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Revenue Builders
The Importance of Recruiting Behavioral Traits with Chaz MacLaughlin
01:09:00
In this episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast, hosts John McMahon and John Kaplan are joined by Chaz MacLaughlin. Chaz shares his insights on effective recruiting and interviewing for B2B sales roles, emphasizing the importance of behavioral traits like hard work, curiosity, and teamwork in candidates. He advises on patience in the hiring process and the value of leading, managing, and listening as essential skills for sales professionals. The discussion also touches on the significance of continuous recruitment and an outside-in mentality, providing valuable advice for leaders, recruiters and jobseekers. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Connect and learn more about Chaz MacLaughlin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chazmaclaughlin/ Enjoying the podcast? Sign up to receive new episodes straight to your inbox: https://hubs.li/Q02R10xN0 Check out John McMahon’s book, The Qualified Sales Leader: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064/ HERE ARE SOME KEY SEC...
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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@ForceManagement.com Enjoy today's episode.
- [00:43]
B
Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast. I'm John McMahon. I'm joined by my co host John Kaplan, co founder of Force Management, the preeminent sales training company in the world. Hey Cap. Our special guest today is Chas McLaughlin. Chaz started his career as a sales rep and quickly moved to Regional Director position at imperva. After Imperva, Chaz was the Director of the west for MobileIron for six years before moving to Signal Sciences as the VP of Corporate Sales for four years. Then Chaz was VP of Worldwide Sales at Lucidum and Chaz is currently the Chief Revenue Officer at Nucleus Security check. Cap, say hi to Chaz.
- [01:29]
C
Let's go. How you doing?
- [01:30]
B
All right. Hey Chaz. I'd like to start by discussing recruiting and interviewing. So you said that you believe in a hiring process that's focused on behavioral traits. Let's talk a little bit about why that's important to you and why it's maybe should be important to a lot of people.
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D
You know, hiring to me is probably the most critical aspect of my job. And having those traits really carries you throughout your career. We can all land in great companies and have great leaders, but in the end, it's on you. Everything about that opportunity is on you. You can't point fingers. You can't blame the product, you can't blame leadership or market timing, the competition, whatever. When you are engaged in an opportunity, it is the traits that separates you from your competition. Sure, we might have some, you know, a better use case alignment. We might be better suited for a specific outcome or we have a specific feature or function that separates you. But in the end, that buyer wants to know that they can trust you. Because it's not just about what happens before, but it's what happens after the sale as well. So for me and our team, it's really important that we know what you're going to do when things go sideways. Because they do and they always do. And if you think otherwise, you're making a mistake. So Turn off the happy years, get real with yourself and the opportunity and the people that you're working with. And there's not a better way to learn or understand what a person's going to do when they get knocked down. So when it comes to interviewing and recruiting, we really try, try not to. We challenge our candidates, we challenge them in the process that we bring forward, we challenge them in the questions that we ask, we challenge them. And even in the process itself, it can be lengthy and arduous for some and many self select out. But that trait, what do you do when you get punched in the face? How are you going to respond? Are you going to hide in the corner? Are you going to call me? Are you going to call your manager? Are you going to ask for help? And those things I think can be discovered with the right types of questions. It's really easy for a candidate today to go to Google or ChatGPT and get a good set of questions. That's what they expect. So not doing that.
- [04:05]
B
Yeah, well, I agree with you that recruiting as a leader that defines whether or not you're going to be successful. So I always find it really strange when some people want to turn recruiting over to HR solely and they don't want to be involved in it because whoever you have on the team is going to essentially define your success or failure on your team. And then traits, I agree with you this skills, knowledge, you know, what they did in their career, their career experience or resume. But to me that behavioral traits are number most important because that's what you find out six months after you hired somebody. You find out the behavioral traits that they had and then you realize, ooh, I made a mistake or I really made a great hire. So given that, talk a little bit about some of the key traits that are important to you when you are interviewing someone.
- [04:59]
D
Yeah, I think it starts with the company values. Not every company has the same or shares the same values. I think we could probably agree that universally they would apply to any organization. But I think a company, especially an early stage company, has a very unique character and is seeking very unique values in their employees because it really embodies why the founders started the company. Not just from a product perspective and the solution that they want to bring to market, but what type of organization do you really want to be? So in the organization that I work for today, it's teamwork, ownership, it's care, it's communication and it's innovation. And we look for that in every single touch point along the interview process from you know, basic introductions to talking to the person that runs customer success, to, you know, the role play that we do more or less at the end. So we try to discover each one of those values. And in those values, you can uncover specific traits. Like, you're okay, so you're a team player. Well, what does that really mean? As a team player? What types of traits are you bringing to the table to support and embody and deliver teamwork across the sales organization and the company as a whole? So we look for very specific things when it comes to ownership. Ownership. I just mentioned teamwork. Let's go right to ownership, because that's my favorite of the five. And by the way, I have my own. I add to it, it's a little asterisk for the sales team.
- [06:36]
B
I'd love the. I'd love to hear those for the sales team.
- [06:38]
D
Well, yeah, it's. It's speed. You know, we talk about urgency. Okay, but speed, I love speed. Do everything fast. I think prospects like that. But anyway, going back to. To ownership, it seems like a very. An obvious question to ask a candidate that is high performant, has great numbers on their resume. Top performer, President's Club, 120%, 150% of plan. Fantastic. And we love to talk about that. That's the easy one. That's the one they're expecting you to ask. Tell me about the time when you lost the deal. And then do not interrupt. Just let them answer. And I usually will infuse with tell me more. I don't lead the witness. You got to be really careful when interviewing people because it's super easy to lead the witness by just giving them clues as to what you're looking for.
- [07:33]
B
That's a good point.
- [07:34]
D
I don't want to disclose that in any way. Tell me more. That's it. And see where it goes. And the longer they take to answer the question, the more that they will reveal about their character and the traits that I may be looking for in that person.
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B
And in that one question, you might discover more than one of their behavioral traits, is what you're saying.
- [07:57]
D
Oh, I think that's a much better way to put it, John. Precisely right. I'm going to describe what about the.
- [08:02]
B
One where they go. Where you said something goes sideways. So like Mike Tyson said, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. So.
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C
Yes.
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B
What do you try to uncover to see what's going to happen when something goes sideways, whether it's a deal or customer implementation? What trade are you Trying to find there.
- [08:21]
D
Are you calm, cool and collected. Cliche as it is, it really matters, especially when we're doing everything over zoom. At least the lion's share of what we're doing. If you are, if you display any type of panic, rush decision, guesswork, it compromises your. I mean, you should be a subject matter expert, a consultant when you're in these opportunities. And I'm talking specifically about large enterprise sales, not plg. Right, Right. That person on the other end of the phone is looking for cues, always. And what's their motive? What are they going to do? How are they going to respond? Are they my champion? Are they going to fight for me on the other side of the fence? So, you know, uncovering these, these specific traits, especially when things go wrong, are really, really important because I'll, I'll learn through that back and forth in that process. If they're going to call me right away or they're going to wait three days, are they going to wait five days, or are they going to call somebody else? Which is fine, get somebody else's opinion, but the buck technically stops with me. So just tell me, let's go. What's, what's the bad news? Put it on the table, and together we figure out what our play is.
- [09:42]
B
Yeah. Well, talk about, let's say, why don't we pick the top three? There's a lot of traits in what you, you know, described, you know, your company values, and also some of the other key traits. But what would you say are the top three that you absolutely have to have? If you narrowed it down, you can only have three.
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D
Number one is hard work.
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B
Okay.
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D
Being. Working 24 hours a day.
- [10:08]
B
Let's give them to me first. I'll go back to them. So hard work. What's the other two?
- [10:13]
D
Are you curious?
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B
Curious. Okay.
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D
And are you a team player?
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B
Okay, let's go through them then.
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D
And it's, it's tough, hard work.
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B
How do you uncover hard work? How would you, how would you do that?
- [10:30]
D
So, by the way, it's hard for me to put those in order.
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B
All right. They don't have to be 1, 2, 3, but they're the top three.
- [10:38]
D
I say them out loud, I'm like, oh, wait a minute. No, number three should be number one. That's kind of like where my brain went after I had said that. But from, for hard work. And we had a candidate do this today. They deliver a presentation to a panel. And it's very common in, in our profession to do that.
- [10:55]
C
Yeah.
- [10:57]
D
But what we Ask is that they actually present our solution back to us. Not what they're currently representing, but ours. So that makes it a little bit more difficult and we provide little to no information to them at all. The website is the library. Go to the library. It's all there. Go find it. And by the way, if you want to take steps outside of the process you have with me to learn more about what we're looking for, fine. Like use whatever means you want to use to learn as much as you can about us and our customers and our outcomes. And that really presents itself. We don't give templates, we don't give any guidance. Maybe a small little snippet from an sdr. You know, when an inbound lead comes in, they capture a couple of banned questions, maybe probably not even banned at this point because we kind of changed it a little bit. But we give them very little information. And within that 30 minute window, we learn a lot about hard work. Did they, you know, create discovery questions that are specific to the Nucleus value proposition? Did they go out and learn and understand about existing customers? Did they read the case studies? Did they go to the videos that they have? Heck, have they even taken a look at some of the technical artifacts that we publish? White papers, tech briefs, maybe even documentation? Candidate we had today shocked me. And I, and I literally mean shocked me. I have not seen a candidate in, I say, four months in the search for this territory where someone took that time and energy. I would say I could put that person up against someone that's been here for six months or a year and they'd probably do just as well in that discovery and that presentation of our solution. So that there, that it's a, it's a lot of work. But the ones that really do it well and are thoughtful and take the time, it's, it stands out.
- [12:58]
B
Yeah, well, in there, in that hard work, you know, you talked about diligence, they put the time in, you said energy. But once you do all that hard work and diligence and everything, you have to put it together in a comprehensive and simple way for people to understand, which sounds like this person did. That's also a lot about their, their intellect also. One, they can actually go out and get the information. That's kind of hard work. Two, you gotta assimilate all that information, you gotta make sense of it, you know, and then you have to be able to articulate it. There's many different stages there.
- [13:30]
D
Oh, and you have to, you have to be curious, massively curious.
- [13:36]
C
Right.
- [13:36]
D
You can't just stop at, you know, a one sentence answer because we're gonna ask you a lot of questions, not stump the chump. We're not about that at all. But we want to know that you've poked around, that you've looked at these use cases, that you truly understand what's driving that use case and that outcome. And those that can put that together succinctly in under 30 minutes, they can create new slides if they want to, most of them do, and present it without a sales engineer. Obviously, you're running solo in front of four or five people that certainly know more about the product than you do, and you remain calm, cool and collective.
- [14:18]
B
Yes, that's difficult.
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D
It is very difficult.
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B
I know they know the subject matter probably better than you do, but you.
- [14:25]
D
Know, that happened today and why we've got, we've ours, we have our Slack channel going during the presentation. Derek, why would you ask that question? I have no idea what the answer to that question is. Derek's like, chaz, don't worry, Just, just wait. See where this goes. I was like, okay, Derek. And lo and behold, what we discovered in that question to the candidate. We would expect the candidate to say, look, I don't know, let me, let me get back to you. That's the basic thing. But he said, look, I know I don't know the full answer, but I'm going to give you what I do know. We were like, wait a minute. So he did take that one extra step. He was curious enough to go one step further, Right. So I'm like, okay, here's an AE that if in a situation, whether it's at a trade show, a VAR event, has to do a first meeting, solo can hold his ground despite whether it's a C level or someone that's day to day, Right. And that I really appreciate that in the candidate. It's not just enough to regurgitate a 30 second elevator pitch, but understand it enough to be valuable and to have an opinion. Right?
- [15:37]
C
Yeah. I encourage the interviewer and the interviewee to consider this statement. You are a walking audition for what it's going to be like. If you're a salesperson and you're interviewing, you're a walking audition for what you're going to be like as a seller. If you are a sales leader, you are a walking audition for what it's going to be like to be led by you. And so I think that I work with a lot of people that are getting ready to do an interview or people that are getting ready To. On either side of it. And I always say that to them. I say, you're a walking audition. And I think what comes out of your mouth and the way that you handle yourself is exactly what people are going to expect on what they're going to get. That is what they are. That is, they're not interpreting your resume. They're not interpreting. They're interpreting how you handle yourself during that interview and before this. Like, when we're picking these character traits, I think it's really, really important that it's not done at a singular level. So, like, whatever they are, you called them Chaz, you called them cultural. I think you called them cultural traits, cultural values. Those have to be shared amongst the entire company, and we have to have agreement on. Okay, what does that. So, like, let's say it's hard work. Okay. What does that mean for us in our company? Hard work in our company looks like something. Because everybody has their own definition of what hard work is. And we want to make sure that when we spot, we know exactly when we see it, we know exactly when we spot it. So that takes some preparation. Before we even get those candidates engaged, we're like, okay, what is hard work? What is hard work? Is the competency, let's say, or the trait. What does that look like in action? And how would we measure that? I think that's really, really important because somebody could say, well, yeah, that guy. That. That. That person, she's a hard worker. And another person could say, well, how do we know that? I didn't hear anything that was like, whether she was a hard worker or not. So it's really, really important to whatever those are, that everybody agrees with them and they map for our company.
- [18:03]
D
These are really excellent points, Cap. What you call it an audition?
- [18:08]
C
Yeah, walking audition.
- [18:09]
D
I gotta use that word. I'm sure you've all encountered this where you have the best candidate on paper. You look at their background and it's really incredible, right? They come highly recommended from references or maybe a recruiter internal referral. Everything's lining up. And then they get to that last step and they come in with a little bit of swagger, like, hey, I know what I'm doing. I've done this before. You should just do what I go along with the Chaz. And it's very hard in those situations when, you know, you've got someone that has. Has the track record, but isn't treating it like an audition. What we see is laziness.
- [18:55]
C
Totally. And that.
- [18:57]
D
And to your point about. Is everyone on the same page about how we measure these certain skills, but rather these traits. We'll get the skills later, I'm sure, but on the trade side, and I even said it on our team call today, look, all of you are going through a bunch of interviews right now with a whole load of candidates. I said, remember? And we have a score sheet. Everyone fills out the score sheet. How did they rank? Is it higher?
- [19:16]
B
No, higher.
- [19:17]
D
What's your. We do all of that, but it always comes back to, you've got the notebook. Teamwork, ownership, care, communication and innovation. That's what you're interviewing for. And I don't ask it any way you want. Like, tell me about a hard time in your life. What did you do? Right. Tell me about a time you lost the deal and it was because of the product. What did you do? Was it really because of the product that is woven in to everything that we do? Not just hiring, but other aspects of our business as well and our team. But kudos to our founders for just drilling that since day one, in the 31 months that I've been here.
- [19:55]
C
So, Chaz, that's not just a. That's just not an interview template of character traits. That then becomes the way that you onboard people. So what does teamwork mean at where we are in our company? That's also how you coach and develop people. That's how you assess people. That's how you promote and demote people. That becomes kind of a master record of not just sourcing traits, but traits that will be used consistently throughout your entire life cycle or tenure with that company. I think that's really important because a lot of times companies say, okay, we hire for this and then we assess for that, or we coach and develop for this, or we promote and delegate, or we promote and relegate for these reasons. And I think it's really confusing for a culture. Does that make sense?
- [20:56]
D
Oh, it makes great. It makes perfect sense to me. Part of what we do here is, you know, 30 days, 68, 90 day reviews. When you first get started, of course. And there's like we get sent out a questionnaire to the, to the employee and to the manager and they do an assessment, but it always ends with, what's your score on those five values?
- [21:23]
C
Yeah.
- [21:24]
D
And for us, if you're in any type of position for some sort of merit increase compensation, stock, whatever it is, if you don't score a five out of five on those five values, it's not happening. I love that it's not happening. You really, I wish I could take credit for that. I can't. It's the founders. It was really great that they do that. It makes the conversations very, very constructive. Yeah, Chaz, but I crushed my number in Q2. Look at all the pipeline I generated. Well, look at how many meetings I did. Blah, blah, blah. Great. I'm proud of you. But you are not measuring up on ownership. And when you do not do that, that has a ripple effect across the team and across the different departments, which, by the way, I have to have a great relationship with. So if you undermine that relationship that I have with product and you need a feature by, you know, February 5th, whatever, what are you doing?
- [22:24]
C
Right?
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D
I mean, pull yourself. Pull yourself back in. So, yes, I want to go back.
- [22:31]
B
Though, Chaz and Cap, to the person that came into the challenge that you had and you said they had swagger and just didn't put the effort in because they thought they. What I think I heard is they basically know it all. And you called it laziness. And actually, I've seen that movie before, multiple times. And what it to me, if I'm hearing it right, it's really that the person is not coachable, and they're not going to be adaptable. They think they know it all. I know everything. You're not going to be able to coach me on everything. You got to take it for what I say that this is right, and this is how I sell. So what happens is, as your company grows and as the product changes, the market changes, the customers change, the competition changes, and you try to coach that person, they're not coachable. And when they're not coachable, they're not adaptable. And that same person that you might hire now, they might sell pretty good for a year and a half to two years, in my experience. And then two years later, you're going to look at them and go, everything's changed. That person hasn't changed at all. They're a dinosaur. And then you have to get rid of them. Seen that movie so many times, and.
- [23:48]
D
Unfortunately, I've learned that lesson, and the consequences are major. Yeah, it's us.
- [23:58]
B
I don't think it's actually laziness. Well, you could tie it to laziness, but it's really that they think they know everything already and they're not coachable. Not adaptable.
- [24:06]
D
I don't agree with that, Kel. I agree with it. And what can happen, and it's happened to me, is when you have one of those people in your organization and they are, let's say they're performing, I find that I can cover. I try to cover for them.
- [24:27]
C
Right.
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D
Because maybe it's someone I worked with before, maybe it's a very well known quantity, highly regarded, and I find myself trying to fill in those gaps that they have on the values which you could probably get away with for a very short period of time.
- [24:42]
B
Right.
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D
What will happen is your team or other departments will discover these things and then they start asking questions about you, like, why is Chaz accepting this? And Chaz tells me one thing, but I see another.
- [24:58]
B
Yeah, why, why, why does. And then they ask the question, why does Chaz not see what we see, which really undermines your leadership?
- [25:05]
D
Done. I'm cooked.
- [25:07]
B
Yeah, cooked.
- [25:09]
C
I John, I think that this point is like so critical, this adaptability and the ability to handle change. I think what happens when people are going to other companies, I've always found, I think you're onto something really, really big. Because if I show myself as adaptable, this is some unfortunate thinking. If I show myself as adaptable, if I show myself as being able to handle change in some weird way, it shows a weakness that I don't know what I should know. So I'm going to put myself in a position of appearing like I know exactly what somebody is asking me at all times. And I've watched this movie a lot. When people, especially today, when people move from company to company and it's easier to do that today than it was back in the day, 30 years ago. If you were moving every two years in a career, that was a problem. Today, it's kind of an expectation. There's no judgment. That's just how a lot of people do that today. But what I feel is, here's what I see down the road. What I see down the road is that I ask questions like, give me an example, I'm the interviewer. Give me an example of where you felt like your company didn't trust you. And that is a great question because I can back my way into these situations where the answers that they give me was more about they were protecting maybe what they didn't know and they didn't really feel comfortable and open enough to receive coaching. When I was coaching, I always liked to say this, look, it's not a problem not to know. Because I would, when people would fight me, I'd say, look, it's not a problem not to know, but it is a crime punishable by death. Not to be doing anything about it.
- [27:16]
B
Yeah. Not to ask.
- [27:18]
C
Right. So I just wanted to make that point that you said, John, in the, in the, you know, it can show up as things like micromanagement. It can show up in things like trust. If you have any employees right now going into the new year and they're telling you like, you know, I don't give any feedback, like I don't think that you trust me or there's micromanagement going on, dig into that because that's a double edged blade. It's a double edged blade. There could be some things that you are doing that are causing them to say that, but oftentimes I also find that there are things that people are unwilling to divulge or just a bad comfort level. And it's so much wasted heat in that manager employee relationship where you're like fighting with an individual, you're trying to help them and they're just constantly trying to buffer you so they don't have to talk about what they don't know.
- [28:11]
B
I think it's really, I don't even know what that is because I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist or anything, but sometimes I wonder if they have some sort of issue, whether it's insecurity or they have to be in control or they have to know or what it, what, what it is that some people are not coachable. They just don't coaching. And they take it three times the same coaching. And you really put a lot of time in them and they never change. Yeah, you don't have that. That's why I think coachability and adaptability go together because number one, you have to be coachable. Then if you're coachable now, you actually have to have the courage to look in the mirror and say, I need to change, I need to adapt. And now you actually have to go through the motions of adapting. And for some people that could be fearful, they could be scared of that.
- [29:03]
C
Well, Johnny, it's like when you think about it, there's people that spend a long period of time to figure out how to get a groove or to get emotion. And I saw this in athletics, like people that didn't want to learn a different way to do something because they knew how hard it was to get to the level that they were at. But I also found those same individuals were the ones that really didn't reach their ceiling because they figured that they were at a point that they were at their kind of like their best level and then they kind of protected their best level. And I always found that those people really never met their potential. It's the people that were fantastic athletes or fantastic sellers. And it also bounces up against some of these other character traits, like curiosity. Curiosity is also related to this conversation. Those people that aren't adaptable and those people that aren't coachable sometimes are auditioning in the same way as not being curious because they don't want to get into that dialogue about what would be different than we're already talking about.
- [30:13]
B
No doubt. Yeah, I've seen the movie. I'm with you, Ken.
- [30:16]
C
Really? Really.
- [30:17]
B
I'm picking up what you're dropping down.
- [30:21]
C
I have somebody that I love, love that I've worked with for a long, long time, and I know that when they pull the trust card on me and they do it, and I know that that's their last resort with me, when they're feeling like they're getting pushed to a limit that they're uncomfortable with. It used to drive me nuts. I used to be like, how many times you going to ask me if I trust you or not? Like, it pisses me off. However, I realized that what they were really saying is I'm really at my wall of my ability to adapt or change in the situation. So I really just. And they don't even know it. They want you just to back off. And so then, because this is about getting intimate, John is past the interview process, but it's going to show up later. Cause, by the way, that person still had. That person had that trait 20 years ago when I first met them, and they still have that trait now.
- [31:13]
B
The difference always shows up later.
- [31:15]
C
Yeah. And the difference is I miss.
- [31:16]
B
Things you missed in the interview process. Will show up six months later.
- [31:20]
C
I know them well now. And so it's my job as the leader to know. Okay, when that card gets pulled, for example, on the trust card, it doesn't piss me off. I know that I am pushing them to a comfort level, and I just bring it out. I just ask them, like, what do you. You know, we just get to the point there. But. So I like where this conversation is going because if we don't start with the things that Chaz is talking about, we never really know what people. People's inner workings are. And we never really know, like you say it's going to show up later on. It's a great opportunity to find that out in the beginning so you know exactly what you're dealing with. And we all have them. We all have our little idiosyncrasies or our little, you know, as a matter of fact, when I. When I do, I love this One, when I do reference calls, like, people don't do reference calls anymore. I'm like, what do you mean you don't do reference calls?
- [32:15]
D
Well, they're all today, absolutely.
- [32:18]
C
They see they're only going to give you a good reference. I'm like, I take everyone as an opportunity and I call and I say, hey, we love to. They'll say, hey, I'm calling for a reference for Chaz. And they give me a reference for Chaz. It's a glowing reference, blah, blah, blah. And I say, yeah, we love Chaz too. That's why I'm calling like now. Now give me an example of an area of opportunity where you've worked with Chaz before in the past, and it was an area of opportunity where you could really help him grow and develop. And what you're really asking for is what does Chaz struggle with?
- [32:54]
B
Right?
- [32:54]
C
I help Chaz. And I'm telling you, these same references that are willing to glowingly tell you everything about Chaz, they love Chaz. And if you ask it in a way as how can I help Chaz be successful, they're going to tell you about something that Chaz struggles with. I found it to just be.
- [33:12]
B
That's a great one.
- [33:13]
C
It's a lost art, Johnny. Most people don't check references anymore.
- [33:18]
B
Like I'm on the boards companies and been the CRO with people that worked directly for me and I see that they get hired and I know the person that was on the board of the CEO or something. They never even call. And I'm like, wow, that's really interesting.
- [33:33]
C
Yeah. Sorry, Chaz, you said you did two today?
- [33:36]
D
Yeah, no, I did one today, but I asked the candidate for two and I just asked an even more direct question of that reference. What do they need to work on? Just tell me. You know, and you usually get something that's very usable, right? And when you call back, the candidate said, hey, I talked to two references. What do you think about A, B or C, whatever it was that that reference said you needed to work on? And there I'll yet again discover something new about the character of that candidate. Oh, yeah, you know what? That's. That is something I've been working on and I still need to close the gap. Here's where I think I'm at. I'm like, good, he's thinking about it. He's got situational awareness or self awareness. Like, I can work with that.
- [34:25]
C
So let me tell you where else it's going to show up in your hard work. Like if you just wait 24 hours, 24 hours, the hard worker is going to already call that reference and say, how did it go? And that person that gave the reference is going to be scratching their head a little bit and go, well, it was great. I guess there was something that came up though, about this and I told the time that you were totally freaked out about the comp plan and you almost quit, but we talked about it in a way that was really positive for you. And so when you go to follow up with that candidate about the reference, now you've got another opportunity. Like, that's hard work. It's not like people just blowing that off. It amazes me. When can I afford. John? Yeah.
- [35:10]
D
No, I was just thinking on the traits.
- [35:12]
B
Yeah, go for it.
- [35:14]
D
Cap goes through this.
- [35:15]
B
Yeah.
- [35:16]
D
Obviously component of all of this is patience.
- [35:19]
C
Yes.
- [35:20]
D
And I think when you, when you think about the pressure that you can get from above, like chess, you've had this open headcount. It can't be that hard. It can't be. The market is full. There's all these, like, there's great people out there. It can't possibly be that hard to find someone. It can't take that long. Like, well, contraire, I'm in like, patience. Patience is crucial in all of this because when it's when you take your time and you slow down, the more that candidate talks or speaks, they're going to show their true colors as things progress. And you go through all these stages. That's what, that's why the first step for me, I just have an introductory call, like, can I have a conversation with you? And does it feel comfortable?
- [36:09]
B
What happens, Chaz, if you hire the guy that came in with the swagger? Theoretically, and maybe you've even seen this in your experience in the past.
- [36:18]
C
The.
- [36:18]
B
Person is an A player. It's pretty obvious they can sell. You're an early stage startup. Let's say you're just looking to get bookings at this stage. Not like you're adding 50 sales reps a quarter.
- [36:33]
D
No.
- [36:33]
B
So what happens if you hire that a player, but that a player isn't the right match for your company's culture? As you outlined what happens, you're having.
- [36:42]
D
A very uncomfortable conversation with your manager, usually the COO or the CEO. CEO. And I, I do not like that conversation. It's. It's borderline embarrassing to have to have that conversation. Because why?
- [36:55]
B
Because they uncovered some of the culture issues or, or compatibility uncovered.
- [37:00]
D
Yeah, they uncovered most likely the character traits that you already knew about that you were playing cover up for.
- [37:08]
B
Yeah.
- [37:08]
D
And it's painful and you have to come clean. Said yes. I knew it, I saw it, I ignored it. They were, they got to their number early, well before the end of the year or whatever the fiscal period is. And I, I figured that that production could cover up any warts, for lack of a better term. But it doesn't. And what will happen in early stage, the founders are still at least for me, I make not a requirement, but I ask that there's like you don't pass the torch from founders led sales to sales. I believe that your true founders should always be a part of in some way shape or form the sales process. So what kind of happened is there can be a meeting that you're not a part of and your direct report is there with the CEO and you know, that character trait presents itself. Your boss is like, are you kidding me? You what? What? Like that's off. That's not good ground to be standing on. You know, unfortunately, you know, I've, I've learned that.
- [38:20]
B
All right, so let's say, so what did you have? Let's say, let's call them five key character traits. When the person has four and a.
- [38:30]
C
Half.
- [38:33]
B
It'S the end of the interview. Do you sit down with yourself or with the team and say what are the, what's the risk in hiring this person? And can we, to use your terminology before, can we cover for that half a character trait that's missing?
- [38:56]
D
So the answer to the question is if you're four and a half, you don't get hired. Now it takes, it's not easy to come to that conclusion.
- [39:04]
C
Right.
- [39:04]
D
Because we do make the decision. It could override. I could, but that's not, I don't want. That doesn't foster teamwork. So if we've discovered something, they're super close, but they're not quite there.
- [39:21]
C
Now.
- [39:21]
D
I think it, it, I think it matters, John. And what it is that what the gap is, right? If we've got these five character traits that we're looking for and that trait has been recognized by the candidate, maybe in the reference call or you know, we talk about the engagement, how well it went and how well it did or what didn't go well, and they can stand up and say even maybe, maybe even before you ask them, because this has happened, hey, I didn't do a good job on that. I really didn't. You know, can I do it again? Or this is why it happened. I think that that context matters. And I'm trying to think back and, you know, all the hires, you know, have we made a concession because we understood what the gap was. We agreed that it could be addressed, coachable. Right. And it wasn't going to be a concern. But as a first response, if you're not a five on the five, we're not going to do it. And we'll just interview one more candidate. It's like, okay, let's interview one more candidate.
- [40:29]
C
So I want to talk about this, because this is the underlying chant in my gut, and I learned this under you, Johnny, at ptc, is that recruiting is not an event, it's a process. And.
- [40:46]
B
I'm going to add an adjective. It's a never ending, never ending. It's a constant process.
- [40:52]
C
And when we're talking about recruiting, I just want people to understand this. The best hires that we've ever hired are the not in play players. And what I mean is, is they're working. Oh, they're working and producing in another company.
- [41:11]
B
Yeah.
- [41:12]
C
And the likelihood of you getting them out of that company in two weeks or what have you, because you haven't been recruiting and you got to fill an open position. All this stuff we're talking about, throw it out the window for most companies. They're just like trying to get people to fill roles. But if you're a leader and you're listening to this, the best leaders I ever worked for. It started off on a forecast call. And the first question on the forecast call was, how many interviews did you do this week? And I was like. And I was all ready to defend my number and talk about my number and talk about the big deals. I was so ready to go. And they said, how many interviews did you do this week? And I was like, well, none. And they said, well, why none? And I said, well, I don't have any open headcount. And that was the kiss of death. That was the kiss of death. And what I learned was that's when.
- [42:03]
B
You got hit with an overhand race.
- [42:05]
C
That's right. What I learned, the best thing I ever learned about recruiting was the rule of three. You should be recruiting for three people. Always for three people. You should have in your pipeline three people. I was like, why? Well, somebody's going to get promoted. Because if you're not getting people promoted in your organization, you're not working in a growing organization, then you're. You're not growing, you're dying.
- [42:31]
B
So that person you're promoting is typically the best AE on the team.
- [42:36]
C
Right.
- [42:37]
B
You're Going to lose. If you have five people, you're going to lose your best person to a promotion.
- [42:42]
C
Better be the company.
- [42:44]
B
Companies grow, and you're going to lose your best person constantly to promotions.
- [42:48]
C
That's number one. Number two, somebody's going to get demoted, somebody going to get taken out, somebody's going to get reassigned, or God forbid we can use the word fired, somebody's going to get fired or moved out of the business. Doesn't make people. It just means we're. We're growing and we're constantly up upgrading our talent.
- [43:08]
B
Well, the average, you know, enterprise software company has around 25% churn.
- [43:14]
C
That's right.
- [43:15]
B
Now, this churn is between losing reps that go out the door and losing reps to promotions.
- [43:22]
C
Yeah. Then number three, And I bet you all three of us on this podcast, all three of us have been in this category. Somebody's gonna surprise you.
- [43:35]
B
Yes.
- [43:36]
C
Something's gonna happen. Something's gonna happen with their family. Something's gonna happen in their life. Something's gonna happen that is totally out of control of the situation that you're managing. And they're just gonna go. They just gotta go.
- [43:48]
B
I made sales calls. I'll tell you a story. I made sales calls with a guy named J.D. i won't say his last name. His. His dad was a football coach. His brother was a football coach. He played, you know, D1 and then went pro. And it was a great rep made. I made a ton of sales calls with him. We'd go out at night and, you know, go to dinner afterwards and go to, like, the basketball games and hockey games and stuff like that. And one day he walks in my office, totally surprises me, says, I got a job with the Denver Broncos and I'm quitting. And I was floored. I thought I was really close to this guy. We shared so much stuff, but he kept that in the background. Was I surprised? No, I was shell shocked. Shell shocked. And that left a big gap on the team that I had to try to fulfill because at that stage of the company, he was the only person in that territory because we were like a raw star.
- [44:46]
C
Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about. When you think about. If you're dealing with the rule of three, and I think I can think of guys. Peter Schmidt. I'm thinking about some guys in Germany. Peter Schmidt. Christopher Rummel. Just. I don't want to alienate him, but I could list a bunch of names. These are people that took me months, seven months. At least one of them took a year to recruit I got a guy on Force management staff right now, Brian Walsh. Took me 10 years to recruit this guy to Force Management. He's one of the best people what he does in the world at what he does. And I knew he was going to be, but he was a not in play player. And so I just want to make sure that that kind of comes across. A lot of times people get out there, pad of paper and they're, they're talking about, okay, this is what I do for recruiting. And if you don't have it as a mindset to talk about a competency and a characteristic, if you're a leader and you don't have this, what we're talking about, you're going to struggle. You're going to struggle being successful.
- [45:48]
B
And I'm sure Chaz has seen some of that movie too.
- [45:51]
D
Well, this rule of three is actually, I've never been able to articulate it. What you're describing, Cap, is something that I needed to pay more attention to. I have multiple recruiters. I've been fired by recruiters because I'm too picky, I take too long. You know, the message from the recruiter always is you got to hire fast in this. It's always this market. I'm like, what's this market? Well, it's always this market, but no one can tell me what the market is. But you got to hire this person faster, they're gone. I'm like, well, so be it. I'll take that risk. Right. Because making the wrong decision, that's really.
- [46:29]
B
Saying is, you know, just like you ask your a to build pipeline, as any leader out there has to build pipeline of potential reps that they're going to hire in their territories. And if you're not and who do you do that with? You do that with the not employee players. You get on LinkedIn, you look at somebody, you say, hey, I'm going to be in town in Chicago on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I heard you're a great rep. This is not a recruiting call, but I network throughout the Chicago area. You know, would you mind it if I bought you a coffee or a beer and just get to know you? You get to know me. That's all you got to do. Now you know a lot more about that person and you do that over the course of time until you got an opening in Chicago.
- [47:18]
C
Yeah, it's lost. It's lost art. It's a lost art. Johnny. The other thing on recruiters, Chaz, that, you know, they put a lot of pressure on us, right? When they're like, hey, it's a tough market. You got to get back to this guy. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I bring it to them, too. And I'm like, because, Chaz, you do such a good job on having these characteristics, and they're measurable. I call it the highlighter test. When a recruiter calls me and says, hey, you gotta. You gotta see this person. I'm like, why? And you better be using my language. Not a bunch of resumes saying, stop me when you see something you like. I don't want to hear that. I want to say, based upon our profile, why do I need to interview this person? And I think that's a great place to start. And then the second thing is, I find companies that are out supporting us. We're leaders inside of companies, and that out supporting us. We are so slow. So the recruiters are right on some things. We are so slow in our internal processes. We've got a profile, and we've gone through the interviews. We've ranked, we've done. We hire the freaking people. It's like, what would drives me nuts is you'll find somebody and they'll be. They'll fit the profile. It's like, I had somebody tell me the other day, n or N plus one. It's like, n means you know them personally, or N plus one, you know somebody who knows them personally. You've done your due diligence, and now the CFO or somebody inside the company is going, hey, let's wait two weeks before this, or three weeks or whatever. That drives me nuts. That's a company that just doesn't get how to acquire talent. Does that make sense to you? So it's both ways?
- [48:58]
D
Yes. Yeah, they can turn a candidate off. You can't.
- [49:04]
C
You can't get an offer letter out for three.
- [49:08]
B
Talk about an audition. How long to get an offer letter out after you told the candidate they have their job is an audition for what it's like to work in that company? I used to swear by that.
- [49:19]
C
Amen.
- [49:20]
B
Sometimes when I wanted somebody, if they were sitting in my office, I literally would say, do you have a minute? I got to go to the restroom. I go, I wasn't going to the restaurant. I went down to HR and told them to print out the offer letter. I brought the offer letter back and put it on the desk.
- [49:33]
C
Yeah.
- [49:33]
B
So you ready to sign it? No. Why not? I got to talk to my wife. I go, great, let's call her.
- [49:42]
C
Yeah.
- [49:43]
B
You know.
- [49:48]
C
Letter out in one day today, and I'll Tell you, it's a freaking unicorn. People just, they don't. They forget. Like, we're asking these candidates to be a walking audition. But as companies, we're not a walking audition for bringing talent in.
- [50:01]
D
You know, I think 48 hours with the contingency in there because you got to do some other stuff behind the scenes with hr, put a little contingency in there. But I completely agree with this wholeheartedly that you want to get. That does set the tone, John. You've got to get that outrider if you're really serious about the candidate and they've taken the time to do all the work that you asked them to do and then they crush it. And then you wait and wait and wait.
- [50:25]
C
Poof.
- [50:26]
D
They don't want to work for you. No, I call you up because I need help in a deal, and then you wait three days to respond to me.
- [50:33]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [50:34]
D
Message. Is that sending?
- [50:35]
B
Yeah. Now, Chaz, what about. We talked a lot about traits. What about skills and knowledge? Are there certain skills, like top couple skills or top areas of knowledge that you have to have in a, in a rep?
- [50:57]
D
Oh, absolutely.
- [50:59]
B
You want to talk about any of that?
- [51:01]
D
Yeah, let's talk about some of those skills.
- [51:03]
B
And. All right.
- [51:04]
D
The large enterprise play, you know, separating from plg, I think they're very different. And everything that I want to share on this topic is having to do with large enterprise sales. Number one's communication, whether it's written, verbal zoom or in person presence, you have to be an excellent communicator. You have to love your craft. You have to practice and practice and practice. You have to take certainly in the early stages, take as many meetings as you can get. Let's just stretch our legs. Let's make sure that we've got our messaging down. We're ready for objections. We're ready for the competition. We're ready for. Well, I'm not sure this is really the right fit. Like all of those things all wrapped up in communication. And that presents itself in many stages during the interview process. But communication is a big one. And then I don't know how many you want. Is it like the top three or the 20?
- [51:59]
B
Yeah, that's, that's one big one, actually, because people have to be, you know, as Johnny would call it, audible ready on a lot of those things. The top 10 most common objections, the elevator pitch, all of those things factor into being audible ready. When you know, it's almost like you don't, you don't have. I always used to say, if you have to think, then you don't know. So there's a certain core of knowledge that you have to basically have where I can wake you up at 2:30 in the morning and ask you these 10 things and you just rattle them off because you don't have to think. If you have to think, then to your point you're not really communicating yet. Because to be a really great salesperson, you not only have to hear what somebody's saying, you have to basically truly understand by listening effectively.
- [52:45]
D
Right.
- [52:45]
B
And if you, if there's core things, then you should know without thinking, then it allows you to sit there and really be part of the conversation with the customer.
- [52:59]
D
Yeah, I started jotting down these skills and I'll come to it, but listening was one of them. The second one, that again not in a static rank. You have to be elite. You have to have leadership skills. You have to lead the opportunity, you have to lead the company. Like if you're doing a six, seven figure deal, the large Fortune 500, you better be able to lead that opportunity and everything that's associated with it. You better be able to lead the engineer that's working on the feature request that customers or rather that prospect is requesting. You have to be able to lead me like, hey Chaz, I need you on this call next Tuesday at 3:00pm this is what you're going to say, this is what you're not going to say. These are all the things you need to know. Here's the gap. I ran the diagnostic tool, thank you very much for medpic. I ran it. Here's where we're at. Like you've got to lead it. Absolutely have to lead it. And that also means you've got to be able to manage, manage the opportunity, manage the project. Like we can rely on the prospects. Project manager, that's okay. We're taking on this big project. It's funded. These are all the people I got to be involved. They have a project manager. Well, we need one too. Right. And you as the seller needs to be able to handle the load. Right. There could be 20 different decision makers on a large enterprise deal. And I really mean that. I've seen that and I believe it happens all the time. You better discover who your dark horses and all of that. So you have to have management, you have to be a manager, more or less. Yeah, I do. Whatever skills are applied to someone in our position has to be visible and mastered in a large enterprise cell with an ae, listening, you know, listening. Okay. I'm not just waiting for my Turn to talk. I don't know what movie that was. There's some great line and some movie in there. But are you taking the notes? You're writing it down, right? Sure. We got Gong recordings and it's awesome and I can use AI and get a nice succinct know message to shoot right back to the prospect that captures all of that. I agree that's very hando and we should be using that. But if I'm going to learn something, I got to write it down, right? I'm old school and old, so I write everything down like I want to know. So are you listening? Are you a great manager? Do you lead? Are you the quarterback? We've all talked about that in deals. Are you quarterback in the deal? Maybe that's all of it wrapped up into one skill set. Are you a great quarterback of your opportunities? You know, Objection. Handling certainly is important negotiation. Like you're talking to a champion and things are going great and the next thing you know, you're in procurement and they don't like you. They don't care about their incentive to grind you and beat you down to a pulp. Do you handle that pressure? Do you have the skill, the experience to deal with that? Are you intimidated by numbers or not? Like, it's a long list, John.
- [55:55]
B
But no, no.
- [55:56]
D
You know, I like the character traits first because I do believe that with many of the skills, if you have the right experience on your team and you hired a diverse team in terms of skills and traits, we can help each other out.
- [56:10]
B
Right?
- [56:10]
D
You get on a sales call. This is what I learned. I tried this. Can I. Maybe I can teach you this skill to be better equipped for that time when it's going to come. Because it's coming. So let's get ready for it.
- [56:23]
B
See, I think, you know, if they have the brains, they're going to pick up the knowledge that you give them. And if they have the drive, I sometimes I call it a PhD, persistence, art and desire, then they're going to gain the skills that you need because skills are gained over time. If I want to be a great dartboard thrower, I'm going to have to commit to throwing a dart a thousand times a day. And if I'm not committed to developing that skill by doing a lot of repetitions, which is drive, I'm just never going to pick up that skill. I'm never going to master it. I'll be okay at it, but I'll never master it.
- [56:58]
D
Interesting.
- [57:01]
C
I like to go to one level a little bit Deeper, because I think this is. I get asked this all the time about knowledge and skills. And for me, I call the company responsibility. The company has responsibility to provide this knowledge. And I call them the answers to the four essential questions. What problems do we solve for our customers? Number one. Number two, how specifically do we solve those? Number three, how do we do it differently or better than anybody else? That's our differentiation. Number four, where have we done it before? Case studies, proof points, testimonials. That's the knowledge that every company has a responsibility to bring to a sales organization. Now the sales organization has the responsibility to apply that knowledge to create skill. And here are the top three that I see right now and that these are really, really sticking out for me. Number one skill that I see in enterprise sales right now is, and again, I'm just going one granular level lower than what we were talking about attaching to the biggest business issue facing your customer. So no matter what you're doing, you've got the ability to attach your technical requirements to business outcomes. And that's a skill. Different people are involved, different conversations are involved. That's a skill that can be taught. Number two.
- [58:23]
B
And Johnny, let me just add to that. The only way you get there goes to what Chad said. You have to be an amazing listener and a fantastic questioner.
- [58:33]
D
Oh, yeah.
- [58:33]
B
And that's how you're going to gain that knowledge, to attach yourself to the biggest business problem that your company, company's.
- [58:39]
C
Product can handle, where they all come together for sure. Another one is influencing decision criteria with your company's differentiation. You want to teach people how to win. Influence the customer decision criteria to make it their idea, the customer's idea. Influence it with your differentiation. That's a home run. It's a critical, critical skill.
- [59:00]
B
And well, again, that goes back to who's going to control the deal. The person that controls the criteria. The decision criteria controls the deal. So if you can control either, the customer can be in control, you're in control, the competition's in control. So if you're in control because you're defining the criteria, the other two are out of control. And the longer that a deal goes on, usually in the beginning, the customer's in control because they have the information that you need. But an effective questioning and listening AE can gather enough of that information, start to tie their differentiators to it. And now they are in control because now the customer says, that's interesting. Now they need information from you. Like, well, how does that work? How do we prove that? Well, Answers your question like, who else has done this before? And that's when the rep is in control.
- [59:52]
C
You got it. And then the third skill, which is wrapped up in everything, Giants. I'm trying to give you these things that you can actually put down on paper. You can test for or you can develop to, you can coach and develop, you can recruit for it. And the third one is you have to be a voracious qualifier. That's a skill. And if you're not dealing with med, pick, medic, I don't care, you're dealing with some type of qualification criteria, but your skill is not only to learn the knowledge of that, but how do you apply it into qualification of opportunities so you can accurately predict your number. And those three are home run, like right now, those are the top three. If I'm listening to this and somebody asked me, what are the top three skills for enterprise selling, what am I testing for, what am I interviewing for? What am I looking for to promote people to make them leaders? It's those three, I think they're really, really critical.
- [60:40]
B
And that last one and then Chaz, you know, you love to hear what you think too. That last one though goes to everything that you do. Meaning I used to always ask myself, why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I talking to this person? Why am I over here talking to this department? You know, why am I doing what I'm doing? So that goes for any leader, whether you're internal or externally talking to people. Why are you doing what you're doing? And it goes to deals, it goes to managing your time, it goes to pipeline, it goes to qualification, it goes to everything. You got to constantly ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing?
- [61:27]
D
You know, that qualification component of that skill set is actually when you look at, you know, managing a pipeline, of course, you know, what, what, what deal should I be working on? What deal should I not be working on, but. Or should I abandon for that matter, qualify out? But when you started to, to share those thoughts, John, what came to mind for me was something that someone had said to me many, many years ago and that was, if it's important to the customer, it's important to me and it should be important to us. And that statement sticks has stuck with me for 15 years when that person said that. And that's my qualification like mechanism, like who is my customer? Whether it's a prospect or somebody internally, like what's important to them and do I have alignment with it and does it make sense for the business. So I have my own like qualification process. You know, on a deal. I almost want to say it's pretty easy to qualify a deal in or out. I mean maybe it's because we've been doing it for so long, but on the all the other aspects in working with different departments in the company, I have to apply some sort of qualification mechanism to it. Is this something I should be spending my time on? And it's a really good point because as a leader in an early stage company, you're pulled in a thousand directions. Everyone wants a little piece of you like you in this meeting. I need you in that meeting. And you have have to decide which ones do I opt out of, which ones do I go all in on or which ones do I have someone participate in my place. Like there's this whole chain of events that goes around the qualification on of what is important and not important, at least as a sales organization and a sales leader. And cap your. I love your skill set. I love that breakdown of those, those three skill sets. And I'm thinking, oh gee, I mean I, I, I went too high level with, with John, but I still believe all of those things are critical and I love the drill down and going a little bit more specific on what's, what's actually needed. And I concur these are excellent ones and qualification. Well, I think it was even you that said it a long time ago, John, you need are we uniquely qualified to solve the problem? If we're not uniquely qualified, let's move on.
- [63:49]
B
Right.
- [63:50]
C
Right.
- [63:50]
B
And good.
- [63:52]
D
Really strong.
- [63:55]
C
I like what you just said, Chaz, when you said if it's important to the customer, it's important to us. And I call that like that's one of the character traits I think is it's an outside in mentality meaning not an inside out mentality. It's an outside in meaning that I know that I exist because there's somebody out there that has a problem or a pain that if I can make it big enough and I can relate it to my solutions to that problem in a way that creates urgency and creates, you know, a multiplying effect like that's as old as dirt. And you can tell whether people have an outside in mentality or not. If they're great listeners, they ask great questions, they, it just manifests itself. I actually think about companies. If I'm out there listening to this podcast and I'm interviewing and I'm interviewing for a company and I'm thinking about going to a company, I can judge Their outside in mentality just in how they deal with me. Because in this instance, I'm the customer for them. I could be the customer for them. And so anyways, I like that it's like outside in mentality. You're patient hold. Here's the problem. Now here comes my solution. They get it messed up.
- [65:11]
D
I wish it was my line. It isn't. I stole it from CD Carlos. I don't even remember saying it to me. But he said it so long ago. And it completely changed how I thought about being a seller. It takes you from me, me, me to them.
- [65:31]
B
Yes.
- [65:32]
D
And the prospect will pick up on that. Over not even instantly when they tell that you're there for them and you are their champion at your business. It's super powerful and I love using it. I think about it in every meeting. Okay, what would you know, Bob say from our customer? Does Would he agree that this is the right direction for us to be going in anyway? I'm digressing, but qualification. I mean, it's a thing.
- [66:02]
C
I like that I. There's another way to say that too, which I really like is you have to first make it all about them before you earn the right to make it all about you. And in a selling relationship, there is a point in time where you earn the right to make it all about you. And you're going to have your time to make it all about you. And you better be ready to do it. But in the beginning, it's about making about them first. And that goes back. It's human behavior. It's not sales. It's just human behavior.
- [66:32]
B
And you know when that happens, the deal actually goes from what I call goes from unpredictable steps. You don't know what's going to happen when you make this sales call. Then all of a sudden you're in control. Got a good champion, and now you know what's going to happen next. So the deal has gone from unpredictable to predictable. And that's when you're in control and that's when things change.
- [66:55]
D
And it's a term we use internally cap a lot. Have you earned the right to make that ask? And on today's call, we were talking about outbound and we're talking about the BDR SDR motion. What are we doing? Are you asking for something? Have you earned the right to even ask for it? I better not get a message from someone I don't know here. Chaz, why don't you just throw 15 minutes on my calendar and we can talk. Yeah, a pound sand moment Sorry, Eli, I'm not interested. Now, if you bring something to me that I can learn from or about for a problem I'm trying to solve or probably deal with, you know what? I'm going to read that message and I might take that meeting or I might set up that meeting. So earning. Earning the right. I love that. Yeah, Good.
- [67:48]
B
That was good conversation, guys. Really appreciate it. Jasmine, thank you, man.
- [67:54]
C
My pleasure, buddy. That's a great, great topic. I know we covered the. We covered a lot in the ocean there, but I think that it's great timing and I think that's a huge value add for leaders and for interviewers and interviewees that are listening. I think that was gold.
- [68:13]
D
Yeah, it was. It was awesome. I really appreciate it. The perspective you guys bring to the tables is super powerful. And all of us that listen to that podcast, super thankful for it. Because in the myriad ocean of information that just gets dumped on you and you're tempted to read it and you hit, you're like, oh, maybe I should do that. You really have to step back and look at the presenters and say, who are they? Where do they come from? What's their track record? Can I trust them? And that's what you guys have brought to the table. It's awesome. Thank you.
- [68:47]
B
Thank you, Chaz.
- [68:48]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out@Force Management.com.