Unlocking B2B Sales Success

Speaker A: Welcome to True Confessions of a Sales Leader. I'm Scott Olson. Today we have two exceptional guests from Introhive, a uh, leading global technology company known for its customer intelligence platform. First, we have Lee Blakemore, the CEO of Introhive. Lee has an impressive career having held pivotal roles at Anthology and Blackboard, where he managed global business operations and led the transition to a SaaS model. He also served as SVP of Global Sales and Marketing at Velocity Technology Solutions and held various leadership positions at IBM. Joining Lee is Justin Picciano, the Vice President of Sales and customer success at introhive. Justin began his career at Accenture and has since worked with numerous leading organizations specializing in transforming companies to handle growth at scale. Both Lee and Justin bring a wealth of experience and insight to our discussion today. Lee, I'd like to start with you. How has B2B sales evolved over your career?

Speaker B: Uh, well, that's a, that's a great question. So I've been in sales for my entire career, so, which has been just a little over 30 years now and certainly going back into the early 90s. First, the whole notion of just buying technology has changed and sort of the adoption and the acceptance of it, which may seem strange, uh, to folks, but you know, back in the early 90s, just the notion of buying technology was still a question mark. You know, do we need it? It's awful expensive, why should I pay for it? All those sort of questions. So you spend a lot of your time trying to overcome those basic, basic level objections. And certainly, uh, the adoption of technology and the acceptance of it and the value and the acceptance of the value and all those sort of things has really obviously accelerated over the last 30 years. And at the same time, you know, access to people and getting access to people that are decision makers and buyers has also changed dramatically. So there's been a lot of change over 30 years, needless to say.

Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like the why technology? And then we've kind of got past that and almost like a little bit of a bubble that we're covering from right now in certain ways.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, Justin, how do you respond to that question? How have you seen B2B sales evolve over your career?

Speaker C: I think that, uh, I've come from a little bit of a different background and I see it having come full circle. So you mentioned that I started my career at Accenture. So, you know, I like to think of myself as somebody who has not been in sales for very long in my 25 to 30 year career. But at the same time I really have Always been selling from the beginning, you know, as a consultant. And the way I think about that is that there are certain traits that you develop that are going to help you sell as you evolve in your career. And a couple of those things are establishing a relationship with the per, with the uh, with the folks that you're selling to. So I'm not just trying to sell a transaction or sell a widget to somebody who's going to buy it. I'm going to build a long term relationship with that person because I want them to keep coming back. The second is to truly understand the problem they're trying to solve for. And when you have that deep knowledge of their business and the problem they're solving for, then you can come up with the solution that fits for them. Then the third thing is you got to deliver. And over the course of my career I've prided myself on being able to deliver on that commitment and deliver on that promise. So it's interesting that uh, over the course of my career has, how B2B sales has evolved is it's now that we're in the sort of SaaS world, we're basically doing the same thing because we want to establish a relationship so that, you know, we're not just a technology platform. We m are a solution that fits a specific problem. We truly understand what that problem is. And then once that purchase is made, we've got to get them up and running as quickly as possible. So we've got to deliver. And then it's almost as if you're running a client engagement at that point because you're not just selling software and moving on to the next thing. You're actually building that trust over the course of that engagement. Because SaaS is recurring revenue and you want that recurring revenue to continue. So I feel like over the course of my career I started out by selling recurring revenue. We just didn't call it SaaS, we called it services. But we're sort of back now selling um, a little bit of the same way. But you can't just sell it as if it was software. You got to sell it as sort of how are we going to deliver on that commitment and how we're going to continue to come back and have you come back to uh, continue to build that trust in our solution?

Speaker A: Yeah, we've made it easier to buy but also easier to leave at the same time. Lee, what have you seen that it's a double edged sword. But what's making selling easier and then what's making selling more difficult

Speaker B: yeah, so I start with the more difficult part. Access to people, access to buyers, decision makers, those sort of things is definitely far more difficult and complicated than it used to be. I can, you know, I'll sound old when I say it, but it used to be that you could email the, or ah, phone or call, you know, an executive, a C level person or even a mid level sort of executive at a company and get a response and engage in a dialogue if you had a solution to a problem that they had. And today getting that sort of access uh, is extremely difficult. And in addition to that sort of separating yourself out from sort of all the other vendors and companies, there's just been an explosion of technology companies out there. So that for any given segment of the market there's, there's many, many, you know, companies that at face value do similar things. So different, you know, differentiating yourself from your competitors, pursing through sort of that veneer and actually having a discussion with decision makers is far more difficult than it used to be. You know, from an easier perspective, just as I mentioned earlier, sort of the acceptance of technology and the realization of the value that it brings, certainly a lot easier. Technology is just a lot better frankly. You know, that early, uh, you know, you go back a few years and you'd be having technical issues and problems with products that were buggy and bad releases and those sort of things and, and you just don't hear about that sort of stuff. So technology's improved quite a bit in addition to sort of the acceptance of it. So now, you know, the issues that you hear about are more related to uh, sort of fit or maybe change management related to the project. The overall quality of the technology being produced, sold and delivered these days is also greatly improved on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, there does seem to be acceptance. It's like, yes, we want technology. Are you also seeing people overwhelmed?

Speaker B: Well that's a constant. You know, it's funny how and Justin mentioned it. You know, you look over a period of time and there are certainly things that have changed and evolved, but then there's also things that are constants. Regardless of what you're selling or who you're selling to or the era that you're selling it in. And that is certainly one of them. That you know, to have a successful engagement, a successful project, a successful deployment, you know, there's key attributes you need to have in place and you know, proper scope, identification, alignment to value, project management skills, change management skills, those sort of things, uh, that hasn't changed. So whether you were deploying you know, ERP in the early 90s or you know, a SaaS tool in your marketing tech stack in 2024. You know, those, those key attributes you, that are required to have a successful implementation have not changed.

Speaker A: And for you, Justin, you're, you're handling both, right? The sales, the acquisition piece, but also the cs. So you can't run from it after you've brought the business in.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: What are, what are you seeing as the biggest challenge facing salespeople today on the sales side? Then we can talk about the CS side.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, um, so some of the things that Lee mentioned are spot on. And I would add maybe two things. One is there's the complexity of how many folks you need to get aligned on a buying decision. We've always faced that along the way in our experience. But, uh, I think that it goes just beyond kind of the economic buyer on the business side and maybe the CIO and the cfo, whether or not they hold the budget. There's, there's always that, but that. But now there's the additional complexity and particularly into the market to which we sell, you've got law firms or you know, accounting firms that have executive committees which cut across multiple partners, multiple decision makers, multiple folks from different parts of the organization that you got to go beyond the normal Personas that, uh, we've all been used to. And so there's complexity in how many different folks you need to get aligned on. Sort of the same idea, the same notion, the same solution that we're meeting the needs for. Uh, the second thing I would say though is there's been a hypersensitivity on CyberSecurity. And obviously IT organizations have taken the right approach, the right tactics to make sure their environments are secure. And we're selling cloud based products and cloud based solutions now. And so that introduces kind of a level of complexity in whether or not that solution is or not vulnerable to an attack. And then you see, despite the tactics that these organizations are taking, they're still, they are being vulnerable and they're getting exposed to cyber attacks. And so add that to the layers of Personas that you've got to align with and the additional scrutiny that, okay, I'm going to go through a commercial contract with this organization that may or may not be indemnified if we get attacked from the outside. And so I think that has added a layer just in the process of selling. I think though, that sort of what I was saying before, salespeople have to go back to what I would call, you know, the basics of observing and discovering and there's been a, you know, a ton of talk about discovery. So I won't go into all the different ways to be better at discovery, but I do think that is something that folks just generally need to get better at because it's evolving so quickly, but then to observe and educate based on that discovery and that's how you build trust in the process. I think that's the way that folks can be better positioned to get a solution, you know, delivered and closed. Because folks are not necessarily just going to buy because they think the solution works. They've got to trust you that not only are you going to deliver, but you've got to, you know, you got the folks that I just mentioned that are being extra, putting extra scrutiny on the cyber security part of it, that, you know, they'll make the purchase, they'll put it, you know, in or around your environment and they have to have implicit trust that that organization will not expose them. And that becomes super important. So if you can build that trust, that goes a long way in the other in your client's organization to not, to not take on additional risk that they otherwise would have taken on.

Speaker A: That makes sense. Appreciate that. Lee, I'd like to go back to a comment you m made a little bit earlier about getting access is so difficult. I agree. I see it with all of my clients. One of the biggest challenges they face, getting in front. Of course Introhive helps with this. Could you describe a little bit about how your solution helps?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really interesting concept. But, but there's a basic question of when you are trying to. If you're at a firm and you're trying to sell your goods or services to another firm and you don't have access to the decision maker, let's say that you sell to the CIO of a cio, uh, is your profile the buyer and you don't have access to the CIO at company A that you're trying to sell to. Then what you do is you say, you look around the office back when you were in offices and you say, does anybody know the CIO at this company? And if you were fortunate somebody in your organization would know that person and they would make an introduction or they, they knew a way to get you there, if you will. And, and basically what Introhive does is we address that, uh, challenge for companies. We, we allow, we enable you to answer the question, who knows who does anybody know someone at this organization? And what you find is across m. In most organizations of a decent size, they don't really have visibility into all the relationships that are held across their organization. And our basic premise is that companies don't have visibility into these relationships, and as a result, they are leaving money on the table, so to speak, whether it is with driving revenue or managing risk with their current client base. So we surface all those relationships. We connect the dots for people so that you can see, does anybody in my organization have a relationship with that CIO or that CFO that I'm trying to do business with? And so that's basically what we do.

Speaker A: Well, nothing beats an introduction, that's for sure.

Speaker C: Yeah, a warm introduction at that.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's one of the things that has not changed with selling over the last many years, which is that people buy from people. I say it all the time, that while we're a technology company, it's a people business, and people buy from people. And you are far more likely to engage with someone you have a relationship with than with somebody that you don't. It almost sounds funny to say. And when it comes to crossing or taking that leap of faith as a buyer or potential buyer, having a relationship or having a level of confidence with the person that you are engaging with will improve your odds and improve your win rate, all those sort of things pretty dramatically. So the basic question is, who in my firm has a relationship with the person I'm trying to gain access to at this target firm? And making that connection and sort of facilitating that process is what we're all about.

Speaker A: And I can imagine the larger the firm more global in nature. It's just more valuable. I'd like to switch now. And we talked about sales, how sales evolved. How about sales leadership? I heard once that the only thing that's the same, the one thing that's the same between sales and sales leadership is that is the word sales. Otherwise, they're totally different. Justin, could you share a little bit about how have you seen sales leadership evolve over your career?

Speaker C: I've seen it evolve in that the folks that have been sort of my leaders and my mentors over the years haven't necessarily taught me how to sell, but have taught me how to understand. And I think that's an important concept that maybe we've lost sight, uh, of where we face challenges, and then we want to sell harder or sell faster. But it's really about taking a step back. And maybe it slows down a sale. But if you take additional time or invest the time in understanding the client, the need the process. Right. Why they're even talking to you or uh, the organization in the first place. That's how I've seen the leadership evolve. And then by being in that position now, it's helping the team understand that you don't necessarily have to go fast. You may sound excited that you know you're on the doorstep of closing a deal. Take a step back for a second and really understand and put yourself in the client's shoes. And where they're at, it may take longer than you think. Therefore, let's help them understand what we see in the market, which sometimes it's more complex, may take longer, might be more scrutiny in cybersecurity or infosec, that kind of thing, and just help them know that they will get from point A to point B and get a deal done. But they uh, can't just run through a process like they're used to running through a process. Um, and that's where I think we as leaders are trying to help the team. It's hard because you know, these folks want to get paid.

Speaker B: So how do they get paid?

Speaker C: They close deals and the quicker they close deals, the quicker they get paid. But if you're thinking about the long game and you're thinking about building that relationship, building the trust, delivering on that trust, that means that you may not be able to go as quickly as you, as you once thought.

Speaker A: Mhm. So yeah, speed's great, but quality over quantity.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yep.

Speaker C: And, and I can, I can vouch for that by putting my client success hat on. Because when you do that and you drive a higher quality sale or a higher quality deliver of the solution, you now have the ability to go, you know, build that trust, that trust at a greater level. Because it started with that client saying, yep, I'm putting my hands, or um, I'm, you know, I'm putting my trust in your hands. So now I believe, truly believe that you're going to deliver versus uh, like trying to get a sale through fast, handed off to the implementation team of the onboarding team, hand it off to the csm and that client is saying to themselves, hold on, what the heck just happened? That has proven to be true over the course of time that the higher quality of the sale, the higher quality the handoff and then the higher quality, the initial phase of onboarding is, the better off that relationships and that engagement's going to be with that client over the long run.

Speaker A: Yeah, the long run, right, yeah, that's a good point. Lee, what are your thoughts? Uh, you Came up really on the sales side, moving into the CEO role. What do you see as the biggest challenge facing sales leaders today?

Speaker B: It's a. There's a couple of things that come to mind. You know, one, I. I'm a. I'm a baseball fan. So I'll draw the analogy to sort of the Moneyball concept in that, uh, there's a lot of. There's a lot more data and analytics we have today around what's happening with your sales organization, what's happening with your pipeline, what's happening with, you know, leads, et cetera. And I see more and more management and sales leadership being driven by, you know, the data. You know, and we've created so many different new data points that you can sort of measure and manage to, just like we have in baseball. So there's. And I'm not saying or dismissing the data, that the data is wrong or it doesn't work, but I think when you only manage a business based on the data, you also can lose the feel of the business. And we all recognize that, you know, there's more. There's more to sales than just closing deals, even though closing deals is the measure, obviously. And sometimes if you just look at the data and you don't sort of spend time with the team, having the discussions with. With clients, listening and sort of getting a feel for it, I think you can kind of lose sight of it. So I think being too dependent upon data, and maybe that's because I have gray hair, I'm the baseball manager that's resisting the young GM with all the data reports on Moneyball, if you will. But I definitely think there's a little too much resilience or reliance upon data to manage some of this business.

Speaker C: Yeah. And to Lee's point, there are a bunch of tools out there that seem seemingly make it easier to do that. Right. There's tools that help, you know, in. In improve forecast accuracy. They've got formulas and algorithms and ways, and they're using AI to figure out, like, what are the. What are the signs that a deal is going to close by a particular time? Or where are the flags that show that it might not be far along as you think. And to Lee's point, it is so easy just to get to. Down into the weeds of looking at that and looking at the tools and how they're presenting themselves without really following your instincts and following sort of what you really think is going on and asking just, you know, a thousand questions of, of the team and of the reps to understand, okay, well, you know, the data is telling me one thing, but you got to validate it is, is the data, right? Because a lot of, you know, a lot of times these, these tools, as good as they are, they're flawed and they're not going to tell the whole story. It's that instinctual part of it and kind of the color commentary part of it that I think becomes just important as the data. And to Lee's point, you're 100% right, Lee. You can easily get away from that and just to trust the data, which is not, uh, necessarily the case.

Speaker A: Yeah, it can provide some good insights. Reminds me of a story about the vineyard owner saying it's important that he goes out and sees the grapes, touches the grapes himself. Not just relying on the reports and so forth, but how. What's your approach, Justin, on interacting with customers? You know, it's one thing to talk to the reps, but hearing it from the customer, being involved. What's your approach and strategy in regards to that?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question. I, uh, honestly let the team do the work, but what I do is I get to the point where I'm not necessarily seeing the progress based on the questions I'm asking or what the data is presenting relative to what my instincts, uh, are telling me. And then when that kicks in, it leads to either one of two things. You know, join in with the rep in a conversation with that client or reach out separately or make a connection or like we were talking about before, what IT drive does, look for where else that those relationships might exist and get a warm intro. I will jump in when it's necessary. And the one thing that I've learned

Speaker B: over time not to do is just

Speaker C: to kind of get involved for the sake of getting involved. I do feel like that decision maker on the client side is going through their decision making process. And if you just decide to jump in, you know, late in the game, quite frankly, that's the last thing they want is a sales leader to feel like you're sort of strong arming them or pushing them. So I really use it as a way to establish a relationship, but only at that point where my instincts are telling me something other than what I'm hearing. And that's hard, that's hard to do. You sort of have to, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you're right when that happens and sometimes you're wrong. Like sometimes you miss the window in the opportunity. So you sort of have to learn when to trust your gut.

Speaker A: Sounds like more coaching, but not Getting involved in the actual calls as a rule.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And use those recordings as learning opportunities. And really that's what it is. It's understand what was heard in the call and what the rep interpreted from what was heard in the call. Because the rep can rep can, you know, take the call, hear certain things, hear what they want to hear, get all excited and you know, you listen to the recording as a objective third party and you highlight the things. Well what about, you know, when they said, you know, how much time it's going to take to do, you know, document review? Oh yeah, no, they said it was, you know, you know, it's going to take just a couple of weeks. Okay, well there were some signs there that they indicated it might take longer.

Speaker B: Yeah, right,

Speaker C: yeah, yeah. So yeah, you're so to your point, I'd say it's 80, 20, 80, 20 coach the team, uh, so that they can do what they need to do. You know, 20% get involved. Especially when you think that there's going to be the right executive relationship that can be established early on because you know, quite frankly in my role I'm not uh, just responsible for getting the deals done. I've got to deliver and I've got to drive adoption and education and retention and so if I can get a relationship established in the sales cycle, I can, then I can, I can tell them, you know, pre sales, I'm their person, I'm their person, you know, forever.

Speaker A: Huge credibility.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I look for the opportunities to do that when the opportunity presents itself.

Speaker A: Okay, well I'd like to take a little step back now, talk to transition in talking about go to market strategy and I'd love to get your perspective, uh, Lee, if you could start perhaps in your history where you've seen it really work, maybe where, where it hasn't or even course corrections where whoa, oh, this is, we got the course correct to get it right.

Speaker B: I spent nine years at IBM and IBM at the time, this would be in the early to mid 2000s. Is that what we call it?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And IBM was really good at course correcting things. They, at least in my experience in my little part of the IBM world, we didn't often get things right right out of the gate. But they were really good at course correcting and they, they eventually got it, got it right and then they were very good at optimizing and operationalizing sort of the getting it right, the formula if you will. So and I, I reflect upon and think about what I saw and learned at IBM. Both the good and the bad on a pretty regular basis because you, it was. There was an organization that was forever trying to improve, forever raising the bar, forever not accepting mediocre and continuing to evolve, evolve, evolve. And uh, like I said, oftentimes right out of the gate, they didn't get it right. But they, they eventually did. And uh, it was a great, it was a great operation to watch firsthand.

Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like it, it's, it's probably hard to get it right all the time. Right. But they're really listening, adjusting and focusing. That's great. Justin, how about for you, examples of companies getting it right or, or examples of where they didn't? Maybe they course corrected to get it right or maybe they didn't.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I would say the first thing would be focus. Where a, uh, go to market team has the right level of focus is the starting point. And I give Lee, I give you a lot of credit. When you joined, one of the first things we did is sort of take a step back and think about and understand who we're selling to. And we were a startup that, you know, was still scrappy to some degree. And when you're at that level of maturity, you're still trying to figure out, you know, what's going to stick. All right. And so we've had all sorts of different types of companies within different verticals that we've sold to in the past. And we really took a step back and put a real solid level of focus on what our ICP or our ideal, uh, client profile is. And by doing that, it really changed how we think about going to market because it provided us for both a level of consistency in the messaging and both a tailoring of that message depending on the vertical. We really at the moment sell to or go to market in three particular verticals. And so you can have a consistent message with, uh, some tweaks when you're talking to a law firm versus an accounting firm as an example. But that has really helped and I, and, and that's what I've seen in, in my past where there's. There's a level of focus in both selling and execution. There's a higher degree that you're gonna, you're gonna be more successful. The other one, and I've seen this work, and I've seen this not work, quite honestly, is having tight alignment with the product and engineering team. Your go to market is as good as the solution that you're selling. And what I've seen happen in some organizations when they're not quite there yet. They try to sell maybe what's not there or they try to sell what might be on the roadmap but not necessarily what's on the truck. Therefore you're promising something that can't necessarily be delivered on. And uh, so I've seen that not work. I've seen where, where organizations are tightly aligned between both what's on the truck and what is coming and what is planned to be delivered. And the sales team and the marketing team and the biz dev team are completely aligned on that. Then you're selling something that you know is going to get delivered and fits the need. And that's something that I've seen that when you've got that, that's half the battle right there.

Speaker A: Mhm. One thing I'm thinking of is one of the challenges of course is agreeing on a reasonable number. And what I've seen is the head of sales gets a number that they're like wow, how are we going to hit this number? And that kind of, I don't know if it forces their hand but then they get really aggressive on closing whatever's in front of them trying to. And that could be a short term win, long term pain. And so it seems like this alignment is so critical in order to play the long game which is going to be better year over year.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: You're just going to get stronger and stronger the more focused you are on the right customers who are the best.

Speaker C: Yeah. And Lee, I don't know what you think about this but um, I'm sure you're on the same sort of mindset. But when we did go through our process of developing our ICP that helped us think through, okay, what's our three year plan? And then once we have that in place, then we know what targets we need to hit over the course of

Speaker B: year one, year two, year three.

Speaker C: That then helps us set the right targets with the sales team. And Scott, to your point, you know when you don't have that, you just give them a target thinking that you, you know, based on just a percentage growth year over year that you gotta hit, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: To get to profitability. And that's when, that's when reps start just going wherever they can go just to get the sale done. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It's really, you have to do it both the bottoms up and sort of the top down if you will. You know, bottoms up. You know, here is the uh, here are the products that we have. Here are the prospects and, or clients that we have here's the number of sales people we have and you know, here's the average deal size that we have. I mean those are, those are all sort of fixed, you know, fixed variables I guess I could say. And, and so you can build a bottoms up picture based on all that. This is what the organization could sell. You put a reasonable set of assumptions on it. And, and then there's a top down which is where does a company want to be in three to five years from a financial perspective which is usually driven by more uh, viewed from either your investors, your owners or your bankers or those sort of things. And oftentimes there's a gap between the bottoms up and the tops down and then what happens? Right. So really at a leadership level it's important that you keep running both exercises and you basically spend a lot of your time trying to fill the gap or close the gap between the top down and the bottoms up. But closing the gap can't be and therefore we're going to increase quotas per rep because that's just, you know, that makes the math look good but it's just a problem. Right. And consequently the answer can't be and as a result we're going to reduce our five year projection. You know, that's not great either. Right. So as a leadership team you basically spend all your time doing top, top down, bottoms up and trying to solve for the gap. And that's, that's basically what you do. It's a big chunk of the job.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is. I see a lot of uh, maybe new first time heads of sales just take whatever number and just happy to be in the role and then they pay for it later though by not influencing that with the bottoms up. Lee, I wanted to see if we can go back to the IBM examples and could you share specifically a little bit more specific on here was the go to market strategy and then the change that was made to kind of course correct after some of the learnings.

Speaker B: There's several examples. So we've had examples of going to certain markets. I uh, won't name countries but back then there were certain markets that we thought had a tremendous amount of opportunity and we would go after that market, invest heavily. Because of the size of the market you just felt like you had to go after it and once you and you didn't have the success and it was tough to walk away but you realize that the market dynamics were such that uh, even though the market was large and attractive, there's other, there's other factors to play that was just really going to limit your success versus if you took the same amount of

Speaker A: investment.

Speaker B: I used to say there's like a, there's a, there's a ratio there of, you know, time, energy and investment equals results. Right? So take the amount of time you spend plus the energy you spend and the actual investment of dollars. You know, that time plus energy plus investment equals the results that you get. And often you find that the market that, that produces the better results in that equation isn't often the largest market. And so there was a couple of times where we backed out of certain markets and doubled down on other markets that at first, at face value, when I would go pitch that to the senior leadership at the headquarters and they were just looking at numbers, they're like, you're nuts. But actually when you went and looked at it and you executed against that, you realize that you actually, you're right. Of course, they never said you're right. But so that was, picking markets was an, was an area. That was an area that we, we learned and pivoted. Doing acquisitions was another one back to sort of the bottoms up, tops down exercise. So, you know, valuations of companies are often driven by future, you know, future revenue and then multiples on top of that. And the teams that would do acquisition often weren't the same teams that were left to run the business. And so the teams that were left to run the business were given the targets that were set by the teams that did the acquisitions. And, and there's a few examples, and IBM wasn't alone in this case of where, you know, that didn't tie out. Right. And so as a sales leader of an acquired company that, hey, we just acquired this company. Here you go. Here's the business case that justified the acquisition. Now you got to go make these numbers work. There's a few scenarios where that didn't turn out so great, but then we adjusted and course corrected. And again, this is 10, 15 years ago.

Speaker A: Sure, sure. Sounds like going back to the conversation about data earlier. Right. Hey, data is important, but certain countries made sense from looking at the numbers, but then maybe culturally or other influences made them less desirable. And perhaps same with the acquisitions as well. Reading between the lines and really seeing it and going with your instincts.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: Right, right. Well, I wanted to ask one question on AI, uh, anything that you're seeing, Justin, out there where people are really leveraging AR in a smart way for, for sales or marketing organizations.

Speaker C: Yeah, I do. I think there are a couple of things. But I would also caution that it's I still feel like it's early days, but there are, you know, there are tools that are helping reps do research and discovery before they show up for a meeting.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So the ability to do a quick sort of summary of the, of the company's 10k for example, or you know, the company's objectives are, read the annual report and you know, give me the key bullets that I need to walk into a discussion with it, make me look smart, that I understand your company. Right. And that is helping. But also I think can be a hindrance too because you walk in sounding really smart, but you're only relying on the AI and the technology to tell you what you need to know as opposed to walking in and not talking and acting smart, but listening. And so the tools are out there but sometimes they can be even, even in early days can be overused. So that's one. And then I mentioned before around uh, forecasting there are a ton of really interesting technologies out there, some of which are doing quite well. You know, where the forecast accuracy, the company and their board of directors are relying on the tool and the technology and the AI that's powering it to make decisions around forecasting. And that sounds interesting, but it's not going to tell you the, you know, the entire picture. In fact, what I find interesting just from an intrahyve specific standpoint is, you know, we've got the ability to layer on the strength of the relationship across the organization you're trying to sell into which these tools don't have. And so they're giving you a point of view on whether or not your forecast is accurate, but missing that really key piece of information around the folks that are making the buying decisions within that opportunity, whether or not the relationships are strong and engaged or not, which I find interesting. But those tools are doubling down on their AI capabilities to be able to bring, to bring that to surface and bring that to light. So those are I think are two key areas that are helping. But I'm also cautious that things are going to move so quickly that we've got to adapt and evolve and be able to both trust but validate what AI is telling us.

Speaker B: Mhm. Mhm.

Speaker A: Lee, how about you? What are you seeing in terms of leveraging AI and thoughts on it?

Speaker B: Well, I agree with the comments that Justin made and it's certainly moving very quickly. At the same time, it's unlike other sort of technology waves. I think the US as consumers also have a short attention span and high expectations where we, I don't want to say get bored. But we're not as impressed for as long as we used to be with previous sort of technology waves. So something comes out that's really cool, but you know, two days later like okay, what's next? And so I think AI, the, the cycle, the length of the cycle changes dramatically. I think as, as it was where it was five, 10 years ago with whatever was hot at the time then. Certainly we're going through a bit of a hype cycle and you know, there, those cycles sort of have some ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys, but there's no doubt that it's going to continue to make uh, organizations much more efficient, much more effective, ability to move at a faster pace than previously was affordable to do. I think we're just at the beginning, I don't think we have an appreciation yet for the impact it can have on business. There will be some situations and scenarios that turned out to be a bit of a flop. That'll be things where we thought it was great at it, that it won't be. But in general it's gonna, it's gonna rise the ties for everybody, raise the tide for everybody and it's gonna, it's gonna do it very quickly. But I think we're just at the very beginning of this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Yeah. The one thing that I think we're seeing in the market is that everybody, all these, these software vendors are talking about AI. AI. You know, we can, we're, we're AI powered and we can do AI. And they are not really talking about what it is. And to me what it really is is, is, is data and sophisticated analysis of that data to be able to make effective decisions faster, to lease point and, but there's got to be a specific use case as to why you need that data to be able to make that decision more effective and, or faster or, or more accurate for that matter. And so there's a couple of things to that for AI to be what it should become. One is that, you know, the data's got to be accurate because the analysis that happens on that data, if it's not accurate, is only going to spit out, you know, inaccuracies. And so that's the first thing. And then the second thing is thinking about what use cases the clients are already thinking about such that you can apply that to them, make it relevant for them. That's not happening as much in the marketplace in general that I'm seeing that everyone's getting excited about AI. Uh, but then, you know, that can mean A million different things to a million different people. And you got to boil it down to what's going to, what's going to be, what's going to be the right solution for that particular client in that particular conversation.

Speaker B: And Justin raises a great point. And back to sort of the trend or uh, the theme of things changing and things remaining the same. You know, the old adage of, you know, garbage in, garbage out was something we heard a lot about back when we were doing large ERP kind of projects. And I think it's come full circle with AI initiatives because we are, you know, we are AI enabling and automating the heck out of all of our processes. But you know, the end result is going to be garbage, frankly, if the data going in isn't very good. And we're going to. I think it's going to bring data quality to the surface again because people are, organizations are investing a tremendous amount of money to automate and AI enable their processes and they're going to expect results. And I think in some cases the results won't be there because the data wasn't that great.

Speaker A: Mhm M. Yeah, absolutely. Willie, I'd love to ask as a CEO, what do you want need from your chief revenue officer? Of course, in addition to hitting their number, but what do you want need from them?

Speaker B: Is there anything else really?

Speaker A: Well,

Speaker B: you know what I the couple of things that we talk about actually before you hit your number, it's hitting your forecast. And from my experience, what I need is to have control over the business. And you establish and sort of show that you have control over a business by doing what you're saying you're going to do. So establishing a forecast and hitting a forecast, to me, that is step one. Ultimately, if that forecast is below your targets, then you get into sort of, hey, you know, sell more, do more, et cetera. But if you don't have control over what you're doing, then it's really difficult to accelerate what you're doing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If you're, if you're overachieving your targets but you don't have control, then you're just kind of lucky. Right. It's hard to be lucky on a consistent basis. So what we talk a lot about is having control over the business and doing what you say you're going to do, which is the form of forecasting. And the other thing, and Justin mentioned it a little bit, which is sort of being the tip of the spear in regards to what's going on in the market and the products and working with the product team because they can't be in all places at all times and sort of working, you know, thinking of yourself as sort of information gatherers, market researchers, providing customer insight back to the product team so that the products we are bringing to market are in touch with what our clients are asking m for. So those are the two things that I'm looking for.

Speaker C: Excellent.

Speaker A: That's great, Justin. Okay, so as the head of sales cs, what do you need from your CEO to help Excel and to hit your number?

Speaker C: So I think it's two things. I think Lee has done a really good job amongst the executive team to have us operate together as both peers and respected leaders. And I say that it almost sounds obvious, but, you know, as we all know, that's easier said than done in any organization. But Lee's done a nice job both with the folks that are now in place from a leadership perspective, but also the fact that we engage and align and, uh, work together really well. And so that's really the first thing, because to Lee's point around being that conduit to the product organization, that's something that I pride in doing. And it's great when you can do that. It's not great when you don't have a chief product officer that you're not aligned with. So we have one, and the alignment is there. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is I think Lee and I compliment each other's experiences. And so tapping into each other's networks, I think is important. Where we may have relationships in different places in the market that can be. That can be useful, whether that be with other CEOs or other CROs in the space or even in other spaces. Relationships that we have within our icp, relationships that we have with investors or the board of directors, either within our organization or others, I think can just help us all be better and can definitely help myself be better and better connected. So that would really be the second thing. And I. I think just based on, like I said, based on our. Our collective experiences, we. We have that and have the ability

Speaker B: to do that and tap into our networks.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a huge value. That's great. Well, I have one last question for each of you and to start with, Lee. Lee, what is one piece of advice you wish you had received before becoming a CEO?

Speaker B: Oh, boy. That's a good question. I'd say I. I probably knew this, but no one ever told me this. And I would say that understanding and being aligned with your board and your investors and having, having a good relationship with them is, is more important than you appreciate if for a first time CEO. So I think as CEOs, whether you come through the revenue side or the product side, you sort of, you bring a focus to people and product and market and driving results and all those sort of things. But having a relationship with your board that you can have candid and open discussions with them about what's working, what's not your ability to talk about mistakes that you've made or things that you got wrong is just, it's just so important. I don't think I had an appreciation for how important it is now that I've been in the chair for a while. So I think for people that are contemplating being a CEO, understanding the relationship with the board and your investors is something that is pretty high up there on the things understand as you take on that responsibility.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you. Justin, what is one piece of advice you wish you had received before becoming a head of sales and cs?

Speaker C: I think that as you get into that position, you're not just running the function, you're, you're a company leader. And so the one piece of advice I think maybe again I sort of knew in the back of my head, but wasn't explicit, is don't assume that if there's a, a company wide cross functional type of an issue that needs to get solved that it's getting solved. And don't wait for that assumption to either become true or not true. So instead be vocal, raise a, raise a flag, seek to understand if that is, if that assumption is even valid or not. And then if it's not getting done, then rally the troops and get the executive team and leadership team, uh, together to go drive what that solution should be. Not that you know, I in my role need to, need to own that necessarily, but need to ensure that, you know, all of the peers and the rest of the team members have an understanding of what that issue might be and then how we go about solving it together as an organization rather than like, okay, you go solve that problem and then you know, I'll be the recipient of that problem. Once you solve it. I think it's, you've got to have a much more collaborative and collective way for solving those uh, those cross functional issues.

Speaker A: Solid. Well gentlemen, I can't thank you enough. This is the insights you shared are just fantastic. Wealth of experience and just fantastic nuggets as well. So thank you very much. Lee, Justin, thank you very much. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, thank you Scott. This is a great opportunity. I really appreciate the time.

Speaker C: Yeah, Scott, it was our pleasure. This was, uh. This was awesome.

Speaker A: Hi, this is Scott Olson, founder of the Olson Group. If you found this podcast helpful and informative, don't forget to subscribe via your favorite podcast app or follow the show on Spotify. If you want to accelerate the growth of your business, the Olson Group can help. Please feel free to reach out to me directly via, uh, email@scottolsongroup.net or call me at 503-525-8866. Thanks again for listening.