E198 - What GTM Leaders Can Learn from the Innovation Ecosystem featuring Dave & Joe O'Callaghan

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hey, Dave and Joe, how you doing? Great.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Speaker B: Excellent. Joe, how you doing?

Speaker C: Fantastic.

Speaker B: Excellent. Well, this is, uh, really excited. This is our first father, father, son tag team here. So, uh, definitely looking forward to, uh, this, uh, excited to have Dave, uh, and Joe o' Callaghan on today. Uh, they're co founders of Vation Vendors. Uh, Dave is the managing partner, and, uh, Joe runs the place as, uh, the CEO. And, uh, we've got a great title topic today, which is, uh, what go to market, uh, leaders can learn from the innovation ecosystem and a whole bunch of other great, uh, go to market, uh, ideas and suggestions. We're, uh, sponsored by Sandler, who's a sales training sponsor of Sales Community. And Dave, uh, I think you said you've got some experience with them from, uh, VMware and Cisco days.

Speaker A: Great group. Yep, absolutely.

Speaker B: All right. Excellent. Good. Yeah, everybody needs, uh, training these days. Especially. We find a lot, the first, uh, line managers, because a lot of people were promoted up over Covid for retention reasons or kind of whatever else. And now everybody's kind of taking a step back and saying, okay, we actually have to, you know, to train these folks that really have no idea. So, uh, I'm sure. I'm sure you see a lot of that.

Speaker A: The world is moving fast.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Uh, so by way of introduction, uh, they live in the Denver, uh, area. And, um, our. I think kind of Dave might be more of a Cleveland sports fan than Joe is. So, um, uh, Dave's Cleveland Cavaliers, Joe, I think, is more Denver Nuggets. They get that, right.

Speaker C: I go with the team that's going to win.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, then you should go the Celtics.

Speaker C: All those super bowl trophies are making me gag a little bit. I think the Browns would love to have one of them.

Speaker B: I actually have a very close friend down here, Todd Kennedy, who's a Cleveland, uh, fan. He came over for a party we had a few weeks ago, and, uh, he took one of my trophies. And I saw him the next day and he said, um, hey, do you see anything missing? I'm like, no.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: He goes, I took one of your super trophies. I said, we have so many from the Patriot. Yeah, he was even more upset than he was than he was before. But, uh, anyway, so to, um, help me with introductions, I got a nice, uh, comment from Frank Roush, says, uh, Dave o' Callaghan is an industry legend. I competed with Dave when he was at Cisco, worked with him at VMware, and advised with him for Ninja. One great leader who has My ultimate respect. And, um, Dave and I only really, I think through sales, uh, community a little bit when you were at VMware, got to know each other, but, you know, certainly in the Cisco days we were, uh, I think competing, but always knew, uh, you as, you know, very highly thought of great relationships, um, you know, across the board, uh, probably especially, uh, laid your claim to fame on the channel side, but I know just highly regarded by, uh, a lot of great people that I respect and, uh, always wish we had a chance to work, uh, more closely together. And Joe, uh, only recently met you, but from our interaction, certainly, uh, impressed with you as well and, uh, look forward to your bright future. Uh, so jumping in here, uh, so, uh, Dave, uh, you went to Bowling Green and uh, maybe tell us about your first job out of college and uh, summarize, if you can, briefly your impressive career from there.

Speaker A: Yeah, and thanks, uh, for the shout out to Frank Rauch. Um, what a pleasure to have worked with Frank. No one better at being the tip of the sword in our industries than Frank Rauch. Uh, so, hey, Frank, Um, and Randy, it's great to get to see you again and thanks for having us and Sandler for promoting us. Um, you know, from an educational standpoint, I was a fighting falcon at Bowling Green and went on to the University of Cincinnati to get my mba. And I actually executive faculty at the University of Denver now. So it's a pleasure to continue education because I, uh, got a lot to learn. As Joe will tell you, I got a lot to learn. Uh, first job actually was paperboy, but that wasn't out of college. But I think everybody that's been a paperboy learned cash flow, learned how to sell new subscriptions. So it's very pertinent to these days. Um, when I dig it out of college, I actually work for a partner. I learned how to be a reseller. It was, you know, it was punch cards and magnetic tape reels. Remember that? You would remember the big magnetic tape reels.

Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker A: All that kind of stuff. And, uh, learned what gross margin was and how to play that middleman role and bring value and relationships. Moved on to a direct sales role with Memorex, uh, and then Hitachi. So I learned how to carry a bag and be a direct salesperson. And that was, that was great learning. And moved on to Cisco and sales management. So, you know, at Cisco that was the forefront of the Internet with TCP IP in the 90s. And it's very, very similar to what I'm seeing with AI now. So we can discuss that later. And then with Frank, um, at ah, VMware, as he mentioned. And then when the other guy on the screen at 31 years old had the idea for Vasion Ventures, I thought, my son's brilliant. He's the new and improved version of me. And so uh, it's great to be here with both of you. Randy.

Speaker C: Awesome.

Speaker B: Uh, great. And Joe, you were Colorado, uh, state, uh, 2008 and your uh, first job was uh, on the wealth advisory space.

Speaker C: Yeah, came out of college and uh, did not want to go into technology just to be that uh, opposite, as my dad, uh, would say. But yeah, when Wealth Management Advisor. No better time than 2008 to uh, jump into that world. But um, it was actually an incredible learning experience because a lot of people left the industry. Uh, it helped build my confidence on having really hard conversations and cold calling people where you know that they're not very happy and uh, taking rejection and all those things. Well. Also, uh, ran due diligence for that firm. So it got me into the analytical side of the equation where I got to understand kind of how to look at a deal. What are the things to look at, uh, what are the things to call out? Um, and it relates very well to how we look at emerging technologies today and the VCs that we work with. Um, uh, and then a gentleman named Paul Markell recruited me to come work for him at a fast growing uh, reseller called Trace three. And uh, made that jump and at the same time went to Denver University and got my professional MBA to kind of round out all the education piece. And uh, then here we are 15, uh, years later, four kids actually now I kind of forget about that. Fourth every once in a while. He's only seven months, but nice.

Speaker B: Congrats, proud papa and proud grandfather. Uh, right, Dave?

Speaker A: You bet. You bet.

Speaker C: Awesome.

Speaker B: So uh, Joe, maybe tell us a little bit more about VAS Adventures.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, uh, my last role at Trace 3 was running Innovation for the largest sales team we had at the Rocky Mountain region. And uh, about, I guess it'll be about nine years ago now, one of the uh, people that worked at Lightspeed Ventures gave me a shout and said, hey, you should start a company around kind of what you're doing. Uh, the idea is really easy. Innovation is hard. Uh, innovation at scale is really, really hard. And uh, so, you know, the idea behind VATION was create an ecosystem that would drive innovation at scale and compress time to uh, market. So I went to Dave, uh, as he kind of alluded to he said I was a really smart 31 year old. He didn't think that at the time. Uh, it took a couple sales pitches and we went out to Silicon Valley, we met with the Lightspeed, they validated the uh, hypothesis and then we went and met with Carl Eschenbach at Sequoia and that was really, Carl was really what pushed Dave over the edge to do the company with me, which was fantastic. But at Bayesian we, we do three things to help compress that time to roi. We uh, have a professional services arm where we have a do uh two types of consulting. We do go to market consulting to emerging technologies. Uh, so a lot of it is kind of what we'll talk about today. But how do they think about the routes to market, how do they make them more robust earlier on? How do they get um, feedback from the end customers directly so that they can pivot their go to markets and then how do they build really robust channel strategies early on? Um, and then on the other side of the equation we do innovation consulting to the market. So we work with distributors and resellers and SIs on building innovation practices, helping them identify what emerging technologies they should be looking at, um, that might make big impact in the next five to 10 years. And then we consult directly to CIO, CTO, CISOs, CDOs as well on innovation frameworks. So orchestrating innovation, how do we find the right people around the right problem at the right time and then operationalizer executing that strategy uh, with the hands on keyboard experience or leveraging a bunch of resources to help drive success of a project for customers. Um, so that's our professional services arm. Our second piece of our business is our own SaaS platform. It's the next generation research tool, uh, helps the high tech ecosystem research, connect and collaborate. And then the last piece of our business is our community business of over 2000 CIO, CTOs, CISOs that are part of our innovation Advisory Council network. And we meet with those executives frequently to test emerging technologies and VC backed technologies to the end market to uh, get exposure for those companies and get feedback earlier on in their life cycles so that they can be successful. Awesome. I'm sure I had some gaps in there from Dave. I don't know uh, if I know

Speaker B: anything else you'd add in with Dave.

Speaker A: No, I thought that was an excellent summary. Well done.

Speaker B: All right, awesome. And then Dave, uh, you had a Vasion Ventures, uh, global summit in Denver uh, back in September. That must have been great. Yeah.

Speaker A: As Joe mentioned, one of our three things that we do is events that bring the ecosystem together. The summit that we did last fall was phenomenal. It was really focused on bringing that community together that starts with the money, the VCs and ends with the money, the end users and everybody in the middle, the distributors, the resellers, the sis, the emerging techs. And uh, from that we recognize that innovation's uh, hard, especially AI and secure AI. How could we simplify the complexity of what happens from implementing an AI? Because the end users are rapidly trying to come up to speed on uh, AI deployments. And our other partner, Jordan Lloyd, would be able to tell you at a very deep level where they're at in deployment of AI. Um, and Joe can probably highlight as well. But that summit really opened our eyes to how difficult secure AI is. And so from that, GTDC just sponsored a workshop in Scottsdale a couple of weeks ago. Um, and again they had VATION bring together the, the ecosystem from VC to end user. And you could see the harmonization, Randy, like how in your past when you had to bring to do an embedded strategy with VMware, you needed to partner really tightly. That was only one other vendor for an AI, secure AI strategy. It is literally maybe a dozen different technologies and vendors and integrators. And the only ones that can truly integrate all of that, orchestrate all that is the distributor, Frank, uh, Patigliano. I know he's a good friend of yours down there in Naples. Um, uh, he orchestrated that workshop and it was great. We'd love to tell all your listeners about that in great detail whenever they'd like.

Speaker B: Awesome. Very cool. Any, uh, shout outs to, uh, some of those companies?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting when you look at who is there, the data guys are really the ones that are at the core right now. Data IQ is a great customer of ours. Um, they are the ability to not only capture but provide insights. Um, legacy companies that have now got DLP offerings like proofpoint, Breaks LA was there, uh, great people. And then the big guys are there, you know, AMD for the infrastructure, Cisco for the network. So, you know, they were all there and they were all contributing to, from their perspective, what's needed. And when you put that whole patchwork quilt together, you can see how the pieces of the infrastructure with the network, with the data capability and the integrator in the channel all comes together so that that CIO can deliver the secure AI dream that their CEO wants and their board needs. So it's fantastic.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Joe, Dave and I have obviously been around the block a, uh, few times. But, uh, I'd say a lot of these forever. A lot of these, uh, founders have never had a bad discussion. They're always super optimistic. Um, are you still finding that, uh, these days with, I'd say maybe some of your generation of founders?

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I think that um, go to market is really hard with innovators. Uh, and the reason why is to your point, you know, founders have never had a bad conversation. They come off very passionate. People don't like to say no to people, um, which is a great thing to leverage if you use it as a tool to progress in a sales cycle. But founders have never had a bad conversation. And what I'm seeing kind of with today's market is there's kind of the two approaches, which is the traditional go to market approach where um, you know, you sell the products and then there's the product driven approach that a lot of the VCs have kind of shifted. They ebb and flow with which go to market is the best route for whatever portfolio companies that is the product level. Uh, the product driven go to market has uh, been very successful for a number of companies. It's really hard unless you're really solving a pain point of a customer. And the pain points really, um, where you need that kind of more robust go to market strategy from an emerging technology perspective is certainly where you have to educate the market on what the problem statement is. What problems are you actually solving and why do they actually have that problem and why does it matter? Um, so yeah, we're totally seeing that. I think it's really challenging to figure out whether you're a traditional go to market approach is going to be better or a product driven approach. Um, but in the world of AI, as Dave kind of alluded to, we're seeing kind of a combination of the two and they're both being very successful. The challenge is being able to keep that momentum, I think over the next three to five years when things are going to be innovating so quickly that new companies are going to pop up even faster every single day. So go to market becomes one of the most important pieces of um, an emerging technologies life cycle as opposed to historically where product was like the most important piece being differentiated on the product first. So I see a lot of challenges on the go to market side for, for the next three to five years, for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So for those listening, uh, or watching along, feel free to chime in with any questions or comments. As always, we had Tucker behind the scenes Helping. So thank, uh, you Tucker. Uh, so, so Dave, uh, there's something to be said for uh, thoughtfulness and humility, uh, also with some of these founders and early uh, executive teams. Right,

Speaker A: Absolutely. Um, looks like Randy may have froze or I did.

Speaker B: Um, I can hear you fine, Joe. You can hear him fine.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Um, so, yeah, thoughtfulness and humility I think are so key. Adding on to what Joe was saying, those founders, they've received maybe $20 million. And so they've been told, you're brilliant, you've got a great idea. And they do. However, I think that if they reflect, uh, like Sal Svarasa, ah, does at Ninja One, um, great founder, he's done it five times, he'll do it again probably. And he's the ultimate in humility. He knows that the Ninja 1 product line, um, needed to be distilled into a simple question for the sales staff to sell to. MSP's question was, how is your patch management? Now the world knows everybody's patch management's pretty rough. So it's an easy question. You know, distilling all of that complexity of the entire NINJA platform down to something that can be captured in a single question is brilliance. And that's Ninja One's a great, just a great example of that, um, where I think more and more founders, we try to help them discover what is that simplified question that your sales team, a channel partner, others can ask that will drive your top of funnel. And it sounds like a simple thing is to come up with the one question. But back to your point on humility, it's like they want to tell you about this great platform they built in every detail and every bit and bite behind it. And that's rough to get out in the first 30 seconds. What's the question? Be Socratic and be humble about it.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And Joe, the concept of uh, value selling and ROI has been around forever, but I'm sure you see that uh, more important than ever these days.

Speaker C: 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: You got to be able to talk about how the technology drives business value right away because there's no time to build a business case these days and go do the nine month sales cycle with AI companies that are popping up so quickly and you can implement right there and they start working right away. So um, 100%. I think building the ROI models and being able to have that business value conversation early on is super important right now.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And Dave, the channel's never been uh, probably more important or more critical these days.

Speaker A: Absolutely. If the channel can Lean in. Distributors can lean into orchestrating everything from data IQ to how does Cisco Meraki fit into the picture to the various security layers that need to come in from a proof point, uh, or others that manage exfiltration of data. That channel is the only place that the end user truly trusts to give them advice. It's been that way for a long time. I don't see it changing that channel partner that has had a 20 year relationship with the CIOs that they're not going to go to a different place for that final piece of advice. And so, you know, I think the channel's in great shape. I hope so anyhow.

Speaker B: Uh, a lot of times, yeah I've seen the past five, ten years, probably these emerging companies, Dave think okay, we're just going to go to the channel. But it's tough. You're an emergent company. Lots of things come into play for a channel partner to even give you a look, let alone spend the time, let alone invest.

Speaker A: We do this piece of our work called on behalf of the distributors usually is uh, it's called Vation certified and it's about 120 elements that we go through in a two hour phone call that um, you know, focus on what's your go to market, what's your operational capability? Can you take an order? How would you take an order? If you had to take it from a channel partner, how would you take an order? What's your marketing approach? What's your investment rewards structure for your partner program? Oh, you don't have one of those. I always suggest that maybe you want to build one of those and we would help you build that. So there's to your point, it's like the emerging tech wants to launch into the channel for reach and scale. Great. But you have to be operationally excellent where the partners just won't have the patience for you. It's very difficult for a partner to take, you know, do orders on carbon papers. Yeah.

Speaker B: And even for big companies it's important. I mean I've been at some big companies where you have these expensive consultants come in and say okay, we can get rid of the, you know, get rid of all these people. The channel's just going to do it like okay, well you forget about the piece that you have to actually invest in the channel in a lot of different ways. It's not like okay, you can just cut the spend and they're automatically going to go take care of revenue for you.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really interesting to me also is the, is picking the routes in the channel. Because I think, you know, for people of our generation, when you think the channel, you think the reseller, you think the various. But today it's um, not only that reseller, it's the MSP that they've become. It's the professional services integrator that actually instantiates data IQ for them. It's the AWS or GCP marketplaces. It's how does the distributor fit into that model? It's what's the VMware OEM, um, embedded model that we should think about with technology partnerships. So the channel, you know, when, when we do our education with emerging techs, it's like let's, let's talk about the overall channel as the. As there's probably six or seven routes to revenue, let's pick the best one for you first instead of trying to throw a shotgun at all of them and winning with none of them. Right. So, um, things are changing, Randy, since, since we grew up.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker C: I even think in the like one route that you always mentioned, but I think I might have misheard it, the hyperscaler route and the marketplace route. Like a lot of technologies are thinking, m I get in the marketplace, I'm good to go. And that's the farthest thing from the truth. Uh, which is why I think that the more robust kind of channel strategy is more important now than it than ever has been. Because you need to be able to navigate all those waters with an enterprise. Um, and that can be a great procurement vehicle, uh, as part of it, but it's not an if you build it, if you get in the marketplace, they will come strategy unless it's product driven growth.

Speaker B: So yeah, absolutely, the company comes to mind. Tackle IO. Right. They're a marketplace for people that want to go to the cloud providers. Right. So all these new companies being wedged in to say, okay, hey, how can we help facilitate, whether it's a distributor or whoever, to facilitate going into those different uh, routes of market. So uh, Joe, one word that really comes to mind, I think with all this put a wrap around it kind of really is execution. Right. So you can kind of think about all this, have these great ideas, but if you can't execute, it doesn't mean anything.

Speaker C: Yeah. And again, I think, um, like we kind of mentioned early on, you know, innovation's hard and we always talk about kind um, of theoretical innovation versus pragmatic innovation. Theoretical innovation is something that might help the market in the next three to five years, but you know, it's still developing and Pragmatic is things that you can actually do today. And for the emerging technologies that can actually solve problems today, um, being able to execute in a very succinct manner what you do, how you do it and why you solve a customer problem on the go to market side is super important. And Dave kind of alluded to the patch management example. It's a great question because sales enablement on the channel there is really easy. Go ask about patch management and see if this CISO or CIO is unhappy with it. Um, what we always talk about is like, how can an emerging technology after, uh, I make the putt on nine and before we hit the T ball on 10 and I'm in the cart with the CIO for that one minute, how can I articulate that emerging technologies problem statement to get the meeting? Uh, and then you execute against it by taking that data and advice and taking all the different, um, inputs to keeping sales very simple by solving the, you know, building the ROI models and all those kind of things. So execution is the number one thing as opposed to kind of, if you, if you get on Marketplace, they're going to come.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I've said over the years, since I'd hear like you, Joe, uh, you know, if you're in the elevator with the cfo, either at a customer or a prospect you're trying to sell to and you have 30 seconds, what are you going to say?

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: It's not all this techno mumbo jumbo and slides or PowerPoint whatever presentation, right. It's okay. How are you going to help them generate revenue? How are you going to help them save money, get some compliance? How are you going to help them stay out of jail? Security, kind of, those are the hot buttons. And at the end of the day, if a CFO has different proposals from different companies on the table, you could have some company that has the best technology in the world, but they've not done a good job of articulating how it can actually help improve the business. You know, they're just going to get skimmed over, which is kind of the tip of the spear for the whole, you know, go to market, uh, efforts that you guys really helped drive.

Speaker C: Yeah. And even on the, on the innovation, consulting side of the equation, when we're doing a bunch of our AI readiness, uh, LaunchPad assessments, we ask one simple question to every stakeholder that we meet with. And we go meet with, you know, the cfo, the cio, the cto, the head of hr, the CEO, the CEO. We meet with everybody in the Org. And we ask them a simple question, what's the worst part of your day? And that answer alone usually will lead to some sort of engagement model because you're going to go solve real problems that they have and they're defined by them. Um, so.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally, absolutely. So, um, moving on. Um, you do a, uh, annual Technology Executive Outlook report and you've got over 2,000 advisory council members to kind of, for lack of better words, determine what the state of enterprise tech is now. Uh, so, uh, Dave, what are some of the trends that uh, you're seeing now for uh, this year? I think that obviously AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, we did a, uh, at our global summit last year. I think Joe, from the keynote, Joe had highlighted that, you know, for every, for every time, uh, AI was said, we had to do a shot of tequila or something like that.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker A: Whole crowd would have been quite liquored up by 9am on the first day. So, yeah, the AI train is certainly on um, path now. Ah, very closely behind that in the survey mirroring, um, it is security of AI, because with ChatGPT hitting about a year ago, it really highlighted that, um, you could export your entire company's IP in an afternoon not knowing it. So it's the bad, it's not a bad actor within, it's the unknowing actor within is what the CISO is worried about for the CIO who has to report to the board. And as a board member myself, I always ask the question, are we secure in every board meeting? Because I'm personally liable for that answer. And so those two were obviously the tips of the survey. Um, Joe, do you recall other components from Troy's survey?

Speaker C: Yeah, and the data, the data side of the equation, I think, uh, being able to have a data strategy execute against that data strategy, so then it builds upon, you can build AI or different innovation engagements on top of that is the number one thing. But the biggest stat that came to me was 90, uh, percent of technology executives think AI is going to be a top priority over the next two to three years. Um, but only uh, 30% think they have skills to do it. So there's a massive gap in kind of talent management as it relates to driving AI. And that can be on the strategy side and that can also be on the execution side. And it means on the emerging technology side, how do you drive technology vendors in there that help solve that problem? Uh, as well?

Speaker B: Yeah. And on the people side, any observations around how uh, technology leadership is evolving?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of new titles out there. Uh, you know, head of AI. I think the last three, three years ago, four years ago, we started seeing kind of the CIO move to CDO or digital officer kind of Persona that's kind of flip flopped back, back and forth. Um, I think from a technology leader it's interesting we actually have this picture of the evolution of a technology executive. Um, and so if you think about historically, you know, and we can send this to you. But very, very focused on kind of like the mainframe. That's when the CIO was built and it was, they were very technical by nature. And then systems started coming and they started expanding the Internet then hit and they first they had their first kind of digital experience where they actually touch customers and not just worked on internal things. They became more business focused and now like cloud helped them drive to the business value where they're more business drivers than they were technologists at heart. I think with AI, the cio, the technology executive, whatever their title is, is the growth catalyst for the company moving forward. And so they are completely business focused. Um, and so technology vendors need to be able to talk to the business side of that equation moving forward because that's what the CIO cares about. They don't care about the how, they care about the what are we going to get done? Um, so that's kind of the evolution that we had. We have a great slide, we'll send it over to you so you can take a look at it. But um, it talks about that and how people should adjust their go to market and who they're speaking with within those organizations to um, solve those problems.

Speaker B: Yeah, perfect.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we can uh, post it on our site as well and then um, kind of on the uh, you know, sales, sales ops and revop side. So you know Dave, we've had, you know sales ops has been around forever. It was always kind of more rear view mirror, now rev ops and all these different tools. You know it's kind of really helps you kind of see out of the front windshield to really help adjust kind of what you can do and how you can do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt A lot of our um, professional services AI work by Jordan Lloyd is in that direction because you know, as you, as you start to deploy AI solutions, secure AI solutions, what you first find is areas low hanging fruit that's around efficiency and some of that might be working inside of Salesforce, some of that just kind of cleaning things up, gaining efficiency while you structure your data. The second layer is around productivity and that's what you're hitting on is now we're into rev ops and how are we going to not just figure out the salesforce component the way it is today, but how are we going to reach the new customers, the new productivity layers that we'll be able to do because of intelligence and insights and then you move all the way to insights and how you drive forward. And that almost is exactly the way John Chambers would define um, market transitions in the day. Back when I was at Cisco, you have a dramatic change in technology followed by a dramatic change in economics. Market transition, absolutely.

Speaker B: And then uh, Joe, from a lead gen perspective again, Dave and I more uh, kind of old school. It seems like cold calling is having a uh, comeback here with uh, real people versus this kind of email with uh, AI and bots and trying to be customized. It's really not that everybody can see through. Uh, what do you see with your companies on the cold calling side?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think cold calling is definitely cutting uh, through the noise a little bit better today. Uh, I do think it's going to be a challenge in the future. I mean I'm not sure if you guys answer a lot of unknown numbers today. Uh, but I do think that the personal touch is still important. AI is really smart. If you look at, there's a lot of AI, uh, SDR kind of email tools today, they're moving into the voice side of things. Um, but they do more research in the AI side and a cold email than any human ever did with me. And so I look at those emails that you know, I'm getting cold called by and they, they did research on Vation. They know who Vation is and why their product makes sense for Vation. It's, it's really intuitive. The challenge is I think everyone's going to kind of move to that model and it's just gonna be a lot more emails and noise there. Um, so how do you take kind of that foundation, you build a cold calling campaign on top of that where your sellers have that data at their fingertips to be able to articulate exactly the research that the AI did and make it more impactful of a 30 second conversation like you mentioned on the elevator pitch, than what an AI bot could do today.

Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting. One of our sponsors, Titan X and uh, they actually do that on the uh, cold calling side. They'll stay okay. Out of thousands or tens of thousands of people you have to call who has a higher propensity to pick up the phone and the um, pickup rates go from like 3 to 5% to like 20 or 25%. Really, uh, real profound. Uh, but anyway, so, uh, moving on. So Dave, what about on the um, you know, speaking of Standler and sales training side, what do you see these days with your uh, the companies that you're working with around kind of sales training? What are the gaps? What are the needs?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's, you know, there's so much coming at salespeople. Even if you're even an AMD or a Cisco salesperson, the large companies, there's, you know, both of those companies are buying people and you know, how do you, how do you train your existing staff up on the, on the new thing or the new guys up on the legacy part of the vendor? So, so there's this ongoing need for uh, for training then in the channel. When you think about it, you know, one channel partner. I always try to get emerging text to understand this, you know, one channel partner. If you're cdw, how many, how many line card, how many line card items do you have? How many SKUs do you have? How many. You can't have a lunch and learn and, and be effective at gaining, you know, market mind share. It's not going to happen. Right. So how do you create, and I believe Sandler actually does this as well, is we try to create a 90 day curriculum. When we're doing a deep dive, uh, to launch an emerging tech into the partner base. We want to do a 90 day insertion to get them to not only listen to the first lunch and learn, but then go out and act upon it. Build pipeline, fail. Let's try it again, try another opportunity. So it's that, you know, how do you, how do you continue to build upon it over 90 days? And in 90 days most people can quick quit smoking or they can start selling. Right. So they could, or they could do both if they're a smoker. So that's the, that's the difference. I think these days because there's so much complexity, it takes time to get people up to speed and acting upon what they learned.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And then just going back to the, you know, basic mechanics. Right. Are all around the things in terms of what we do, how we do it, are you qualifying, whether it's med pick or kind of whatever methodology, but kind of making sure you're being uh, kind of extremely thorough through the process. You're kind of setting up where do we want to invest in whether it's our resources or the channel partner resources.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then Joe, what about, what do you see in terms around the uh, other side on the, the people side of things in terms of um, kind of teaming, teamwork, you know, having uh, appreciation, kind of where the puck is going. By the way, I have to give a shout out to Denver who had VC's number this year and last year. So well done. We hate you guys. Yeah, we hate you guys especially, especially your goaltender. But uh, anyway, but to get an idea to say, okay, what is the skill set of the future? And kind of how do we start to train for that and then how do you make sure, especially when you're recruiting, that you're recruiting not for kind of what used to be an A player, but what you think an A player is going to be?

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, and I saw, I mean I know that you were part of the kind of people management side of things and would love, love your thought on that because I think that um, that is the challenge right on understanding where DU is gonna put that puck. Um, I think I look at, from a skills assessment, keeping it simple and we could get really in the weeds of like this is where we need to be in five years and this is the type of resources that we need. But if you're solving customer problems today, you wanna simplify that process as much as possible. On the talent side, you want the best talent that solves that problem the fastest. Um, and so I think, you know, from a, from a where the puck's going to go, that's really challenging. On the people side, I mean obviously following the big trends, following what Google or Amazon or, or Azure is going to do and the types of search that they're doing and all this, like those are important. From the people side, don't get me wrong. But from a problem solving side today, having the talent that can solve the problem, have credibility to solve the problem and do it the fastest is the most important. And keeping that simple, you can only move fast if you keep things simple. So that's how I look at it. But I know that you were on the people side and we love kind of your thoughts on how you keep uh, people at the head of the puck there.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've learned a lot from. There's a company, Octus iq who's another sponsor sales community. But uh, they'll do um, a lot of great sports analogies. But um, they'll go through uh, detailed testing. So if you take like Brock Purdy as an example, everybody passed over. They do a lot of uh, NFL and college football assessments and found out that he was off the charts in all These different attributes. But if you judge a book by the COVID he would have failed miserably. So he ended up getting picked up and obviously doing well. They have an opposite case study. And all this applies to business and to sales, where there is this lineman who kind of seemed great but kind of under the covers in terms of the mental toughness and flexibility and humbleness and trying to learn kind of all those was just awful. And they knew going into it to say he's going to get drafted high because he may be a specimen of sorts, but you know, when it comes time to the other kind of intangible things, he's going to fail miserably. And likewise it failed miserably. So kind of applying some of those skills and assessments to um, kind of people that you have on your team and also taking a look at, to say, okay, ah, of these, you know, a players that we have now, kind of what are, what are these attributes? And then how can you coach and develop, uh, from there? But kind of.

Speaker C: Well, it's super interesting because one of the things that I'm terrified with, with all the AI stuff and whether it's goto market or driving innovation in an organization, whatever it is with my kids, you know, second grader and kindergarteners and AI is becoming the thought engine for everyone. We need a good job and ability to provide critical thinking on top of that. And I think that like to your point, being able to create an assessment and finding people that can critically think and are critically thinking, leveraging that tool are going to be the ones that rise, rise to the top over the next three to five years for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean over the years, Dave, we always call the eq, uh, emotional quotient, but certainly uh, something that is uh, important. So uh, Dave, what about along the way you must have had some uh, great mentors and if uh, there's any kind of specific one off that you kind uh, of took, took away from any of them.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, so. Well, I mentioned uh, Mr. Chambers and Keith Goodwin at, at, at Cisco, of course. Uh, I was really blessed to also work in the organization with, with Carl Aschenbach and, and Pat Gelsinger and I think you know, Pat and um, and Carl and there are, there are no better human beings. Um, you know, and, and I think Joe is mentioning the, you were mentioning the need for humility these days. And when you look at the types of people, any of those that I just mentioned, their common element is a fundamental humility, a fundamental desire to learn, be inquisitive, you Know, and so I'm trying to stay inquisitive. I'm not that young anymore, but I'm trying. It's. I guess it's easier when you forget stuff, then you can become inquisitive again on the same topic. So, um, you know, I think being humble and being, you know, inquisitive is really key.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Carl and Pat over the years, always big corporate jobs and they'd always be, you know, amazing. You know, talk about humility, for sure, but kind of just responding and following up and, you know, I mean, the. Yeah, I work with some companies these days who, you know, the sales reps don't even do half as good as, you know, what they would. They would do is, you know, them having, you know, huge jobs. But I did do a Tucker, uh, and I do a weekly post. It might be old school, but. But it's basically all just the stupid stuff that we see these days that, whatever, 20, 30 years ago, even poor performers would do in their sleep. But, um, I'll get off that. That soapbox. So, so, so, Joe, in your, uh, your senior years here, you're, uh, still young, but, uh, any advice you'd give to your younger self,

Speaker C: uh, so Dave grew. I grew up with Dave, and he gave me pearls of wisdom, uh, throughout life.

Speaker B: Did you. When did you actually start listening or figuring that out?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Going back, he gave me one, uh, probably when I was about 16. And I don't think I listened to him until, uh, until we started this company. But, um, I thought you're gonna say

Speaker B: until we started this conversation today.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, there's a couple of those, but I wouldn't take that advice still. It's around golf and we don't want to go there. But, uh, the number one thing, especially as it relates to the sales community, is the only person that likes to hear you talk about yourself is your mom. And I think that's so important in everything that we're doing in life that. Don't talk about yourself, ask people questions, listen, do active listening, and it'll bring you really far in your career. And that's what we've leveraged at Baytion over the last year. Why I think we're been successful is because my mom's not on these calls, so I'm not talking about myself. Uh, but that's. That's the only way.

Speaker B: Give her the link so she can watch. I can't believe she's not on asking any questions or commenting. I should have sent it to her.

Speaker C: You got to be careful with that. She would, she would eat up that hour pretty quick.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, anyway so really uh really awesome there so time, time flies. So uh Dave and Joe you've been awesome. Uh we'll continue to uh look forward to watching your success along the way and uh any ideas how we can help but appreciate it. Uh so thanks so much uh thanks Sandler for uh sponsoring today and uh Tucker I think I forgot to say in the beginning if you can throw up our spring uh free link. So for those that are members of sales community, thanks. For those that are not, uh feel free to join uh for free. Lots of great content and folks uh on there uh for sure. Uh so Dave and Joe thanks have uh an awesome time. Uh enjoy everything.

Speaker A: Thank you Randy as always a pleasure.

Speaker B: All right, thanks. Take care.