The Ledger, every show

“So at MongoDB, the sales team Oracle people did really poorly for the most part.”

“And at TripActions, Concur people and Amex people do poorly.”

“But you don't get from 20 to a hundred on PLG because, you know, to get from 20 to a hundred, you're probably doing bigger deals, and you're doing bigger deals at bigger companies, and so PLG makes for a great meeting, and you know, I think in a hundred, if yo…”

“Don't hire a leader yet. Hire individual contributor. At first just hire SDRs and you be the rep so that you get, I think for an early stage company, the CEO really has to develop the plays, figure out the message, at least that initial message.”

“Pipeline generation. Hiring AEs that have not built their own pipeline, that one is non-negotiable, because if they say they will, if they say they want to they just don't know how hard it is, or they don't remember, maybe they did it as SDRs a long, long time…”

“We've parted ways with people at bootcamp. It was clear in their first month that, you know, we'd made a mistake and, you know, we apologize for that because we hired them. But why wait nine months and waste their time and waste our time and opportunity costs?”

“You don't disrupt a market by hiring the people from the legacy vendors and hoping they'll figure it out. You need fresh thinking, and so really what that means is you hire sales athletes, exceptional sales talent, That probably doesn't know anything about you…”

“I don't believe salespeople sell. Buyers buy. All salespeople can do is create an environment that is conducive to that purchase decision.”

“I think it absolutely can be learned. And I think when people say that someone is born a sales, a salesperson, usually what they're referring to is charisma and a big personality. And I don't know that those things are necessarily what makes a great salesperso…”

“There are people who are savants, who are gifted, and there are people who can Connect dots that others don't see, but then others can follow, can learn, and can replicate those things, so I think it's more science than art, candidly.”

“A trap and a mistake that people make is Over rotating on what they have done in the past, and assuming that success in the past predicts success in the future.”

“I would prefer experience with the type of deal over domain with the, unless the domain is so specific that it's going to take a lifetime. You know, if I'm selling some like, you know, molecular modeling technology and you have to be a biologist to understand …”

“I've spent almost my entire career at challenger companies. And so if you're going to disrupt a marketplace the risk associated with hiring someone that hasn't been at a challenger company is really, really high. So that one is a near non-negotiable.”

“At MongoDB, we hired a lot of people, and our attrition was higher than we wanted it to be, and so we did a lot of analysis on attrition, and what we found is that lone rangers, and we meant that meaning when we have a single employee in a You know, if we have…”

“Roughly excellence in pipeline generation equals excellence in sales. Someone who's got a massive pipeline that misses some things in the sales cycles, They're probably still gonna do very well. Someone that executes beautifully, but doesn't have enough pipeli…”

“Really the most effective means of pipeline generation is outbound cold calling.”

“Most meetings are set, like two thirds are set as a cold call.”

“Certainly down to 50 K, maybe below 50 K probably, you know, starts to break down. Cause down to 50 K you know, your reps are gonna be earlier in career, and so their OTE is not as high.”

“A lot of companies, You know, they, they'll, they'll start to worry about someone that hasn't sold at, you know, nine, 10, 1112 months, and so then they'll make a decision to part ways at 18 months. That's so expensive”

“For a founder at a, you know, let's say a series, a company, I would get some really smart, hardworking you know, enthusiastic individual contributors and go build it. And you won't, and you'll be able to build your enablement after you've closed, you know, 10…”

“Verticalizing the sales force when you have a horizontal solution, I think cuts it cuts against meritocracy because there's typically going to be some verticals that are better than others.”

“I do think that a lot of that has worked through the system already. Companies that I'm, you know, a little closer to, I think most of that seems to be the trough, let's say is, you know, is behind us.”

“And I think the days of, you know, the big sales rep with the fancy suit that comes in and does the big deal and then walks off to another To another, you know, to another account. I don't think that's healthy, and I think those days are long gone.”

“I think that using discount to close a deal that was not otherwise going to close, rarely works. Because if it's a considered purchase, There is either a champion that is willing to advocate for this purchase and advocate with the economic buyer for this purch…”

“That was the challenge, frankly, that that I encountered in my CEO journey. I thought I was walking into a, to a situation where the primary you know, the problems were mostly go to market. And sure, there were opportunities for improvement in the go to market…”

“And what I realized is that this individual lacked the skills to go build pipeline. He just didn't know how to do it. He was a relationship seller, a competent guy, a hardworking guy, but the skills to actually go and call a stranger and deliver a value prop a…”

“A hundred percent. No question about it. Absolutely. They learn faster. They, their morale is higher. If I'm having a bad day, but the person next to me is having a great day, that gives me hope, that gets me through the trough. And so yeah, they're absolutely…”

“Your account managers should also be excellent at pipeline generation because they're trying to get into other divisions, et cetera.”

“Closing. I'm a closer. I know how to just convince this idea that you can coerce a customer or do some psychological gymnastics to get someone to sign a piece of paper when they weren't actually intending to. First of all, if you do, that's a, that deal's prob…”

“That's why when you are a challenger, you need a higher caliber of salesperson because you don't have the brand. As your brand gets bigger and bigger, either great salespeople become more productive or you know, you're able to get more junior or less talented …”

“And so by going up market and by building a second product that company didn't die and it would've.”

“Drive's the one that's most linearly correlated with results. Intelligence is more of a threshold value. If they're smart enough. And sure, more is better, but really it's Drive that, that, that scales.”

“Leader recruiting is the analog to AEPG. It's their responsibility, and anything the talent team does is, is gravy on top, and so, I think that's a really healthy sort of, ah, way to operate.”

“I think for an early stage company, the CEO really has to develop the plays, figure out the message, at least that initial message.”

“When you're hiring the thing you can't change is the innate attributes, the DNA of the person. And so, that's where you should spend the most amount of time. Get to understand who that person is in, in, in the areas that they can't change.”

“I'm a big advocate for at the end of the process. We call it a challenge. We have an event where they have a couple of days to go think about some questions, prepare a presentation and come back and present it. But that's more of a validation Around the decisi…”

“I think it's human nature that we tend to index around our own strengths. When we see pieces of ourselves in someone else, I think it's very tempting to become enamored with that and then to miss other gaps.”

“I'm a big advocate of hubs, and so I think at minimum you want two sales, if it's a company, if it's a product where you have a sales engineer, two sales people and a sales engineer, that's like the minimum profile for a hub.”

“If sales reps are doing the work to generate their own meetings and their own pipeline, man, when they get pipeline from their SDRs or from marketing or from partners, they'll treat it like gold because they know how much work and how hard it is to get that. A…”

“Roughly a third of your time, so maybe 20% of your time, one day a week, is dedicated to just Outbound, you know, cold calling. And then there's another probably 10 to 15% of your time that is devoted to prep for the cold calling and follow up from the cold ca…”

“If they haven't done that and they haven't been in that lonely place, the likelihood that they are willing to make that 20th call is low. Even if they thought they were willing upfront, when they actually get into it, you have to have been through that journey…”

“Less than 10%. It's elite. It is highly, highly correlated with elite salespeople that have the ability and the tenacity, the willingness.”

“Monday afternoons is a great time to do training, especially training that's related to PG skills.”

“Thursday we declare Friday and over the weekend we prepare. Monday morning we review the preparation, Monday afternoon we train, Tuesday we do PG all day, and then obviously throughout the week there's follow-up, there's harvesting, and then I love to do a wra…”

“The problem with doing just an hour is you can easily go for an hour and never talk to anyone. And so, you know, it's, you need that positive reinforcement of a conversation, even if it's a conversation that doesn't land a meeting, because you learn from that,…”

“If someone is doing good PG, they should be able to on average get two meetings in a given week. Sometimes people will get more. Sometimes people will get less and they might get one or they might get zero and still they did a good job. It was just, you know, …”

“Depends where you are in the journey. Early on, when product market fit isn't really good, yeah, it might be three to one. I think, you know, the rule of thumb, once you're scaling, you know, you want to be at five to one or better, for sure.”

“Once somebody can land a new logo with the core product, the likelihood that they're going to be successful is very high, even though they don't have some of the advanced knowledge or the advanced skill.”