Scale with Strive Podcast · 2025-06-25 · 34 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
47 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Mark Stephenson, a 30-year go-to-market veteran from Cisco, Evisort, and Avi Networks, outlines his playbook for scaling early-stage SaaS companies through four foundational pillars. The episode focuses primarily on the first two: defining an actionable ideal customer profile (ICP) and hiring the right talent. For ICP, Stephenson argues that effective operationalization requires three elements - customers with the deepest pain point for your solution, expansion opportunity beyond the initial sale, and predictable business metrics (deal timing, ACV, gross margin). He breaks down ICP segmentation by demographics (enterprise vs. mid-market vs. SMB), geography (resisting the urge to go global too early), and technographics (what else customers buy). On talent, Stephenson's core insight is counterintuitive: functional expertise in sales, marketing, and customer success consistently outperforms technical domain knowledge. Technical founders typically hire based on tech knowledge because they can't evaluate functional competency, but this creates "sales debt." When hiring sales reps, he looks for candidates who have worked at sub-$5M ARR companies, opened new regions, and can quantify their quota attainment and deal history - clear numbers on resumes indicate future performance. The episode is essential for founders struggling with ICP clarity or making costly hiring mistakes.
An effective ICP must have: (1) customers with the deepest pain or need for your solution's use case, (2) expansion revenue potential beyond the initial sale (especially important in SaaS), and (3) predictability about the business model - gross margin, deal timing, and average order size - so you can model revenue from that segment.
Across 14+ engagements, Mark has found that functional expertise (sales experience, marketing expertise, customer success proficiency) consistently outperforms tech domain knowledge in go-to-market roles; technical founders often hire on tech domain because they can't evaluate functional competency, but this creates sales debt and poor performance.
Segment your ICP three ways: demographics (enterprise vs. mid-market vs. SMB, plus average order size and sales cycle), geography (pick one region and resist global expansion early to avoid unnecessary complexity), and technographics (what complementary tools does your ICP already use, which can be markers for targeting).
Look for clear numbers: quota targets, attainment, and key deals closed in each year of their recent history; if a resume lacks quantified results, it's a yellow flag; also verify they've worked at companies of similar size and stage (e.g., sub-$5M ARR if that's your current stage).
Sales debt, like technical debt, refers to inefficiencies in your go-to-market - such as reps not hitting quota, wasted headcount, or misaligned talent; since payroll is a company's largest expense, failing to put people productively to work in your go-to-market factory creates compounding losses.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains a handful of genuinely actionable tactics - the pipeline-sourcing four-number diagnostic, the 'Value One' framework, and tieing marketing comp to closed pipeline rather than MQLs - but much of the runtime is padded with standard GTM framing (BANT, MedPick, OKRs, BHAGs) and motivational language that adds little for a knowledgeable B2B operator. The ratio of novel insight to filler is moderate.
If you've got somebody in your early stage under 10 million in ARR, they better not answer channel or marketing. They better answer I build my own pipeline
I wouldn't hire a marketing person that they want their number one objective being MQLs. I want to hire a marketing person that their number one objective is pipeline. That closes.
The functional-expertise-over-tech-domain argument is the most counterintuitive claim and is stated with conviction from real experience, but most other content recycles well-known frameworks (MedPick, BANT, OKRs, kaizen) and the 'Value One' concept is explicitly credited to Looker rather than being original. The 'sales debt' metaphor is borrowed from tech debt with minimal extension.
functional expertise trumps tech domain
even a turkey can fly in a tornado
Mark Stephenson is a genuine operator with a credible career arc - Xerox, Cisco, early-stage SaaS including Evisor - and 14 fractional CRO engagements provide real pattern recognition. However, he is now primarily a consultant working with sub-$10M ARR companies rather than a sitting operator scaling a significant company, which limits the caliber ceiling.
over multiple engagements now, 14 different engagements across many domains I can tell you with absolute fact in go-to-market, functional expertise trumps tech domain
I started in my advisory with Series C companies even some E's and I was like gosh. I got here too late in a lot of cases to avoid sales debt
The episode scores better than average on specificity with real ARR thresholds (sub-$5M, sub-$10M), a named benchmark (Cisco's 65% gross margin), the four-number pipeline equation, and the Looker attribution for Value One. However, there are zero named client transformation stories, no before/after metrics from engagements, and named companies serve mostly as passing references rather than evidence.
when you're working at a large company like Cisco with 65% gross margin and about that in market share
I want an equation with four numbers. Number one how much of your pipeline was marketing sourced? Second, how much of your pipeline was SDR sourced or BDR sourced? Third, how much of your pipeline was AE source and how much was channel source?
The host functions primarily as a pillar-sequencer, using questions like 'talk to us all about the role of collaboration' that are broad prompts rather than incisive probes. There is no pushback on any of Mark's claims, no productive disagreement, and the host frequently inserts personal anecdotes that consume airtime without advancing the topic. One decent clarifying question ('help us understand what you mean by sales debt') does not offset the overall passivity.
So talk to us all about the role of collaboration fostering innovation and growth within SaaS.
And just for everybody, just help us understand what you mean by sales debt.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast, the place where you come to listen to some of the world’s most influential leaders of the SaaS industry. Our host is John Hitchen and on today’s episode, we are excited to welcome Mark Stephenson, Fractional CRO, Advisor and GTM Coach! Mark brings over 30 years of experience in Solution Sales and Go-To-Market Leadership, having worked with high growth venture-backed SaaS companies like Evisort and AVI Networks, as well as large organizations such as HP and Cisco. He's built a reputation for consistently delivering outstanding results, surpassing quota in 24 out of 27 years. Today, we focus in on SaaS Growth, and the four pronged growth approach that Mark believes is essential here: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), Talent, Collaboration and Sales Process. Some of our key takeaways from the conversation were: What defines an ideal customer profile in today's market? Strategies for identifying and attracting top talent in competitive markets Best practices for improving cross-functional collaboration between sales, marketing, and product team Metrics and KPIs to measure the success of a sales process Let’s Dive in!
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
1 - >
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast, the place 2 - > where you come to listen to some of the world's most influential 3 - > leaders of the SaaS industry. 4 - > Welcome to another episode of the Scale with Strive podcast. 5 - > I'm your host, john Hitchin, and today we've got an 6 - > exceptional guest with us, mark Stevenson. 7 - > Stevenson Mark brings over 30 years of experience in solution 8 - > sales and go-to-market leadership, having worked with 9 - > high-growth venture-backed SaaS companies like Evisor and Avi 10 - > Networks, as well as large organizations such as HP and 11 - > Cisco. 12 - > Mark's career started in sales at Xerox and he's since built a 13 - > reputation for consistently delivering outstanding results. 14 - > A reputation for consistently delivering outstanding results, 15 - > surpassing quota in 24 out 27 years. 16 - > He's developed a proven four-pronged growth approach 17 - > that helps businesses scale and succeed, with a focus on 18 - > building cohesive, high-performing teams. 19 - > Known for his creativity and high-energy leadership, mark has 20 - > both experienced direct and indirect sales, as well as 21 - > marketing and customer success organizations. 22 - > He's passionate about aligning go-to-market strategies with 23 - > business objectives, hiring top tier talent and building 24 - > scalable customer engagement processes. 25 - > Mark, it's great to have you on board today. 26 - > How are you? 27 - > Oh geez, john. 28 - >
Speaker 2: I'm blushing. 29 - > What an intro. 30 - >
Speaker 1: Thanks, great to join you from San Francisco here 31 - > today. 32 - > Great, great to have you on board. 33 - > So look, you know I'd give you a go at an introduction there. 34 - > But do you want to give us a little whistle-stop tour about 35 - > you for the viewers? 36 - >
Speaker 2: Ah, you did a great job, but I just say it's a third 37 - > of a third of a third of a third very large corporations, 38 - > as you said Cisco back in the day, when they were acquiring a 39 - > company once a quarter at least, and so from that calling on 40 - > high-tech accounts in the backyard of Cisco, like Apple 41 - > when it had the original orange carpet pre-iPhone, and all the 42 - > way to Xilinx and Google and the hyperscalers in between, it was 43 - > a great time and a great time for me to understand how to 44 - > bring technologies to enterprises. 45 - > But I always felt like the next third of my career was really 46 - > early stage because, candidly, when you're working at a large 47 - > company like Cisco with 65% gross margin and about that in 48 - > market share, you pretty much ought to win every time and I 49 - > felt like I was presiding over somebody else's best practices. 50 - > And so the second third of my career is really early stage. 51 - > Like you said, AI for contracts with Evisort and different tech 52 - > domains. 53 - > But it's what black marks you put on white paper in an early 54 - > stage firm that makes it run, which was super great. 55 - > Early stage firm that makes it run, which was super great. 56 - > And then the last third I've been about 24 months working 57 - > with technical founders with about a handful of VCs, who will 58 - > bring me in CEOs who are having thoughts about their 59 - > go-to-market and really help them with my playbook that I 60 - > developed as an operator to really help them think about how 61 - > to optimize their go-to-market and don't create sales debt that 62 - > you don't need Nice. 63 - >
Speaker 1: I like it, I like it. 64 - > Well, today's going to be really interesting then. 65 - > So we're going to focus on those four pillars that you work 66 - > with technical founders and CEOs on when you know, doing 67 - > some fractional advisory board business work with them. 68 - > So, first pillar ideal customer profile. 69 - > So, first pillar ideal customer profile. 70 - >
Speaker 2: I guess from your stance, where do you start when 71 - > talking to founders about this subject? 72 - > Yeah, I mean everybody's. 73 - > Oh gee, icp, what a shocker. 74 - > Everybody gets that as a super important concept but I think 75 - > few really operationalize it deeply and at its basic level in 76 - > an early stage business. 77 - > My frame of reference is early stage firm. 78 - > The bias is to fail and you have to do extraordinary things 79 - > every day and be very efficient to break that bias and get your 80 - > flywheel going and escape velocity. 81 - > And so everybody being on a true north focus about what 82 - > customers you want to go after is super critical for the whole 83 - > company. 84 - > And at its basic point, an ICP should have three things. 85 - > Three things Number one the customer you're going after, 86 - > going after you're trying to serve, has the most pain or need 87 - > for what your solution provides , the use case, super critical. 88 - > Number two is in the initial sale. 89 - > You don't sell a hundred percent of your total 90 - > addressable market. 91 - > You don't sell 100% of your total addressable market. 92 - > Ie there's expansion sales beyond the first sale and SaaS 93 - > is so great about that right. 94 - > And then, third, you can get predictability about the 95 - > business by serving that customer base gross margin, but 96 - > also the timing of deals, the average order size. 97 - > You need to be able to model a business out of a customer 98 - > segment you're going to go after . 99 - > So those three things are the basics that we think about when 100 - > we figure out that ICP. 101 - >
Speaker 1: And when you work with technical founders or come 102 - > in, I guess, how do you work with them? 103 - > They'll probably come to you with some form of ICP and I can 104 - > imagine you're going to challenge them in some way and 105 - > say, why is that the ICP? 106 - > And make them realize what it might be. 107 - > So what does that discovery stage look like to you? 108 - >
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super fun. 109 - > I have kind of a workout process that I work with the CEO 110 - > . 111 - > It's you know what's the vision , the true north that you're 112 - > going to go after. 113 - > What's the mission, which is what's our operating plan. 114 - > What have you signed up with? 115 - > A board do you got to go deliver? 116 - > And new logos, expansion, sales they are our growth, etc. 117 - > And then what's your strategy? 118 - > Um, that's less than five things you're going to go do to 119 - > capture the market and suck the marrow out of the opportunity. 120 - > And then what's your structure? 121 - > A lot of people muddle that around. 122 - > That's the order of operations is super critical. 123 - > And then, with that structure that you're going to go after, 124 - > hey, is it a slg motion, plg motion or both? 125 - > What's the talent you need, key processes, leading, lagging 126 - > metrics. 127 - > Anyway, I have this workout framework that I do with them 128 - > and really the idea is to challenge what's the opportunity 129 - > in the business? 130 - > Like, for example, you could have founders that say I want to 131 - > go after enterprise. 132 - > Okay, strap on your seatbelt. 133 - > Those are the long sales cycles . 134 - > I like to take out a triangle and start segmenting the 135 - > demographics of the opportunities. 136 - > Is it global enterprise or enterprise, or high-end, 137 - > mid-market or mid-market, or commercial or SMB that you want 138 - > to go after, let's chart. 139 - > You know, if you've got N equal 40, you've got 40 customers, 140 - > you can start charting. 141 - > Okay, what was the average order size? 142 - > What was the sales cycle time? 143 - > You know I love going after global enterprises or big deals, 144 - > but the other side of that coin is mid-market, where the 145 - > average order sizes could be, you know, real good, but shorter 146 - > sales cycle. 147 - > So doing that segmentation is really key. 148 - > Three ways you want to cut the ICP, though, is the demographics 149 - > , like I said, key. 150 - > Three ways you want to cut the ICP, though, is the demographics 151 - > , like I said. 152 - > Also, I think, especially with open source projects, the 153 - > attraction could be well, I got customers all over the world, 154 - > okay, great, but you could probably drive by five customers 155 - > on the way to the airport to get on a 10-hour flight. 156 - > I love to stay focused, so pick a geography. 157 - > If you're in North America, good God. 158 - > Resist the urge to have a global tan, because it just 159 - > drives I mean global go-to-market, because it drives 160 - > complexity needlessly. 161 - > So the demographics. 162 - > Next, the technographics. 163 - > Hey, when a customer buys your solution, what else do they buy? 164 - > You can use those technographics as a marker for 165 - > your ideal customer profile persona within that, and you put 166 - > all three of those together and you try to score that and you 167 - > try to. 168 - > Then Clay is a great solution right now to where you can 169 - > really see your ICP in the data and start triangulating a really 170 - > tight ICP to go after. 171 - > So those are some pragmatic elements in the ICP. 172 - >
Speaker 1: I love the exercise of it and the fact that you're 173 - > not coming in working with founders. 174 - > Right, let's make your icp work . 175 - > You've got a challenge in you and you're testing them to see 176 - > why it works. 177 - > And then you know, you kind of mentioned there, I think, the 178 - > geography really stuck out to me . 179 - > You know, you know in our field we have an icp in recruitment, 180 - > but 90 of my clients are in the icp and you know there's 10 as 181 - > salesperson. 182 - > You just can't say no to right. 183 - > Business is business, but it's good to be super structured 184 - > because I imagine that falls into the messaging and maybe 185 - > even the mission statement and everything else which comes 186 - > around it. 187 - > So really important for individuals to think about the 188 - > ICP. 189 - >
Speaker 2: Well, I'd say even further, further. 190 - > It's just a, it's a super cheat , because if you, if you can get 191 - > the whole company around a true north of what customer you're 192 - > serving, you know I guess we're. 193 - > You know we're talking about go to market, okay great. 194 - > But think about product and if I'm really talking to my icp all 195 - > the time, then the rfe's request for feature enhancements 196 - > are market and, uh, it really becomes efficient. 197 - > About how you market product cost, uh, sales and customer 198 - > success. 199 - > Right, I mean customer success really gets advantaged by having 200 - > customers that they onboard who really need what you have. 201 - > Back to to that first point of ICP Go vector on who has the 202 - > deepest use case for what you're selling. 203 - >
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree and I could dive into this 204 - > all day. 205 - > The ICP is so layered as well and it maps out. 206 - > But I guess thinking about your second pillar, because this 207 - > will reflect the type of people you recruit to manage the ICP 208 - > sales. 209 - > So talent, super important for you, right? 210 - > This is the second part of your pillar. 211 - > So what's the importance of a talent acquisition in scaling a 212 - > business at the earliest age? 213 - >
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where you know, I started in my 214 - > advisory with Series C companies even some E's and I was like 215 - > gosh. 216 - > I got here too late in a lot of cases to avoid sales debt and 217 - > I'm clearing sales debt. 218 - > When I get in, I do a talent assessment. 219 - > Okay, half these people shouldn't be here. 220 - >
Speaker 1: And just for everybody, just help us 221 - > understand what you mean by sales debt. 222 - >
Speaker 2: Just inefficiencies. 223 - > Just like you have tech debt, right, I think it applies in 224 - > sales debt and I have kind of an operational factory mindset 225 - > around things. 226 - > I want efficiencies, I want to find the bottlenecks in your 227 - > go-to-market and I want to have the most efficient go-to-market. 228 - > And when reps aren't making quota, when you're burning 229 - > headcount, those are all. 230 - > You know that's sales debt and you know it's your biggest 231 - > expense is the talent that you have in the organization and 232 - > putting them productively to work in your factory is super 233 - > critical, right. 234 - > So having that operational mindset is very important. 235 - > The big thing I see is see technical founders typically go 236 - > with what they know and they will really evaluate, go to 237 - > market talent, marketing, sales, customer success, sdrs on how 238 - > well they know the tech domain. 239 - > Because they don't know how to evaluate the functional domain, 240 - > functional being marketing expertise or sales expertise or 241 - > customer success expertise. 242 - > And I think you need a modicum of the tech domain. 243 - > But over multiple engagements now, 14 different engagements 244 - > across many domains I can tell you with absolute fact in 245 - > go-to-market, functional expertise trumps tech domain and 246 - > what I do is make sure they have a minimum of tech domain 247 - > and I can tell you how we do that. 248 - > But it's the functional experience. 249 - > There is sales experience. 250 - > If we're talking about AEs or sales leaders, do they's the 251 - > functional experience? 252 - > There is sales experience. 253 - > If we're talking about AEs or sales leaders, do they know the 254 - > journey that you're in right now ? 255 - > Yeah, that is the biggest mistake I see, and I usually get 256 - > involved when the CEO becomes consciously incompetent. 257 - > They've made the mistake and they realize okay, I don't know 258 - > what, I don't know, I need to get expertise here. 259 - > Those are the good ones. 260 - > Those are the CEOs who are really savvy and looking for 261 - > continuous improvement, versus still filled with some hubris. 262 - >
Speaker 1: Yeah. 263 - >
Speaker 2: I get you. 264 - >
Speaker 1: I'm working with a founder at the moment of an 265 - > early stage cyber vendor and he has no previous experience in 266 - > cyber, but his approach and energy to things is so business 267 - > focused that he's focusing on the business elements and not 268 - > just you. 269 - > So let's just dig into that a little bit. 270 - > We call these functional expertise, but they're also like 271 - > the characteristics of a person , right. 272 - > So what are things you look for in bringing in go-to-market 273 - > look? 274 - >
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's focus on the sales rep. 275 - > Okay, so three things it seems to be always three, right, but 276 - > let's put a Venn diagram up on the board here. 277 - > So you have functional experience, which would be sales 278 - > . 279 - > You have tech domain and then you have customer experience 280 - > those three. 281 - > You're a sub-5 million ARR company. 282 - > You want to hire a sales rep who's been in a sub-5 million 283 - > dollar company. 284 - > They were the first, second or third to open a region. 285 - > As an example. 286 - > You want to look at their resume and see not a lot of words but 287 - > a lot of numbers. 288 - > I'm shocked at how few sales reps have. 289 - > This was my quota. 290 - > Here's what I attained. 291 - > Here's what the key deals that I did in that time period to do 292 - > it. 293 - > And if you're a technical CEO and you're listening to this, 294 - > run it by the numbers. 295 - > If they don't have that clearly in their resume, it's a yellow 296 - > flag. 297 - > But check and ask them. 298 - > I want to go through the last four years. 299 - > Tell me each year and what you attained. 300 - > That type of prior performance is a super good indicator of 301 - > future performance. 302 - > Is it a similar average order size? 303 - > Is it a similar sales cycle timeframe? 304 - > These are really good metrics that you can figure out and a 305 - > big one for an early stage firm is how does he get pipeline? 306 - > Ask them. 307 - > I want an equation with four numbers. 308 - > Number one how much of your pipeline was marketing sourced? 309 - > Second, how much of your pipeline was SDR sourced or BDR 310 - > sourced? 311 - > Third, how much of your pipeline was AE source and how 312 - > much was channel source? 313 - > If you've got somebody in your early stage under 10 million in 314 - > ARR, they better not answer channel or marketing. 315 - > They better answer I build my own pipeline and anything that I 316 - > get from a BDR and I work well with a BDR, it's the pod that 317 - > matters. 318 - > That's the answer you want. 319 - > So that sales experience have you hit quota? 320 - > How do you build pipeline? 321 - > Run it by the numbers and you got a really good indication. 322 - > This is somebody I want to talk to, the tech domain. 323 - > What I typically do is have a CTO or an SE group somebody 324 - > develop a technical interview question. 325 - > So that second interview, after the first interview where 326 - > you're sussing out their functional experience, would be 327 - > a technical interview and it's two part. 328 - > One is you share the technical value prop of the company. 329 - > Get them excited about that. 330 - > And the second part of that interview is to ask them some 331 - > strategic questions and score them on their tech domain 332 - > experience, so you can relate one candidate versus the next. 333 - > And then third is customer experience. 334 - > Back to where they've been selling. 335 - > What customer have they sold to ? 336 - > Rolodexes? 337 - > Everybody should look that word up. 338 - > Don't necessarily translate from one company to the next, 339 - > but if you sold to Citibank and Citibank is one of the accounts 340 - > you want to go after, by the way , that's a nightmare to go call 341 - > on, but then that's a good indication that they'll be off 342 - > and running pretty quickly to your ITP. 343 - >
Speaker 1: I love it. 344 - > Functional over technical. 345 - > You kind of touched in there around sales, marketing and 346 - > customer success, which brings me on to your third pillar, 347 - > collaboration. 348 - > Super, super important in the modern day SaaS org. 349 - > So talk to us all about the role of collaboration fostering 350 - > innovation and growth within SaaS. 351 - >
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, hey. 352 - > Just one more point on talent, because I can't get past it. 353 - > It's just so important and it just so happens. 354 - > That's your business, right, but the hacks on this and I got 355 - > a lot of gray hair made a lot of mistakes. 356 - > These are the hacks for hiring talent. 357 - > Number one is the tight spec. 358 - > Get the recruiter, or your own internal recruiter or yourself, 359 - > an objective mark to hit. 360 - > We've talked about the Venn diagram, but really get granular 361 - > about what this person looks like before you meet them. 362 - > Number one the spec. 363 - > Really get granular about what this person looks like before 364 - > you meet them. 365 - > Number one this back. 366 - > Number two is have a really tight two-week interview process 367 - > , no more than five people. 368 - > I don't want to have all the reps freaking. 369 - > Interview the person You're not rushing a fraternity for crying 370 - > out loud. 371 - > And third, have a challenge in that interview A 30, 60, 90. 372 - > Give them a prompt of your facts about your business. 373 - > So it's not an academic exercise, but I want to see a 374 - > rep's 30, 60, 90 day plan or a sales leader's 30, 60, 90 day 375 - > plan. 376 - > Can they put black marks on white paper? 377 - > That's relevant. 378 - > Do you have confidence that they'd make best use of the 379 - > first 90 days? 380 - > Yeah, and then the last hack is to avoid false positives, 381 - > meaning I hired somebody, they got past my defenses. 382 - > That I really shouldn't have is I have a five-week onboarding 383 - > program where there's some stand and deliver elements and I've 384 - > fired people that couldn't deliver the first call deck as 385 - > an example. 386 - > That means they can't become conversationally fluent about 387 - > the value prop in the first five weeks. 388 - > It ain't going to be good. 389 - > So it's a way to make sure if you make mistakes it's an 390 - > imperfect science you catch them quick. 391 - > Those are big hacks, and I could go a lot deeper on that. 392 - > It's uh, I have actually written uh, kind of some some 393 - > missives on this point. 394 - > Uh, because it's so critical to get the right people on the bus 395 - > in your, in your company anyway , so yeah, definitely. 396 - >
Speaker 1: I mean from a recruitment point of view. 397 - > There the thing that stands out to me is two weeks for a 398 - > process. 399 - > Time is your best friend as a hiring manager. 400 - > It's your advantage because you know some of these 401 - > organizations and I bet the bigger ones are even worse. 402 - > It could be weeks and in some cases months. 403 - > So having a two week process gives you real competitive 404 - > advantage in the market. 405 - > But, um, as I say, I can talk about these individual subjects 406 - > all day, but I want to make sure our viewers understand your 407 - > pillars, and we have some collaboration, yeah, 408 - > collaboration. 409 - >
Speaker 2: And it's another thing that sounds trite. 410 - > Oh yeah, sure, I want everybody working together, but it starts 411 - > at the top. 412 - > Do you have? 413 - > And I never got this? 414 - > Early days in my career, I worked for great companies and I 415 - > took culture for granted until I worked. 416 - > You take culture for granted until you work for a company 417 - > that's got a shit culture and then you don't ever again. 418 - > But is there an emotional pull to the vision of the company? 419 - > Do you break it down into a mission with BHAGs? 420 - > Big, hairy, audacious goals that are credible? 421 - > And then this is the super critical piece Can you then 422 - > cascade those OKRs into a way that belies interdependency? 423 - > That's how you get collaboration going. 424 - > So for marketing, by the way, I wouldn't hire a marketing person 425 - > that they want their number one objective being MQLs. 426 - > I want to hire a marketing person that their number one 427 - > objective is pipeline. 428 - > That closes. 429 - > So you see the difference there . 430 - > So, pdr, I wouldn't give them a comp plan that's just on 431 - > meetings. 432 - > No, it's meetings and pipeline. 433 - > Well, wait a minute, I'm not qualifying that meeting as 434 - > pipeline. 435 - > Well, wait a minute, I'm not. 436 - > I'm not. 437 - > I'm not qualifying that meeting as pipeline. 438 - > The rep is yeah, isn't that great. 439 - > You have an interdependency with the rep. 440 - > The rep I want, I want them to have an interdependency for 441 - > really knowing what the use case is and handing that off to 442 - > customer success so that customer can be wildly 443 - > successful in in the onboarding. 444 - > Uh, so every the ceo and the executive team needs to cascade 445 - > cross-functional metrics all the way through the organization. 446 - > That stitches the leading and lagging metrics of the company 447 - > together. 448 - > That's how you you get this flywheel going and everybody's 449 - > going down the same direction. 450 - >
Speaker 1: I love it and I think the obvious thing here that 451 - > maybe founders or VCs who are involved in a company want to 452 - > know is how do you come into a business and overcome the 453 - > challenges? 454 - > Because what you said there is a brilliant start to a business. 455 - > If I was a founder and I was at zero revenue and I was building 456 - > , I'd build with the vision of head. 457 - > But what about the founders who are a few million ARR? 458 - > They've built out the org and maybe there isn't the North Star 459 - > and it's not dripped down. 460 - > What's the challenges and tactics there? 461 - >
Speaker 2: Well, it's just classic gap analysis. 462 - > I mean, you never Look, I never get into a situation that's all 463 - > perfect or I wouldn't be there. 464 - > So all these things are in various degrees of completeness, 465 - > and there's a good Japanese word called kaizen, or 466 - > continuous improvement. 467 - > Everything needs to be completely tweaked all the time, 468 - > with the market forces you have and everything else. 469 - > But if you've got that mindset ahead of time, you can really 470 - > drill in all those things and cement the interdepartmental 471 - > teamwork in your OKRs, in your compensation plans. 472 - > Everything is developed around that. 473 - > I'll give you another hack. 474 - > This one I didn't come up with, but I stole it like crazy. 475 - > It's called Value One, and Looker did this. 476 - > And what Value One is? 477 - > What's the first value that a customer would get that would 478 - > make them want to underwrite buying your solution? 479 - > So is it? 480 - > You know, the classic three would be hey, by buying your 481 - > solution, I can get access to more a dollar of revenue, or 482 - > take a dollar of cost out, or mitigate risk, or all three. 483 - > So that's the M in MedPick, by the way, and it's the I. 484 - > What's the metric of improvement? 485 - > What's the implications of that pain? 486 - > What's the P? 487 - > And it's the I? 488 - > What's the metric of improvement? 489 - > What's the implications of that pain. 490 - > What's the P, the pain? 491 - > All those work together in MedPick but it all comes 492 - > together with value one. 493 - > It's like what's the first value that a customer will get? 494 - > That's that land or initial use case that you want to be really 495 - > good at. 496 - > So sales reps need to do discovery to figure out value 497 - > one. 498 - > They need to sell the value one , they need to do POCs or POVs 499 - > to value one and they need to tell customer success what value 500 - > one is. 501 - > So it's a great customer baton that you can hand off through 502 - > the organizations and customer success. 503 - > Here's a big hack. 504 - > Everybody will say I'm done in customer success when the 505 - > customer is onboarded. 506 - > And yet why do you have cancels ? 507 - > Technically, onboarding is table stakes. 508 - > You want to make sure that the customer had value one before 509 - > you try to get value in and try to sell more to the customer. 510 - > And once you understand those business impacts then you feed 511 - > that to marketing and marketing should be marketing to value one 512 - > Right. 513 - >
Speaker 1: Back to your. 514 - >
Speaker 2: ICP? 515 - > Right, because what was the thing I said about ICP Number 516 - > one thing is to find customers that need you the most, and if 517 - > you quantify that business value through value one, you can 518 - > expert your ICP as well. 519 - > It's a systems way of thinking about it. 520 - >
Speaker 1: I love it, mark. 521 - > I love it. 522 - > I think very logical and I think very, almost very needed, 523 - > but not overcomplicating it. 524 - > Value one the initial value we can offer without going into 525 - > everything else, I think is really important to keep at the 526 - > forefront. 527 - > So I guess, with value one, that neatly puts me into your 528 - > last pillar around sales process . 529 - > So sale process is a huge topic . 530 - > I can imagine you do a lot of work here with founders, so 531 - > designing an effective sales process tailored to the ICP. 532 - > Who has the pain? 533 - > Where do you start? 534 - >
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of commentary. 535 - > I think in the last 10 years it's been this kind of acid 536 - > crazed. 537 - > Everybody would buy anything kind of timeframe. 538 - > Those days are kind of over and I would argue that was a unique 539 - > time. 540 - > If you look at reps, I don't think they really had to follow 541 - > a sales process in the last 10 years. 542 - > Everybody's over their number. 543 - > I mean, even a turkey can fly in a tornado. 544 - > Now, all of a sudden, sales process is more, more important. 545 - > It's because people aren't just buying willy-nilly, right, they 546 - > , they. 547 - > I think it's useful to build a sales process where you think 548 - > there's a caustic, green visored finance person on the other 549 - > side of your sales order agreement looking at this and 550 - > saying why the hell would I buy this? 551 - > So that's something I do in my engagement. 552 - > I hate doing advisory as a fractional CRO. 553 - > I like being there one or two days a week to really ground 554 - > these changes into action. 555 - > And so what we'll do is we'll interview the best reps or 556 - > interview the CEO, the founders, and we'll understand what's 557 - > that sales cycle. 558 - > Every sales cycle known to man has interest, development and 559 - > commitment. 560 - > With a couple of. 561 - > You know you've qualified discovery, break down those 562 - > milestones, get what are the best practices in each stage, 563 - > what's the customer verifiable outcomes, that you know where 564 - > you are in those stages and then what's the SLA about how long 565 - > each, how long a prospect should be in those stages. 566 - > And you can instrument through HubSpot or Salesforce. 567 - > Then a real great way to get telemetry on your forecast where 568 - > you are in the business and do it in a way that's got good 569 - > ergometrics for the rep so it's not burdensome. 570 - > You're not asking all these freaking Dilbert questions. 571 - > You're asking the right questions at the right time. 572 - > Bant for meeting qualification You're not going to do med pick 573 - > in a meeting. 574 - > Do they have the need? 575 - > Am I talking to somebody who's probably accountable? 576 - > Program in BANT for qualification between the BDR 577 - > and the AE for something being on pipe. 578 - > Then program MedPick into it with your best practices. 579 - > Constantly refine that you know that value one piece all the 580 - > way through. 581 - > So that gets done and instrumented into Salesforce 582 - > Such a wonderful renaissance right now and RevOps tools you 583 - > can use and AI tools and everything else. 584 - > So instrument that process, kind of staple yourself to a suspect 585 - > or a prospect. 586 - > What's that flow with marketing ? 587 - > What's that the lead flow then to the sales process and what's 588 - > the work process from sales to customer success. 589 - > So engineer that workflow, have the right technology in play. 590 - > It's all stuff we do, I'll tell you. 591 - > The other good hack though I think this is a good visual is 592 - > try to instrument a four-call close. 593 - > Oh Mark, what are you selling typewriters? 594 - > Yeah, in 1988, I was selling typewriters. 595 - > But if you don't have a simple sales cycle, if you don't 596 - > engineer it to be simple, it sure won't be. 597 - > So your first call should be you should have a first call deck. 598 - > Who am I? 599 - > What problems have I solved? 600 - > It really answers the three whys why do anything? 601 - > Why do it with your company and why do it now? 602 - > So that first call deck, that's one of the things I look at 603 - > before I even start with a company. 604 - > I have a reading list that I ask for Let me have your first 605 - > call deck. 606 - > That tells you a lot. 607 - > Second call deck is two slides what's the customer's current 608 - > state and the problems they have with that current state? 609 - > Hey, and if they were going to fix it, what's the desired state 610 - > ? 611 - > That's the second call deck about the problems they're 612 - > having today versus what you want to achieve. 613 - > The third call deck is how you construct a POC or a POV. 614 - > What are the critical versus nice to have requirements? 615 - > What's the governance about it and that I will have an 616 - > executive presentation at the end of this POC with the 617 - > economic buyer to do a readout of how the solution met those 618 - > requirements. 619 - > And then the fourth call deck is the proposal. 620 - > And if you put all four of those call decks together and 621 - > you had to sue in a higher court for dollars for your solution, 622 - > it would represent you well. 623 - > And so we engineer a sales cycle with those four kind of 624 - > call decks in mind customer facing artifacts that you can 625 - > use and anchor for the decision all the way through. 626 - > So sales cycle is super critical. 627 - > That can be tailored. 628 - > It doesn't matter the freaking tech domain, all that can still 629 - > apply and you really give reps and the company what they need 630 - > to drive great customer outcomes and great customer 631 - > conversations. 632 - >
Speaker 1: Mark, I think, speaking to you there, I mean 633 - > you went into hyper growth with just the excitement and passion 634 - > behind you. 635 - > It was radiating experience and having the simplicity of it, 636 - > but also the confidence before getting technical and what 637 - > everyone tries to jump into straight away, was great. 638 - > I could chat to you about this all day and go into metrics and 639 - > defining the process. 640 - > Love it. 641 - > But look, it's been great to speak with you today. 642 - > If I had to sort of summarize a few key points for our listeners 643 - > today, I think ICP doesn't just mean a Fortune 1000 company or 644 - > Fortune 500 revenue. 645 - > Who's got the pain? 646 - > Okay, that's a great start and a great piece of criteria, I 647 - > think. 648 - > Secondly, on talent, functional expertise over technical 649 - > expertise is overlooked so much and I think really you nailed it 650 - > there in terms of what are we looking for, not just someone 651 - > out of the ecosystem. 652 - > And then I really liked your work on the sales process, where 653 - > you were talking around engineering it. 654 - > To be simple, here's four steps . 655 - > Here's the customer journey in our eyes getting them from A to 656 - > Z, getting that deal closed. 657 - > So a real pleasure speaking to you today. 658 - > I guess if people want to follow up with you or get a hold 659 - > of you and talk shop some more. 660 - > What's the best way to do it? 661 - >
Speaker 2: So LinkedIn or my cell phone is 408-406-9174. 662 - > And my wife says I need to keep busy 1174. 663 - > And uh, my wife says I need to keep busy. 664 - > Uh, I'm uh, I work uh with a client, uh one or two days a 665 - > week, currently working with four, uh, which is fantastic, 666 - > and uh ride motorcycles and uh cars on friday, uh, to keep my 667 - > sanity. 668 - > But it's been my pleasure to to be on this with you, uh, john, 669 - > and you know much to my chagrin, your, your accent belies how 670 - > smart you are and it turns out you really are. 671 - > Uh, it's been great to to to work with you here. 672 - > My pleasure. 673 - >
Speaker 1: All right, Mark, take care. 674 - > Thanks for listening. 675 - > I hope you enjoyed today's episode. 676 - > Don't forget to subscribe and if you want more information 677 - > about the podcast, head over to our website Scale with Drive.
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