Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Yeah. So number six, thinking you're getting away with under investing in management, upskilling in HR. We might've touched on this one too, on the hiring of the people, but what was this real mistake? Where did you, we all under invest, but what was that? What was, where are the painful memories here from under investment?
A I have this, I had this, I had this really, um, valuable experience in that when we acquired zoom info, it was a company that was in our space doing something similar. Um, But doing it in a completely different motion. And so it's as though like all of the things you thought you might do along the way, you got like an open book case study to your competitor doing. And in this, in this way, like we, we under invested in middle management along the way, especially in our go to market motion. And instead of investing in managers, people to like manage a group of people and get them motivated and keep them focused on metrics. We invested in a bunch of automation. And so instead of like investing in a manager to manage sales folks, we built a lot of automation. So our sales team would never miss a follow up would always, you would always see what's going on in their accounts would be alerted if their account like logged into a trial and took a bunch of action. We basically automated managerial functions. And that made for a, for a, you know, a high margin business, but then we acquired zoom info. And what you saw was a very opposite approach. Instead of investing a bunch of automation, they invested a bunch of managers in that go to market motion. And you saw that when you invested in great managers, the outcome wasn't a lot of places much greater than just investing in automation a…
AI assessment note: “we under invested in middle management along the way, especially in our go to market”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q you're blue in the face or sales strategy, but if you don't have the team to do it at your Zoom Info scale, there's no point in Talking to your office. So I mean, that's where I think you're better than me among many things is you got it. It's tiring to rebuild the management team, isn't it? Maybe you love it, but I don't know that anyone loves it.
A I think part of it is like, there's this piece that where you go, yeah, you should be recruiting 20 to 30% of your time all the time. The other side of it is you need to be evaluating your team a hundred percent of the time. And so a hundred percent of the time you're trying to think like, is this the right person? I think it's the right person. Are they doing the right things? Are they? And if they're not, how much time do I have to get them to be doing the right things and building a good team? Or do I have to go start meeting other people? And that's probably the most tiring part because you want to get your team Feel really good about them. But if you're trying to build, it's like you're constantly evaluating if they're the right people.
AI assessment note: “And that's probably the most tiring part because you want to get your team”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Yeah, you gotta do the write-up. Um, related to this, there's a topic I'm lately super passionate about is, I've realized it's getting worse and worse too. How expert does the sales team need to be in the product?
A Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is it depends on your stage. So early on in, in, in the evolution of our company, um, when you were creating a, kind of creating a category, and people hadn't heard of the product, and you're the only one in the space, and competition was, like, really fierce, and it was kind of a, like, more of a duopoly at the time, they have to know a lot about the product. They have to know how to navigate the product. They also have to be usually really bright. We did a really bad job of hiring salespeople. We'd hired six, and then one would be remaining. We'd hire one, five, three months later, two would be remaining. We ended up giving essentially a cognitive test in the early days, and it turned out we gave it to our best sales reps. They scored way high on it, and so then we went, and we went back, and we gave it to everybody who was a prospective salesperson. The ones who scored high came in. They did a really great job. When the company got bigger, that was just a bottleneck to hiring, and it turned out, as the company got bigger and more people understood what the product was, more the buyers in the market understood things, the product was more featureful, that you didn't really need, like, the super high IQ person anymore. Um, and that was just hurting our ability to scale the sales team, and so it is, the, the smaller you are, the newer t…
AI assessment note: “The answer is it depends on your stage. So early on... they have to know a lot”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q trusted sales. So I just put with limited capital. I put it where I knew, but You're really saying I didn't know these other areas and I'm not sure about the leaders I hired. Did you hire the wrong first generation of management team because you, you hadn't done those functional areas before? What was, why are you not able to trust them? Did you just make the classic mishires?
A I think I made the classic mishires. And then after I made the classic mishires, like if I took marketing, for example, after I made a classic mishire there, what I convinced myself of Was what I was getting from them was better than what I would do myself in the limited time that I would have focused on marketing across all of the other things I was focusing on instead of am I getting what I would in just a vacuum, what I would expect from a fantastic marketing organization. And I wasn't ever getting that in the early days. What I was getting instead was something better than what I was able to do on my own. And it was just the wrong lens to look at it through.
AI assessment note: “I think I made the classic mishires.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Okay, we got a bonus mistake number 11. Um, I'm sure there's bonuses 12 through a hundred out there too, but undervaluing communication and messaging internally and externally. Yeah, we all make this mistake, but what is this, what does this mean specifically?
A So specifically for me, this means like Getting your message right on any number of things can really mean the difference between success and failure between getting your team behind you or not. Um, and that, and that goes from everything from like your sales deck and your pitch deck to the messaging on your website. But for me, where this, this happens most is internally where I'm trying to get the team excited about some direction I'm going and, you know, At this level, I think like the, the somewhat naive view is I get, I come in and I go, Hey, do that, do that, do that. And everybody goes like, yup, we're going to go do that. And it's just like, it's way more nuanced than that. It's not like I just go like, I can't just go to my CTO and go like, do that. And he goes like, yup. Okay. I'm going to go do that. Like I have to be persuasive about it. I have to tie a story around it. I have to explain why it's important to our business, why it's important to his business. And I have to get people around the idea so that everybody is convinced that this direction from a product perspective or a go to market perspective is the right one. And how you message any of those different directions is that it really makes the difference between like everybody being really excited to run through a wall for you. And like a couple of people getting in and a couple of people being like, y'all …
AI assessment note: “specifically for me, this means like Getting your message right on any number of things”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q Oh, on top, not, not get rid of them, which you would, you know, but actually just add your expertise to their team. Take the same talent without training and tools and people and just leverage up their, their, Leverage revenue per lead, just increase their revenue per lead, right?
A Increase their revenue per lead from an M and a perspective internally. The way I think about it too, is like, if you can make go to market incredibly efficient, incredibly effective, then that gives you a strategic, uh, advantage to be able to take dollars that you would be spending there and spend them in product and spend that, spend them in account management and spend them, um, in customer success and marketing. The more efficient you make your go to market motion, the more dollars you have to spend across the company. And I never really, I actually, when people would tell people would say like, Hey, zoom info is a sales first company. And I'd be like, no, no, we're a product first company. We're a customer first company. I hated hearing that. Uh, and it took a while to, that's okay. Like that is a strategic advantage of the business. We shouldn't be embarrassed of it.
AI assessment note: “Increase their revenue per lead from an M and a perspective internally.”
