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The Leadership Moment That Builds Loyalty | A Sales Leadership Lesson with Cedric Pech, MongoDB
00:13:10
In this minisode, Cedric Pech, President of Field Operations at MongoDB and former CRO, shares a formative leadership moment from early in his career at PTC that shaped how he thinks about building revenue organizations.
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- [00:12]
A
Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. In this short episode, Cedric Petsch, president of field operations at MongoDB and former CRO, shares a formative leadership moment from early in his career at PTC that shaped how he thinks about building revenue organizations. He tells the story of a manager who invests in him personally before he had proven himself professionally. It's a lesson in what real leadership looks like under pressure. For CROs and frontline leaders, this clip is a reminder that culture is built in moments like these, not in mission statements. Let's dive in.
- [00:59]
B
You know, joining PTC, I think I was 23, was a little like, how can I describe that? Like Dora the Explorer in Jurassic Park. That's what I'm saying. I don't know if you translate in English, but. Or maybe the Care Bears in Jurassic park, right? It's like the same. You're like, you come to this organization and you're like, holy shit, what's going on here? Right? Like, and. But lucky enough. And I'm saying that because you have to admit, with as much stage sincerity as I can, that the reason I was able to survive that is because of. Is because I had a great leader. And I just tell this story because it was a few months in the job and my brother comes to Bologna, Italy, and he's going to go for a worldwide backpacking trip. And he spent the weekend with me and spending the whole weekend going in industrial areas to pick up names to prospect. On Monday, I had this recorder, this little recorder in my car, and I was, you know, recording those names in this industrial area so that on Monday I could pick up the phone and know who to call substantially. And it was difficult. Back to what John was saying, it was like, my Italian wasn't that great. And so it was a lot of. A lot going on in my life. And my brother does such a good job that on Sunday night he tells me that convinces me that I need to quit and go for this, you know, worldwide backpacking trip, right? And it's a daunting moment because it's Monday morning and I show up in the office in San Lazzaro di Savina, which is close to Bologna. And, you know, it's the moment where. The crucial moment where I'm gonna have to tell Carlo that it's over, right? So I'm sitting in my desk 7:30 in the morning, and he's supposed to show up at 7:30 and, you know, I'm sweating like, holy shit. He gets into the office and instead of turning right back into his own office. He's very smart. He sees me there and probably my body language was betraying me. He goes straight to my office, but he stares in mine and goes, like, how are you doing? And I'm starting to mumble. And, Carlo, I think I might have not made the right decision for myself. And before I end up, I finish my sentence, he goes, like, where are you living those days? And I'm like, you should know that because you signed my expense reports. I'm in a hotel in the suburbs of Bologna, and that's where I am. And he goes. He stops me and goes, like, you're going to stop here. You're going to take three days off. You're going to go and find an apartment for yourself. And once you are settled and in a good place, you come back to work. I don't want to see you before that. His intuition was off the charts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. But, like, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't really the direction I wanted to take that conversation to. Wild, right? So I'm like. I'm like, holy shit, how So I tried. Last one. And I tell him, you know, which was the truth. I don't have the money to make a down payment to get that apartment anyway, so it's not an option. So I'm trying to work myself out of this conversation, right? And before I can understand what's going on, he pulls out his paycheck and writes a 3 million lir check, which was probably at the time, the largest check I had ever seen. And he hands me all this check, and I'm like, I've known you for two months. I don't do that. And by the way, I'll never be able to give you this money back, Carlo. And the guy has that line which does differentiate great leaders from others. At the right moment, in the right place, he goes, you are going to give me that money back when you get your first commissions. And, you know, I'm sitting on my chair in a long moment of loneliness because, like, I'm like, this guy believes in me more that. More than I believe in myself. That's powerful. And therefore, I'm like, I can't give up on this guy. I can't quit on this guy. I can't. I just. I just can't watch myself in the mirror in the morning. And. And that has been an important lesson for me as I reflected about. About it when I was. When I grew up in my career, because at the end of the day we are not in the software business, we are in the people business. Right? And to the extent that us as leaders can actually get involved authentically, not talking about faking it, but authentically in being curious about what's going on in our team's life and actually curious, it's a buzzword like caring about them and making a difference that does that can have a giant motivational impact on people. It had on me for sure, and I never forgot it. Right. We worked 10 years together and never, never, ever. I'm very, very bad at taking directions. I'm pretty good at taking inputs. I was very difficult to handle and he was able to build a partnership with me which I will have never betrayed at any price. And that's what happened.
- [06:12]
C
So when I want to look at that from a couple of lenses, obviously the leadership lens is unbelievable. He understands your body language. He's looking for more than just what your numbers are. He's looking at you as an individual. Getting intimate with your people is just. We talk about that a lot on Revenue Builders. I want to flip the lens for a second because there's a lot of great potential in young sellers that are hearing this story and hearing other stories like that, whether they have a leader like that or don't have a leader like that. Sit yourself in the seat of a new seller or a new employee and talk to us a little bit about the advice that you would give that new employee that's overwhelmed, whose brother is like trying to get him to make the biggest mistake on the planet. You know, go backpacking, leave corporate America or leave corporate world and you know, go backpacking. Give some advice to the sellers that are swinging for the fences right now. Don't really feel like they're making it. You maybe don't have the greatest leader. What advice would you give them?
- [07:32]
B
I will give them. The first piece of advice I will give them is exactly what the entire enterprise software sales corporate world is not doing, which is be patient and work on your craft and don't cut corners and don't go after the next promotion or after short term money, but really work on your foundations. Because this is a marathon, right? If your ambition is to being amazing at what you do in the long term, you're not going to win or lose in the next couple of quarters. You're going to win in the next 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, that's what you're going to do. And unfortunately, the whole world is trying to make people believe that they should be rushing into promotions and Bigger titles and more money in the short term. And I think it's a giant mistake because it's like it's betraying those young people, right? That's one piece of advice which is very difficult to give because most of the time, people. I'm not sure I was able to listen to this one, even if it was given to me many times, including by Carlo, I had a hard time listening to it. And I wish I could talk to the. To those people with. To these younger salespeople with the eyes and the experience I have right now, because, you know, it's too bad. I saw so many mistakes there. The other piece of advice I will tell them is that out of all the leaders I've worked with, let's call it this way, I've got 20 to 30% of them which were really bad. Maybe 40% which were. Whether they were there or not will not change anything. And then I've got maybe 10, 15%, which were amazing. Now, the way to deal with the amazing leaders is easy, right? You get inspired, you observe, you listen, and you try to work on yourself and you imitate someone, and that's an easy one. The vast majority of those leaders are there, which are without any color. They don't hurt, but they don't add any value. You need to be able to use them. By using them, I mean, I give you something to execute on. You do it for me so that they can do my job. And as a young salesperson, you need to recognize that, right? It's not because your leader doesn't add values that you can't still progress your career. And the third piece I would say is when you bump into a bad leader, that's another learning opportunity about when you're going to be in his or her shoes. Here's what you'll never do. Here's what you are going to avoid at any cost, and you suffer the pain out of it. And it's horrible. And this is why it's an even better lesson. And that happened to me many times and sometimes, and McMahon knows that I've been, you know, screaming and. And complaining a lot and, and being very difficult to handle as well. And because I was suffering and going through the pain, right? And. But if I look back, I say, you know, what did I learn there? And what I remember. I'm going to make you a specific example. I remember a sales call. So I had been used to sales call with Carlos and when Carlo will get me. So first of all, we will never get in the sales call even with the chief executive of Ferrari without me in the room. And not only that as a rep, right? So Carlo will always consider that the most important person in the room is a rep. And he was right. In a sales driven organization, the most important people in the room is a rep. Not only that, but every time I will get in that room, he will give me a lot of credit in front of the customer and try to empower me and to help me, put me in the driver's seat. Because he understood that this is about developing me. It's not only about being successful in that specific sales call. And he will always be there to rescue the situation if needed, but he has the maturity to do that. Then I move into another leader a few years later and I go into this first sales call. The guy was head of femia and we get in the call, we sit in front of those guys and that my leader takes over the conversation, introduce himself, gets everyone introduced, run the whole meeting. We go out and I never say a word. So he gets out of the meeting and he goes like, how did he ask me? How do you think it went? Right? And I told him, well, it sounds like you just promoted yourself into being the rep on this account.
- [12:21]
C
Because
- [12:25]
B
I'm not going to follow up on that. Right? So I have zero empowerment. Customer doesn't understand. So that's. So you see that, you know, depending on the mindset of the leaders that can very little things can really hurt someone in the way you. You behave.
- [12:44]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management where we help companies improve sales performance. Performance Executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out force management.com for more information.