Creating a Foundation for Long-Term Sales Success with Matt Radomski

Matt Radomski: Foreign.

Fred Diamond: Thank you so much. Welcome to another episode of the award winning sales game, uh, Changers podcast. And Matt, We've done over 850 sales game changer shows. My name is Fred Diamond, I run the Institute for Effective Professional Selling and of course I host and produce the Sales Game Changers podcast. You can listen to all of our previous episodes and watch the videos on. Go to salesgamechangerspodcast.com salesgamechangerspodcast.com for the 850 or so previous episodes. If you're watching this on YouTube, thank you so much. Give us a, ah, thumbs up. We greatly appreciate that. And of course if you're listening on Apple podcasts, give us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it. And Matt, a lot of our loyal listeners know that about a year ago we started doing a sub brand of the Sales Game Changers podcast. And I'm talking with Matt, Matt Radomski. That's how you pronounce your name, correct?

Matt Radomski: That's correct.

Fred Diamond: With Harness. And um, I'm excited because um, we started doing a show called Office Hours Sales Professors Unplugged where I interview uh, directors of selling programs at major universities. As a matter of fact, we just had our 16th annual award event, uh, our Sales Excellence award event and we gave our first sales, uh, Educator of the Year award to Brian Collins with Virginia Tech. And um, you know, you and I have known each other for a couple years on LinkedIn primarily and harness had come up a couple of times in conversations with other people. So I went back out and connected with you again. And turns out that you went to Clemson and that you also participated, uh, on the sales team and had done competitions. You didn't necessarily go for a sales degree per se, but it was great to talk to you. You're a VP at Harness and I'll ask you in a second about that. But it was nice to see the connections there. And he introduced me to the leader of the Clemson program uh, there and we got him into our loop as well. So a couple of our worlds are coming together and it's great to see how you've grown in your career and, and how your experience at Clemson taking sales classes and participating in competitions, et cetera, framed you for where you are now. All right, so tell us a little bit about yourselves, Tell us about Harness, tell us what you do there and you know, give us a little brief introduction to your journey.

Matt Radomski: Yeah, so thank uh, you so much Fred. And thank you for setting the table there, especially where it all started, which was uh, Sales class at Clemson. So uh, as you said, I run the federal civilian business at Harness. Uh, I have lived and worked in the D.C. area in federal software sales. Uh, I think this is year 14 for me. Uh, so becoming a veteran slowly, uh, in the industry started, uh, my career at Oracle, uh, worked my way up from inside, from the BDR world of cold calling and setting up meetings to inside sales at Oracle, uh, up to the field, uh, and really owning an account, uh, and then from there pivoted to Salesforce, um, when they were kind of becoming a mature sales, uh, organization in the federal space, uh, supporting the Department of Veterans affairs under Joe Marcourt, who I know you know, has been on your show in the past m. Worked there for five years, really expanding that account out and then wanted to go smaller and wanted to be on the ground floor of creating a federal organization. Uh, so went down to the, you know, a pre IPO company, Harness, um, to help the build that they had started. And it's been a really exciting journey.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little bit about Harness. Tell us what they do.

Matt Radomski: Yeah, so the easiest way to think about Harness is um, it's kind of the easy button for what is historically a very messy and complicated world of software delivery. Um, so you think about after a developer or an AI agent writes code, the process from building that into an application and deploying it safely is extremely, extremely difficult in most organizations. And it's why we see government and highly regulated industries take months or even quarters to deploy something new because they need to do it with security and compliance built in. Um, so Harness takes all of those things and at an enterprise level automates everything after code commitment, uh, to make sure that all the innovation can be done at the speed of light without any issues of worrying about downtime or um, security or compliance issues. Issues, uh, once something gets to production. Uh, so in the world of the anthropics and openais of the world, um, doing a lot of the coding for us there is just this giant influx of code. Uh, but there needs to be a way to get those pipelines automated out to deployment. So that is what we do and that's what we're helping some of the biggest companies in the world and some of the largest federal uh, agencies in the world do.

Fred Diamond: That's great. You know, it was 30 years ago a, uh, part of my role I, uh, was a product manager for what was then known as automated testing. And it was with a company called Compuare in the late 90s and it was one of the uh, we were inventing automated testing actually. Uh, had done a lot of it on mainframe and then of course on client server in the late 90s. I was deep into that space and it's amazing that um, the how far we've come in 30 years. So it's great to hear, it's great to have gotten caught up on what Harness does, et cetera. And as we get into this next part of the conversation, again, you've participated in sales competitions when you went to Clemson, you know, having started your career at Oracle and then the Salesforce. Right. You know, those are two heavy hitters. I mean Oracle, we've had a, I've had a bunch of sales leaders on the Southgate Changes podcast from Oracle. I've had a bunch on the show from Salesforce in the public sector and commercial side. Um, you know, you don't become a VP of sales at Salesforce or Oracle just because you say you want to be. You know, there's a lot of compet competition. It's their hard environments. Again. We're doing today's interview in April of 2026. Uh, 2025 was very challenging year 2026 is, uh, still challenging, a little bit more open. But um, give us some insights about how your college, the competitions and how they, and studying for sales, how they framed you for where you are right now.

Matt Radomski: Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so I know you were introduced to Dr. Ryan Mullins, uh, and I remember, you know, taking his class. And I, when I was in college, this was the age of like Mad Men was on TV and I thought I wanted to go into advertising. I was like, I'm going to be a marketing executive. And I took Dr. Mullen's class along with uh, Carter McElveen, um, and some other professors there in the sales organization. And it really changed and molded what I wanted to do into okay, I think actually sales and um, being on uh, on this side of the business makes m more sense for me. And so I think the first and foremost was taking the fear out of um, out of pitching and out of being in front of people. I always liked presenting, um, but the thought of picking up the phone and calling someone, I don't know, um, was kind of a daunting task for a college kid. And so getting through that and learning the tools of how to add value and deliver value on your first 10 seconds, 15 seconds was uh, something that I, I got through that before I ever graduated. So I remember walking into Oracle and there was a class of 60 people that all had just graduated college, getting into their first job and being two or three steps ahead of people. Because I had already gotten past that fear, which is, I think most new sales reps, it's what they struggle with the most. Um, and I could just hit the ground running. So it was really impactful for me to have some of the basic tools from graduating college. Going into that first role at especially a, like you said, kind of a cutthroat sales environment like Oracle.

Fred Diamond: You know, that's a great answer. One thing we talk a lot about that we've learned on the office hours sales professor show is that they're preparing the young adults to be a couple years ahead. Right. Than the average student. I like the way you just described that when you graduated, you got past the fear that everybody goes through, even those who are very successful and seasoned. You know, as we say, there's a 99% chance you're going to be rejected. Right. Even with a customer. Especially now, people don't have to answer their phone and, you know, they don't have to reply to, to you, even if you're an existing customer and you're bringing them more value. Right. So you starting there. I like the way you said, uh, that you were a couple years ahead of the competition. And for the companies that are investing in the young professionals, young adults who are coming out of colleges, uh, either with a major minor or just having taken a couple of classes and getting exposed to that, there's a huge advantage for the companies that are doing that. Just kind of curious. Also, again, we mentioned Blue Chips, Oracle and Salesforce. Like I said, I, uh, have a lot of people who have been leaders there historically, of course, Salesforce was created, you know, from Oracle, uh, or at least, you know, some of the leaders. One particular Benioff, the leader. But give us some of your lessons from those two companies. Having worked it, you know, they're kind of like for people who don't know who are listening to today's show, you know, that's kind of like the New York Yankees and the Dodgers. Right?

Matt Radomski: Yeah.

Fred Diamond: Of technology. And good for you for getting a job for both of those companies early in your career. What are a couple of things that you took away from them that have stayed with you, that have allowed you to progress your career?

Matt Radomski: Um, I'll do lessons from two people who, um, I know you know as well. So at Oracle, when I was trying to go from inside sales to the field, uh, I tapped Lee Fisher, uh, who at the time, uh, had just gone into Leadership at the first time at Oracle. And, um, he had a really, really successful, uh, field career as a field ae. And I was just asking him, like, what is the difference in going from this inside role that's a little more transactional to trying, um, to build up these enterprise and really transformative type opportunities for your customers? What did you do differently that other people missed? And Lee told me this story about staying with a customer. Um, if it wasn't overnight, maybe it was like till midnight or one in the morning, trying to stand up a new system. It was maybe an engineered system or new deployment they were doing. Um, because his whole thing was that the customer's success was his success. And even though the deal was done, the sale had been made, his job was to make sure that his customer was successful and that, um, he helped them every step of the way. I think he told me he was like, there's nothing I could do. Technically, I'm not an expert, but I showed my commitment to their success and I was there if they needed something, if there was a lever that needed to be pulled, I was legitimately right there next to them. So what Lee taught me, which was really impactful, was like, the customer is the North Star. You know, you need to find their success, should be your success. And everything else figures itself out. Like, don't focus on selling, focus on their value and what that matters to them. Uh, and then you'll, you'll help them along the way. Um, so that was, that's my Oracle lesson. Uh, my Salesforce lesson is, uh, Joe Marquardt. So Papa Joe, uh, the avp, when I, when I was at Salesforce, he had a quote that I actually have written down. I won't pull it up, but I have written down, I put it when I talk to my team, which is, um, if you don't have a plan, you become part of someone else's plan. And his was, you know, taught me, he ingrained it in me, which is you have to come to every meeting, uh, every week, every day with a plan, or you will just get caught in the motions. Um, and it really helped me structure, you know, not just, um, maybe an opportunity, but a big part of my career, which is just, you know, having a plan and trying to execute on that plan as the best you can.

Fred Diamond: Um, those are, those are great stories. And actually, you know, Lee and Joe have both been on the podcast. Joe has been on twice. He was actually the very first person at Salesforce that I interviewed. And actually, um, we originally got through him through A guy named Anthony Robbins, who ran Nvidia Public Sector for a number of years. He had a guy working from him named Rick Simmons. And Rick said, you need to meet this guy named Joe. And, um, I remember learning from him. The other lesson about, uh, from Lee, and Lee has been on the podcast. Lee has also. We do regular events for people listening every at the Carahsoft Conference on Collaboration center where we bring a panel of three to four great sales leaders. And Lee was on one of our panels in 2025. And I've heard stories from some of the sales leaders that are legends in my mind who have called on customers at 3 in the morning. Right. And the lesson, the story that you just told is a great one in that the sale doesn't end with the sale. Right, Right. Especially in the types of companies that we're talking about here because you want to grow the accounts and you gotta prove that you're successful to go. Even if you're like doing great in a agency or big corporation, you know, Maybe you're hitting 5, 10% in a lot of cases, so you want to keep growing. So showing the customer that you're going to be there with them until everything gets up and running, those are great lessons from two great sales leaders. I'm also interested. You came out of college and you went right into the federal vertical. And I talk about this all the time. When salespeople ask me, young, young sales professionals, I say, you need to be very, very knowledgeable in one of two things. Either the customer's marketplace. Right. We're going to talk about federal here in a second, or your product and technology. But you got to be like leagues above everybody else to get to the elite level. So you'd made a decision earlier in your career that you were going to focus on federal. And for people who are listening, who don't know, there's an expression that federal, even with, with doge and cutbacks and, um, employee, uh, layoffs, et cetera. Federal employee layoffs. It's still Fortune 1. And use the analogy of Fortune 500. I was on a session today where they talked about how the federal IT budget is about 137 billion. That's just not all going to the oracles of the world. Give us some insights on why you made that decision to focus on that vertical market.

Matt Radomski: Yeah, uh, this is a funny one. And I have to actually peel this back a little bit to tell you the background. So, uh, I got to Oracle, uh, through cold outreach. So, um, out of college, Dr. Andrea Dixon, uh, At Baylor. Her daughter was a friend of mine growing up and interned at Oracle. Uh, I basically did Google research and said, what are the top 10 best paying software companies for software sales? I knew I wanted to be in tech. I'd interned at a series a tech company. But I wanted to start big and I wanted to start somewhere with a good foundation. And I, uh, reached out to Taylor Dixon and I said, hey, you're an intern. You know, can you give me some names of these people who are hiring? Uh, so she, she name dropped the director of their BDR program. Uh, I cold outreach cold called him, got, uh, an interview. And so I'm going through the interview process and I am five steps behind everyone that, that is kind of a pipeline out of college to these programs. And so I'm doing everything I can to stick out. And one of the questions they asked me was, um, if you were hired here at Oracle, where would you want to be? And they were hiring 90% of the people for Austin, Texas. I had already been looking at apartments. I just thought I was moving to Texas. But in my back pocket I said, oh, well, uh, Larry Ellison founded Oracle by creating it was Project Oracle, which was the database for the CIA. So I said, I think it's really, really cool that Oracle kind of started in D.C. in the public sector. But so, um, you know, I'd love to be anywhere, um, you know, Silicon Valley, where headquarters is Texas, where this new sales organization is, or even D.C. in the public sector. So I thought that was a great answer and I thought that would just help me stick out. And when I got hired, they told me you were so passionate about the public sector business that you know, we're sending you to D.C. and so I had to call my dad and say, scrap the plans. We're not going to Austin. You know, I got to pack up and go find an apartment, uh, in the D.C. area. So, uh, it happened by accident and then, uh, ended up making a career out of it. So, um, and I've loved every minute of it.

Fred Diamond: That's great. And also thanks for reminding me. Actually, that was how we actually reconnected is when we did my post again for the office hours sales Professors Unplugged. I interviewed now known as Dr. Andre Dixon. And it was a great show. And she is truly one of the top two or three leaders in education, uh, for young adults in colleges at Baylor. Did a great show with her. And then I saw you had commented and, uh, it didn't hit me at first. And then, then I realized and Reached back out to Dr. Dixon. She had some very nice things to say. So that's great. Um, what advice do you have for young sales professionals? Again, you've done very well so far in a relatively short amount of time. And we've talked about, you know, the journey to get there. But give us two or three things that you advise young professionals, young sales professionals to get to the level where you are.

Matt Radomski: Um, I would say first and foremost, um, be extremely curious. So, um, when you're in an inside role or you're in a, uh, BDR role, you kind of have this very structured responsibility, right? Hey, I'm responsible for outreach or I'm responsible for closing deals up to this threshold. Um, but if you don't intend on your career ending at that role, you should be really curious about the role that's next. So what I talked about earlier, what I did with Lee, I knew that even if I wasn't going to be promoted or get to the field, I needed to know the things that he did or that others in that industry that were successful did to be prepared. Um, and so I remember as an inside sales rep, uh, I was mapping up to Josh Miller and, uh, Jay Smith, who was the leader at Oracle. And I asked any time I could be in the meeting for a deal I wasn't a part of, but it was out of my scope. Could I just kind of sit in the corner? Could I be a part of it? Could I see how the deal structure was made? Can I be added to this spreadsheet? Um, and those things, even though I was not maybe participating, um, soaking it up like a sponge, was really, really impactful. And it helped me when I was trying to get prepared for that next role, um, have some insight, and again, hit the ground running when I got the opportunity.

Fred Diamond: That is a great story. And I've told the story many, many times. Early in my career, when I was working at Apple Computer, I was working in marketing and my boss said to me, we're all going to be valuable if we help in the sales process. Apple was, of course, one of the top marketing companies in the history of business, but I did the same thing. He said, I want you to go into every sales meeting. And I would sit in the back and listen. And, um, in the beginning they were wondering, why is Fred in this room? And. And then I paid attention, and then I would ask good questions when I felt it was right. And then they started noticing that I was doing a little bit of extra homework and giving some insights. And then eventually I Noticed I was sitting at the table and again I wasn't taking over the meeting because that wasn't my place. But you know, for the sales, for the, for the young sales professionals. And even if you're listening to this and you're in marketing, we have a lot of marketing people listening. Think about the value that you're adding to this sales process. And the only way that you can understand that is by doing what Matt just suggested, by having as many conversations with the sales professionals as possible. I uh, love the way you keep bringing up some of these great sales leaders that you soaked up knowledge from and you earned and you know what they want to share. They are. You know, people ask me this all the time. It's like, how would I approach, you know, someone who's 20 years older than me, um, to ask them questions about their career? I said reach out to them, reach out to them and say, can we meet for coffee, 9 o' clock at Starbucks, the local town square, whatever it might be. And they're going to say yes. You know, I mean, you know, give them, come prepared with the questions, you know, ask them things that, that they can answer. Just don't say, how can I get better? So that is great, Matt. I want to get some of your insights again. You're obviously a thoughtful guy. Um, what are customers telling you these days? Again, Federal marketplace, you know, is challenging 2025. It's still challenging, a lot of cutbacks, et cetera, but it's still a humongous marketplace with even with you know, continuing uh, resolutions and things like that, it's still 100, 137 billion in it is going to be spent in 2026. Uh, what are customers telling you? What are customer inter. What, what are customer engagements looking right now? What do sale. What do customers want from selling professionals?

Matt Radomski: Yeah, I think there's two kind of routes to go here. So uh, round number one, like from what they're looking to move towards organizationally or structurally is um. There seems to be these shifts, you see these shifts in technology where it's like we want all these best of breed solutions and we're going to start putting them together and start molding them and customize things. We are seeing kind of a shift towards um, we want consolidation, we want having 100 contracts, thousand contracts, 10,000 contracts. Depends how big the organization is, is becoming a burden uh, on these organizations. So consolidation, standardization, having um, single platform, single policy, um, is really, really a move that we're seeing not just in the private sector, but in the Public sector. Right. Um, so it is funny to see how that has shifted. And there's these ebbs and flows and we're kind of coming back to centralized platforms. Single pane of glass, um, is helping organizations stay structured and stay organized. Um, especially in like a compliant, heavy world. Um, number two on the technology side also, these shifts, um, they almost always come back to how do we get services and technology and systems out to our customer. It could be, you know, a constituent, it can be a veteran, it could be a war fighter in my world, or it could be a consumer customer. If you're in the commercial or enterprise space, um, it is about getting those out effectively, easily, securely, and getting those services to the people that need them. Um, and we saw a lot of this be customized 10, 15 years ago. And then we saw this shift to no code, low code salesforce days of being able to say, hey, we have this platform and we can get out these tools and these applications really quickly and securely with drag and drop. Might not need a developer. And now we see this shift kind of back where the creating code. Right, and being able to develop software, uh, is becoming faster than ever because of Claude and because of OpenAI and all these new, um, dev tools coming out. And it's. Well, we can customize things really, really fast, but we need to make sure it gets to the consumer in a secure way. And we need to maybe pump the brakes on areas where AI is, is coming in and creating chaos. So it's adding structure around that. Um, so it's really interesting that no matter what the end result is, how do we get, um, uh, our solutions out to a customer and how do we serve the customer? But how organizations are doing it continues to change depending on what the technology landscape looks like in front of them.

Fred Diamond: That's great. Matt. I want to thank you for being on today's show. You've brought back some great names, some great lessons that we share. Uh, as also, it was great to be able to tie in the fact that, you know, you took some college classes in sales and that you were able to deploy that while you were in college. And proving what we've been saying for the last year is that the young adults who are getting trained on sales and uh, your degree wasn't in sales, what was your degree in again?

Matt Radomski: So I was a marketing major, uh, marketing major, minor in uh, business administration or business, uh, some other business, uh, piece. And then, uh, I got a sales certificate. So they, I think that was the accreditation at the time.

Fred Diamond: Gotcha. So, um, before I end today show. I'm going to ask you for a specific action step. Just give us, give us two habits, two things that you do that you can attribute a lot of your success to. And then I'm going to ask you for your final action step.

Matt Radomski: Uh, so I think the first one is, uh, I am a Sunday night planner, so I like to organize my week on Sunday night. My wife and I do this in our personal lives, uh, because we have two little kids. And then, uh, I do this with work as well, of getting my week ahead of me and figuring out, like, what is success for my week look like, uh, before that week actually starts. Uh, number two is, um, I always try to have very realistic goals, but I set the benchmark really high at the beginning of the year. Um, so I start every fiscal year the same way by mapping out my knowns and unknowns and trying to kind of figure out the gap to the goal that I'm setting. Uh, and I think those things at a very tactical level, week to week, and then, um, a very strategic level for the year, uh, have helped me along in my career.

Fred Diamond: Very good. I, once again, I want to thank Matt Radomski with Harness. Thank you so much for tying in. This is a great show that we tied a lot of things that we're talking about on other sales Game Changers podcasts and of course the Office Hours show. So thanks for that and congratulations for, uh, the success you've had so far in your career. Um, give us a final thought or a final action step that you recommend selling professionals do right now, maybe even to your team to help them take their sales career to the next level.

Matt Radomski: Uh, I'm going to repeat one that I did earlier, which is the Joe Barquart quote. It's a, you don't have a plan, you become part of someone else's plan. So, so my number one action is always, always put together a plan, be organized and structured. And if you create those tools and those structures for not structure for not only your day to day, but your week by week, quarter by quarter, everything else will roll into place.

Fred Diamond: All right, very good. All right, once again, I want to thank Matt Radomski. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers podcast.