212: Tamara Adams | CRO, Octave

Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Sales as King Dan Sixmith. Glad to be with you. And another great guest today in our beautiful New York studio, Tamara Adams. Tammy Adams, the CRO of Octave. Tammy, welcome to the program.

Speaker B: Dan, thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

Speaker A: Great to see you. We finally got you here.

Speaker B: I know. We finally got here. And it is exciting week, so it's a really great week to be here. High energy for Octave, that's for sure.

Speaker A: Tell us what's going on this week.

Speaker B: Yeah, so we're, uh, here this week to kind of ring the bell on the Nasdaq. And so we're doing that Thursday morning. We are really pumped. It's the culmination, like, the last two years of work. We broke off from Hexagon, which is a parent company in Sweden. Um, and there's been a lot of division of kind of what those companies look like, which ones need to go with Octave. And so over the last two years, we have now formed a, ah, $1.6 billion company, carve out of a $30 billion company. And we took it live on a secondary offering on Swedish stock exchange on Monday. And we'll do nasdaq, the official ringing the bell tomorrow. So, really, really exciting week.

Speaker A: How exciting? That's so great. So talk a little bit about the process, how you got recruited to this role, number one, and then number two, some of the moves you've had to make over the almost nine months that you've been there.

Speaker B: Yeah, so, um, I had an external recruiter that kind of heard about me. Um, so I always get pinged for jobs constantly, and I always have to say no, not ready to make a move. Um, champagne problems as we go. They are champagne problems. I know I am very lucky. I've got, I guess, a good reputation in the marketplace, and so that's actually kind of helped out quite a bit over the years. But I would say that I was recruited, um, and it was into a company that had rich cultural heritage and history with their tenured of employees. And it was a really different dynamic from an interview process and one that I haven't experienced in a really long time. I've worked for several startups, other companies that we've sold to Siemens. So rapid fire, move with speed, revenue with speed. And this one's a little bit different. This was about culture. Uh, I still call it transformation, even though they may not use that term, but it was a cultural transformation, I think, is how I look at it. Um, a lot of the people that are in the organization, have strong tenure. And that's the beauty, the knowledge that's kind of coming with Octave. But it's also change is hard for folks that have been there in that kind of tenured positions. And so the idea behind the position was to come in and really kind of bring the groups together to strategize, collaborate and transform. And where we're headed as kind of informational intelligence at speed, at scale, um, we really are driving much more towards an AI industrial revolution, if you will. Um, and I think the reason why they really needed somebody that has that experience was really around the fact that I've been there, done it in different industries, regulated space, non regulated public sector, working for large companies like Honeywell and Oracle. And so that intrigued them, um, that I worked for big and small. And so I had a different perspective on kind of coming in the door and kind of how I can help them get there.

Speaker A: That's great. Um, so what are some of the first moves you had to make? Obviously you're probably doing an assessment of what have we got here? Um, but talk about it a little bit from kind of a systems personnel, um, what were some of the first key moves?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think you have to look at transformation with speed, but you also have to do it with a little bit of grace and understanding. Right. So I'm a big data person. I have more of a finance background. That's where I started before I got into sales. I really wanted to understand the data. Data was tough, I would say, to get initially, uh, and we've gotten much better at it in the last nine months I've been there. Um, but we had to get through a lot of the data sets for me to really understand, um, where our foundation was. And that was like tech stack people. If we can do a long term value calculation, cat calculations, what were internal cost, what revenue were we able to achieve, margin analysis, all the traditional things that you would constantly think about. So once I got a better picture of kind of where that was and then really get into kind of the expertise around what's our skill set and depth and breadth, it gave me a better foundation to learn what changes I had to make. And so in 90 days is kind of really what I look at to make the first round of changes. And so they came fairly quickly, um, exited, uh, uh, they were in the midst of doing some changes already. So it just kind of helped fuel that by getting those on board a little bit faster than maybe even like the typical 120 days that you would sometimes see. But 90 days is kind of my window. My policy of we got to get exits moving so we can bring the right talent in because you're going to have a four month ramp up window anyway so you got to move with speed.

Speaker A: So any particular areas that were more impacted or that you targeted or was it kind of wholesale marketing all the way through cs?

Speaker B: Um, CES was actually in pretty good shape as I tell my team, level up and um, the CS organization underneath, um, the gentleman that runs it for me now, um, had done a really great job of just getting the foundation in place. And so he's in the level up phase and he's doing really good and happy to talk more about that. Um, but the other areas that were really challenging were enablement. We were not doing enablement I think fairly well. We were taking too long to get our sellers ramped and we need to have better benchmarks and get them on the board faster and so really retooled, uh, the whole enablement organization. Um, truthfully channel sales is also a big area for us and looking at our alliance partnerships channels really should represent at least 10% of our business if not up to closer to 30. I like to get it to 30%. Between distributors, resellers and a true traditional marketplace, um, besides the typical Amazon Microsoft microplaces, this would be a true Octave product led growth marketplace, um, that I'm trying to get in place as well. And so these elements have to get done and the foundation has to be laid. And so between the exits and the foundational elements is really what I've been focusing on for the last nine months and it's starting to show. Um, renewals is also the third, I think kind of leg in the stool that we weren't, we were very disjointed how we did renewals and how we looked at renewals. The team did a good job on how do we communicate with our customers. But we leave so much money on the table and you know there's so much value, right. And what we bring to kind of the industrial space, we forget sometimes it's okay to ask, you know, like hey, we're bringing this new technology and this new functionality to you and it's okay to ask, you know, for a little bit extra because we developed that for you, but people are afraid. And so I think you know, putting those techniques in place and putting those teams in place, um, is going to be, is going to pay dividends for us in the back half of this year.

Speaker A: So staying on CS for A minute. How are you organizing that? Um, they report into you. Um, do you have control over the kind of everything from marketing through full journey customer success?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So the only, so we do have a chief marketing officer, um, so uh, he does all of marketing, um, kind of the field events, the campaign management, those pieces of it. But I do own all of customer success. And so um, yeah, they report, Ashish reports directly into me and um, we have, we'll be probably approaching closer to 100 kind of CS professionals. Um, I think sometimes it's kind of an afterthought. They think hey, if you sell SaaS software, um, you need to either have a really good support organization, especially if it's product led growth, uh, from a SaaS perspective, or if it's true enterprise grade software, which was what we are. Um, for the most part those CES individuals um, kind of are an afterthought I think sometimes like oh, they get placed, the deal's done, they get brought in, but there's so much value, it's untapped value and potential that I see with them. And so I really fundamentally believe CES as a true profit center. Um, and it can transform your organization and transform your customer relationships and it can lead to massive expansion opportunities because they are on the inside helping drive value and helping our customers achieve their objectives that they need to be successful.

Speaker A: Yeah, they all have the trust of the customer. Which trust is the key to any selling today?

Speaker B: It is.

Speaker A: Right. Whether you're pre sales, post sales, wherever, executive level.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, it's all about trust. Did you have to change the job description of the current CS group or did you just kind of um, bring in new people or did you just up level those folks to how to do a little bit more of a discovery and think more commercially?

Speaker B: I think um, enablement was critical. I think they felt as a little, they were a little bit left behind and kind of part of the process. And so I brought in some third parties that I worked with previously that have really good techniques around kind of how do you create the value stream kind of in that relationship versus the tactical aspects of it. And so it's very like I think you and I have talked about previously in our conversations, the consultative angle is so critical and so these, these individuals really have to have that consultative backbone and know how to have those hard conversations too. When a situation from a deployment perspective goes awry. Right. They don't have control over the product but they can help resolve the outcome and they can also then help the customer Achieve more, more value. And we do see this as uh, really a leading indicator of kind of the expansion areas. And so even within nine months we have moved um, pipeline through this channel and it's increased 200% um, just by retooling kind of how the CS organization looks, feels and how they talk to our customers and so they feel really invigorated that they're contributing such a huge component to kind of where we're headed. And I love it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I think there's a lot of just low hanging fruit by just changing the mindset.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, and you know I went through it with my team and some folks they're like oh, I don't want to be a seller but if you could add more value, um, that's all you're looking to do, right? You're trying to just expand the value that you bring and that the company brings. Um, so I think that's obviously a huge focus and um, glad to see you've got some good uh, impact there. Um, how about on the pre sale side? New logo acquisition, Any changes there uh, in either the kind of team or approach and um, what you've been seeing in the early returns?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is one that's still evolving because I do have pre sales cs. Obviously all the sales organization and the service organization for us is pretty large. It's about 2,000 people. Um, we're in the middle of that transformation. The pre sales organization, we've acquired a lot of those assets when we acquired some of our solutions for EAM and such uh, from N4 several years ago. A lot of the pre sales organization came with it. So we have some really great pre sales individuals that really understand kind of asset management. Kind of the whole life cycle between kind of build, design, operate and protect is kind of how we look at our product portfolio and kind of where we're headed. And each one of those pillars or workflows as we call them have a different pre sales kind of mantra and individual skill set. And so how we are looking to transform that group is to get them to be cross pillar because uh, expansion is critical. But if we don't really hone in on all the assets that we're acquiring and do a true cross sell model, um, we will stagnate a bit. The pre sales organization has to come along that journey and has to be trained in the right way to be able to do that cross sell. Because just like any sales organization that's on the technology side with your Oracle SAP workday you don't want to show up with five different people and you're looking at a day in the life scenario to do. And then you're like, John's over here and he's going to turn it on and then he's going to do the AI over here and then Sally's going to come in and she's going to show you this horrible. It's terrible. It's terrible. You don't look, you look disjointed. So the goal here is to make sure that we are talking value, we're talking day in the life. We're showing you kind of really how what Sally does at one level and then kind of what Bob does at the executive level. So we want to make sure we hone in on the right Personas, have the right icps and that we're demonstrating that we care and that we really understand your business from soup to nuts. I think if we get that right, um, with the presentation skills, the solution selling, um, and even a little bit of, um, sussing out what's underneath the covers of it, so to speak with what their problems are and be able to translate those into kind of real tangible actions for them, the pre sales organization will kind of just take off.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Curiosity is a big one. Um, uh, EQ versus iq. You know, everybody talks about business acumen. You know, we want sellers with business acumen. I don't know if you could teach that or if that just comes with kind of the territory. Um, what's your thoughts on business acumen?

Speaker B: I think, you know, to me the strongest sellers and even leaders are the people that can actually talk to a CFO and then literally walk into a different room and then talk to the users and be able to kind of translate that into what's meaningful for them. Um, because I do the same thing, right? So I'll walk into a room, talk to a senior leader, executive president, whoever, and I'll have to turn around and talk to my team. Right. So it's being able to kind of process where you are at and being a little bit of a chameleon knowing that, okay, I'm going to have an executive conversation. It's going to be very financially driven around the value components that they need to do. And then I'm going to go talk to our user because they have a job to do on a day to day basis. Right. So it's really being able to kind of navigate both, I think both sides of that and do it well and to kind of show that there's no pressure. It's just very, it's very relatable, it's very personable. But again, it all really comes back to that consultative approach. I think that every salesperson, leader or even CRO should have.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. What about AI for selling? How have you seen that, um, play a role in, A, who you hire and B, how the team is leveraging it? Is it just more of an efficiency play? Um, what are you seeing?

Speaker B: So I think we're, you know, I think there's like, different categories. In fact, I was in Portugal like two weeks ago with a lot of leaders, M from, uh, very large transportation, public sector companies, um, EPCs, Food and BEV, um, from across the globe. And it was all interesting to talk about where they're at in their AI journey. Um, we're all having the same challenges. How much do you use? What's the security protocol associated with this? How much information of your own personal company do you want out there? Um, we talked a lot about that. Someone asked me, what are your challenges? We're here to talk to you. But Tammy, what are your challenges? I'm like, well, that's a really great question. I'm glad you asked. Um, so to me, it's a great tool, but you have to make sure, um, if you're using it from a sales perspective, I think it's hands down one of the best ways and the quickest ways to do research on a 10k looking at the customer versus having to go through, if you remember back in the day for Elizabeth that actually got out there and carried a bag, you had to kind of flip through the 10k. It's old school and you're having to read through it, dissect it, write your own notes, type up everything, how you're going to present today. You can just dump all that in and it just snaps it out for you in 10 minutes or less. And you're just like, based upon the prompts you put in. But as long as you're putting the right prompt in, you're going to get what are the top five issues? What are their business pains? So I think that helps the sellers in prepping and having meaningful consultative conversations. Where I think the challenges are is that I, uh, don't think the teams are comfortable enough yet to kind of challenge it because there's still a lot of junk coming out of it. Right. And we all see it. And if you really read it and don't really know how to create the right prompts, you could be taking in the wrong Data the wrong information to your meetings. And so I think it's important that we educate our sellers, our colleagues or team members. One, you know, kind of make sure that we protect the information, the integrity and information that we put out to the AI tools, but that we also question it because we're still the very much. There is a human side of it. And any, um, data analysis, I always look at it, it's like, hey, 80% is a data, 20% is a human element and you have to question all of it.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I think it comes back to trust again.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, and then there's that kind of notion of storytelling.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, for sales, which I'd love to kind of get your take on what that looks like, but there's plenty of data. But how the good sellers are putting that into, um, a nice cohesive story. Um, what are you seeing out there? What does good storytelling look like to you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, a great seller knows how to tell a really good story. Um, and I'm a big believer in it. And in fact, when we were, we got the teams all together and I think as I mentioned, you know, we've got a lot of tenured individuals on the team and I even have somebody that's on our organization that's been there 40, uh, 1 years. Right. So because again, uh, Hexagon's been in business for over 50. Right. So when we made the split, we really did bring a lot of people over, um, and really good people. But you really have to make sure that you're giving them the right tools. And storytelling, in my opinion, is one of the, like there's two pieces of it, storytelling and negotiation skills. Right. And you think you, you can think you're the best negotiator in the world, but times have changed. How you negotiate and how you look at a deal, um, five years ago is completely different. You can't sell and negotiate the way you did five years ago. Same thing with storytelling. And storytelling for me is not just the customer references, but it's real world evidence and experiences. And you may not have been the rep that sold Apple, or you may not have been the rep that sold Bechtel, but you know that story and you know it well. And then you translate that into kind of personal experiences, into your own sales methodology, um, and talk about then how does it apply to them. So to me it's good benchmarking skills, talking about what's happening in the industry. So you almost have to become kind of an industry expert, knowing what their peers are doing. And then really kind of understanding, kind of some use case studies that would apply to the solutions that you would like for them to, um, adopt. But I always find that storytelling never talks about a product. You're talking about value, you're talking about trust and you're talking about outcomes. You don't ever talk about a product and storytelling.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Uh, it's so true. You mentioned negotiation and it's changed. Tell us how it's changed.

Speaker B: Well, I think we all saw it during kind of when the market dropped in 08 and then we started this. Let's see the slow evolution of kind of how it's transformed then. The negotiation has changed in that there became a lot more audit and control and processes. You couldn't get an approval. So sales cycle started to slow down because everyone was afraid to spend money. Oh my God. We had a $5 million deal and we've seen it evaporate because it got to the CFO after eight approvals and they're like, we're not doing it. So it's basic blocking and tackling and knowing kind of who you have to go to anyway. But I think even today's fast forward, even to kind of where we were even three years ago, um, I think today is also transformed in that, um, they're looking at different tech stacks. And if you are not an integral part of their business process, whether if you're in pharma, you have to be in production or you have to be upstream in research. There are certain industries that are mission critical activities and that if you provide solutions in those mission critical activities, it's a little bit easier to kind of get through. If not, the business justification is much harder. And I think the reps need to understand that the negotiation moves, the chess moves to negotiate become a lot more rigid and a lot more harder. And so you have to think three moves ahead and know what the outcome potentially will be and how to have that conversation. And if you don't, your sales cycle is going to slow down and the negotiations cycle is going to elongate and you just don't have time for that anymore. So you have to be really willing and able to know what terms and conditions and things that you can kind of, kind of pull in and what leverage you can kind of pull in.

Speaker A: Yeah, and just the whole orchestration throughout the, uh, growing buying committees.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, that are out there. Um, you know, you mentioned outcomes. Um, I've heard this term the outcome. We're in the outcome economy. Um, tell Me how you guys are dealing with that, um, in helping um, not only talk about what the potential value would be pre sales but then how do you measure that? How do you have your teams measure the outcomes? I don't know if you're doing anything more on consumption based pricing, that's another thing that's out there. But talk a little bit about how you guys are dealing with that.

Speaker B: We're still, I think we're in the infancy of this. I mean we're transforming several companies into kind of one Octave and we are looking at different pricing models. I firmly believe, and so does our cpo that we need to have a platform play. I do think the platform does make sense. Individual seat licensing still works. I mean we've got a lot of customers out there that have that. We've done different types of license models and I think the beauty of what Octave has inherited is um, is the fact that we do see based. We'll still do perpetual because we still have you know, China can only do perpetual. I've got India, it's still got a mix Middle east perpetual. So I've got a mix of um, perpetual and also SaaS. And then in that model we do have some types of level of consumption that we're kind of moving towards that we need to I think kind of figure out how we're going to really monetize because again the data sets that we are going to be driving through some of our newer technologies we want to drive much more towards a consumption based model. But I think over the course of the next 12 to 18 months we'll see a lot more move to SaaS from Perpetual. Um, we'll move some of our customers, we have a leasing model even. Um, we'll move customers off that leasing model to perpetual or to SaaS. Um and then we're going to see customers start to consume the data in ways that are meaningful for them and that will really drive I think a higher level of degree of consumption versus the seat model I think will kind of go away.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, we talked a little bit earlier about Tech stack.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, how do you see that evolving and uh, uh, which ones are exciting to you going forward? What's the future of the tech stack for Octave?

Speaker B: I know this is going to be controversial.

Speaker A: Please.

Speaker B: Salesforce is a great tool. I worked for Oracle for a really long time and obviously Benioff broke off and formed Salesforce and it's a great tool. So I make. No, no, uh, I don't mean any ill will. Yes, but great Tool, great company. Uh, but it's very early 2000s and it's had its heyday. So I think the methodology is still critical. I don't think you're ever, even with AI, ah, you're never going to get away from a sales process that still has some rigor in it. We need to make sure we have the right sales stages, the discovery, the qualification, the discovery. You've got to be able to do the right demonstration packs, you've got to be able to do the right forecasting and then you got to do the right negotiation. So the traditional five to six sales stages, that will never go away, that will still have to be in some element. So because we've got to be able to do as a publicly traded company, we have to look at our forward looking forecasting and the only way you get there is some element of that, whether it's Salesforce or some other tool, but the heaviness or the weightiness that we have given the tools like Salesforce in the past. Right. So in the next two years I can tell you that our reliance on Salesforce is going to go extremely down. Um, there are other tool sets that are up and coming, um, that we're starting to kind of look at now. Um, that will allow us more, I, uh, think better modeling. You know, there's good tools out there already like Clary and some others that I think do some really nice forecasting modeling. And um, CI is obviously something that everyone does. Whether you use GONG or some other types of tools, um, those are kind of table stakes. But you still have to have a storage component and whether you put that into Salesforce, that's fine. But I think we've developed algorithms and things in Snowflake and that's kind of where we're living right now as we bring these companies together. And um, I think a lot of other companies are looking at that too. And then how do they use AI to kind of then move faster? Because data, the faster we get to the data, the faster we can make the right decisions and then we can execute a much cleaner, I think, and more accurate way of moving forward for um, our forecasting and revenue models.

Speaker A: Yeah, it'll be interesting. Um, let's talk about CRO tenure. Um, between 18 and 22 months on average. Why do you think that is?

Speaker B: That's a really good question. Um, I think they come in and they inherit organizations that they weren't fully ready for. I think the reliance on a CRO coming in and fixing everything, they think that's going to Be like they're going to come in and be the savior and they're going to turn it all around. And so I think sometimes there's false expectations and hope that individual is going to be able to do that. Um, but I think it's also on the CRO to come in and making sure that they've done their due diligence in the interview process to know what they're actually inheriting so they can set the proper expectations with the CEO, with the board. Um, because really the board is looking at the CRO to be able to execute a plan. Um, it's not just about revenue. There's a plan that surrounds revenue to get us to that top line growth that we're all after. But there's so many facets of that that is such a big swath of revenue operations, right. Service, um, services, um, pre sales and even some marketing. Some CROs do own all of marketing so it depends on kind of your full remit. But I think where folks, um, their tenure is short is because they just didn't do the due diligence to really understand and then educate their executives on how long the transformation potentially can take. And that really comes from experience. If you haven't a CRO role in a really large organization before, you don't know what to look for. And so those are just lessons learned, you learn along the way and so hopefully you move from 18 months to 36 months. Um, but you got to close those gaps and know exactly how to communicate effectively in those transformation things you have to do and you have to move with speed, um, in order to kind of, I think break the glass if you will. At the 24 month mark, what do

Speaker A: you think the top skill required? Skills like the top two required skills for a successful CRO today would be?

Speaker B: Mhm. I think you have to look at the analytics out of the gate and really understand it's beating in front of customers. Still at a CRO level I think is fun. I kind of miss it. I miss the thrill of the negotiation to be honest with you. Someone's like, what do you miss about being in sales? I'm like the negotiation, that was the fun part. Um, but I think it's uh, from a selling perspective and a CRO perspective, I think um, you have to look at the data set and know that you've empowered the right people to make the right decisions. Um, you also I think have to protect your time. In order for me to make the right decisions for my organization, I can't have my ADMIN fully book me out the whole day. She has to protect, and she does. She does a great job at it. She protects my time and gives me space that I need to think, because if I don't have time to think, I can't make the right decisions. So, to me, for a strong CRO, you have to really look at the data set, apply the human element to it in order to make the right decisions. Then I have to protect my time to be able to kind of engage in kind of the right areas to make decisions also quickly. And if I'm back to back eight to six, I can't do it.

Speaker A: No, I think that's great. Um, let's talk about your story a little bit. Um, bring me back to the early days. Uh, what did you want to be when you were a kid, and did that have anything to do with where you are today?

Speaker B: Well, I wanted to be a race car driver, and I think that's why I love F1 so much. Um, in fact, F1, we are a sponsor of racing bulls. And so when I joined with the funny story, I didn't know we were a sponsor of F1. And then two weeks into the role, they were like, oh, yeah, you got to go to Austin. And I'm like, oh, that's great. I'm like, what am I doing? They're like, you got to go to F1 race with clients. I'm like, you're kidding me, right? So I really wanted to be a, um, race car driver. So, um, I do drive fast. I admit that's probably my downfall. But I do love race car driving.

Speaker A: Competition.

Speaker B: Yeah, competition. So I think that's what makes it really, really well. So, uh, anyway, long story short, I think, um, race car driver kind of led me into kind of like, where I'm at today from the standpoint of calculated decision making, right? So if you think about a race car driver and kind of what they do, right? So they're pulling 5Gs, and they have to make these calculated decision. And behind an F1 driver, there's, like, 300 people looking at data analytics to make the right decisions. And so I kind of equate it to a little bit of this role and kind of my journey of I made calculated decisions, um, along the way that have got me to this seat. Um, some of them were risks. Some of them were just by chance. Some of them were through my network, um, and just relationships I had built over the years. And it's funny, people ask me, how did you start? I said, I started in finance. And made a complete left turn into sales. But what got me out of finance was the fact that we sold a company to Danaher and I had to close the whole company down after the executives left. And we had 14 different companies at that time that we sold off. And Danaher offered me a job to move to another, uh, uh, move to Dayton, Ohio. And I was living in Newport Beach, California at the time. And I'm like, Dayton, Ohio, Newport Beach, California. I'm like, eh, I'm going to stay in California and kind of keep surfing. And um, I, uh, took the job with Oracle and that led me into the tech world and I loved it. Um, and so my job, my journey from there has just been kind of different racetracks, different speeds, different opportunities. Um, but I would say to anybody that is kind of looking at their own personal journey, mine was about taking risks in some capacity. Um, going to different startups, trying different things, um, trying different industries, finding the industries that gave me meaning and aligned, uh, to my mission statement, whether it's for betterment of mankind, regulated, uh, space and pharmaceuticals, um, kind of better quality environments in the industrial space. So you name it, it has to have aligned to some type of mission statement. And so some of those left and right turns I made were also part of my mission statement in my charter and where I wanted to go.

Speaker A: Love that. Any, um, early days of selling, any stories or things that you remember, um, that were noteworthy.

Speaker B: I have a current one from last week.

Speaker A: Uh, that's fine.

Speaker B: Um, but I would say early days from selling. I think if you go back in time of booking deals and burning the midnight oil, so to speak, it was, you know, we had to get deals booked, you know, by, you know, by 11:59. Right. And I can't tell you how many times me personally or my team, we've been like camping out in parking lots. Like we, because this is before we could actually transmit everything over, we had to kind of go like get everything scanned and they still had to have a wet signature and things, things have changed. Right? But wet signatures were important at the time. And so just, you know, oh my God, it's 11:59 and I'm sitting in a parking lot at Merck, you know, for an eight figure deal. I'm like, what in the world am I, this is nuts. Or, hey, it's Thanksgiving weekend and my family's all kind of doing something together. And here I am sitting in an engineering construction firm office in Los Angeles going, wow, I hope this deal comes through. There's a lot of Sacrifice. Right. Um, but at the end of the day, you're doing really good work, and it's helping customers really kind of achieve their goals. And so it makes you feel really good.

Speaker A: Was there any, um, early mentors or advice you got that kind of helped, uh, propel you along the way that you can think of?

Speaker B: Um, there was a CEO, this gentleman's passed now, but there was a CEO, um, at World Minerals, and he was in, I remember, Lompoc, California. So I used to go up to his mine and we sold a pretty big transaction, uh, to him and his organization. And they eventually got acquired, but really good people. And I sat in his office one day and, um, he told me, you have more moxie than any of my other leaders that I've ever, um, had in my organization. I said, well, I don't work for you. He goes, I feel like you do because you're here for us. You care about us, um, you want to see us succeed. And I know if you came to work here, you would get a lot of stuff done. So those words stuck with me, and I really prided myself in my journey to make sure that I really understood the executives and the people that were in the organization, whether you were a seller, whether you were an admin, whether you were a dba, whether you're, um, a CEO or a cio. I cared about the individuals that we were selling to because I wanted to be connected to them the long term. Because you never know when you're going to need them or they're going to need you for their success. Right. And so that element of moxie, getting stuff done and caring about the people has really stuck with me over the years.

Speaker A: Those are fantastic. I really like that. Um, so it's building relationships not only with customers, but also with the people you work with.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Um, talk about. I know we're getting a little tight on time. The first CRO job, what was that like? And how did you kind of embrace it and turned it into a success?

Speaker B: That was crazy sauce. That was real crazy sauce. Um, it was a full transformation role. Um, and, um, we were moving with speed, and, um, we were buying companies left and right and trying to. The idea was to sell the company ultimately in, uh, two to three years. It was PR backed, um, or, excuse me, uh, PE backed. And we had a mission statement. We had to get it done. And so I think there was no time for consensus. It was move with speed. So it was really revenue with speed was my mantra. And it was like, decisions had to be made. Quickly. And we did not have time for, um, like, how do you feel about this? Do you think this is the right decision? Let's think about it and get back about it next week. No decisions were made. We're going. Decisions were made right there. So it was a good, uh, again, analogy back to F1. Right. And moving with speed. Right. So it was totally. We had to get things done in a very short period of time and we had to make decisions. Now, were they always the right decisions? Sometimes they weren't. We had to learn from those. But for the most part, I feel really good about where we are headed and it gave me, I, um, think another skill set where it's like, summarize things really quickly, get it done and make a decision. Let's not dilly dally over that stuff. So, um, we were able to kind of transform in the kind of the tenure that I was there. And we were able to kind of sell the company off to, um, Siemens. Um, and again, it was a team sport. It was not an individual sport, it was a team sport. But it was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, A lot of acquisitions of companies. And then how do we kind of bring them all together from a revenue perspective and still be able to be ready to be sold?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. So that's probably the great case study that you can take to all these other jobs that you've gotten.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Figuring out how to make decisions, smart decisions quickly, um, and then ultimately exit.

Speaker B: Exactly. That's the ultimate goal, which is the

Speaker A: name of the game. And you've done that successfully now multiple times. Um, this is great. Uh, last question we always ask is, what is your definition of success?

Speaker B: Mhm. Um, so I have a mantra that I've come up with that I've been using a lot lately. Um, it's a little bit of grit, a little bit of grace. I, um, really believe that my definition of success, and if I were to kind of leave this job tomorrow, um, I know it will succeed based upon the people and the tenure of the people that I have in the organization now. I have brought in some really good people, but for me, success looks like that I can walk away knowing full well that my team has leveled up, it can run on its own, it doesn't need me to be at the seat of the table, and it still will do really, really well even after I'm gone. So to me that's a success of a really good CRO that you don't need to be still sitting at the table. You've built your team and done it well enough that it can survive without you. And to me, that's the key to success with a little bit of grit, getting some stuff done and a little bit of grace and making sure that you've built the right team and enabled them to be really good leaders.

Speaker A: I love that. That sounds like a good title for a book.

Speaker B: It is a good title for a book. Don't steal it.

Speaker A: I won't. I've got my own book. Um, well, Tammy, thanks so much. This was great. Such a pleasure to spend time with you. Wish you nothing but continued success in Octave and on wherever your career takes you. Good luck ringing the bell tomorrow and thanks for being our guest.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, thank you for having me. This was a blast. I really appreciate the time.

Speaker A: Love it. This was great. Well, thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll see you back here soon. On sales is king. Peace

Speaker B: M.