 emails this month. AI has taken over that piece of it. So if you can drive a human connection, um, then you are now going to be successful as a seller. And as soon as you prove that you're going to become an ae and as soon as you have success in that role, if you want to, we're going to support you going up market to become an enterprise ae. Maybe A strategic ae. And we have built these bridge programs, that's what we call them, to do that. So it doesn't, it's not just a promotion. You don't just go from being an SDR to being an ae that would be reckless and wouldn't help the person get prepared. You help them get educated and go through some curriculum and even help them ramp so that when they show up um, they are um, actually further ahead than they would be if they were an external hire. So ah, uh, this has been very intentional. Things that you're asking about with calculators do happen. So there are ratios of course, how many SES to an AE, how many SDRs to an AE, how many managers? Usually the AE is the uh, is kind of the core of the thing and everybody's getting ratioed to this. Um, but it could be enablement people, it could be folks that are that, that are involved in things like project management. Uh, so it kind of gets to being a calculator but that can't stifle in uh, innovation, um, which is uh, you know, a core tenet of what we're constantly pushing.

Jason Bay: So just curious with some of those calculations was this like uh, hey, let's talk to the board and see like what kind of experience that they have with this. Are your investors, are there people internally that already kind of done some of this stuff before that you could run it by like where do you, how do you benchmark that kind of stuff? I know there's like really large consulting firms that kind of offer some of that. But what I always hear is hey, we spent a million bucks and we got like a 40 page strategy document that didn't really do much for us, you know, kind of thing.

Adam Block: We definitely did not do that. Uh, so we did not engage with a consulting firm to help us here. Um, I think what it was is that we did have folks that had great experience prior to motive and even at motive, um, we've been able to change up uh, um, innovation. The way we use things like AI, the way that we are using um, different technologies and we've, we've trialed different ratios. You, you only have to take one. So, so I'll give you an example. I'll give a very practical example. In our mid market organization we have a lot of customers, uh, tens of thousands of customers in just that segment. Um, and um, the account management organization. So we have new logo and then you have account management which actually used to be different. It was, it was new logo and then it was expansion Sales and customer success. So there were three groups. We mashed those together to make it a more you own the account either at new logo or ongoing forever. We had to test that, we had to make sure it was going to work. Now what we're optimizing for is how do you get the best experience for the customer? And so you've got um, you know, a lower investment strategy which is fewer account managers per, um, accounts. So in other words, larger account books of current clients. Remember, they have to make sure that their experience is great, they have to retain the customer and they have to upsell the customer. So it's a lot of touches. And then secondarily we piloted again what would happen if we reduced the book sizes for account management, not for new logo. And the results were striking and very, very positive and worth investing in. Um, so I think what I would share here with your listeners is that don't get stuck, by the way things were at a different company. Don't get stuck in a model constantly. Be challenging yourself, be open to trying something new. Uh, and I can assure you that some, it'll either validate your Right, okay, that's okay. Or uh, it will give you a path to more efficiency or more revenue or uh, or more retention, uh, whatever it is. And in our case, uh, happier customers and frankly happier employees. Because when your customers are happy, I gotta tell you, um, the account managers are happy too.

Jason Bay: Oh, absolutely. If you could shed some light on the account management model that you guys have moved to. Because this is another big debate I see in companies because, you know, we get brought in for pipe gen and pipe gen a lot of times is, you know, expansion within a customer account. It's like, does the AE own that? And if they do, for how long after they close the initial deal, do they own that? And then now like you have these account managers that they might just be used to really doing more of a customer success type of job. And now they're being asked to sell. Yeah, like true, like expansion selling. Yeah. What was that? What was that like? Because this is where I think a lot of organizations are stuck on, um, like what to do. And they have that three pod model versus the two that you're doing now.

Adam Block: We, uh, some customers uh, are very large and we actually don't move them off of their ae. Okay. So a lot of customers that are on the larger end that, that the AE will keep that account forever and we will add other resources to that account. Whether it's a, uh, broader team, whether it's subject Matter experts, whether it's um, customer success managers, um, et cetera. So, um, that model, when you think about some of the world's largest businesses, um, uh, they just require a level of depth and breadth. We just talked about it a moment ago that you don't want to lose. Uh, and it's really helpful to make sure. Plus we're constantly building new technology or they're telling us what else they want to do and so you can introduce those technologies to them. Um, so the idea of a more traditional AE and CSM that's come, that's introduced when we have that customer to make them successful, literally the name and observe how they're behaving and adopting the technology, um, that is still what we do for larger organizations. Um, however, uh, what we found in the uh, higher transactions and enterprise is somewhere in the middle enterprise and mid market. You know we're still um, innovating with and trying to optimize it. But our retention is very, very good. Uh, but we're always trying to improve the customer experience is that um, it's inefficient for the AE to maintain the account. Um, so if you sell them something for $100,000 and the expansion opportunity in the next quarter is $2,000, that is the quota to OTE ratio on something like that will not support really small transactions that are add ons. So we saw that and we developed that expansion sale motion. These people are going to call, they're going to introduce new technology, they're going to ask you how your scope is and then we had somebody else that was kind of your primary point of contact for support, called it a csm. Um, it was just confusing. Too many cooks in the kitchen, um, not a single owner that had a net number. And so for us, um, moving more of our organization to somebody that either owns the account when they're going to buy or somebody that owns the account forever and they might need other partners. Maybe they need to go to product, maybe they need to go to support, maybe they need to go to finance, they need to go to uh, supply or whatever supply chain to, to do things. But they become that quarterback. We saw not only improved customer experience and improved retention, but also they were going to sell more because that individual, uh, you know Sarah, the account manager, she knows her accounts and she knows their problems, she knows their opportunities. Um, she knows that they don't have, she understands the white space. Um, and so uh, it, we found it to be far more efficient, uh, and impactful to the customer to have a Single owner managing, um, and triaging all those things as opposed to multiple parties.

Jason Bay: Love that. I think there's so much there. I love how customer centric you guys are too. And because that's like, if it's better for the customer, there's this like, you know, this is like Medallia stuff, right? It's like how people feel in the NPS score. It's like that's a big thing too. Like how someone feels their sentiment towards your organization, especially a decision maker. Like, do they look forward to hearing from you and meeting with you? That's like a really big part of it, you know, um, there's so many things I want to dig into, but I want to keep moving, um, enablement and messaging and like the support system around this. I'm curious, like moving up market this is. Sure, they're using similar products and you had to do a lot more with the product, but the buyer is different. Like the executive buyer is thinking very differently. They're going to respond to different stuff. Like, how did you guys like, uh, equip the sales team with like the messaging and the tools and the structure and just like, how did you guys think about that part?

Adam Block: This all starts at recruiting. So we didn't walk in and say, uh, the team that is selling to our commercial customers is going to start selling to the Fortune 100. That's not how that went. What we did is we went to market and found people that we felt were the best at what they do at engaging with large organizations. So I'll start there. We, ah, talk a lot about rad. Uh, I do. Anyway, RAD is resilience, accountability and discipline. It's a model I put together over time. Um, and the reason we talk about it is because these are things we look for in an individual when they join our company. Resilience. This is when you, uh, you might hear no, right? You might have something that's a challenge that pops up and how are you going to bounce back? You know, are you going to have a renewed vigor? If so, that you're going to be resilient. Accounting accountability is owning your outcomes, good or bad. And then of course the discipline, ah, which is the most important one of these is, uh, doing the things that you know you need to do even when you don't want to. And so the folks that are going to showcase that they have a great drive and motivation, that they're willing to do the right things, that they can bounce back and that they'll own their outcomes, um, we search for that in all the roles. But not everybody is an enterprise seller. Not everybody is a strategic seller. So we really had to understand, uh, what was best for them, what was their. A talent. Uh, and so it starts at recruiting. Um, when it comes to enablement, um, this is actually very simple, but it's hard, um, to do. Um, it's so it's not easy, but it's very simple. And that is, um, folks have to be able to describe what our company does. And it's incredible how many SDRs, and you've been around this business long time in technology, how many SDRs and AES cannot adequately describe what the company does or the value that it brings. Yeah, and so my advice, when we hire a class and I meet with them, and I do it every time I meet with every single class of new hires, um, is I encourage them. Before you do anything, before you start breaking down your accounts and before you start identifying who the key Personas are, and before you start thinking about pricing and, and all the features, functions, just make sure that, uh, you can go into a family member or you can go to a neighbor, or you can go to a coworker and you can describe who we are, what we do, how we do it, how we do it better than others, the impact that it has and, uh, where we've done it, the customers that we serve. If you can do that in 90 to 120 seconds and a parent or child can understand you, that is great because now you can talk to anybody. Um, so that is an ailment function here. We put a lot of effort behind that exercise. Uh, and there's lots of other enablement things we do. Um, but that's, that's where it starts. Um, and then, uh, not to pile on here, but the conversation has to be about value. It has to be about the problem and the problem you're solving. So we do have a proprietary framework for doing that. We've, we've coined it the motive value architecture. Uh, and in essence, it's the ability to play back to somebody. You know, why is it that you are even talking to me? Right. The person's talking to you and they're evaluating your technology. For some reason, you've got to be able to describe that back to them. It's because you have this problem today or you have this current state and this is where you said you wanted to go, and this is what the outcome is going to look like when you get there. Um, and also the urgency around it. What is happening now that wasn't happening two years ago. And what makes it a problem to solve for the moment that you can't solve in the future. So if somebody can adequately describe motive and they can do it in a compelling and convicted way, and they can have a conversation with somebody that's about their world and their problems and you can play it back to them, those folks are going to have great success. They're just going to be doing it with different Personas and different size organizations that have different technical needs over time.

Jason Bay: Yep. I think that, I love that I, I think the difference between what I'm hearing from you and a lot of what I see in practice is that I think we all know that we should not talk about ourselves and our products so much and that we should talk about their world. Yet if as an organization you're not helping reps do that, you are not enabling them, it's, it's kind of tough to expect especially a new SDR to do that. And it sounds like first you at motive, like this customer centric approach is just really ingrained into the culture. Like we need to be able to speak to the customer, meet them in their world, articulate the value. I need to be able to explain to someone who doesn't know anything about motive, like it's such a fundamental part of selling. I think that is really lost these days.

Adam Block: Virtually all of our clients, uh, will expand with motive over time. Virtually all of them if we are meeting their needs. And so, um, that starts with the right people that are going to engage with them. And by the way, when we're talking about sales predominantly or SDRs, and. But the truth is that the solution engineers have to do this. So the whole pre sales organization, folks involved with implementation, um, and account management, customer success, really anybody that's customer facing, um, if you start with the customer experience, um, first and then you work backwards to the technology and the approach, um, I've found that to be the, the, the most optimal way of ensuring success.

Jason Bay: Yep. Awesome. Uh, before we take off, I got a couple surprise rapid fire questions for you.

Adam Block: All right. And I, for some reason, I'm not surprised. All right.

Jason Bay: Um, so if you could go through this, what it's been a two or three year journey of you guys moving up market, it happened so quickly for you guys. Um, if you could do that over again, knowing what you know now, what would, if anything would you do differently?

Adam Block: I would have gone even faster. Um, we continue to have great success, um, and um, I would have gone even faster. My conviction, the beginning was very high and we went very fast, but that wasn't until about the 9 to 12 month mark we built it out a bit and then so it's fascinating how much we've grown. Which you have to remember is that that didn't really start until like the ninth month I was here. So it's uh, it was a uh, very rapid growth. But frankly I think if we, we could have been our size years ago. Um, and uh, the technology was working at that time very, very well. Um, so if I had to do it over again, another one just from a more practical sense, uh, would be um, that uh, we're a direct sales engine at Motive. I mean we are absolutely uh, wonderful. One of the best maybe uh, in all of technology. However, um, you know, I think that to get to the point that you are generating many billions of dollars in revenue, partnerships has to be a, an important component of it. Um, and so our investments were always going into our direct sales motion and into our integrations. So product partnerships. But I think we go to market partnerships, um, is a critical component. It's something that we have now developed. Uh, I probably would have started that earlier.

Jason Bay: Uh, how do you personally use AI like in your day to day.

Adam Block: Great question. So um, I put most things through AI when I am consuming information. So I uh, as an executive I'm not um, generating as much documentation as I used to. Instead I am uh, responsible for knowing what everything says. So we review a forecast, if we review a business review, if we're looking at an initiative to change something, uh, if we want to look back over how we did last quarter in a certain segment and there's a 55 page document that I need to read through. Um, I do and I read every word. But every day I'm leveraging AI to help me understand big data models, to help identify trends, to help identify key insights, um, and certainly to help make sure I didn't miss something that is a problem or an opportunity or a really interesting insight. Um, so I found that it is, um, it ensures that I'm a more complete present person in a room. Uh, because it's like having two more atoms right beside me that are also reviewing the same information in uh, just faster, different moods. You know what I mean? So we do a lot with it. Don't get me wrong, as an organization we use so many tools. But if you're asking about me and my personal, personal life every single day, um, I also do it for a lot of just random idea generation. You know, I'll, we'll use Claude, um, or, uh, Chat, GPT or Gemini or something to do fun stuff like, I don't know, somebody said something funny in a meeting, and all of a sudden there's an image generated from it. You know, it makes us laugh, keeps us grounded. Um, or we want to come up with a name or we're thinking about a spiff or something, and you just say, you know, I'm feeling like this. And I kind of. I'm, um. You know, like the derp. The Kentucky Derby's in a week and a half, so how can I weave that into whatever my message is going to be to the company next week? Um, stuff like that.

Jason Bay: One last question before we take off is, you know, having a position like yours could be stressful for a lot of people. And, like, I always like to ask about, like, is there anything that you do to relieve stress or prevent stress or anxiety or any kind of routines, tips, anything like that?

Adam Block: It's a really good question. This is an area that I don't think I do well. Um, and, uh, in time, um, I will do more. You know, it's. It's. It's interesting when you. When you enjoy work. You know, I enjoy work, and.

Jason Bay: Me too.

Adam Block: Um, when I make, um, uh, progress and have a sense of accomplishment over what I did today. Um, and it doesn't really stop. Um, I'm just. My happy place is driving things forward. Um, I'll give you an example. We had a conversation today, and I identified a couple of challenges with one of our active cycles, and it gave us a lot of energy to go and solve those things. Um, that's great work, and that gives me a lot of satisfaction. Um, um, I have great friends, and I do travel a lot for work and not for work too. Uh, and go all over. So maybe that's it. But it's not. It's not always small. Uh, it doesn't always reduce stress, per se. Um, but I would say this. Um, you know, if you. If you do yoga, if you are somebody who's into painting, uh, if you are somebody who likes to play sports and these kind of things, and that's your stress relief, that's great. Um, and I do some of those things some of the time. But the truth is that I really am, uh, very thankful for the team that I built. That's what allows a stress relief. I mean, you can't go to sleep at night if you've got a huge set of problems. You don't have the right people working on them, but it can make you uh, very confident. And going forward, if you are surrounded by an incredible bunch of, uh, of leaders and very senior leaders that are in many cases have teams of hundreds or thousands of people. I mean, my organization, a CRO here is uh, over 3,000 or right at 3,000 people right now. So it's a big org. And those folks need great leaders, um, that are getting what they need from the broader, uh, teams and they do that through me. Uh, and so as long as, uh, they are out there representing their teams and we are uh, doing the work to support them and we have a trustworthy relationship, uh, I know that sounds very, uh, elementary, but at the end of the day, um, that's going to relieve a lot of stress. Uh, and so that's what I'm very proud of, 100%.

Jason Bay: Uh, so we gotta take off. It's been great jamming with you here. Where can people go to connect with you or learn more about motive? Like I'm sure you guys are hiring. Link all of that kind of good stuff.

Adam Block: Always hiring. Go motive.com. there's a career page. Uh, of course, if you're listening to this, just send me a note. Adam block, go motive dot com. Send me a note on LinkedIn. Uh, and uh, we'd love to hear from you. Really all functions are, um, and have been hiring for quite some time and it's ah, it's a great team with a great attitude. Uh, and uh, it's not something you can fake. Uh, so, uh, I would invite any folks to get in touch and we'd uh, love to hear from you.