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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co founder John Kaplan, the show goes behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that and seen the results. If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. Revenue Builders is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Find us@Force Management.com enjoy today's episode.
- [00:42]
B
Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast. I'm John McMahon and I'm here with Mr. John Kaplan of Force Management. Today our special guest is Paul Campenbasis who is the Chief revenue officer of MongoDB. Paul started his career at PTC where he grew through the ranks to become the Canadian Country Manager. After six and a half years at ptc, Paul moved on to Essential Software which was acquired by IBM, and then to Symmetry Software which was acquired by Oracle. Then Paul joined BMC Software as the VP of Eastern US Sales for three years before moving to AppDynamics as the VP of Eastern US Sales. After AppDynamics was acquired by Cisco, Paul moved on to Splunk as the VP of North American Sales before moving to MongoDB as the Senior Vice President of North American Sales. Since then, Paul has done an outstanding job and was rewarded with the Chief Revenue officer title at MongoDB. So Cat, I mean Paul Cat, not John Cap, we're going to have to get that straight throughout this podcast. You know, I've watched you as you build high performance culture within, you know, MongoDB and I'd like to talk to you about the key elements of the right culture and then effectively how to build it. So how does a leader at any level in the salesforce start to create a high performance culture? Let's start with that.
- [02:21]
C
Yeah, so interesting. I think when Mongo started, prior to our CEO coming on board, it was a startup company run by database people and that wasn't going very well for the company. And so when the new regime came in, I think what was figured out was that you don't need database people to build a database company. What was more important at the time, because this was an industry that hadn't been disrupted in 40 years, what you really needed were disruptors versus people who had experience in a particular industry. Right. And with aggressive goals. You got to figure out what is the culture that we want to have here. Right. Which was really, really important. The culture that we came up with was we are going to hire and train amazing people and turn them into amazing database reps. Because just understanding the industry is not enough. When you're a fast growing startup company, you need people with those characteristics to really help you scale very quickly. What we did was we set up a program called our BDR to CRO program, which was an environment where people could come and learn and earn and develop their careers. And it was a career path that's not meant for just mongodb. But if you wanted to come to Mongo and invest in yourself and invest in your career, that we could hopefully change the trajectory of your career. And I think we've had a pretty good track record of doing that. And one other thing I'll add is in that BDR to CRO is a great career path for people here that we have fostered over the many years that we've been here. And we've created an environment of meritocracy. It doesn't matter who you are or who you know, the people who do the right things are going to be promoted and they're going to have more and more opportunities for themselves to then grow. Right. And that's. Those were the stakes that we put in the ground and we've built from that.
- [04:42]
B
Yeah. So let's start. There's a lot there to unpack. So let's talk first about disruptors. Instead of people that salespeople that just have domain knowledge in database, talk a little bit about what you mean by the characteristics of a disruptor.
- [04:57]
C
Well, there's hunters and farmers. And then as a great rep, typically you have to be a little bit of both for sure. But if we went and hired a profile of a rep who was at, let's just call it a really large mature company. Right. And maybe they're doing big transactions, but a lot of these transactions are just flip deals. Right. We didn't have deals to flip. We needed people to go out into the market who had the characteristics of intelligence, desire and coachability, who could be challenger reps and to be able to go and challenge the status quo, which for us was very important because we're selling into a market and trying to disrupt a market that had been around for 40 years with almost no disruption or certainly no disruption within the last 10 to 15 years. Does that make sense? Like you're looking for the characteristics. And so then even as a background, finding somebody who has been at a high growth company versus having never done that before, you're trying to find the right player for the positions that we have. Right. So a resume could be very deceiving. Someone's been at a large mature company for 10 years with great results. It might not translate for what we actually need them to do. Right.
- [06:22]
B
You need somebody to get out there and create demand versus the demand that's already created after 10 years or 20 years. And like you said, they're doing upsell deals, cross sell deals, renewal deals, wrap and rolls, but they're not going out and trying to find new opportunities from a company that has really no name and no name recognition to the customer. So the customer is going to question everything about that product and everything about that company versus what they buy today. And that's a different type of salesperson.
- [06:56]
C
What also makes it harder is you're going in and trying to convince people that have been using a certain solution for 20 years that, you know, maybe, maybe there's a life where, you know, there's change now involved and people are going to put up a wall because they're not going to want to. They're comfortable in their jobs and we're going to make them now more uncomfortable in their jobs. So you really have to go and find people and create strong technical champions.
- [07:24]
B
Right. And what happens in those scenarios, as we know, is there's already an established champion for the incumbent that's been around for decades. And now you go in as a salesperson and you're certainly not going to sell to the champion of the incumbent, which has basically control over all those, you know, the databases that come into that company. And now you have to go find and search for somebody that understands that you have a different type of technology and could, to your point, be the technical champion for your product.
- [07:58]
C
What makes it particularly hard in the database case is that those tools might have been established for 30 or 40 years. Right? So you're going to try to win this religious battle. It's a really hard job. And as a result of that, what was really has been critically important for us is trying to find the right characteristics in people. Right. Because every time you make a hire, and I say this to our leaders when we go through leader training, is it's a million dollar bet that you're taking because if that person doesn't work out, let's just say the average productivity of a rep is a million dollars, it's a big decision. And if you're going to go out and hire three, four or five people, you know, you got to get that. Right.
- [08:46]
B
So six months to ramp them and then let's say six months Later. So you're in it for a year and then they don't work out. It takes you another three months to hire somebody, another six months to ramp them before they produce. You really lost even more than a million. Yeah, you can't get it back.
- [09:03]
D
In this example, I have a lot of affinity for MongoDB because the first week that Dave showed up in New York, he actually called me and we were sitting together in the Mongo offices. And the point I want to make is this was. The discussion we're having was not a sales conversation. It was a massive epiphany on a company going from a community of users and the value to a community of users and trying to monetize it in the enterprise. So the very nature of. In that first meeting, and I remember it's just like, you know, how are you going to. It was one of my beginning influences in open source. And the value for the customer, the potential was so great. But the targeted customer, the targeted conversation, the ICP was totally in a different direction. And Dave saw it right away and was saying, hey, we're going to move this to the enterprise. And so my point on this is this sales culture that gets created is a responsibility of a company to say, what is our icp? Based upon that icp, who are our buyers? What problems do we solve? All the value questions, and then based upon that, how do they acquire? Because all these were like fundamental questions for Mongo, like how they were acquiring and how we were going to ask them to acquire that totally changed or created a success profile. And I think it's one of the greatest examples of discipline of company owns, icp, company owns value proposition. Company owns who's doing what, when and how the buyer's going to buy and how we're going to sell to them. And based upon that, the sales organization says, okay, what are the competencies and behaviors that I'm going to go get to go do what we need to do for that customer? It's one of the greatest examples for me in the history of business. The scale was just incredible. But without that, I see a lot of companies do this. They bring in a CRO Paul cap and they say, these are the characteristics that I'm going to bring in. I'm going to hire this type of army. And without the stuff I just said, that army in that battle could fail and oftentimes does.
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C
Well. Yeah, because you have to put them the best conditions to be able to win.
- [11:48]
D
Right.
- [11:49]
C
And something that I certainly had never faced before in my career was you're giving software away for free and then now you have to go and try to convince people to pay for it. Now there's a difference between our community and free product and our paid product. But in the early days, this is before we had Atlas. Atlas is our cloud product, which really is the company today. But at the time it was really freeware versus on prem paid. And like trying to figure those motions out was very, very difficult. It was a hard slog really until we developed the cloud product and user.
- [12:31]
D
Champions, people that had never bought software. So you're kind of cultivating a user champion and then figuring out how to establish that user champion and attach them to business outcomes. Because the software when being used was creating incredible business outcomes. But there was a disconnect between user and business outcomes. So technical outcomes and user outcomes. And again, I think Mongo is one of the greatest examples I've ever seen. When you connect technical capabilities to business outcomes and you put those two worlds together and you hire salespeople that have the ability to bring those two worlds together, you get incredible outcomes just like.
- [13:17]
C
You'Ve seen you do. And what's made it somewhat difficult as well is that it's really a bottoms up sell.
- [13:26]
D
No doubt.
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C
Right. Because if someone's not a customer of yours, I mean it's very hard to go at a very high position with a value proposition to developers. I mean the gap between a cio, a CTO and a developer is, you know, it's an eternity. Right. So we were in hand to hand combat, I mean really, and we're trying to win application by application and then eventually you get enough groundswell that you can then now kind of go higher. Right. But it took a lot to really gain that groundswell in some of our large customers today. And it's funny because when people come in now they're like, oh well, that person has an easy job. I mean they've got X account that's like there's. I can tell you the fish never jumped in the boat. Okay. I mean you had to earn everything. So yeah, it's been quite the journey along that.
- [14:21]
D
And Johnny, you've seen this probably several times on the companies that you've worked with. It's this actual timing of when you go from this bottoms up or then it became product led growth to enterprise. But that's no small task. And I think that that's a, you know, we talk about that a lot and it's the profile of an individual to live in that world, to swim upstream without the Ability to gather the other people in the river and bring them upstream with them. That's a competency and it's not for the faint of heart.
- [14:54]
B
No, but he's still a classic mistake that you see today in many, many startup companies still today, where they go out and the first number of sales reps that they hire, the people that they believe have to have domain knowledge, not hiring the people that's going to go create demand. They're doing the same mistake that Cap talked about. They're hiring people from these big companies that have a lot of domain knowledge but never had to really go create demand. They fail or they get really far down the road, earn a lot of money, and then all of a sudden wake up and figure out, oh shit, we need to hire some real enterprise software sales reps that can create demand.
- [15:33]
C
Yeah. I think the problem that we had for the experience is that typically, let's just say, the large incumbents in our space, it was really a commodity sell for those companies for many, many years. So we didn't view that as value for us. And in fact, maybe less than 5% of our reps ever had database experience. So with that said, you've got another challenge because now you've got to help build this organization and enable and develop these people into database salespeople. Right? So there's a lot of planning and teaching and growing. I mean, it's just, it's a lot of work and you can't do that without a great enablement organization. That's one. And then without having a leadership team that are developers, because the company can only do so much to enable and develop a sales rep from a programmatic standpoint. Right. Like, meaning you go to boot camp, you've got an onboarding process, every company should be doing that. But then how do you get people to the next level and how do you do it at scale? You have to focus and develop and enable over and over again your leaders. And that's what's either going to make you or break you. Because in a company that's scaling at 50%, you just think about the amount of hiring that you're doing.
- [17:10]
D
Right?
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C
Because 50% growth, you're also going to have a certain percentage of attrition and you got to keep that productive capacity. It's a constant need to do that. Right. But to be able to scale at that level, your leaders have to be great coaches.
- [17:26]
B
Right. What you're saying is, I can do a lot of classroom training and give people a lot of knowledge, but I need Leaders that can take that knowledge and turn this into a skill set over time on the job development of my sales reps to be able to consistently sell deals in a domain that they don't have the experience of selling into.
- [17:52]
C
Yeah. So let's just say I think this term is overused. The term playbook. Everybody wants to be a playbook. There's certainly not one definition for that in my opinion. I mean, I think most people's definition is I have a sales process and a qualification methodology and maybe it's medic and Hamlet Playbook company. That's certainly the foundation. Right. But I think it goes much deeper than that. And when you're a playbook company, which we are, we have a very well defined playbook. To be able to be successful in a playbook company, your leaders have to have intimate knowledge of the playbook so that A, they can run it and B, they can teach it. Right. And so for us, we developed this BDR to CRO program which was an internal development program, knowing that if we could educate and develop these reps or RDs like first line leaders and do that amazingly well, that we would have growth opportunities for these people to step up into the next level. Why that was very beneficial for us is because they knew the program. They knew how to run the program. So somebody coming from the outside who didn't understand our program or maybe has never been in that kind of environment before, it was a huge struggle. And so we have poured enormous time and resources into that. I don't know of any company that does leader enablement the way that we do. It's like our calling card. It's a big reason why people come and have come to Mongo. What we promise them is the ability to earn and learn and get better and make money, but also have the opportunity to develop and hopefully in the long run change your career. Right?
- [19:43]
B
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit then, Cap, about some of the people that are the leaders and what makes a good leader so that they can develop people underneath them. There's certain traits that you're looking for in. You mentioned some of the traits that you're looking for, like intelligence and drive and coachability that you're looking for in the rep. And now you're going to promote somebody into a leadership position. Are there certain traits and characteristics you're looking for there?
- [20:13]
C
I mean, I think the first thing is coachability. I mean, you know, I've never been in an interview with somebody who said I'm uncoachable, but I've met many uncoachable people in my career. Right. So I think wanting to learn and putting in the time to do that, like, and you have to do that with purpose because you want to learn your craft either as a salesperson or as an rd. But then are you curious also enough to continuously seek knowledge and get better.
- [20:46]
D
Right.
- [20:47]
C
And you know, I've been lucky enough in my career to be at companies and starting at ptc, which was awesome for me, and that really I was so lucky to have started there because enablement and development was just ingrained in the culture there. And I think we've definitely brought that, you know, here and foster that here at Mongo, leaders have to want to learn to get better. They have to be curious, they have to be coachable. I think if you have those things and intelligence, it's a great springboard for you to develop yourself and to develop your career.
- [21:17]
B
Yeah. And for the people that you've promoted from the inside, you're able to see over time, you know, that they were intelligent, they were curious, they were driven to learn and that they were adaptable. But that becomes a little bit more difficult if you're trying to hire somebody from the outside to see whether or not they have all of those characteristics. You might be able to figure out, okay, they're really smart, they're kind of curious. But are they adaptable? Are they going to change as our environment continues to change, as our products continue to change, the competition changes? That's the one that's the most difficult to figure out. When you're hiring from the outside.
- [21:57]
C
I think you probably it would have been hard to survive here without being adaptable because we have refined our go to market in three different phases. Right. Like every sort of three years we went from an on prem company to a SaaS company to a company today that's on a consumption model. Like those are massive changes. Right. And so we have done that deliberately, but in doing it deliberately, we've had to change our go to market. We've had to adapt our go to market. And so we did that by really training and developing our leaders to be able to go out there and enact that change. Right. And doing it the right way and then having to also inspire people with changes. And you know, so we've had so much change here in eight years. You know, when we hired people from the outside. My view has been, look, if you're not good with change, this is not going to be a great environment for you. Right. And so change and adaptability 100%. And especially for any fast growing company, there's going to be change. And there's some people that just don't deal very well with that.
- [23:14]
D
So Paul, that's a. You're hitting on something so powerful. I mean, I always say that the people that struggle with the impermanence of life are the ones that suffer the most. And so by nature, humans don't change very well. So how do you, how do you know, how do you look for that? I mean, people can, you know, people can talk about it, people can agree with it. Like you have to really make sure you're bringing leaders in the company or people that can be leaders in the company that are adaptable and can change. And so how are you testing for that? Like, how are you validating that? I think that'd be really good for our listeners to understand.
- [23:59]
C
Well, I think we've dealt with it a little bit differently in that we've developed 90% of our leaders. Okay. And so it was those ICs or those first line leaders who have been in their roles for a certain period of time. And you're able to see that, you're able to see how they handle themselves in a QBR when we're going through this small metamorphosis. Right.
- [24:26]
D
What does it look like? So if it's internal, when you spot it, I want to get really clear here for people to know what it might look like in a qbr, in a call, in a one on one meeting, what does it look like?
- [24:39]
C
Okay, so say when we move to a consumption model. Okay, yeah, that's. I mean, I don't know how many companies have done that. I'm sure a few now, but certainly we were one of the first. I think that really started as an on prem company. And the next thing you know, six years later, we're in a consumption world. As a result of that, your KPIs and a lot of the information that you're generating to be able to understand where your business is at any point in time. Right. We had to modify some of the things that we were measuring. And so we developed something called tiger parties, which were like an event that you had every two weeks to really try to understand the environment. So when you're in a consumption world, the days of forecasting, they're almost over. Right? Because for a consumption level, it's more accurate to do it at a company level than it is from the ground up. But when we got to these tiger parties, there were dashboards, tons of information that we had to try to understand your business. And you saw that certain leaders went and spent a lot of time trying to educate themselves and better understand where their business was at any one point in time, whereas other leaders either struggled with it or just didn't want to do it. So it's a different business today. Maybe it's not the right fit for you, or are you going to embrace that and try to make those changes your friend so that you can then go and excel in this new environment?
- [26:14]
D
So no matter what it is like data driven, more analytical in an AI world today I'm seeing it. There's certain people that are leaning in, aren't afraid to try something, aren't afraid to make mistakes, have the ability to make mistakes and get coached. I see those people doing great inside of environments today, the ones that are hesitating everything. You know, I hear people talking about AI right now where they're like, everybody's talking about AI and not every nail needs the same hammer and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, that is an indication to me that people aren't open. And I think when we get to a certain level, we don't. It's weird because the older I'm getting, the more I want, I feel like I'm running out of time. So the more I want to learn. But sometimes in business I meet people that are like, as they get a little bit older, as they get more experience, they don't want to learn. They want to get mastery level on what they already know and they want to get credit for what they already know. And I just think in the times we're in, it doesn't exist anymore. Very, very rarely.
- [27:21]
B
I think it goes back to what Paul said where he said that some people just didn't want to do it because to me, change requires discipline.
- [27:34]
D
Yeah.
- [27:35]
B
And discipline is really hard. Right. And then a lot of people have excuses, which makes today easy, but tomorrow really difficult because you're not going to compete, you're not going to win. And it's the people that accept the fact that, okay, things have changed. It's going to require personal discipline around this change. And I have to put my nose in it and grind and learn it. And some want to do it. And to your point, cap and cap, some people just don't want to do it. They're like, hey, I got to this point, I was pretty successful and I don't want to change anymore.
- [28:14]
D
Talk about how to lead in this, in that environment, talk about how to lead. You have some that are Going to go. Some that aren't going to go. You got to get as many as you can to go. How do you do it? How do you lead today in that environment? Because it's really relevant.
- [28:28]
C
Yeah, I think imposter syndrome has a lot to do with it. And I think people aren't coachable. Like, in my experience, they just don't. They can't be vulnerable. Right? They can't be vulnerable. And so how I would coach around that is to be. Is to sit that person down and be vulnerable myself with them, to try to get them to open up. Right. And it's like, look, you don't need to know all the answers of the test. We're going to try to get there together because none of us have the answers to the test. We're doing something new right now. It's okay not to have the answers. Right. As long as you're open and willing to learn, there's no problem. But there are people, for whatever reason in my career, most of the times where whether it was a rep or a leader that didn't work out, it was because they had this imposter syndrome and they just would shut themselves down afraid to fail.
- [29:21]
B
I have another viewpoint on that. So a lot of times when I've sat people down to your point, I see them at a level that they don't see themselves.
- [29:30]
D
No doubt.
- [29:30]
B
So I see in them that they have this potential to be at the next level, but they're not moving. They've been at the same level for like four quarters. The company's changed, the products change, you move to consumption model, whatever it is, but something's changed. Made in major league and this person has the capability to get there, but they're not moving. But I see that they have the capability. I sit them down, put them in the hot seat, supposedly, and ask them why they're not changing. But then I also tell them that I see them there and other people see them there. They're not seeing themselves there. And the organization demands that they move there. And I'll help them get there, but they're going to have to make the effort. I can't do it for them. They don't want to leave you anymore, no doubt.
- [30:17]
D
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
- [30:19]
C
John, you were asking about examples. Right. So think about the changes I've walked you through that we've gone through. Right. From open source to consumption. It's a huge journey. The profiles of our reps and we spend so much time with our leaders and have. We've tinkered over the years relentlessly on. Well, if we have this big of a change to our business, does it change the profile of rep that we have? Right. And some leaders, some leaders have been unable to sort of graduate to the next level because they've recruited one category of rep for so long that it's kind of in their DNA and they just can't get out of their own way. And it's kind of shocked me, right, because it's really in their comfort zone. They know how to recruit those people. So let's just say you've got a junior up and comer, somebody who's sort of younger in their career. We've got them in a, in that kind of a territory. And now over the last few years, we've gotten to be a billion and billion plus. Our customers have gotten bigger. So now it's not just the bottoms up people that we need. We need people that can understand and do the bottoms up, but we need people now that have these discussions with executives and sell business value. And so those leaders, some of them, because maybe they haven't been in leadership that long, have never had to recruit someone who's more senior, with more experience than that. Some can flourish and others just mentally can't get over that hurdle.
- [31:57]
D
To go back to John's point, you made such a good, you made such a good point there. Johnny. On like today's employee, in my opinion is hypersensitive to hypocrisy. Hypersensitive to hypocrisy. So am I. So I don't. It's not a negative thing. And what that means is if you are unwilling to do something that you are asking your people to do, it is more of a problem today than it's ever been in my opinion on leadership. And then what Johnny was talking about, talking about is the value that gets created in leadership by taking an individual to a place that they couldn't get to on their own is. I just want you to think about that. Like how many people would say my leader is helping me get to a place that I can't get to on my own. That is value in leadership today. So I think those were really, really good examples. If you're asking them, hey, you need to have one foot in the technical camp and you need to have one foot in the business camp. And your job is to bring both those together. And if you can't model that great leaders today, the best leaders today are the best coaches. And if you can't coach that and you can't model that, hey, there's development teams, there's enablement, and you can go, you know, you're really at risk today. I think you can't rely on. I mean, it's got to be great enablement, but you have to model what you're asking people to do. One of the struggles we started off talking about, I want to make sure that we get this, we get this point because the people listening to this, when you're interviewing for a company, when you're inside a company to figure out whether you're going to stay in a company, whether you're evaluating a company doing due diligence, look for these characteristics like this domain expertise that we touched upon earlier. I just want to kind of wrap a bow around that because I thought it was pretty powerful. Typically, if you have a technical founder, that technical founder has a bent towards domain expertise. And so that's just a natural bent. It's not a bad thing. It's a great thing because you got to have technical expertise to found a great technical company. Where the scale issue becomes is if that technical founder is insisting that a sales organization continues to hire people and you hear things like they don't have enough domain expertise. I was on this sales call and that person didn't understand what was going on in banking. Didn't understand what was going on, whatever. And then you have this concept called like the hunter and the zoologist. And this for me is scale. And I think that at Force Management, we've just been really, really lucky to be a part of these great scaling companies like a MongoDB. They got this hunter and the zoologist and the hunter. When the, you know, the zoologist tells you where the bear is, how the bear eats, how the bear sleeps, when it eats, where it goes, but the zoologist can't grab a rifle and shoot the bear and hunt the bear. And I find that the greatest scaling companies on the planet are the ones that can teach the hunters. All the hunter needs is to know, hey, what problems do we solve? How specifically do we solve them? How do we solve them differently or better than anybody else? And where have we done it before? Proof points, case studies, testimonials, and that switch between domain expertise and scaling with hunters. If you don't have the answers to those things, if you're not committed to getting the answers, those things, things. I think one of the greatest things that MongoDB did was you guys flipped the switch from the zoologist to the hunter and you gave the hunters the bullets, the guns, the whatever the Analogies are not to offend anybody to go out and do their jobs. And people wanted to go there like hunters wanted to go there. Recruiting became easier because people wanted to go shoot big bears in that environment. And they knew they were going to go to a place that had the ability to make me even a better hunter than I am today. So I just wanted to kind of put that formula together that we talked about. There's a lot of companies out there that I talk to that are, you.
- [36:28]
B
Know, you've heard me use this analogy before. Like Tom Brady will go down as maybe one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. His domain knowledge of the game is great. Put Tom Brady in any other position on the field and he fails on the first play. That's the difference of what we're talking about. We're talking about domain knowledge, which you have knowledge but you don't have the hunter capabilities, the skill set required to go out and go, you know, take.
- [36:58]
D
That analogy to another level. How do you take a world class rugby player and, and bring him to the NFL? There are certain characteristics for that rugby player, but if they don't understand what it takes to play a position in the NFL. And I think people do incredible things. Johnny, you got a whole history of bringing in the non NFL players and bringing them into the NFL. So I just want to make sure that we're clear on what we talk about on domain expertise. It's not just the industry, it's not the NFL. It's the athletic capability, if you will.
- [37:35]
C
But I also think it's that it's almost the easy button to go and hire somebody with domain expertise. Because I think those people you're referring to, John Kaplan, they don't know if you put together a world class enablement team, how effective that team can be. Right. I mean we were all at ptc. I was at a much lower level than you guys back in the day. But I was a history major in college and I'm selling mechanical engineering design software. You know, I know more about sheet metal design than a lot of sheet metal companies.
- [38:10]
D
Great example, right?
- [38:13]
C
So if you set up with purpose a great enablement program, not just for your ICs, because I think people can get that right. What I don't think many companies have done is gotten the leader enablement right. Or maybe they don't have a program. Like I was running the North America team years ago. There's a guy at a contemporary company and we had a partnership, we struck up a relationship and we just checked in with each other once every month or two. And he asked me like, where are you this week? And I said, well, I'm in Ireland. What are you doing there? I'm like, well, we have our leader development program here. And he goes, what do you mean your leader development program? And I said, well, we put on a whole week for these guys. So any leader that either gets promoted or comes on board, we have a five day enablement class for these guys. And he said, really? I said, well, yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking this is the bare minimum of what we need to do. And his point to me was our version of leader enablement is like an hour during a qbr. We might invite somebody to come and speak to us kind of thing, try.
- [39:17]
D
To motivate them or something.
- [39:19]
C
I mean, we do a whole week for these leaders. We spend a day and a half on recruiting, one and a half days on recruiting when somebody either gets promoted or comes in from the outside into our first line leader role. The hardest thing for these guys is recruiting. It's just you have to do it over and over and over and it's still never an exact science, right? But why not try to apply as much science as you possibly can to it? Because every time you hire somebody, you're assessing the risk. That's what your job is. You're making a million or a $2 million bet here. Those are pretty high stakes. So if that's one of the core components of the job, then we have to spend a lot of time doing this stuff. So we spent a day and a half doing that. And then by the way, we went through Covid and I realized during COVID even those five days, the leaders would go back into the field. And of course they get caught up in the whirlwind and they forget 90% of what they learned there in the first place. So we bring them back six months later for a three day repeat of that with no slides, just discussions about what were your experiences in the field.
- [40:32]
D
Application. Application.
- [40:34]
C
Let's all be vulnerable here. We're in a big room of people you guys can share. And that's such a great way to learn, right? So that's why we. You know, I knew when I was running North America, like when I got to the company, I think maybe there was 10 frontline leaders. All of a sudden, a few years later, I've got 54rds. So I mean, to me, until I got to say 20rds, like they were to me, the most important people that we had in the Company because they were going to make it go like those are the people that needed to be enabling and developing and helping these people ramp up. And then all of a sudden you get to 50rds. Well now you're second line leaders. Right. They're kind of like the newrds. And I always knew when I thought about a leader at whatever level it was at, when I thought about the person and I knew that they were very competent, I slept really well at night. I knew they were recruiting the right people, they were developing the people, they knew how to do that. And yeah, so I think that's been one of our calling cards here. Right. Is developing from within and spending a lot of time and purpose and money and thought has gone into how we develop our leaders.
- [41:52]
B
And I think a big part of what you're touching on too, Cap, where I've seen a weakness in first and second line leaders when they're in the job, is not only their ability to recruit, but I think what's even more important because we're talking about development of our people here, is their ability to truly assess what's the strengths and weaknesses of my individuals on my team. Because a lot of times, you know, they, you know, I'll be brought in when they've gotten rid of a bunch of people and they think they got a churn problem. So then you walk in through. Okay, so why did you let go of Joe? He didn't have grit. Okay, how about Sally? She didn't have grit. And then you ask them, well, define what grid is and they can't get a definition of what grid is. So then you know it's some other issue. And when you keep probing and probing and probing, you find out they really don't know why Joe or Sally didn't make it because they have a very, very difficult time assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their people. I find that that's just a big, big problem for a lot of leaders.
- [43:00]
C
Yeah. And like the way that we've tried to help with that. Right. And our QBRs are probably 80% of the QBR is about the people. 20% is about the numbers. Right. And you know when you're a leader doing a QBR and you've got say eight RDs going through a QBR in a day. Right. If you're going through the people issues, they can all learn from each other. I mean the numbers are the numbers. How did you do last quarter? What's you know, your forecast going to be? But like now let's. This is a, it's a great way to develop leaders. Going through those sessions, right?
- [43:34]
B
Yeah.
- [43:35]
D
I want to just make sure that people heard what you guys are really laying out here. I think it's one of the number one challenges in a sales organization is the lack of development for leaders, for managers. And this isn't getting a leadership person to come in and talk about stories. You talked about recruiting. Well, there are components of the job. It's the same conversation. It's like an ICP which develops a success profile. Now we have a success profile, let's say. And I can't imagine if you are not helping a leader today with their ability to call their number, whether it's consumption model and it's even getting more complex to call my number. If you're not helping me do that, if you're not helping me attract top talent and teaching me and develop me how to do that. And Johnny, what you talked about, if you're not helping me develop and coach people and you're not helping me understand how to assess them first before I coach them, and then we haven't even talked about how to really understand your people and get intimate with your people to make sure that you understand their why and and then be a voracious qualifier. Like there's so many assumptions made in that those are the fundamentals of that job. And most people listening, I bet will say, hey, what manager development do we do? And most times it's a secondary thought. We train the sellers and it's a secondary thought to train the manager. So hats off to you, Paul. I know you picked that up a long time ago.
- [45:12]
C
Well, I think you're putting so much time and effort into developing these reps if there's no follow up. And it's really about consistency. Right. And so because if you go through a training class and you don't hear about it, you know, nobody ever talks about it afterwards, it's how effective is that going to be? Right.
- [45:30]
D
Mostly it's because the managers aren't modeling it in the field. That's the number one reason for the disconnect.
- [45:36]
C
Yeah, 100%. So going back to the recruiting thing as we have, we call it SLT sales leader training and then SLT refresh and when people come to refresh, what are the topics we want to cover. And so the reason why the genesis of it was we were going through Covid and I'm going through some of our KPIs and I see the lead, some of these leaders, they weren't moving things from discovery into scope and what I realized was they didn't really truly understand our sales process. So, okay, we're going to put a training class together and we're going to reinvigorate that and just make sure that we're really buttoned up there. And then it morphed over time to what was the number one thing they wanted. And keep in mind in slt, we spend a day and a half in recruiting. Six months later they come back. What's the number one thing that you guys want to discuss? Recruiting. It was the number one pain point, which is insane. Like you spent a day and a half, you got it right. But you don't got it because you're out there. It's all trial and error now. Right. And mostly you're probably failing versus succeeding. And so, you know, I never took anything for granted after that. Never took anything for granted. So, you know, I set up this RD council that I talked to once a month to get feedback from the field to see what where the RDs are struggling, where people in the field are struggling, so that we can incorporate that into our enablement plan. And over time it's morphed.
- [47:07]
B
I want to go back to assessing people because again, I think it's a really big problem and a lot of that emphasis is put on that first line leader. They might be a first time manager. And the person that really should be held accountable for helping the first line manager assessing the people is the second line manager, which usually I call the Teflon man because he kind of hides a lot, especially in a structure like you have underneath you. Paul. Second line manager never really feels the heat. The first line manager does. Even you do. Your VP might, but the second line manager doesn't feel the heat. And it's really their responsibility not to help that first line manager, that's brand new, not only recruit but assess people. Because it's the difference, as you talked about, between success and churn. And if they can't really now, why is this person succeeding or why are they not succeeding seating you, you're asking for churn problems.
- [48:02]
C
We've also done a number of sessions at that level, at the second line leader level where we've taken them done off sites for we do it at least once or twice a year for those guys. Because I think that's a harder adjustment going from first line to second line than it is going from an individual contributor to a first line. Because you can be a first line manager and be out there running a bunch of deals with your reps and Be successful and it's not the end of the world. Maybe you're not developing them that well, but like you can still be successful. Right. But going to the second line, your inclination is to still be to do a lot of the same things that you were doing as a first line leader. You need to think more strategically and I think you're more of a puppet master at that point because you have a much bigger mandate and your job is to ensure that your reps are going to be as enabled and developed and successful and productive as humanly possible. But you can't do that by yourself. You have to do it through those first line leaders. Right. And so that takes some adjustment. I think that's the biggest thing from an adjustment standpoint that I've seen for second line leaders is just figuring out where they fit in now to the equation. Right?
- [49:15]
B
Yeah. And to your point also there's a segregation of duties. Like what am I really responsible for and what is the first line manager responsible for? Because the last thing the reps need is the first line manager asking them about ABC Deal and the second line manager calls him and is asking the same questions about ABC deal. There has to be a segregation of duties. And here's what I'm responsible for and here's what I'm accountable to the CRO for as a first line and as a second line manager. And I think a lot of organizations never do segregation of duties. They don't really know what that second line manager is responsible for.
- [49:52]
C
Yeah. And it's on the second line leader to define that. Right. For, for not just the RDs and the people underneath them, but also for the sales reps.
- [50:00]
D
Right.
- [50:00]
C
And so like what's now your value and what is your role in that ecosystem? The biggest mistake is that I see is second line leaders going over their first line leaders and just getting their hands too dirty. Because they were really good at that when they were first line leader and.
- [50:15]
B
When they were reps, they just still basically high performing reps instead of second line leaders.
- [50:20]
C
But in a high growth company that just doesn't scale. Right.
- [50:24]
B
Cap, talk a little bit about you mentioned earlier in the conversation. Inspiration, like you have to inspire people. What's the best way for leaders to try to inspire their people?
- [50:37]
C
Yeah. So we just give you one thing. I think this is about inspiration, but it's also about authenticity. Right. And so a few years ago we ran this program about leaders creating their own values. Back in the old days, I mean I don't think anyone would have ever thought of that. But the world has changed. I think this business has changed. And I think I've been lucky enough to be at companies that have adapted along the way. And we went through this value session that I had never really thought about before myself. I always knew the type of organization that I thought I was running or helping to run. And I knew what the program was and how I wanted people to feel when they sat in their chairs. But I never really put it down on paper, presented that as, look, this is who I am as a leader. These are the things that are important to me. These are the values that I want to instill. And this is the environment I want people to have in this organization so that you can be developed, you can make money, but at the end of the day, you still want to have fun in your job. If you can't have fun in your job, like it's. This is a really hard business. Right? It's hard to get up and get out of bed every day. And I think, you know, we did that. And then I went and presented that to my North America leadership team. It was the first thing we did coming out of COVID We had a meeting and I'm in front of 90 people. And I had never opened myself up like that in front of that many people, I mean, let alone one person. And I was very nervous doing it because these are unchartered waters. But the feedback afterwards, it helped people to trust me. People thought it was incredibly authentic, which it was. And I think when you do that, it gives people the ability to be more honest with you if they get to know you a little bit better. And I think that is an incredible motivation for people on your team and people in the field and people just as part of your GTM organization. There's a great book called Left My Heart in conference room B. And you know, this value session was taken from one of the chapters in the book. It's a fantastic book. I would make it recommend any sales leader to lead that. But it's really about leading with authenticity. And when you lead with authenticity, the value that you get out of that and your organization gets out of that is it's game changing. Does that answer your question?
- [53:11]
D
There's a lot of data out there that is suggesting that it is hard for a human being to develop contempt for somebody that they know. And so what I see a lot of organizations doing to break down silos like finance and sales or marketing and sales is to do exactly what you're talking about doing, Paul, and allowing People to share themselves in an authentic way. It's unbelievable what the data says happens to cultures because it's very difficult to harbor and facilitate and perpetuate contempt for someone Once you know their story, the human brain starts to go to more trying to figure out why that person is doing what they're doing based upon what they know about that person, versus just saying, I have contempt for this organization. What was the name of that book again?
- [54:04]
C
I buried my heart in confidence from B.
- [54:06]
D
Love it.
- [54:07]
C
Great book. And, you know, we ran that with a bunch of our leaders who went and did that with their teams. And, you know, it's just. It's explaining the kind of leaders they want to be, the kind of environment they want to work in. And, you know, as a result, our leaders, generally speaking, have been here for a really long time. A really long time. And I, you know, that's just one of the pieces of the puzzle.
- [54:30]
B
But we had Doug Holiday on. Yeah, we had Doug Holiday on four times. And I think you know him also. And he talked about the same thing. Revealing your authentic self and sharing your broken parts. And when you do that, to your point, Paul, when you are authentic and really sharing your broken parts, then you have something in common with other people. Because we all have broken parts. But most people don't really show it, especially as leaders.
- [54:57]
D
Takes care of the imposter syndrome right away.
- [55:00]
C
Yeah, but being able to, like, get that off your chest in a way as well, just as an individual, it makes you feel really, really good about yourself. Right.
- [55:07]
D
And where the hell were you guys 30 years ago, man?
- [55:10]
C
I know.
- [55:15]
D
Yeah.
- [55:16]
C
30 years ago, I wasn't even allowed to wear a striped shirt. Right. It had to be a white shirt.
- [55:21]
D
I'm wearing a beard right now just in defense against McMahon. We weren't even allowed to have facial hair. Hey, last thing I wanted to. Johnny and Paul, you guys did such a great job talking about these concepts today and leadership. And I wanted to wrap a bow on one thing on great leaders in this development area. I feel like great leaders, they help people get emotionally connected to the conscious competence of something. So when somebody says to me, hey, and Johnny, you and I do this all the time. We play golf. You're like, the reason why you hit that shot. Of course I do this for Jon. The reason why you hit that shot so well, Jon, is because you had your elbow in. And then Johnny gets consciously competent. Unfortunately, Paul, what he does to me is the reason why you suck so bad, Kappa, is because you're lifting up.
- [56:14]
B
Your front foot in the story, there's the truth and somewhere there's a little bit of exaggeration going on, right?
- [56:20]
D
Always. Always. But the point is, I think great. When you talked about inspiration, Johnny, I just want to encourage people, when you get up, these characteristics, these behaviors, these success behaviors inside of accounts and then you get up and you do your sko or you get up and you do your QBR and you're recognizing people. You want to talk about how to kill a culture. You're recognizing people for performance inside of these accounts and you are not tying it to any of those things or there's no evidence that any of those things happened. This is how you get hypocrisy. I hear it all the time from sellers. So leaders, you have to connect the dots.
- [57:03]
C
I mean that in particular, again, going back to this whole playbook concept, people have to understand the why. They have to understand the why and what's in it for them, Right. Versus just do it this way or else it's just, you know, and that's where I think, you know, some companies just get it wrong.
- [57:20]
D
Right?
- [57:21]
B
What's in it for me? How am I going to change? How am I going to become better? Can't answer those questions. Then to your point, they're going to resist.
- [57:29]
D
We've had a great run.
- [57:30]
C
Paul.
- [57:31]
D
Paul, brother, keep it going.
- [57:34]
B
Great job. I feel like we're only touching the surface of this topic, so we may have to have you back again. Fantastic job. Thanks to Paul. Thanks to John Cap and Paul Kap. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders podcast.
- [57:53]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out at forcemanagement.
- [57:57]
D
Com.