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Revenue Builders
Building the Machine: The Pipeline, Metrics, and Discipline Behind 100%+ Revenue Growth with Carlos Delatorre
00:59:04
In this replay episode, Carlos de la Torre joins John McMahon to unpack lessons from decades of enterprise sales leadership, including how he evaluates CRO opportunities, why complex selling environments demand sophisticated go-to-market engines, and how pipeline generation, leadership hiring, and management operating rhythm drive sustainable growth.
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- [00:05]
Podcast Host
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 takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for skin scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid Enjoy Today's Episode welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast. Today's episode is a replay of a standout conversation with one of the most experienced revenue leaders in enterprise software. John McMahon sits down with Carlos de la Torre, a seasoned revenue leader who has scaled organizations at companies like MongoDB, Trip Actions and now Harness. He's helped lead multiple businesses through periods of hypergrowth and acquisition. In this episode, Carlos breaks down what it really takes to move from top performing sales rep to scalable sales leader. He shares how he evaluates CRO opportunities, why complex selling environments demand disciplined go to market systems, and the costly consequences of hiring leadership too late during rapid growth. You'll also hear Carlos's hard earned lessons on pipeline generation, list, leadership development, management, operating rhythm, and why personal sustainability is not optional if you want to lead at scale. If you're a sales leader navigating growth, building your bench, or trying to avoid the Q4 heroics that come from being late on leadership, this is a conversation worth revisiting.
- [01:41]
John McMahon
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Revenue Builders podcast. I'm John McMahon. My co host John Kaplan's taking a little time off, so I'm navigating solo today. My guest today has had a classic career of climbing through the ranks of sales leadership with many lessons learned. He started his career as a sales rep at Beckman Coulter selling clinical laboratory diagnostic products and moved over to PTC where he quickly rose through the ranks to become the VP of the West. From ptc, Carlos went to Oblix, which was acquired by Oracle. He then moved on to IM Logic, which was acquired by Symantec, and then to bladelogic, which was acquired by bmc, where Carlos was the VP of the East. After bmc, Carlos de la Torre became the CRO at Dynamic Ops, which was acquired by VMware, and soon after Carlos moved to be the CRO at clear slide. After ClearSlide, Carlos moved to become the CRO at MongoDB, where he significantly grew MongoDB revenues at over 100% annually. After MongoDB, Carlos was the CEO of Vera and then Carlos moved to become the CRO at Trip Actions. Carlos is also an active investor and advisor in Many software companies like Starburst, Exafunction, Bartan, Modern treasury, and Outreach. And Carlos also sits on the board of Yalo. Just prior to the start of the podcast, Carlos shared some exciting news where he's decided to join an exciting new company as a CRO starting in August. So, Carlos, congrats on the new opportunity and welcome. Thank you. John, how are you?
- [03:34]
Carlos de la Torre
I'm doing great. I'm doing great.
- [03:36]
John McMahon
I'm taking a little time off right now, recharging the battery.
- [03:40]
Carlos de la Torre
That's absolutely right.
- [03:41]
John McMahon
I'm getting some exercise in.
- [03:44]
Carlos de la Torre
Yes. Lots of cycling, actually.
- [03:46]
John McMahon
Oh, yeah? Yeah. A lot of good hills out there.
- [03:50]
Carlos de la Torre
Fantastic hills. About three weeks ago, I took. I took a trip with a few buddies. Dan Fougere, who you know, and.
- [03:59]
John McMahon
Oh, really?
- [04:00]
Carlos de la Torre
Herman Hessa and Adam Jenkins, a good friend of mine. And the four of us did. Did a trip through Tuscany. We started out in Siena, and we rode a little over 100km in the pouring rain to Florence. And then the second day was a perfect, perfect weather. We rode to Lucca, through Vinci, as in Leonardo da Vinci. Beautiful hills. And. And then the last. The third day, we wrote. We rode from Luca over a fairly steep mountain, and then down to Forte de Marmi on the coast. It was a. Was an amazing ride.
- [04:42]
John McMahon
Yeah. Well, good for you. I don't know if you saw that new Netflix special Tour de France, but you should watch. It's like eight. Eight different episodes. And there's one there. You're just making me think about the descents with, where this one kid, he's a younger guy, and he was descending while the rest of the guys are descending at 55, 60 miles an hour. He was close to 70. I mean, it's a true. Real daredevil.
- [05:08]
Carlos de la Torre
Yikes.
- [05:09]
John McMahon
Anyway, hey, Carlos, when you were deciding to make this next move, and congratulations on that, what do you. What were some of the top items you were considering, you know, before you made the move? Was it like market size, competitors, team technology, company size, growth opportunity? What was it?
- [05:27]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, almost like maybe a few levels. I thought about it. I'd say the. The most basic level is I thought about, you know, kind of the three basic things that I think most people think about is, is there a big market? You know, are you not. Because if there's not a big market, there's a chance everything else could be okay, and then you just run out of market and you can't grow anymore. Is it a product that's differentiated, where, if you sell it right, you can win more than your fair Share of deals. And is, is, is it a team? Are the people gathered around the table people who are competent, who are going to be able to scale as the business grows? So I'd say that was probably the first level. And then I wanted to, I wanted to put myself into a situation where I feel like the things that I can bring to the table really matter. And so I, I like a more complex product where having a strong, having a sales team that's really good at the message and differentiating from the competition that, where that really matters, where the value prop of the product is one where there's real business value. Because if there's real business value, then you know, you can do effective pipeline generation and you can actually create demand. You're not just fulfilling the demand that already exists. You can actually make the market bigger through effective pipeline generation. And then, so that's probably the second level. Is, is there complexity? Is it a market where there's business? Is it a product where there's business value, where PG will pay off? And then the third was just the human level. You know, the people I'll be working with, do I feel like there's alignment around the values? Do I, do I respect them? Do I feel like it's people that I'm going to enjoy getting out of bed and working with every day? So those are, those are the first things that come to mind.
- [07:36]
John McMahon
Yeah. Now when you said complex product, I understand what you mean by that. I think I do. But why don't you, can you expand on why you, with your skill set and your knowledge and your background, why you wanted a complex product?
- [07:52]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I said complex product, but I think what I meant was a complex selling environment. So there's the product and there's the customer. So what I mean by complex product is a product that has some business value and it delivers that business value by solving technical problems. And so if you just talk about the technology and the features and the functions, it's not obvious what the business value is. It takes a salesperson to work with the customer and help the customer see that connection. And when the customer sees that connection, then the product becomes more valuable to the customer because now they can see it's not just features, it's solving an important problem. And then the complexity on the customer side is if the solution is, is, is truly powerful, chances are it delivers value to different roles within the organization. And the value, the business value is something that has to be described in terms that resonate to those respective roles. And so now a Salesperson is going to have to come in and do enough investigation and research on the account to understand who are the people that occupy those roles or those functions within the company and present the solution in a way that resonates with each of them. And so there's complexity in the product, but there's also complexity in how we present the value to the organization that we're selling to. And then you could even say there's a third level of complexity, which is political complexity. In larger organizations, you have politics, you have people who have power and people who have less power. And so being able to navigate the politics of the account, I think, you know, great salespeople can do all three. And I think it's really fun to figure out what the formula is and then build kind of the go to market engine that really tackles those three sort of levels and those three areas of focus.
- [10:10]
John McMahon
Yeah, and the reason that resonated and the reason I wanted you to go deeper is because it really talks a lot about you and your skill set and your background. And like you said, you know, it takes a sophisticated sales rep to be able to be in a complex selling environment, political environment, you know, make a complex product simple enough for people to understand what the business terms are. And then the complexity of speaking different languages to different people about how your product brings that business value, that all speaks straight back to, you know, your experiences and your skill set. And where I was going was that with that is because you know how to go find those types of sophisticated sales reps. You know how to train them, develop them, and get them to go to market in the right way.
- [11:00]
Carlos de la Torre
Thank you. I think so. I hope so.
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John McMahon
I have confidence in you, brother. You guys know you can do that. I know you could do that. No, but if that's the thing is when you go and to go look for the product, what you are basically, and the reason I want to expand on that is you're not looking for just some commodity, simple product because then that speaks to the type of salesforce that you might need. You were looking for more of a complex product in the environment that you described, because that resonates with your skill set which over so many years you've been been able to find and develop, you know, high level enterprise salespeople in complex selling environments. Right. So that was the type of company you were looking for also.
- [11:43]
Carlos de la Torre
That's right. That's right.
- [11:45]
John McMahon
So let's talk about some of those lessons and that you've learned over time. You know, if you think back on you know, climbing the ladder from sales rep to first line to second line, third line to, you know, the sea levels that you've been in. Now, what do you think have been some of the top lessons that come to mind as you climb the sales leadership ranks?
- [12:09]
Carlos de la Torre
Do you have time for a story?
- [12:10]
John McMahon
Sure. Love story.
- [12:16]
Carlos de la Torre
Before technology, this. This would. If you had asked me what's my proudest deal, I'd probably tell you the same story. But there was a lesson in there, too. So I was at Coulter. I was selling medical equipment, and I started out with them in Alabama, and I did well, and I was the top rep in the company. And so they, quote, unquote, promoted me. And I say, quote, unquote, because it was the same job. And they sent me to the worst territory. They put a senior in front of the title, gave me a little more base, and said, go to California, because Becton Dickinson's kicking our ass in California. And so to San Francisco. And that was a. That was a market where you sold through distributors. And so, you know, you had these distributors which were basically supply reps. These. These reps would go door to door to doctor's offices, and they would be the ones to source leads. They would tell you, who needs a. You know, who needs a machine and who doesn't? And. And it was a desert because all of the distributors were committed to the competition. They love Beckton Dickinson. And so I was really beating my head against the wall for the first few months there, and outbound PG to doctors, which is a bit like looking for a needle in the haystack, because they only buy a new machine, like, every 10 years. So. And I was, you know, doing PG out to the distributors, but all the distributors were saying, hey, we're. We're happy with this other thing. And so this doctor up in Jackson, California, called in and said, listen, I want to know if you guys have a program. I've got this old Coulter machine. I don't need it anymore. Do you guys have a program where you maybe donate it to some third world hospital or something? And I said, why don't you need it anymore? Well, we bought this Becton Dickinson, and it arrives next week. And I said, you got to talk to me about a new culture. No, no, we're good with the beck. I'm talking to the office manager, and the office manager says, no, no, the deal's done. The doctor met with the rep, and she decided that this is the right. Well, you got to talk to her and tell her she's got to see me. No, I don't think I'll ask her. Go. Go ahead. And so over the course of, like, three days, I talked to this office manager five or six times. Finally, she says to me, listen, the doctor says, the deal is done. They're. They're delivering the machine on Monday to do the in service. And, you know, just. You just got to go away. It turns out that I still had an old Becton Dickinson in my closet, that I had taken in on trade from a doctor in Alabama. I hadn't sent it back to corporate yet. And I said to this office manager, I'll tell you what. Tell the doctor that if she'll see me, if. After she sees me, if she still wants this Beckton Dickinson, I'll give her one for free. And. And I thought, I'll just never send it back. And I don't know, tell them it got lost in the mail or something. And she said, oh, I'll see. I said, I'll wait here while you ask her. And so she wasn't going away. So she asked, this is Thursday afternoon. And she says, well, she comes back finally. She says she'll see you, but it's got to be tomorrow because they're doing the in service on Monday. Jackson, California, is up in the Sierras. There's a snowstorm. I drive my Astro van up to the mountains. I probably get there at midnight, check into, like, a podunk motel. You know where the story's going, right? She finally sees me the next morning. She buys my machine, and. And I take that deal and. And I put it through the competitor of the sales of the. Of the distributor that had sold the Beckton Dickinson. And then I call the distributor that sold the Beckton Dickinson, said, listen, Dennis. His name was Dennis. Here's what happened. This is what. This is what I did. And the. I put it through your competitor. So now your competitors got a foot in the door at this doctor. And the reason I did is because you sold it Beckham Dickinson, I'm going to do this everywhere I can. So unless we talk to each other, and hopefully you can. You can bring me in and let me pitch to your reps. And that, I can tell you, was a turning point. I was able to turn that one distributor, San Jose Surgical, and they became my best distributor. And. And the rest of my time in California was a lot better until I went to ptc. So the lesson. Thank you for letting me tell that story. I'm very proud of it. The lesson was, if you have a valuable solution, and you. And you're convinced that what you have is better than what your customer has or what your customer is about to buy, then you should stop at nothing and go as high as you need to go and be as persistent as you need to be to get your message to the person who makes the decision. And you might, you might actually change the course of history in the process.
- [17:13]
John McMahon
That's a great story. Story of persistence. It's a story of, you know, how you really break into a market and sounds like the dam opened. You broke the dam once you got that deal. So Congratulations. Thank you. Now when you think about. That's an amazing sales story. Now when you think about moving up to, like, sales leadership or even, you know, when you're looking back now, because sometimes you're doing advising work too, and you're on the board of company also. What are some of the top lessons that you think you've. You've learned along the way?
- [17:48]
Carlos de la Torre
Maybe two come to mind. One, my early part of my manager career, and then. And then another one later. So my first time as a. As a manager was at. Was at Parametric Technology. And my boss was. Was this guy John True. Who, you know, and I was very impressed with John True. I was. I was. Frankly, I was. I was intimidated by him. He's so sm and he was just. He was just one of those guys that was always thinking 10 moves ahead of everybody else. And so. And he wasn't particularly effusive, so I didn't really know if he thought I was doing a good job or not a good job. And so he'd been my manager for about 90 days. And he pulls me into his office one day and he says, carlos, you interested to know how I think you're doing? And, like, my knees are probably shaking under the table. I said, yes, yes, John, I am. And. And he gets up to the whiteboard and he grabs a marker and he draws a star on the mark on the whiteboard. I said, oh, this is good, this is good. He says, yeah, look, you start the week in Dallas, and then you go to Lubbock, and then you go to El Paso, and then you go to somewhere else and somewhere else. And, and, and so the reason you're doing that is because you're doing all the meetings for the rep. You're doing the job. And I didn't pay you to come in and be a rep. I'm paying you to be a manager. So you either become or I'll make you a rep. Any questions? No, John. No questions. It was a Five minute meeting and I remember it well and it was such a good, such a good lesson and it was, I think it's a, it's a mistake that a lot of first time managers make, which is they're good at doing the job of the rep and so they just go in and, and do it over and over and over and I was running myself ragged and the reps were just basically, you know, letting me do their job for them. And, and of course it doesn't scale. So that was an important lesson that as a manager your job is to make the sales reps self sufficient. And so if there's a problem in a deal, even if it takes twice as long or the problem gets solved half as well, you're better off solving it through the reps so that you build that skill and build that muscle. And that was, that was the lesson that John was trying to teach me and it was a really good one.
- [20:19]
John McMahon
Yeah, you see that a lot where just get promoted think they have to like prove themselves. So they have to prove themselves to the team that they're super sales reps and that's why they got promoted. When in reality, like you said, when they back up and they get separate themselves from their ego and their insecurities, they can understand that the only way I'm gonna get anywhere is if I could make my team really, really well at what I, I've learned to do. So yeah, great point, John.
- [20:48]
Carlos de la Torre
If I'm honest that that was going on too. Scott Armstrong had done a fantastic job with this region or this district before me and he got promoted and like several of the reps had done a lot more revenue than I had done as a rep. And so I absolutely wanted to prove myself and I was probably a little bit insecure.
- [21:10]
John McMahon
Yeah, well, yeah, that's. But I think it's really normal. I don't know that that's just Carlos de la Torre coming up through the ranks. I think that's, that's what happens to lots of people. Right. And because no one's truly sat them down like John. True. Did Satch down. Why are you really a leader? What are you really supposed to be doing? And it's really about developing your people. Right. So any other lessons that come to mind?
- [21:36]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, you know, later, later in my career and you'll, you know, you'll, you might remember this and I think you probably do is at MongoDB, so the business was doing really well and the team was growing. Everything was up and to the right from an outsider's perspective. But the reality is I had hired a lot of great first line managers and some great second line managers. I had not hired really senior leaders who were capable of scaling. And it was, it was, it was okay at that moment, but based on the way the team was growing six, nine months later, it was going to be a problem. I was going to not have the leadership capacity, the senior leadership capacity that I needed in place. And, and I let that, and I let that get, get ahead of me because you know, for a senior, for a really strong senior leader, it could easily take six months to find them and another three months to ramp them. And so if I need that person six or nine months from now and I'm not recruiting and I don't have a pipeline, I'm already very, very late. And so that was, that was a problem that, that I got into it and it, and it, it caused us to be. There was one year at MongoDB where by Q4 we were, we were probably 10 heads behind plan, maybe 12 AES behind plan. And it was one of those Q4s where we had a few big deals and we did all kinds of heroics and just like everybody was working like dogs and we, we did some of these big deals and we just made the number. And the reality is it should have been a celebration. We should have done 120% of the number and we needed these heroics to just get over the fin finish line. And, and that was because I was late on the leadership. Six months. Six months prior.
- [23:33]
John McMahon
Right. So let's dive into that a little bit because you see that problem a lot too. So what, what you're really referring to here, if I can make an assumption, is that there's different. As a company starts to scale, some people can actually, as leaders can actually adapt to the new environment and what they, what demands the scaling puts on them and their teams and others can't. And in, in a lot of cases it's only, it's a minority that actually can make those moves consistently year after year as a company scaling 100% a year. And what you saw was, ah, you know, maybe I waited too long to start to, you know, go outside and look for new leaders because I can already see that some of the leaders that I have aren't making the jump. They're not meeting the demands, you know, that this new business environment is putting on them. With respect to scaling. Is that, is that what you're referring to? Yeah, yeah.
- [24:33]
Carlos de la Torre
The only thing, yeah, 100. The only thing I would add to that is, I think a lot of people develop in spurts or they develop at an irregular pace. And so sometimes people just need to sit in a roll for a while to mature, to connect the dots. And then other times you can see somebody promoted like once a year. It's happened in my own career, you know, there have been periods four or five years where I got promoted. Like at ptc, I was getting promoted once a year and I kind of did okay. And then there were other times where I just needed to really be in a role for two or three years for the lessons for the skills required for that role to really sink in. And so, yeah, when the organization is growing really fast, it's unlikely that people are just going to be able to keep stepping up into the next role. And, and so that. That's what I missed at MongoDB at that period.
- [25:26]
John McMahon
Yeah, but you know, that's where you also need to, to put pressure on your leaders to understand where their leaders are. Like, if you're a third line person or fourth line, you know, what are your third line and second line people doing with the first line and the second line? What are they doing to develop those people? Because like you said, that's part of making the judgment call on, on people is that some people learn and adapt at different levels than, and speeds than other people do. So as a leader, you can't just say, oh, this guy's never gonna, or girl's never gonna make the jump. The reality is maybe they will make the jump and maybe they'll even be more successful than people that have already made the jump. It's just that it takes them a little bit longer to make that jump. That's right. And the thing that I found that I've always had to look for is I had to see some sort of tangible change in their behaviors, in their leadership to know that eventually they're going to get there. If I can't consistently see these little changes, measurable changes, then I really am thinking I don't know if they're ever going to make it. Yeah.
- [26:32]
Carlos de la Torre
You know, another thing that related to this that was, that was a challenge for me at MongoDB is that was the first time that I was, I was in the head of sales role, scaling a large org. And so I didn't have perspective for how complicated things were about to get. And so there were phenomenal leaders. And I had seen those leaders, like deliver some, some of them had, you know, I'd worked with in the past and I had seen where, hey, Every challenge they've ever faced, they rose to the challenge. And I didn't have the perspective for how much more complicated things were going to get and how quickly I think trip actions. I had the benefit of having scaled MongoDB, and so I. I had a better. I had a better sense for whether people were going to be able to take that next step or whether they needed to. To sit tight in. In their current role for a little while. Yeah.
- [27:30]
John McMahon
So let's talk about what's the biggest lesson you had to learn about you as you now look back in your career and all the different things that you've experienced and all the different things you have to learn. It's the biggest thing that Carlos had to learn about Carlos.
- [27:45]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah. To make it personal, 1. One of the big things I learned is, I don't know if you've heard the saying, put your own oxygen mask on first.
- [27:56]
John McMahon
Yeah.
- [27:57]
Carlos de la Torre
I learned the importance of taking care of myself, and if I don't take care of myself, I can't take care of anything or anyone around me. And so, you know, when things got hard, I just felt like, oh, I just need to work a little harder. I need to sleep a little less. I need to, like, take a call in the car in the morning on the way. And what I ended up doing was just like, snipping away at time with my family and sleep and just time to reflect. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I, you know, I can. If I don't get. If I'm not resting and eating well and feeling like I'm. I'm doing what I need to do with my family, then, you know, I'm not as patient. My temper, you know, can flare up. My decision making isn't as good. I'm not as creative. And. And so I had to learn the importance of, like, getting my eight hours eating well, getting at least a little bit of exercise in there so that I can actually do operate at my best, I think.
- [29:09]
John McMahon
Again, another amazing lesson that I think a lot of leaders, you know, face, and I tell a lot of them now when I'm, I. I see them or talk to them, and I can tell they're kind of getting close to burning out. I say, look, if you don't take care of you, no one else will. That's number one. And number two, your team is counting on you. They're counting on you to make really good decisions. So you have to take care of yourself so you can make really good decisions for your entire team. So important yeah.
- [29:42]
Carlos de la Torre
And, you know, there's like a paradox in there, because if you have that mentality, which I do, and I know you do too, that you want to take care of your team, you want to be there for your team, then sometimes the way to do that is to tell them no. Like they. There, there will be an infinite amount of demands on your time, an infinite number of things you could do. And so it takes a little bit of like, discipline and maturity to just say, no, I gotta go. Take care of me. Whether that means going for a long walk or just, you know, going to bed at whatever time you need to go to bed.
- [30:17]
John McMahon
But it's also now what you, what you also are referring to is time. So what starts to happen as a leader is you start to realize, okay, I am working 16 hours a day, 18 hours a day, there is no more time. So I have to start to be able to manage the people around me too, and the demands that they're putting on me. And what's really important here, what's not important, do they really all need an hour on my schedule or can it be done in 15 minutes? Can it be done with a quick email? Why do I have to talk to them for an hour? You know, so you can. It then forces you to start to prioritize, forces you to start to manage your time better and start to manage the people around you. Otherwise, like you said, there's just not enough time in the day. And I think when you start to see it is when I saw it is when I was working 16, 18 hours a day and I come in the next day and I'd still have stuff from the day before, my to do list that I never got done. Yeah, I was like. And then it would go to the next day and the next day. And I think this, this is not sustainable. Something has to change. Right.
- [31:22]
Carlos de la Torre
What worked for me and made this a little better is I just put everything in my calendar, including, like, when I go to bed, when I have dinner with my family, when I'm, you know, riding the peloton in the morning, when I'm going to spend recruiting, I've got three hours for recruiting and two hours for PG and this and that. And, and you know, my, my assistant knew that she could move those blocks around, but she also knew that she could not delete them. And so if there's a meeting coming in and it doesn't fit, she would bring it to me and say, you know, this is. What do I do? Do I cut into PG or do we not do this meeting. That was the only way that it worked because otherwise things just come in and they, they'll dominate your calendar.
- [32:07]
John McMahon
Oh yeah, I can remember asking one of my assistants now when I looked at my schedule in the morning. Now when do I get to go to the bathroom? Is that between 1159,00 and 12 0000? Like there's no time to even get up from the desk, you know. So, yeah. What do you think you had the biggest thing you learned about other people?
- [32:30]
Carlos de la Torre
The Buddhists have a saying that I like that says that the universe exists in a grain of sand. And what they mean by that is that by examining any one simple thing down to its most fundamental characteristics, you can understand everything about the universe. And I think that's true of people. And if someone shows some, you know, it can be positive or negative. If someone shows some, maybe lack of integrity, willing to cut corners, even if it's on something small, I've learned to pay a lot of attention to that. If someone shows, you know, real generosity or kindness or a willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of a deal or the company, even if it's on something small, it, it. You could extrapolate that. And so I really, I really pay attention to the little things because they tell you the whole story about.
- [33:40]
John McMahon
It's really good, Carlos, really good. How about the biggest skill that you had to learn? I mean, we all lack skills as we're coming up the ladder. Is there any one skill that you think, man, this, this is something I had to learn to master and it took me a while to really master it. I mean, you've talked about a lot of knowledge. Yeah, adapt to.
- [34:02]
Carlos de la Torre
I would say that. I guess the thing that comes to mind the most is pipeline generation. You know, it's not like I had never done it, but I would say building a, a PG machine is something that, that we did at MongoDB and I think we did it in a more sophisticated way than I had seen before. You know, I sold copiers in college and we would do prospecting. We would, you know, we called it cold calling back there, back then and at, at ptc, we would, you know, we would do prospecting. And so it's not like I hadn't done that before, but I think at MongoDB there were, there was the complexity of the open source aspect to it and you know, the fact that the downloads were anonymous, the, the person downloading the software was anonymous. But you could do a reverse IP lookup and figure out the company, the Roles that we were selling into. You know, there was, there was something to be done with developers, but you better not ask developers for money because you'll turn them off. And there was something to be done with security people and ops people and, and then there was a lot to be, there was a lot to being able to, to do pipeline generation into line of business owners and talk about time to market. And the only way that a salesperson would be able to do that is if they would do sufficient research on the account and then build the messages for each of the Personas. And then there was a bunch of sort of MongoDB or open source specific research. And so I remember at the beginning of my time at MongoDB, you know, previously there, there had been no outbound pipeline generation. And I'd say over the course of a year it was, it certainly wasn't just me. It was me and, and people in, in sales ops and some of the great sales leaders and some of the great sales people we developed, we called it the PG recipe. And over time that became a big part of the secret sauce for why that company going so quickly. And we would train new reps on it. It took a day and a half to even just understand the mechanism and what was expected. But so that, that was probably, I'd call it maybe a competency that, that was pretty important that, that I really developed.
- [36:38]
John McMahon
Big competency.
- [36:39]
Carlos de la Torre
Right.
- [36:39]
John McMahon
I mean, as any sales leader knows, if you don't have a big pipeline, then all the reps, you know, tend to hang on to the deals that they do have and they're going to tell you all the reasons why it's going to close this quarter. And chances are they're not closing this quarter because it's. But when you have a really big pipeline, then it's pretty easy to qualify which deals really will make it this quarter and which deals won't make it this quarter. Right. So gives you courage. Pipeline generation is everything. Yeah, we're talking about like pipeline generation and other, you know, key metrics. Let's think, think about key metrics that, you know, sales leaders should be monitoring during the quarter and ones that they should take a look at in reviewing what happened during, during the quarter once the quarter's finished. So what, what, what are some of the key metrics that you tend to monitor during the quarter and then review once the quarter's finished.
- [37:36]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, during the quarter. The ones that I pay the most attention to, we just talked about pipeline generation. So meetings set. So on a given Tuesday, I'm A big fan of dedicating Tuesdays to pipeline generation. So on a given Tuesday, how many net new meetings did each salesperson set? And then you should look at it again on Friday, because a lot of the goodness of Tuesday's PG actually happens Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, where, you know, people call you back or you finally catch somebody. And so at the end of the week, how many net new meetings did we set? The second really important metric is visible opportunities or scope stage opportunities. So the stages that, that I, I often think about is there's research stage, where we're just learning about the company, or maybe we're talking to people, but we're talking to people that aren't, are unlikely to be relevant to the opportunity. Then there's discovery stage, where we're actually engaging with people who could, who are likely relevant. And then at a certain point, we move to scope stage, where we think we have a champion, we think we have an opportunity. And now we're doing real work. We're doing real work to build value, to understand the organization, the customer's doing real work to actually evaluate the solution. We're not doing a poc, but there's real work. So that scope stage opportunity is what, you know, people sometimes refer to as a visible opportunity. So that's another key metric is new visible opportunities created. So in a given week, I think if you're, if you're selling a complex enterprise solution, I think if sales people are able to generate two net new meetings, that's pretty healthy. Some people will do three, some people might do one. If they're doing zero, that's, that's bad. If they're doing two, that's probably good. And then as far as visible opportunities, you really want to see at least one. One a month. I like to see one a month. Sometimes you'll see, you know, people can get maybe two a month or, or, or three over the course of two months or four a quarter, that kind of thing. So that'd be the, those would be the two key leading indicators for individual, for, for AES that I look at. And then for managers, it's recruiting, it's, it's new, you know, it's, it's net new candidates that make it up to the second line.
- [40:24]
John McMahon
Meaning you're doing the same thing with recruiting that you're doing with, you know, pg, you know, same, it's the same qualifying each stage of it. So, and that's the one piece you, you, you alluded to it. But for young leaders listening to this podcast, for each Step that Carlos has net new meetings, visible opportunities, scope stage. He has specific definitions of each one of those that you have to meet in order for it to actually be a visible opportunity. And the same with recruiting, right? Carlos, you're basically laying out almost like a pipeline, and each step of that pipeline has a qualification to it also.
- [41:05]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, yeah. For it going back to the stages, I think whatever, you know, whatever the, the sales process is, whatever the stages are. What, what is really important is that for each stage you have unambiguous exit criteria.
- [41:23]
John McMahon
Yes.
- [41:23]
Carlos de la Torre
And that way everybody agrees, you know, if an opportunity is in stage, you know, X stage three, everybody knows that the exit criteria for stages one and two already occurred. And you don't have to like, you know, spend 10 minutes talking about it to. To know that and same thing.
- [41:42]
John McMahon
So for the young leaders, you know, it doesn't have to be like 10 different things that define what that stage is. Again, it has to be. Be. It could be two or even one. Unam, as you said, Carlos, unambiguous definition of that stage, right? Yeah, yeah, but it's something that everybody can look at and agree, yes, this occurred or it did not occur. Right. And then what about the quarter end? Now the quarter ends and you're going to review. Okay, we hit the number, but how did we do? Like you alluded to one time where you hit the number, but it really, you guys barely made it. Looking back on the quarter, what are some of the metrics that you're looking at? Yeah, well.
- [42:27]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, so obviously new revenue. So productivity per AE is, you know, is the, is the key metric to define the health of a sales team. I also look at composition of the revenue, meaning how much of it was new logos versus expansion. And so you want to have a healthy amount of new logos. And it can be, it can be dangerous. It is dangerous to rely too heavily on expansion. Expansions are great. If you've got a product that customers buy and then they keep buying more of it, then you're going to get a lot of your revenue out of expansion. And as the business matures, you might get 2/3 or even 3/4 out of expansion. So there's nothing wrong with expansion revenue. The danger is to rely on expansion revenue because it'll dry up eventually. Eventually you will sell all. You'll sell your customers all that they need. And, and that can. That can happen sort of abruptly and all of a sudden your growth falls off a cliff. And so new logos is. Is very, very critical. And the quality of those new logos are we Getting new logos in accounts where there is real expansion, where we know that that new logo over the course of the next two years is, you know, is likely to deliver X amount of revenue.
- [44:02]
John McMahon
Right. It's not a one and done.
- [44:05]
Carlos de la Torre
Not a one and done. Exactly. It's not a. I didn't sell them all. They're ever going to need conversion rates. So looking back, when you look at the deals that closed, I think it can be. You can learn a lot by looking at the conversion rates, meaning how long the deal, you know, was in each of the stages. And then so if deals go relatively quickly and you see a rep that has, you know, relatively fast conversions, then a lot of times you can learn something from that rep. What is that rep doing? What has that rep figured out? Maybe that rep figured out that, oh, if I go to this role early in my sales cycle, things happen fast because now my deal is sanctioned or I've got really strong business, you know, business case attached or business value attached to the deal. You can figure that out and then train it, train the rest of the sales team. Sometimes, and I know you use the term artists, sometimes you have salespeople who are artists who are just really gifted and they might not even know why they're doing it. It's just instinct. But then you go in and you figure out, oh, that's what they're doing. They're going to the lineup. Like at MongoDB is it, you know, going back to that there were salespeople that figured out that if I go, if I find out, I find a project that's being built, I go figure out who's the line of, who's the line of business, who's the general manager over that product. And I educate them on how with MongoDB, it's going to hit the market, it's going to go to market quicker, they're going to get their revenue quicker. If I do that early in my sales cycle, my sales cycle goes super fast. Where if I deal with just the developers and the OP and the IT ops people, it's going to take a lot longer. So things like that. So looking at conversion rates, and I have to put an asterisk on that because there's also a scenario where if the conversion rates are unbelievably fast, then usually what that means is there are some sales reps who are a little bit reluctant to put things in the forecast because they'd rather not have the screen. And so you'll see some deals or some sales reps that their Deals happen like it's, it's magical. And the reality is they had those deals in their back pocket but they.
- [46:38]
John McMahon
Weren'T really the sandbagging, sandbagging, they were.
- [46:42]
Carlos de la Torre
Keeping things in their back pocket. So you got to watch out for that. But conversion rates is a big one. And then on the, on the manager, on the manager side again, it's all the, it's all the recruiting metrics, the lagging indicators. How many people did you hire? How many people did, you know, did we a trip? How many people were promoted? Or at least how many people or maybe more importantly how many people in the quarter became promotable. Whether we promote them or not, whether the business needs them is, you know, is, is secondary. But did the manager develop the team so that we have promotable AES and then you could, you know, you can follow that all the way up as a second line manager developing the first line managers to where they are promot goal.
- [47:31]
John McMahon
So Carlos, what I'd like to do is just go back and emphasize our, you know, a couple things that you talked about. There was one that you talked about the danger of only relying on existing new deals. So you know, for all the new sales leaders out there, you're your, your insurance of having a job in the next number of quarters is how many new deals you can bring in. As Carlos said, especially the deals where you think there's a big expansion opportunity. And the second thing is Carlos was going through the different metrics that he looked at. I want to emphasize how he was gaining insights from them. Not just from let's say one specific metric, but when he looked at a combination of those metrics, he gained certain insights that told him what his salesforce is doing or not doing or even what one rep is doing or not doing doing. So it's really important to keep a lot of these metrics and really gain insights from them.
- [48:31]
Carlos de la Torre
You know, just to piggyback on that, John, at trip actions we had, which is now called Navon, we had a, a really, really strong rev ops team. They would do so at the end of, they did it every month. At the end of every month they would crank through, you know, all of the metrics and eventually this got automated so that the very first day of a new month I had a book, we called it a fact pack and it had all the metrics, conversion rates, hiring, you know, new business, expansion business, the different regions and, and I could take, take, you know, half a day or at least two or three hours and just really study those, study all the Metrics. And just like you said, certain things would pop, would pop out and then, and then that would be something to go investigate. Yeah, that was a really valuable exercise.
- [49:32]
John McMahon
Yeah. But the biggest one that you mentioned is, and all the experienced sales leaders understand the biggest one is the average productivity per sales rep. Rep. When you see that going down, then you know something's just not right. So you can take a look at ASPs for new, ASPs for existing, how many new deals you got, existing deals. But if your productivity per sales rep is going down, you better start to dig in really deep as to what, what occurred in that quarter and what you can do to reverse course. So Carlos, earlier we talked about, you know, prioritizing, running out of time. And you, I know you're a really big fan of what we call a management operating rhythm. So can you share with the audience, you know, what is, first of all, what is a management operating rhythm? You know, why is it important? How is it used and how it can just really save leaders a lot of time when they interface with all their different constituents within the company. Yeah.
- [50:37]
Carlos de la Torre
So a management operating rhythm is just really just a fancy word for how you combine the things you want to do with the time you have available, how those two things come together. And so, you know, we talked a little bit about it before. I think there are, there are things you want to get done. Depending on your role, they're going to be different. There are things you want to get done in a given day, in a given week, in a given month, in a given quarter, in a given year. And the only thing that's ever worked for me is to schedule those things and to define exactly when those things are going to happen. So like I just said at the beginning, at trip actions, at the beginning of every month, there's a three hour block, usually about nine in the morning till noon, where I'm just going to study the fact pack. And then there's another, you know, three hour block where I'm going to go and ask for, you know, ask questions about what I learned in the fact pack. And, and so really management operating rhythm is just about defining what are my priorities in each of those, you know, time frames. Day, week, month, quarter, year. And then when am I going to do them? And you have to be sort of conservative, meaning budget a little more time than you think you need because things always take a little longer, emergencies come up. Sometimes, you know, you go to do something and then you realize, oh, there's this other thing that I should have done beforehand. To prepare in order for me to be able to do this. And so. And then the more times you do it, you know, you can really dial it in. But that's, that's really all I mean. And you know, I could talk about what is a man, what's the management operating rhythm for a given month or a quarter or a year. But that's really, that's really all I mean by that.
- [52:35]
John McMahon
Let me expand a little bit on it. So if you're a. No matter what level you are in, in sales leadership, or even if as a sales rep, especially if you're in sales leadership, then it is like what is expected from your boss? Like, what are the deliverables that you have to deliver on any given month? Like, when is the forecast due? What do I have to do for pg? When do I have to give these types of reports? That's for coming down from the top. And those obviously, as Carlos said, have to be prioritized in your calendar. And then there's the things that you're going to ask your as deliverables from your people. And you know, when are those things do. And they start to take priority in your calendar also. So it's. And then as Carlos outlined is the types of things that you want to get done not only in your job, but even like, you know, exercising in the morning or leaving time to go see your wife and kids or your partner and kids. So it's all of those things that start to fill up your calendar. And whether it's, as Carla said, by the week, by the month, by the quarter, by the year. Because maybe in the year there's a sales kickoff, maybe every quarter there's a quarterly business review. Those things have to be set in your calendar. And it really helps, I think, you think through, you know, what is it you're going to achieve in that, in that, in that quarter and when are all these things due? What I've also found, Carlos, at least at the CRO level, is it helped the other disciplines interface with me so I would share my management operating rhythm. Like in the last two weeks of the quarter, don't talk to me because I'm doing something else. So if you're going to bring me something, it's going to come from marketing or come from engineering. It better be like top priority, otherwise I'm not paying attention to it. Right. And it got to the point where even my kids knew that the last two weeks of the quarter, like, just don't talk to dad. I remember one time I walked in the House and my daughter had a couple other girls, girlfriends in the living room and they saw me walk by and my daughter just said, oh, there goes my dad. I can't talk to him. It's the last two weeks quarter. There he goes, bye dad. And that's it. So I don't know that you need to go to those extremes, but it does help other people in other disciplines in the company understand when it's the appropriate time to bring something to you and when it's not and which really helps your individual productivity. Right, right.
- [55:08]
Carlos de la Torre
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [55:09]
John McMahon
I resonate.
- [55:10]
Carlos de la Torre
Yeah, absolutely. I'm smiling. My wife Benny, she's a, she's a big planner. She loves to take trips and whatnot. And so she would keep it in her calendar the last two weeks of the quarter and then the first three weeks of the quarter, which is qbr. Just knew those five weeks are off limits.
- [55:30]
John McMahon
Yes, exactly. Now Carlos, as you've grown, I mean we've taken up an hour of your time and I really appreciate it. I want to spec. Respect your time, but let's, let's just leave with, with something that you know, we always have to think about, you know, as you climb the ladder is so as you've grown into these VPNC level positions, how do you stay in touch with what's going on, I call it in the street. What's going on with the reps, what's going on with the account engineers, what's going on with the systems engineers? How do we stay in touch with that? What's your best advice for any sales leader that's now beyond the first level, to stay in touch with their what's going on in the street. Yeah.
- [56:10]
Carlos de la Torre
So like anything else that's important, if it's important, you got to plan for it and, and you got to build it into your management operating rhythm. A few techniques that, that work for me is one is blocking some time to just let people come to me. So I would do two or three sessions on Friday, 30 minute calls, coffee with Carlos. Anybody could sign up, but only up to six people. And people come in and they can talk about anything, personal stuff, work stuff, career stuff. And it was usually, you know, more junior people earlier in their career. A lot of times they wanted career advice or maybe sometimes they wanted me to know who they were or what have you. But having those conversations gave me an opportunity to really understand what, what they were worried about, what things were coming down from corporate, whether it was for me or from product or the CEO or whatnot that were resonating or not resonating with people. So that, that was one just kind of these open door sessions on a recurring basis. And then another one is I would just block time in, in my calendar to just go walk around and I would make sure that I do that when I'm visiting an office. So if I go to the New York office, I'll have, you know, a two hour block every day where I'm just going to walk around and talk to people. And then probably the third one, not probably the third one is just to go out on sales calls.
- [57:51]
John McMahon
Yeah.
- [57:52]
Carlos de la Torre
Nothing better than, you know, the, the drive or the flight to a sales call. And after a sales call to you debrief about the, about the account. But then you also maybe go get a bite to eat and, and really understand how people are feeling about their career, about the company, about the market. Those are probably the three biggest ones that, that come to mind.
- [58:13]
John McMahon
Yeah. And stay off the phone when you're doing any of those things. Yes. Talk to people. Make it, make it personal. Carlos. Thank you, brother, my friend. Appreciate it. Thanks for doing this. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders podcast.
- [58:35]
Carlos de la Torre
A real pleasure. John, thanks for having me on. I enjoyed it.
- [58:39]
Podcast Host
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