World-class enablement, AE self-sourcing, and onboarding

Jason Bay: AE self sourcing. There's a lot of opinions on this, uh, sales Loft did a big study of their top, you know, clients a couple years ago and they found that the account executives, depending on their asp, will self source between basically a third and two thirds of their pipeline. And it tended to grow larger the more enterprise and strategic the sales motion was. So the larger the deal size, the more sales sourcing they tend to do. And there's a lot of opinions on whether or not AES should self source or not. And mostly what I see, if I'm being honest, is that the thought leadership, if you call it that, on LinkedIn around people believing that AES should not self source tend to be an SSMB sales motion versus a strategic sales motion where we're trying to get into, you know, maybe a Fortune 1000 account or an executive that is extremely seasoned, that's multiple layers removed from the software that let's say that we're trying to sell them. So today's episode is going to focus a lot on AE self sourcing from an enablement lens. It's a, uh, client that I'll talk about here in a second who doesn't even have an SDR team. They have close to 200 account executives and they all self source pipeline and they do it really, really well. And they have a really, really high retention rate on the sales team too. So I'm super excited to dig into the episode before we get to that. My name is Jason Bay. I'm host of Outbound Squad and CEO of Outbound Squad. So appreciate you coming here, spending time with us. We're all about helping you turn complete strangers into paying customers. So our work focuses a lot on Outbound pipegen. So it's really all of the things that you want the sales team to do, whether that's BDRs or AES. Outside of marketing to build pipeline. That's everything from referrals, doing cold outbound to events and sort of, you know, all of the other stuff around working their network and getting warm intros into accounts, that's what we focus on in this podcast. So if you're a leader or enablement leader and you're trying to get your team to do more of that effectively, you're definitely in the right place. And we've done it for some really cool companies like Shopify, Zoom, Rippling Gong and a ton of other startups, but 250 teams we've worked with in the last five or six years. So today's episode is going to focus more on the enablement lens, I have Mitch Thomas on the pod. He's director of sales enablement at a company called BrookSource. BrookSource, uh, does not sell software. So when I told him, I was like, hey, you have these AES doing all this self sourcing. That's crazy. He's like, basically his response was, I didn't know that there was a different way of doing it. Right. And I really love the culture. I actually got to go speak at one of their SKOs, uh, for their parent company, which is three companies. I want to say there's five or six hundred people. It was the largest live event that I've, uh, been hired to speak at. And uh, holy shit. I remember being pretty nervous, but as I was stepping on stage. But, uh, it went really well. We did a keynote, I did some workshops. The culture, just everything was really top notch. I got to meet the entire sales team while I was out there. So, uh, we talk about a couple things. And the reason why, if you haven't noticed, I'm starting to interview more sales enablement folks is I don't feel like there's a lot of great content out there on sales enablement. And I feel like a lot of the folks that build these programs and roll them out and, you know, a lot of them do with very limited resources, don't get the credit they deserve. So with Mitch, we talked about their enablement approach. I think what's really important as a sales enablement leader is how do you position enablement, you know, the department as really a partner to sales, less an order taker of, hey, what are you working on? What do you want me to do? And more, hey, like I'm in the business, I'm seeing this trend. Here's some data. Have you considered this? And like, Mitch was a previous seller and sales leader at the company. I think that really helps a lot. So we talk a lot about how to really position the department as, uh, a partner. We talk about what happens when they do align on the projects that they're going to work on. Everything from how they pick metrics to get leadership, buy in and create the resources around it, hit the field with it, measure it, et cetera. We of course talk about AE self sourcing and all the things that they're doing to generate pipeline right now. Some of this stuff is in person, which I love. And then we talk about onboarding. Um, I think onboarding was, it was a really big trend a couple years ago to talk about onboarding. And I feel like people have Just kind of forgotten how important it is to get a rep quickly ramped and up to speed and really skipping all the BS that a lot of onboarding programs make them go through. And I've seen so few onboarding programs in person that I was like really impressed by. And theirs is one of them. So we talk about how to onboard. They actually bring everyone together and they onboard and uh, cohorts and they do it in person, which I think is really, really great. So we talk about all this stuff and more. Two things before we get to the episode. One, if you're looking for, for more free stuff, we just launched the Outbound Masterclass. This is three hours of our very best outbound content. It's got, uh, everything in it from how to think about your ICP and narrowing down your targeting to make sure that you're only putting your, your message and your effort in front of people that uh, our engaged buyers in people with a higher propensity to want to book a meeting with you. We talk of course about cold calling, cold email. We talk about how to make offers, we talk about follow up. I mean there's just so much like really great stuff in there. You can check it out. Outboundsquad.com masterclass Again, it's free. Outboundsquad.com Masterclass and if you're listening to this and you're like, hey, I would love, uh, Outbound Squad to maybe help us a little bit with our outbound pipeline generation, uh, reach out to me directly, Jason. Outboundsquad.com We've done this for a lot of great companies like Brooksource that you're listening to today, like Shopify, Rippling, Zoom Gong, et cetera, and a ton of startups that are just getting started too. So if you want to learn a little bit more about how we help these types of companies increase pipe gen, reach out to me directly. Jasonoutboundsquad.com all right, let's get to the interview. It's good to jam with you, man. Here. Um, I remember the first time we met, I was like, I'm gonna get along with this guy because you had like, you have like guitarists in your office, like hanging on the back wall. I was like, let's go, dude.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, you just told me about some Van Halen solo you'd learn. I'm like, oh, uh, yeah, this is gonna be fun. And then right before we got on here, you're listening to some Van Halen bootleg video or something. So. Always a good time.

Jason Bay: Yeah, um, the other fun, funny part about how we met too is, and this happens somewhat often, but maybe not quite to the extent, um, that you guys have at BrookSource was like, you're like, yeah, so we're already following a lot of your cold calling frameworks and you open up this deck and it was like, yeah, we're like following this to a T. You know, we already know what a priority drop is and a permission based governor and like all

Mitch Thomas: this other stuff, all your stuff before we even got to talk to you. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Bay: I was like, so happy. I was like, oh, this is awesome, man. Um, I thought what would be good to get into? And we've sort of talked about it offline. But, um, how do you go from sales, being a sales leader and doing that whole stuff and why the shift into enablement, uh, for you? I thought that might be a good place to start.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, it's a good question. The interest in it. Well, first of all, I think the interest started before I even knew what it was. You know, we certainly didn't have it in the company. And at least from my lens, I know enablement is really, really popular, you know, in SaaS, sales and tech, longer in our business, like in staffing, consulting, like a lot of our, A lot of competitors don't even have that yet. So I was really interested in, when I was coming up through sales and sales leadership in the company, like, we would just be kind of reinventing the wheel a lot in our different markets or different regions. Regions. And just a lot of thoughts about, like, how could we do this? You know, everyone's creating this, this messaging, like, how could we do this at scale so that every rep doesn't have to reinvent the wheel over here? Um, so it kind of started there. And as I got into leadership, uh, the need for that really just grew. As we evolved the business, we grew our operation, you know, and some of the complexity and the process and the technology, um, the new hires and the people that we were onboarding, like, as that increased, the need only got greater. And the leader I was working with at the time when I was a sales manager, um, was becoming our VP of sales. So it just really kind of fortuitous timing and then just an interest in trying to do things across the organization, the sales organization at scale, and solve big problems for everyone, I'd say, is how I got into it.

Jason Bay: So because you've been in enablement now, I think for six or seven years or whatever, it's been like, did you have to learn did you have to learn how to do enablement, like on your own, from scratch? Like, how did you, how did you pick up all this stuff?

Mitch Thomas: Still learning? Yeah, I mean that's, that's been my mo. That's something I, I prioritize a lot is I go out and I like to read, I like to listen to podcasts. You know, that's how I ran into you. Um, so bringing external knowledge into the company, um, is something I'm always trying to do. So, yeah, I did have to go out and learn a lot and I'm always trying to connect with people out there and get different perspectives and yeah, we, we borrow a lot. You know, we see this out here. We like this. Um, so it's a lot of the things we do are homegrown, but they're inspired by a lot of great things that we see out there. So that's kind of how I've done it over the years. And I mean, still evolving and definitely still learning. Don't have it all figured out.

Jason Bay: Yeah. One of the things that impressed me most in working with you guys was, I mean, dude, I want to say, at the time, was it just you and the enablement department. When we started working together?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I was uh, yeah, one man crew for the first three or four years and then we started to uh, you know, still a small team, but we've got a couple different folks on the team now, so it has grown. Yep.

Jason Bay: And how many, how many reps do you guys have?

Mitch Thomas: Just for. Yeah, for our Brook Source brand. Uh, we're just south of 200 reps. Like 180 right now.

Jason Bay: Yeah, so 180, 200 reps. And what I was surprised by was like there's so much standardization inside of the organization already. It's like, wow, like people are following a very similar, like, outbound, cold, uh, calling framework. I know that in our work together we increased the conversion quite a bit of like first call, you know, connect to meeting. But it was already pretty high. I want to say it was a 25% conversion rate on connected calls into a qualified meeting. Um, there was that and then the other thing that I was really impressed with that I want to get into is, and this is something that enablement can struggle with in some, some orgs is there was a really good partnership between you and the sales leaders.

Mitch Thomas: Yep.

Jason Bay: And a part of that, I imagine was that you, you've done the job before at that company especially.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I think that, uh, yeah, that definitely helps. I also think it's just, I'D give a lot of credit to just like our culture and the people in the org. Like, it's definitely a culture where people get a seat at the table and you know, your opinion and your voice is heard. So we, uh, definitely benefit from that, from the enablement seat. But I think it goes both ways too. I mean we have that, that culture and that mentality, but also like, we, we try really hard to make sure we're bringing it. Like we're, we're bringing value, you know, back to bringing ideas and learning from, you know, external sources. Like, you know, we see the enablement team as an area that can bring new ideas to the sales team that may. They haven't thought about in the sales leaders. So if we're bringing that value, we've got a seat at the table. We just have a good, um, kind of 360 feedback loop and making sure everyone gets their voice heard going. So that helps.

Jason Bay: Yeah, love it. Um, so we're going to unpack like three things here, so I thought would be really good to talk about. First is the enablement approach. So how you do everything from take all of the ideas that probably, I would imagine get thrown your way through emails and texts and messages and meetings and that sort of stuff, and how you prioritize that, um, to how you measure it, etc. Um, one very unique thing too that I still think is, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, being done today Is, you know, AES are pretty much expected to self source most of their, if not all of their pipeline. There isn't like this big SDR Org that's setting all these appointments for them. That was a really unique thing coming into the business that I saw. Uh, and then onboarding. Um, so if we were to unpack the enablement approach, like if we kind of step back, how do you think about and feel free to add commentary if you're like, hey, dude, this is really adapted over time too. And I've had to kind of figure out some of this the hard way. But yeah, how do you approach like organizing and prioritizing what to even focus on first and then what happens after that when Brook Source decides that this is a thing or two that we really, really want the enablement team to focus on with our sales work?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean, to your point, it has evolved quite a bit because when I first stepped into the role and I was learning enablement, I mean, it was like floodgates open. You know, we'd never had anyone doing it and like, uh, you know, a Sales manager would be doing this or my, you know, the person who was probably the happiest is our VP of sales, who'd been like writing sales training, and any change that needed to be done was doing so. It was definitely like floodgates had opened when we started, and I don't think I quite had the confidence at that point to know what we should be prioritizing. Um, I was really just executing a lot of the work and, you know, hey, you should do this next or you should do this. But it quickly became a challenge. Like, okay, all of a sudden I've got all these ideas coming at me from all over the organization, sales, other groups, and yeah, what do I prioritize? Where do I spend my time? Because I'm one human. That became a challenge really quickly. And it didn't. It wasn't like a light, um, light switch flip with that by any means. But where we've gotten really good in the last couple of years has been our executive team and our leadership team has really painted a clear picture of what our vision is like, even for that year. What are some of the things we really want to focus on? And then that has become my North Star to be like, okay, these are the things that, you know, we think are going to grow the business or be the most important things to the business this year. These requests that are coming in or where I'm deciding to spend my time, like, what. What would be a tier one project? It's got to move the needle on some of those core objectives of what we're trying to accomplish. If it doesn't, it's not in that lane at all. You know, it's not that it's not a good idea or it's not important, but it doesn't need to be a priority. And I know it's hard because, like with enablenet, sometimes some of the things that are coming up are like many fires. It's like, uh, that's on fire over there. But if it's not something that's like one of those core things that we really think is going to help us this year, I'm going to let it keep burning, which took me a while to learn. But I think we've gotten a lot better there and we've been able to be more focused on, like, what priorities will move the needle.

Jason Bay: How do you. Because I think this would be helpful for other enablement leaders listening. How do you say no to something and. And then also be okay with just like, yeah, there's always stuff. There's A million things that aren't working right. Um, and just like being okay with kind of letting that go. How do you say no to that? And how do you. What advice would you have for someone that's like, well, there's so many things we could fix, like, this thing's not perfect and this thing needs to be fixed, et cetera, et cetera.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah.

Jason Bay: What advice would you have?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I. For starters, like, I. I feel like a lot of the requests I get or ideas I get are from people I know really well because I take time. You know, I've been in the organization, I'm coming up on 15 years, so I'm a little bit unique there. I've just had more time with some of these folks. But usually people who are coming to me with those types of things that maybe I have to tell no. I have a relationship built. I understand their business and, you know, a lot of times what they're trying to accomplish. So that helps, um, that there's, you know, trust there and transparency and just a good foundation of a relationship. But I. The big thing for me, I actually use this, like my whole career. Sales, sales, management enablement. Now, like, I just explain why, you know, not. It's not just a no, it's like, yeah, this is a great idea. Well, first I'd like to listen to and take it all in. What exactly are we talking about? What would it involve? But if it. If it's clearly something that we're not going to be able to give attention to immediately, just in explaining the why, and that could be, you know, we've got Project A, B and C over here. Or it could be, you know, this doesn't really line up with like, some of the big objectives that we're trying to tackle this year. Um, but I mean, I always. Even good ideas that don't fit that criteria, I'm still going to keep that in mind. Like, I'm going to follow up with that person. You know, hey, is it still a problem? Three months later, I have a, you know, my whole method to my madness of how I organize projects and what could be future projects. So I have it stored somewhere where I can revisit and check in with them and make sure that, like, they're still feeling heard and they know it hasn't been forgotten. But, um, you know, we're going to still check in, even if it's something that's not accomplished yet.

Jason Bay: Yeah, and I think you mentioned something else I noticed in really great enablement leaders is they, they have these really key relationships that they've spent time building. So there's trust there. Um, curious for you, like, because a big part of it is showing up as a partner. What do you do with, with you and your department now to stay engaged with, like what's actually going on in the field and being able to come in and actually offer strategic value or guidance. Like, what do you, what do you do to stay on top of that stuff? What, what does that look like? Practically speaking?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean, uh, some of it's been done for me. Like we just, we have a, a couple different, like SWAT teams, if you will, like groups who report up through sales leadership that are talking regularly. So like my boss is, has prioritized that and created that system over the last few years and gotten the right people involved. So I just feel like, I mean we have that uh, one of the calls is weekly, one is bi weekly. So we're constantly talking like if something is feeling off or like there's something that's on fire that's really needs attention, everyone knows about it, and then can plug the right people in, um, to fix it. So that, that helps tremendously. And then, you know, as we've grown the team too, because that helps. Those are sales leaders. So that, that captures a lot of the big picture stuff. But we try to be really intentional with making sure we spend a lot of time with the people in the field, you know, because what can happen is we've got lots of ideas of what we think is going to move the needle or how impactful this project or this new technology could be from our lens, from the enablement lens. It doesn't matter if the field doesn't see it that way. So spending a lot of time with sales managers, our AES in the field, like we, you can never do too much of that. And I, I always feel like we could do more and I want to do more. But I do think we've done a good job of prioritizing that so that we have a pretty good pulse of like what, you know, what the field thinks about what we're putting out there.

Jason Bay: What are the, what are the SWAT teams?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean we have like weekly calls, you know, so it would be anyone from like people who are specialists who are running, um, different vertical organizations, or the folks who are running some of our services and solution orgs, um, regional sales directors. So it's a, you know, it's all folks who report up through um, you know, like our sales executives. Um, and they're the right size, where there's enough people, where you're getting perspective from a lot of different areas and a lot of different things can come up, but they're also small enough where like, we can, we can get things done when we talk weekly, bi weekly and accomplish a lot. So I would definitely recommend that if you, you know, if you're an enablement leader who maybe doesn't feel like there's a seat at the table or just like in general, the sales org or even orgs that sales is interacting with are just not really in sync. Like getting. It can be as simple as having some of those calls and you know, we rotate. It doesn't always have to be one person running it. Like, I'll maybe I had an idea or something that I read that I thought was relevant for us. I'll bring it to the call, I'll present on it. It's just super collaborative. And I mean, every call we have, we're uh, either identifying something or like actually working on something to get a solution done. So kind of like your get shit done sessions that I know you branded. Yeah, it's kind of our version of that.

Jason Bay: Yeah. So just because I think this is an interesting insight for everyone. Um, are the SWAT teams. Is it like there's like an outbound SWAT team or is it like how. How are the SWAT teams? Is it organized around a topic or like a function or.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, the ones I'm thinking, I mean, we, I, I guess off that note, like, I do spend those up quite a bit as well. Like, for example, we're always making tweaks to. You know, one recently was. Yeah, like our, our cold calls. How are those going? Reassessing, like our framework or. Uh, it could be anything. Um, you know how we're multi threading. Like, I'll definitely spin up like a smaller group of people and figure out like, who are some of the key stakeholders. Like maybe I want to grab a sales manager, a couple AES, a regional sales director. Just get perspective and use a small team to drive that. So do a lot of that. Um, this team's a little bit more standing, just like more of the executive leaders in sales who are leading a lot of those functions. So from a high level, they kind of know what's most important in their org and what's going on. Um, and that kind of helps us all stay in touch with each other.

Jason Bay: Got it. So like, from a prioritization standpoint, it sounds like there's a couple components of like, you're really close to the field, you and your department and like what's going on and participating in that stuff. And there's also these like kind of dedicated smaller teams of the leaders, which I think is a really big part of like the leadership buy in around stuff too, where it's like, you're not just coming in as an enablement team and saying, here's like, uh, you know, we're going to run some general enablement sessions on cold calling. It's like, no, we've heard this is a problem. Something's not resonating. The leaders have brought it up, they're bought into this. We're going to talk to some of the reps, we're going to observe this in action. Love, um, that. So we've uh, prioritized what we want to work on, um, what sort of comes next after that. How do you think about. Because you guys are super data driven too, which I love. Um, how do you think about metrics, creating buy in, creating the actual enablement content? How do you kind of think about the rest of the steps?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it, but I mean, general things. Try to start with the end in mind. If we identified something that, hey, this is definitely a priority and to the data point, we're not exclusively going to say, yes, we have to do this because this data says this, but we use that for sure. Like if, if we have a feel that, hey, this is a gap and we're hearing that from the field and there's data there to support that, like, that means, you know, we feel like this is a slam dunk, something we should prioritize. Um, but once we've landed on that, yes, we need to take action here. Like definitely thinking about what the end result would be. What would a win look like three months, six months, nine months from now, whatever the time frame is. And we definitely have gotten a lot better at trying to figure out like, what, when, what would a win look like? It could be qualitative, but also quantitatively. Like, can we measure it? If we can measure it, that's obviously best. So we can see if it was successful and then we learn from that. Right. So that's become a big piece up front, constantly, um, evolving. But I think we've done a lot better job of using data to help us make sure we're working on the right things and then obviously see how successful some of the things we roll out are so that we know how we can do better next time. Um, in Terms of like the buy in, back to leadership. I mean if we're going to roll out something new, you know, very rarely will we roll out something new and important and just kind of get it out there to the field. Like we're going to spend time with leadership under making sure we understand the true problem. You know, hey, here's what we were thinking about for this rollout. How do you think that would go? What are blind spots that we're not thinking of making sure that the leadership team, and by that I mean like the sales managers or maybe some of our vertical leaders, we want their input, we want them bought in before we start trying to get it to the field. Because if they're not bought in or they don't understand it, they don't understand the why they don't get, doesn't have a chance really. We've just, we've had so many failures there. We're just, it's simple, let's just push it, you know, out to the field. But if the leaders aren't on board or they don't get it, it's just not going to be successful. That's what we found. So for our big ticket things, we're going to spend a lot of time up front making sure they can roll it out and they're not completely dependent on enablement because they're the ones in the markets, right. They're the ones who are sitting down with these folks running the sales meetings. So that's, that's been a big learning lesson over the last few years. It's probably the most important one, honestly.

Jason Bay: Yeah. How does it go with um, like are you then training or creating content in collaboration with the leaders at that point? Or is there a phase of this where it's like, hey, we're going to roll out this new cold calling approach, let's say, and we're going to train the leaders on it first before we roll it out. What does that part look like?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, a lot of times we will do that. Or like a recent example was let's just use AI as an example. Uh, we sell technology and engineering talent solutions so we're working with customers and how they're leveraging AI. So um, we put out content to just educate the field at large for what's going on in the market. What are we hearing from customers, what is brook sources, value prop, all the things you can imagine that the field needs to know to stay up on latest and greatest. So um, one thing we did recently with that was so we put out, we Kind of have an internal podcast that we do that as it's the main medium. We put that out through and we release it early to the leaders, let you know, give them some time to digest it, give it a listen, host an office hours, um, you know, hey, come if you feel like you got it and you feel good reinforcing that with your market, great. No issue. But if you have questions, you're a little, not unsure about it or what would be the best way I can actually reinforce this, you know, with my AES. Come to the office hours, let's talk about it. Um, and then. And be able to back it up with just like the really easy, you know, here's everything you need. You know, here's a sales meeting you can run. Um, here's the sales play. You know that all the resources live. This is what the reps will use. So you know, check this out and see if you have questions. So you know, just trying to go above and beyond and make sure they have everything they need. And then also know on the back end if they get lost three months or three weeks later or whatever, like they can come to us and we can help.

Jason Bay: Yeah. Uh, can you talk a little bit more about. Because it sounds like a big part of this is one we're getting leadership buy in. And then you also mentioned like we're giving them ways that they can talk about this in their meetings and like reinforce it and that sort of stuff. Like, uh, what goes into that? Like, and maybe we use cold calling as an example because that's like, maybe the, that was the reason why I was brought in was to talk a little bit more about that and you guys were already adopting that and that's a really kind of simple example to use. Um, but what would you give leaders for, hey, we're going to roll out a new cold calling approach. What would the leaders expect to have in terms of like collateral or enablement that would help them outside of the training sessions that you guys are going to run around it.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, so definitely like anything that we would eventually be giving as a resource to the reps. So whatever they fall back on, which could be like a, you know, sales play, a one pager, talk tracks, whatever. Um, but then I think the key with, with the leaders, at least from my perspective, like the leaders tend to value more of like the in person time. Yeah, the direct training. They want to be able to get on a call and just ask their questions, get it figured out versus like, you know, take a training, you know, in an LMS or like read through a bunch of information. So I found the best engagement we get is, is just offering time, you know, um, so that's the main thing. It's nothing crazy. You know, there could in some cases, like for cold calling be more of like, how are you coaching it? You know, there could be some separate resources they can use or maybe a coaching sales play. But I find a lot of times like we can overthink it and provide like too much content. So a lot of time it's just getting them access to what the reps are going to see early. So there's just, that's the core content and then giving them additional time to ask questions on it. Um, but we do, we definitely do train the trainers as well. So for like cold calls, there was something new we were learning and we did that with you. Um, that was super effective because while they need to know what the reps are going to learn as well, like they have a different lens. So they're going to want to know how can I create a culture around it in the market, how can I give feedback around it? Um, how can I think about like our call management strategy and who we're calling? So I think giving them time in person is always the highest ROI for us and getting far enough ahead of it where they feel like they're not rushed to. Holy shit, this is coming through. It's new and I gotta get this in front of my reps, like next week. That doesn't usually work for us either.

Jason Bay: Yeah, love it. And there was like, if I remember correctly, there was like a four part framework that you guys were using that I think was very, very. Our frameworks were almost identical. It was like teach, practice, inspect and coach. I think is, is ours yours. You guys have some a riff on a variation of that.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, it's pretty much identical. Yeah. Like teaching up front, you know, that might be where you're going through the actual training material. Like here's the X's and O. Like this is the framework. Um, and then I mean the important part is just getting into the actual activity itself. So let's say, yeah, we're a cold call, like going through how we would actually prep to make that call. Or if we're going into a cold call session, what kind of prep can we do? So they actually do the prep, you know, with a rep, um, and then like shadowing in the moment. So again, we use this a lot. It could be for anything. It doesn't have to be cold calls. It could be meetings, whatever. We're, whatever skill we're trying to learn, um, but actually getting into the activity with them, making calls with them, going on the meeting, riding along, um, and then actually after you've actually been through the activity, like the coaching that comes after that. So kind of the review of what happened, how did you think that go, you know, giving feedback, things like that. So that's a good one.

Jason Bay: Anything else you would add before we kind of shift gears a bit on your enablement approach, your framework, how you and the team kind of think about it.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean I guess something that we've done this year that's helped a lot is like we have somebody in the organization like enablement is always change management. Um, but we have invested a lot in just because so many things are changing and that's just the normal state. Um, we've invested in just upping our change management game as well. So like we have a leader who's kind of tasked, I call her our change management czar. But like she's, yeah, she's gotten some training on it and is, you know, if we're rolling out something big, um, we're going to her to like present our plan and just, just look at it from a different angle. Like she's not in enablement, she doesn't roll that stuff out every day. But our most recent launch we made it was just like some process updates and some different CRM things and gave it a whole new perspective. So that's just something else that's working is just having somebody out else in the organization, maybe put eyes on some of the stuff you're putting out there and be like, here's how I was thinking of rolling it out. Is there anything else we could do to improve this? And in this case it was somebody who worked really closely with a lot of those sales managers that um, was their role just gained a lot more perspective. So I think having peers and people who are in cross orgs help with some of the major lifts and change management, that's been a thing we've done this year that's gone really well.

Jason Bay: Do you have any examples of stuff that you've gotten feedback on that was helpful?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean some of it was um, you know what we talked about earlier, like the best way to roll things out to specific groups. Like what are the do our market directors really like, like different, um, different styles for how people learn. And um, it was even like the launch plan, you know, how we were timing it up and you're like, hey, have you thought about the timing of this and how this coincides with this other thing that's going on, just things we wouldn't have thought about. Um, those are a couple examples that come to mind. But there were a lot of like, aha, um, moments where I felt like the. We came in with a pretty good plan and left with a great plan just for having one other set of eyes on it.

Jason Bay: Yeah, I think the timing piece is so crucial. It's because it's hard, right? Because especially us as being a third party, we come in like, we don't know what the day in, in the life looks like for a rep. We don't know what they're being asked outside of the training they participated in with us, you know. So, uh, being conscious of that is obviously very crucial if you want something to land.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, we kind of see ourselves as like the, a little bit of the gatekeepers to the AES time because they, they get so many things from so many different areas, not just enablement, but you know, from our HQ departments from um, from everywhere. So yeah, it's really our job to figure out like, okay, like a schedule, you know, of when things are going to come out because we've definitely had instances where we didn't think through that or there's something coming from somewhere else in New York at the same time. And it's, and it could be a great rollout, great um, content or whatever it may be training and it just doesn't land because it was simply mistimed because there was something else going on at the same time they had to do that was equally as important and they, they just could only swing one. So, um, that's a lesson learned for sure.

Jason Bay: Let's uh, let's shift gears into self sourcing. So this is probably the thing that stuck out to me most working with you guys is I was like, oh, there's. Okay, there's no SDRs. Um, I'm sure there's some marketing leads and stuff that come in here and there and some channel partnerships and referrals, but for the most part the AE is out there like building their own pipeline. Um, what are some of the stuff that you've seen work? Um, not just like tactics wise, but how do you set the tone and the culture around that? Because that is just something in SaaS that is, I think that they're learning the hard way in SaaS right now. These last couple years have been pretty hard in terms of like, the market is not what it was and the SDR teams are not as Inflated as they were. And it's like, hey, I gotta go out and self source 2/3 of my pipeline when I'm used to kind of doing nothing for the most part. So it's been, it's been a hard adjustment for a lot of sales teams. But can you speak to like the culture just around this and how you guys think about, you know, Pipegen and that kind of thing?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean we do benefit. I feel like I have to call this out first. Like, we never have had a BDR role or team. So it's all. We have a lot of like tenured people who started with the company and that, uh, that's kind of one of the unique parts of our culture is we have a lot of people who have just grown up through the business and have been there a long time. So for a lot of us it's just all we've ever known. So that helps. But I do think like from my lens, I mean we, we prioritize training a lot of those skills right out of the gates. Um, and we set that expectation early. So if you're, if it's a new person coming in, maybe they've sold in a different role or maybe it's their first sales job, like that's, that's just a big focus. We want to get them doing the job. And the first part of the job, when you start fresh, you know, we don't have dozens of qualified leads to just hand over to somebody. So like, hey, you're. The first part of your job as an AE is going to be to try to figure out how to set meetings, learn about your account. Like they're starting from the ground up. So the training reflects that. When we get them into training, like we try to get them, um, understanding their accounts, starting to become a student of their customer's business or the prospect customer's business, getting on the phones, learning how to do LinkedIn, learning how to do social. So it does start immediately and the tone is set and that's, you know, if they want to eat, they gotta hunt. Um, so I think we said that early, but we also invest a lot in the training and giving them like setting them up to be successful with the tools they have and the support they have to do that. So, um, those are a couple things that come to mind. And I also think we're just, this is in a lot of areas of our business, but we've always been just equality over quantity. So I think one of the things that can overwhelm reps, maybe sometimes with with self sourcing is just, you know, hanging a huge number over their head. Like, we're not asking, especially our more tenured reps who are, who are managing accounts and, and managing opportunities in business. You know, it. We're not asking them to make 300 calls a day. Um, but we want quality contacts and um, we want consistency. So we, you know, we look at the numbers. Our coaches do a good job of, of checking them on that. You know, hey, no calls this week. Like, what's going on? It's so it's just an expectation. It's built into the coaching, it's built into the training. And then I think the ask is reasonable. Let's make quality, um, quality outreach attempts and, and understand the importance of how we need that. Like, if you want to continue growing your book of business, you can't just sit in this group over here and not meet new people and spread your influence.

Jason Bay: So, yeah, there's a lot to be said for that just being the expectation coming in and people not knowing any different.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah.

Jason Bay: You know, um, and then I think the other thing too is, and I've just been really big on this messaging lately is that, you know, we, you know, companies spend billions of dollars, especially in SaaS, on sales training and sales methodology and sales process. And if there's a big deal, Carrie's gonna, might fly in person with a rep to go meet that client. Right. Um, Outbound traditionally gets like, hey, here dude, here's a talk track and some emails, like templates like, go get after. There's like no training, there's no methodology, there's no approach, there's no onboarding that like nothing, you know? Um, so I think that's the other big part is you guys invest a lot of time training on how to properly do this because outbound sucks. If you suck at outbound, it's, it sucks. It's really shitty. To be an average rep that converts 5% of live connected conversations into a meeting. That means I'm getting rejected 19 times in order to book a meeting. That's like, that's not sustainable in enterprise sales, you know, um, what are some of the things that you guys are seeing working? I know that there's like, this isn't just like, this isn't like an inside sales team that you guys have. Right? Like reps are going out, they're meeting in person and getting into local markets and that sort of stuff. What are you guys seeing working for Pipeline? Ah, right now?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, you know, it's, it sounds really simple and basic. But I. It's definitely the first thing that comes to mind, you know, and I think about some of our more experienced reps who have been in the field, like, a lot of times. Maybe those are the folks if you're out there listening, like, who are the. The ones who don't want to pick up the phone? You know, they've been at it for a while, or maybe they are used to a BDR doing a lot of that for them. Um, but our best reps, they don't even have to pick up the phone much. Like, I think getting more out of the relationships you have and getting really good at strategic ass. Like, we train a lot on, you know, every meeting we go into, we're preparing to, like, what referrals are we going to ask for? Or, hey, these are three people. I keep hearing their name. How can you get me introduced? So turning that one meeting you have into five and getting into a new part of the organization for us. We go very deep into an organization. So instead of, like, a couple buyers, it might be dozens of buyers. So, like, how can you get me connected over here? But it can be your. Your market that you're in as well. You know, you're at this org. I, uh, see you're connected with this person over here. So leveraging the relationships, which, I mean, I mean, seems obvious, but our best reps are so good at that, and then just spending time where their buyers are as well. We have a huge, you know, we have brick and mortar all over the country, so this helps. But, um, I mean, our reps are super involved in the community. Like, we have a big service as one of our core values as an organization. So, you know, people are out at, uh, doing philanthropy, seeing what events their customers are into and just running into people there and not trying to sell anything or, you know, be sketchy or anything, but just running into people and making new relationships that way. So we do it a ton with that. Going to events, getting involved in the communities, like, that's such a great way to build your network. And it. I don't know, it always amazes me. You go to, like, a couple events and. And just meet somebody who knows this person, and all of a sudden you're. You're talking to this person that maybe has been on your call sheet for two years. How many times that happened to you? It's like, man, I've called him every day for two years. All I had to do was, um, you know, meet this person who was friends with them. So we put a Big emphasis on that. And that just fits our culture as well. And like the type of people we hire, they're just natural at that.

Jason Bay: Can you speak more to. Because you guys have a bunch of offices, right? Like how do you think about in office and doing things in person? Kind of. What's the, what's the expectation for the round?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, we try to do everything in person if we can. Now obviously Pandemic changed things a lot. Um, I mean pre Pandemic I would guess we were around 70, 80% of our meetings with customers were like on site. We're either grabbing lunch at a coffee shop but like ideally on, on the client site. Um, now you do have a lot of leaders now who are remote or maybe not sitting in their building or there every day. So virtual meetings are just, you know, more normal and that, that number is higher. But anytime we can back to the relationship, you know, like let's get out and do, do lunch. Let's, let's get to an event together. Um, hey, I see you're involved in this, you know, community organization. Let's, let's volunteer sometime. So that's something that we teach early. And I, I think it again, it just resonates with people too. Like they want to, they'd rather be in person. I don't think anyone in my opinion really loves virtual meetings or you're not going to get the same effect you would get if you were sitting across from this person. Um, obviously from a sales seat. If you can be in person and pick up on those cues or see what you know, they've got in their office. And in terms of getting in, you know, referrals for people too. You're walking through the office and hey, like I haven't actually met, you know, Debbie over here. Can you introduce me? There's just so many good things that happen when you're actually on site or just in person with an individual that you just can't get virtual.

Jason Bay: Uh, I mean this is, you know, with all the AI noise that's out there, this is the thing that really helps you differentiate and stand out is those in person relationships. It's like Pipegen and Outbound has been this like uh, through the sales sequences and sales engagement platform era has been this thing that's been commoditized down to emails, phone calls and social messages. Mhm. You know, the in person component is huge.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, we were in a training last week and just talking about, you know, even if you're just getting started, maybe you're one of those newer Reps, and you don't have much of a. You know, you don't have meetings on the books or not a ton of relationships. You're new to the market, whatever it may be, like, even just getting on site. So add to your cadence, like a drop, you know, a creative drop. Maybe it's, you know, we got March Madness wrapping up now. Like, I. I saw you graduated from here. Like, something really simple. Doesn't have to be like an elaborate gift, but just something thoughtful. Even a handwritten note about a topic that maybe would land with them. Those sort of things, you know, not a lot of people prioritize. So if you are able to get in person or do something in the market, I mean, it's. It's huge. And even your messaging, you know, you get a cold, call somebody or you email them and like, hey, um, I'm. I'm in the area. I'm going to be in your building next week. I'm coming by to do this. Um, that. That warms up a message so much. You know, you don't have to rely so much on maybe nailing the top challenge they have or any sort of pitch. If you can just be really human and be somebody who's their neighbor.

Jason Bay: Yeah, I love that. I love the focus on referrals, too. And oftentimes with referrals. I mean, if I'm being totally candid, this is something that we've done an awful job of at Alpine Squad, you know, that we're really focused on now, where it's like a lot of it is just asking.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, it's.

Jason Bay: It's asking and it's preparing in advance and looking through to your point, you know, someone's LinkedIn sales navigator who's connected with Mitch and just being really direct and, like, asking and making it easy for someone to tee you up, you know, for an intro. Um, let's, for this last little bit, talk about onboarding. Um, in our last conversation, you had talked a lot about kind of things that you're shifting in the onboarding process. And onboarding is obviously a very big part of enablement. Um, what are some of the things that you guys are seeing with onboarding? And how are you, uh, have you been adapting?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, I mean, going way back. Uh, I think the big mindset shift that we've taken is skills, uh, are such a big focus for us. Whereas I think in the past, like, you know, when I was trained in the organization, there's just, if you think about, like, knowledge, skills, behavior, there was just such a big Emphasis on knowledge, you know, knowledge about our service lines, knowledge about our frameworks, knowledge about our business, our customers, business, technology, engineering. So many things I need to learn and it um, so I think the light bulb for us, um, and where we started to make, we're starting to make bigger strides is just, that's all great but like the foundation, if you're thinking about of a pyramid, are those sales skills. So just putting more emphasis on the things you use day to day selling like communication, active listening, ask, being really good at asking questions and open ended questions, um, telling stories, overcoming objections. Like those are the types of things we've, we're starting to emphasize more which are making a big difference. Whereas in the past I think we were just too hung up on wanting them to, to know everything about our business, you know, so they could cover all their bases and thinking about it more as a, it's a marathon. Like people can't learn all this information and you know, this short window. So like thinking about it truly as a journey and trying to identify where in the journey do they need to know what. But uh, understanding that the foundation has to be at those skills or nothing else is really going to matter. Right. If they don't know how to ask a question, what good is a, you know, a cold call framework or a uh, meeting framework where they have to ask questions, you know?

Jason Bay: Yeah, it reminds me of like if you were looking up, because we just moved to Seattle, if you were looking up content on how to make friends and you didn't have some of the basic skills of being able to just socialize with people at an event where you don't know anyone and uh, being able to say hi and ask questions and not just talk about yourself the entire. It doesn't matter what kind of tactics you saw on a YouTube video or what script you might be provided with yet. We don't really think of sales like that. We think of sales as a series of like linear steps that need to be taken when no human conversation is ever, is ever linear. You know, um, how do you guys think about like if we were. If. Let's just say questions. The ability to ask great engaging questions. How do you teach that during onboarding? Is this like simulated through role plays? Is there kind of like high level psychology that you bring into it and then like how does that actually get taught?

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, that's been a journey too. And we've had people come in and out of the organization that, I mean, you know, somebody new in particular. I'm thinking of who's helped us improve in this area. Um, but yeah, I mean the application is huge. I mean I think there's definitely strategy to learn about it. You know, I mean even as simple as understanding when you're using open ended questions versus close ended questions or you're leading people to an answer or you're asking them multiple questions, you know, so there's a little bit of learning. But I think the biggest growth comes from when. Yeah, the application of it, the role play, asking them to do that and creating a safe environment, you know, especially for the newer, the new folks or maybe new to sales, new to the company. Um, for them to, you know, fail there and, and realize that they have to kind of rebuild how they ask questions or how they communicate, um, and really dig in and improve there and continue to do it. Like it's not something you can just learn in one session. Right. So it has to be like a cornerstone of the training program if you actually want to expect to see growth in it. So we had, we had a in person training last week at our headquarters and we had three, I mean probably across the, the whole program, probably five different instances where like questions were a big part of it. And it was amazing even just in a couple days to see like the first activity we did as a group and like how they were asking questions to like when you, when you leave they're like calling themselves out and um, you know, just so much improved. So it doesn't take much. I don't think. It just, it has to be prioritized.

Jason Bay: Yeah, it's almost like the path to getting better at sales and the path to having a better sales team is creating better humans. Really when you think about it, dude,

Mitch Thomas: I mean, yeah, that's sales. Right. So I mean it seems so obvious. Right? But yeah, I think back to some of our like previous programs, I'm like, man, there's nothing, there's nothing in here that was helping these folks become better salespeople. It's. We were just jamming information down there, you know, into their brain and, and that's not how people learn either. So like understanding how people can actually retain information and learn and you know, that's where like, if you can build skills, the knowledge that comes on top of that I think sticks a lot easier.

Jason Bay: 100%. I think one other thing to mention about Brooksource too. And I think at 8:11 this is sort of a uh, standard practice also is you guys hire a lot of folks directly out of college, right?

Mitch Thomas: We do, yep.

Jason Bay: So there's obviously I would imagine big pros and cons to doing that. A pro is like, we're not bringing in this jaded seller that has all of these really bad habits. A con is this person has no career experience, you know, so it's like these basic kind of skills that honestly a lot of the veteran people don't have. Um, it's like, I wish in sas, that's the BDR role typically is that first role. If a big part of it was like these essential, non negotiable skills around, like how I communicate and how I think, like actually have empathy and think about what it's like to be on the receiving end of everything that I'm doing.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah. What was interesting was, you know, when we obviously focus a lot. Let's just go back to the questions and that skill and active listening. Like we focus a lot on the new folks with that. What was interesting was we made it a big focus at our SKO as well. So we had all levels of sellers in there. And I mean, we're pretty floored by. Yeah, like, even when you really diagnose like how one of your top sellers is doing it, like there was a lot of light bulbs from all levels, leaders, high level sellers, tenured sellers, new people. So, um, obviously it's a big focus for an onboarding program. But like, we're, we're doing a lot with the foundational skills and kind of backtracking a little bit for some of the people, myself included. Like, I was never really trained on that. So as we've started to focus on that, I feel like I've learned a lot. Um, and there's a lot of our sellers who have been doing it for a long time who are going to get a lot better at their jobs by learning and just practicing some of those basic foundational skills. So we're not stopping at just the onboarding we're really looking at as we've gotten better and figured out how to do better training in those areas. How can we, how can we get our leaders trained up on this and train them to be more effective at doing this in the moment? You know, at the desk with reps and also our tenured reps. Really? Everybody?

Jason Bay: Yep. Love it, man. Dude, this has been great. We talked about the enablement approach, we talked about ae self sourcing pipeline. I love the focus on referrals. That's something that I being able to systemize and standardize that is just like it has such a big network effect when we can, to your point, turn one meeting into five. Um, and I love some of the stuff that you guys are doing with onboarding around like skills. Dude, we don't need to teach them more about our product and what we sell. Like we need to teach them to be better. Like conversationalists, better humans. Um, where can people go to connect, uh, with you? Learn more about BrookSource. Are you guys doing any hiring at 811 that maybe people should check out? Yeah, let us know.

Mitch Thomas: Yeah, we're always hiring. But I mean for me LinkedIn's the best spot. Um, connect, uh, love to get messages. I'd love to hear what people think. Or again, back to the beginning of the conversation. Like I just love to learn what other people are doing and get different perspectives. So definitely hit me up on LinkedIn Connect, send me an InMail and then, um, yeah, brooksource.com we're always hiring. Got some training, uh, programs coming up, some training classes. So yeah, if you're interested or looking for a new career path, definitely look at us there as well. Mhm.