The Prospect Experience Needs Disarming Honesty w/ Adam Clay @Tomorrow.io

Hello and welcome to the Account Experience Podcast. My name is Adam Durrell and as usual we are parked up at the busy intersection of the old town Road of B2B Account Management and the shiny new freeway of customer experience. And that's why we call it Account Experience. Every week I get to talk to an industry leader to share best practices and tips to help you develop your program. I'm so excited about this one. So different talk track about customer experience, thinking about the prospects and I'll get into that in a couple of moments. But I have some news coming up. We have a big event coming up in Amsterdam in September. It's called Monetize 22 and it's the only place to be if you are a B2B customer experience professional. It's going to be held in Amsterdam on the canals right in the heart of the Netherlands on September 13th to 15th. And we're going to have many of your favorite podcast guests live. You can hear the present, meet them, I don't know, get their autograph, get to ask your own questions and probably post for selfies with them. So check out monetize22.com for more details. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Adam Clay. Adam Clay is the Chief Revenue Officer of Tomorrow IO. He leads the global sales and channels teams and he brings experience scaling revenue teams for many growth oriented SaaS organizations. Before he joined the company, he was CRO at Beyond Identity and Logs IO and then before that he served as a vice president of worldwide sales of Black Duck software, later acquired by Synopsys. By the way, full disclosure, that's where I met Adam and I've been friends with him ever since, followed his career and yet he before that he was also the VP of many larger organizations. Mendix for example, which was acquired by Siemens, and then Shunra, which was acquired by hp. And today Adam's going to dive into. Well, why don't you tell us Adam, you've got a different take on experience. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

Hi Adam, it's great to see you as always. Thanks. I was hoping to talk a little bit about the prospect experience. You know, without a great prospect experience and the ability to create new customers, there won't be in account experience. And I think a great account experience can be established early on if the right values are injected into the sales cycle.

Well, I think it's a really good place to start, but let's just frame this because I think most people think, you know, account experience or customer experience happens after the sale you know, when you and I were talking about this, you're like, no, it's really upfront in the sales process. So I'm really glad that you're bringing this, this, this to our attention today. So let's really dive into this. What is important about the prospecting process that makes the first impact on a customer?

Yeah, so when I, when I talk about the prospect experience, what I'm referring to is I think what most SaaS organizations encounter when they acquire or seek to acquire new customers, and that's the journey that you go on, is typically defined between discovery call and the execution of a contract. And you know, in between those two moments, lots of things happen. There are second meetings, there are third meetings. There are proof of values or proof of concepts. There are commercial negotiations and contractual negotiations. And yeah, I subscribe to the theory that the tools to do that really well and create a great prospect experience and terrific mutual outcomes for organizations is often in, in the hands of the sales organization itself. And there are wonderful tools and frameworks out there for driving a delightful prospect experience and converting interest into closed, into closed agreements. But they're often hard to deploy. And some of the ideas, and I hope we talk about them today, that I've managed, you know, fortunately to deploy across a handful of companies are kind of hard to do because they're counterintuitive to so much of the conventional wisdom out there around what it means to sell.

Well, hold on a minute. Sales is all about relationship building. So surely that's a natural part of the, the process. Right? The salespeople, sales executives should be great at that relationship. So the experience should be great. And you're telling me it's not always.

Well, yeah, I'd subscribe to that thesis pretty strongly. And hopefully as a function of this production we get some input and some feedback. But yeah, I think the word relationship in sales is overused. I don't think it's understood to the depth that it, that it ought to be. I'll start with a, with a simple, a simple notion. So all relationships are, are built on trust, first and foremost. We all understand that so much of the conventional selling efforts, particularly in and around SaaS companies, aren't based sincerely on finding good, solid mutual outcomes. That's my definition of selling. It's the pursuit of solid mutual outcomes for both organizations. We get business, you get what we want, period, full stop. And to explore whether or not there is actually a mutual outcome to be had, you have to do some things that most sellers don't do. And that is, ask hard questions. Be disarmingly honest about your capabilities. Don't assume you know what the prospect is thinking, really, and earnestly seek to discover it. Make it absolutely acceptable for the prospects to get out of the conversation and to tell you they're not interested in what, what you're, what you're seeking to do with them. And if you think about everything I just said, there's. You could take those basic tenants and apply it to any human relationship. And I think that would constitute in no small part the ingredients for a good relationship. But, like, what's a good selling relationship conventionally look like? Well, I'll tell you, because we all experience it. Salesperson tells you what your problem is and then tells you exactly how they're going to solve it for you. And if you met a stranger in the street and they walked up to you and said, this is your problem, and here's how I'm going to solve it, you would briskly walk away from that conversation. And if they hung in there a little bit and you had a second meeting and a third meeting, that salesperson might say, well, gee, I must have a relationship with this individual. They listen to me talk, they're open to my ideas. You don't have a relationship. What you might have is some type of dependency because maybe you actually have something that the customer wants. But there is no relationship there. Built on a solid foundation of mutual understanding in search of mutual outcomes that will help both organizations that can often only be arrived at through really good, honest conversation, which starts with asking a lot of questions and being willing to walk away from unfavorable situations, that is.

You know, I've worked with a lot of salespeople as well. I've been one as well. It's sometimes really hard to ask those tough questions because. Why is that, Adam? Is it like the fear of getting no as an answer, or is it an inability to go deep? Can you give some of your experience on why it doesn't happen?

Well, you just put your finger on it. And so, you know, to any VP of sales or CRO or executive who's been around SaaS companies, there is nothing new about what I'm saying. But in my experience, and I'm involved with lots of companies in the SaaS space, these ideas are understood, but they are very often undeployed. So sounds good. You know, we've pulled our sales team together. We're going to train them in methods that are associated with the principles that we're talking about. Adam? Yeah, but it Very rarely sticks because it's hard because you're asking salespeople to really change their behavior. And it starts with what you just talked about. Most people don't want to hear. No, they don't. And over time, you know, some people get more accustomed to it, particularly salespeople who've been doing it for a while or particularly those, you know, who have, who have, who are early on in their career. Yeah, it's a bruise to the ego when somebody tells you no. We are inclined to want to hear yes because it makes us feel great about ourselves.

And yet isn't it true that the most experienced sales professionals out there try to get to the know as soon as possible because it wastes less time? And that's just my sort of cod science approach. Is there some truth in that?

Oh, I think there's absolutely truth in it. And I, I think it's. It probably, you know, divides along like the basic Pareto principle. There are probably 20% of sellers out there that, you know, are really comfortable with. No. They actively seek it out. 80% are generally seeking a yes. They're seeking affirmation of their own ideas or their company's value propositions almost at all costs and often without a care to really listening to what the prospect is saying. And by the way, we all experience this in our day to day lives as consumers. When we walk into a shop, when we walk into a store, when somebody bangs on our front door looking to sell us anything, the experience is a typical sales experience. Let me tell you what your problem is, and here's how I'm going to solve it for you.

Yeah, I'm going to get deep on this for a moment and it might be going a bit deeper, but this really chimes with one of the themes that we hear a lot on this podcast, which is getting over the fear of feedback. I mean, if you're a salesperson and you're paid on commission, you want to get in as many sales as possible.

Right?

So there really is that tension between the two points. I want to try and keep sending to you as much as I can because I get very few leads, you know, the Glengarry Glen Ross leads. But it's like, so how can, how can sales teams evolve to, to, to, to get over that?

So, you know, there, there are a couple of, just to be super tactical, but this might be a fun conversation to have. Adam. This, the sales teams that I've been, I've been working with over the last decade or decade and a half will recognize this and, you know, lots of sales leaders have probably heard this before, but why it's not deployed more widely is beyond me. But I'll give you a super tactical example. I think among the greatest phrases in sales is it has to be sincere. It's gotta come from a place of authenticity. It can't be delivered without sincerity. One of the greatest phrases is, Adam, I'm so glad to meet you. I'm delighted that you're interested in our product and our service. The truth of the matter is, I'm not sure if we have anything for you. Right. Like, with and with your permission, I'd love to ask you a bunch of questions. It's kind of a long list that hopefully is going to reveal to both of us whether or not there's even a reason to continue exploring this partnership. And look, we might get to the point where there is no reason. And I would hope that you're comfortable telling me that's the case. We'll just pull the plug and restore each other's calendars to the rightful place. And so there are probably people who will listen to this podcast and they'll say, you know, I've heard that before. But rare is the organization that is capable of institutionalizing that type of disarming honesty. Right. That type of humility, that ability to be patently comfortable with. No, because it just flies in the face of typical. Typical convention. And again, these ideas aren't unique, and I'm not suggesting even that they're my own, but I am suggesting that organizations could do so much more to institutionalize some of these practices and how that. How that equates to a great account experience is pretty basic. If that's the way that I'm approaching conversations. And I've trained my entire team to really understand, like, your problem and what the impact is and how you think you need to solve it, how we might be able to help. By the time we get to the execution of a contract, we really understand what's going to make you successful. Because if we did it the other way, Adam, where I just talk to you, I talk to you, I tell you what your problem is, I tell you what you need, and guess what? You might actually have need in a small fraction of the time. If I put enough volume into the system, we'll get lucky and we'll create some agreements. And now comes the handoff to the account management and customer success team. What do we really know about the customer? Is it even possible to make them happy? Do we actually have the technology in our arsenal? So, yeah, what I've always advocated for is that customer success starts in the very first conversation. And so one of the challenges that you have when you first meet somebody is getting them to open up in a way that allows them to feel comfortable to, to share with a perfect stranger their critical business issues. So the conventional way of selling. I'm just going to talk to you, tell you what your problem is, tell you what I got. I'm going to pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. That prospect is very likely just going to tell you what they want to hear so they can get out of the call what they want. A demo of your software, presentation of your company's capabilities. But if you say, hey, listen, I don't know if we have anything for you, we might not. I mean, statistically speaking, we probably don't. Right. Because we only close like 20, 30% of our deals. Yeah, that's I recall. So the odds are already stacked against us, like, so why don't we just talk? That sort of disarming honesty has a tendency to set people at ease. They're like, wow, like, you know, Adam Doral seems like a pretty down to earth guy compared to the last three sales reps I spoke to to solve this problem. This is somebody I actually feel is interested in me. That is the start of a good relationship.

There's a lot to break down in that. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna try and recap it. I was taking some notes, by the way. Having two Adams on, on a podcast can be kind of confusing, I guess for some people, not for us. Great.

That's why we have to go first and last.

Yeah, something like that. But the first thing I want to break down on that you use the words disarming honesty. And you, you did quite a. You did some really great phraseology on that. But one of the things I'm going to call out is, you know, they say a lot of communication is non verbal. And you have a really great way of delivering this, Adam, which is slow picking, really good words, but it's the tone of your voice that is super confident and the way that you're saying, you know, I'm not even sure that we might have a fit, but it really invites that. Well, as you say, disarming honesty. So there's a lot going on in what you were saying there and not even with the words that you were doing. And I think that's a very important part for people listening to this to understand and go back and listen to that phrase. You did because it was perfect delivery. So there's a lot to teach in that. But how do you get to the disarming honesty bit? Can you teach that in a class? Or do you have to break people down? Do you have to put them in the room and do scream therapy or. Or, I don't know. You know, how do you get people to that, to that stage where they are prepared to let go of some of their ego?

It's a. It's a great. It's a great question. I. I think it's. I think the fundamentals of it are identical to how any human being, you know, learns to build a new skill, even if it requires breaking old habits. And it simply comes down to, you know, first, some level of belief that what I'm going to practice here is. Right. Like, I agree with it. The second is just submitting yourself to lots of practice. I really appreciate the compliment you just paid, by the way. I happen, you know, to have said that one phrase and there are many other, you know, things that can, I think, inspire really good prospecting experience, but I've probably said that phrase no fewer than 10,000 times in the last 15.

You've got muscle memory on it or something.

Yeah, but, you know, that muscle memory probably comes, you know, after the first, you know, 30 or 40 times you do it. And trust me, the first five or 10 times you do it, you feel like you're about to walk off a cliff because you're like, gee, the prospect could say, gosh, you know what? I'm so glad you said that. I don't think you have anything for me. The SDR that I spoke to set up this meeting utterly twisted my arm, and you guys gave me a hundred dollars gift card. And you know what, Adam, thank you so much for saying what you did, because this is going to be a total waste of time. Now. I will never have known that. Right. If I hadn't, you know, done what I would do to a friend, I'd say, hey, Adam, Dora, do you want to talk about this or not? If you don't want to talk about this, it's cool. Like. Like in a friendly, casual conversation, if I said that, that would invite a better interaction. Not saying that or something similar to a prospect is going to have you sitting there just burning 30 or 60 minutes of everybody's time while you talk about your.

If you're in sales, one of your. Your most valuable commodities is time, right? So you get that back yourself. So it makes complete sense to get to the. No sooner rather than A soft. A soft no. I also think hard no's are very important to get.

It's. It's true. And just to put the finest point on the, the question that you asked, it's just practice and, and committing to this method, you know, in spite of what might, of what might be, you know, resistance from sales teams, resistance from people inside and outside the organization. And that's hard. So that's hard. It takes fortitude. It takes entire organizations getting together to collectively learn something and practice something that might be uncomfortable for them. And hey, let's face it, salespeople are pretty confident in their abilities. They arrive at organizations like this one with 5, 10, 15 years of experience. Help me understand why I should do anything differently. You're paying me a ton of money to do my job. Why should I do anything differently? The answer to that question is, look, if we want to create better customers, if we want to make better use of our time, we want customers to really, truly trust us and understand what they want. We can't just show up and talk. Can't do that.

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Let's dig into an example, if that's okay, about how you managed to do that. Because I'm guessing that you've had some positive experiences out of that by getting to that truth, by saying, hey, we might not be able to help you. That does also open up a sort of trust window with your prospect. Right? So can you give an example about how. How by opening up that trust window, you actually managed to complete a sale by being so disarmingly honest?

Yeah. Well, I think, I think it comes back to that, that notion that, you know, as a, as a, as a company, like, we, like, we too have our, we too have our interests, right? I'm not seeking just to solve the customer's problem at all costs. I'm seeking to do it in a way that makes responsible use of my company's capital. And so that's why there's a heavy emphasis in, I think, all good sales conversations around seeking mutual outcome, mutual understanding. If this looks good to both of us, then we'll proceed as opposed to this, this notion that all selling is subservient to the customer's wishes and dreams. And I guess sometimes that could be useful, sometimes that might be the right thing to do. But at the end of the day, we are stewards of the company's capital. Like, we have to make elections about where we're going to spend our time. So to blindly say, adam, I'm here to do whatever you want, that's nuts. And it's also, it's also stunningly disingenuous. And so guess who knows that the prospect knows that they're like, that's total Garbage, like you're not here to do whatever I want, you're here to do a deal. So let's just be honest with everybody in the room about what a great outcome for both of us looks like. And so I think that's, that's really.

The first, the first step, a really good example. Now what I want to try and do is connect that to the post sale experience. I mean, what could I, you know, I think the modern way of thinking about sales is it's a one continuous sale. Right. Especially in the SaaS business. But we do have this concept of the pre sale and post sale. Let's connect those things. As you go for perhaps many years on a customer relationship, how do you keep the disarming honesty and the self deprecation up? How are you managing to make that work in the organizations that you've been.

Well, it's, I think it's pretty straightforward and again, not, not always easy to do because you have to have willing participants. So train customer success managers, train account managers to do exactly the same thing. You know, now, now the way it shows up once somebody is a customer is different. It's different. I'll give you an example. So let's say that we've been doing business for a couple of years and at this point I know you pretty well. Regardless of how I've run conversations, you're paying us money. We're providing you a product or a service we have by virtue of that exchange trust in one another. And you call me out of the blue, Friday night, hair on fire. Adam, I need you to turn on more of this. I need more widgets and I want to help you, I really do. And so training customer success reps and account managers to not just say, adam, you got it. Okay, A hundred percent, I'm going to turn it on. Like, here's the price. Are you good? Right? Like, hold on a second, Mike. Let's just let it. Adam, seems like you've got something on your mind, right? Like, I really want to think that we can help, but before we just go and turn on another thousand widgets. Yeah. Can you please help me understand what you're trying to accomplish? Right. I like to think because we know each other pretty well that we can do it. Right. But there's a small possibility if we rush this, that we're going to do something that's not going to help you. And I don't want to be in that position. So give me a little bit of time here. Help me understand what you're trying to accomplish. And I'm going to tell you whether or not we can, because guess what? We're in the business. We're in the business of solving your problems. You know that that's probably why you called me. But help me, help me understand. So that is oddly difficult to teach customer success teams and account managers. You know, at, at Tomorrow IO, we have a brilliant group of customer success managers and account managers and they're on the journey with the sales team sort of learning some of these things. But the way that you bring people into the company at the point of hiring, you know, you can either say, listen, you are absolutely in service of the customer. You're in service of the customer. In which case, Adam, the only thing I'm going to do is turn on the widget machine and produce a thousand more widgets for you. Yeah. But if I hire you and I say, hey, like, we're in the business of creating great mutual outcomes for ourselves and for the customer. So I need you to maybe do some things differently when you join this company. Like, we're going to dig in. We're going to really try to understand what our existing customers are trying to do and we're going to be grateful for the growth if we can get it. But I need your first reaction to be understanding, attacking what the customer needs, even late on a Friday night with an urgent curiosity that's been.

Yeah, and for me, I love what you're saying because, you know, I'm very much in the business of making sure that customer feedback is taken seriously as well and acted upon. And that also can force people to be, well, quite humble, especially when they get negative feedback. So I think what you're really saying, Adam, if I'm getting this right, is that you need to teach the ability to be very humble and have, and accept humility in the organization. And if you don't mind me saying, it's almost that's counterintuitive to the way that we think of most high growth SaaS businesses. So how have you managed to, you know, how are you able to persuade your, the board, for example, or other investors that it's the right thing to do, especially at the end of the quarter where we are now. Tough question, I know, but you know.

You know, I, so I do try to be, whenever I join a new company, I try to be as upfront about these things like, hey, like I've got, like I've got some kind of strong views about what constitutes a good selling conversation. And you know, having run lots of customer success and account management teams in the past. Like, I've got some pretty strong views about what an account management and success conversation ought to look like. And so I'd want to share those with you to see what you think, because that might not be what you think the right thing to do is. And if we have underlying incompatibility now in the interview process, Mr. CEO, Lord knows I'm going to drive you nuts a year from now when I've deployed all this. So let's just talk about the way I see things and guess what? Like, like that. But that's, that's honest.

I'm going to state the obvious. And of course, you're using your, your disarming honesty and self deprecation in the interview process when you, when you're getting a job, so.

Well, I, you know, I tried, trust me.

And I bleed humility.

Right. You know, I just, Yeah, I want to be, I want to be totally clear for everybody who's listening, like little to nothing of anything I'm saying. Adam is original. Most of these things that I'm talking about, down to the phrasing.

Yeah.

I picked it up from some, like, wonderful consultants and trainers and colleagues along the way who have been exposed to some of these methods and who have helped me sort of understand the benefits. And I, you know, took it, tried to rigorously apply them, you know, in these long running training programs that I really enjoy doing with, you know, revenue teams. And they, they work like, they produce results and when we go back and we pull prospects about the selling experience, generally we get pretty high marks. They're like, oh, my God, Adam Doral was so interested in what I was trying to accomplish. It was like a breath of fresh air. And he was so honest about what he couldn't do and what he could do. So. Yeah. But I think the point that I just wanted to talk about with you today is why it's so infrequently institutionalized. Because anybody listening has heard this stuff before, but it's very infrequently actually put to work across organizations.

I also really agree. And it's infrequent that people measure the prospecting experience as well. And it's very easy to do, you know, by doing that stuff. Now, Adam, it would be unfair to leave this topic with the people thinking you're, you know, you're a big, softy, cuddly teddy bear of, you know, of an honest kind of guy because you are, I think, more than anybody else I know, really committed to metrics and efficiency in the sales team.

Yeah.

So just while we run, can you share a couple of your favorite metrics that you're using to. To. To. To look at efficiency and performance in your sales team?

Yeah. Thank you for. Thank you for saying that. Yeah. And so, like, everything I'm talking about is, like, it has to, like, it's always been married. Thank you for highlighting it with a pretty, pretty. What's the right word? Fastidious approach to metrics and performance. So, like, these sort of things that I'm talking about, like, they're still backed with, like, basic performance agreements with revenue teams. Like, hey, we're here to perform. Like, we're here to perform and we have to hit numbers. That's how we're going to be judged here. And look, if we hit them together, great, we're going to win. We're all going to grow personally, professionally, financially. And if we don't and you don't perform in any number of these ways, from hitting your number to learning some of these methods that we're talking about, hey, like, we're going to have to talk. I'm going to help you to learn this stuff. I'm going to help you hit your number. But if it goes on too long, like, we have to be honest with each other. We probably don't have a fit. And then we're going to have to have a harder conversation. So the method might sound unusual, but it's got to be backed with like a basic performance contract. And part of that is, like, we measure a lot of things around here. So to your questions about key indicators, like, we're going to look at how many discovery calls are created. We're going to look at the rate at which those discovery calls convert to opportunities. Right. We're going to look at a stage by stage basis, how, at what rate you convert those opportunities. We'll look at your win rates, the amount of pipeline that you're creating on a. On a regular basis, you know, all the way down to. There's some wonderful tools to do it. GONG is remarkable. We can look at, you know, conversational mechanics from a quantitative perspective. So, like, here's another KPI. How much time did you spend talking in the sales call with the customer?

Yeah, I'd love to.

How much time did they spend? And so I hear again, anybody listening who's in a revenue organization now is probably using GONG or something similar. And they're like, yeah, we sort of like, you know, I was having a cocktail on a Saturday night and I pulled up GONG and I Looked at some of the metrics and I was like, wow, that's cool. That was six months ago. Haven't looked at them since. That's pretty common. But, you know, one thing that we do on a pretty regular basis that I've done for years now is like, well, look at rep by rep performance, account manager by account manager performance. Like, how much time are you talking and how much time is the prospect talking? How many questions have you asked? What is the rate of question in any given period of time? Like, what is your aggregate rate of questioning, you know, per hour that you spend with prospects? All of these things are totally available and gone. And so to those who aren't familiar with the concept of. Of recording conversations, like, for those who might feel like, wow, it seems like a little Orwellian, that's a little creepy. It's only being done for one reason. In my mind, it's to create a better customer experience. Because if our salespeople are properly coached in some of the things that we're talking about, I promise you, the prospect is more likely than not going to be delighted by having a conversation with somebody who is like, sincerely curious about what they're trying to accomplish. That is a delightful thing to do to be able to talk about yourself to somebody who can help you.

I had a great friend of mine, late great Johnny island, who preached the fact that we got two ears and one mouth. That was his thing. And he said that's exactly the ratio that you should be selling in. So go with that. Are you. I mean, could you share a couple of metrics? It's a state secret. Don't do that. But what are you looking for as an average in. In GONG for conversational percentages and the question rate per hour? That's what I'm not familiar with, by the way, so I'd really want to hear about that.

Yeah, of course. So when I speak, I'm not speaking about tomorrow IO specifically because that would be a breach of our internal operations. But I'll talk in aggregate. And again, these metrics are known. GONG publishes these metrics. Chorus publishes these metrics. They're not often institutionalized into the fabric of the company. So here we go. So for. For me, the GONG disagrees. They take a different, more conservative approach. For me, if the sales rep. If. I'm sorry, if the prospect is talking more or about 75% of the time, that is a good selling conversation. Yeah. Which is 25%. Right. So 2/3, 1/3, 1/4, 3/4, somewhere in that range. The top Sellers that I've worked with in a typical discovery call. Right. Which is where you're going to ask the majority of your questions. There could be follow on questions. We'll ask somewhere between 23 and 27 questions in that hour. Wow. Like, so you could hear that and be like, like, do you guys, like wheel in the, the klieg lights and just interrogate the hell out of your prospect? Cause that sounds like profoundly unpleasant. Like, who on earth would submit themselves to that rate of questioning? And this is where I would say, this is where I would say that if you and the prospect are agreed on how you're going to spend that time together, and it will never feel like a rapid fire interrogation. If I say, Adam, 60 Minutes, what do you want to accomplish? And you say, hey, I want to demo. I want to see your corporate deck. Great. Like, from my side. Like, hey, not sure if I have anything for you, but I got a long list of questions I want to ask you. Are you cool if we do that first and then I'll show you a demo and I'll show you the presentation. The chances are it's going to be much more relevant because I'll know a little bit more about what you want to accomplish. Great. So in that context now when I start asking all of my questions, you're not, you're not surprised? 23 to 27 questions an hour feels like. Feels like an interrogation out of 1984. When proper expectations for how you two, the buyer and the seller are going to run the call aren't established. And so we've all been on the receiving end.

Yeah, we have.

That seller gets into the conversation, they say, adam, what are you trying to accomplish? Great. But when do you want something in place? Is this budgeted? And you're like, what? Really? I don't know you. I'm not sure where this call is going. How are we going to spend the rest of our time after you grill me? So you're uneasy from the jump. There's no way you're going to open up about your critical business issues. So I think all of that's really tied together. Is that fair?

Yeah, I agree. It sounds like an upfront contract.

Exactly.

Make a deal with the client. I mean, that's also from what I know is very. That comes from the Sandler training methods. I'm a big fan of that. Are there any for other people out there? So you're a Sandler fan also, I think. Or is there anybody else you'd recommend?

Yeah, you know, there's so that's why I say, like, very little of this is new. None of it is new, but it's. It's the actual use of it, which is too infrequent. Yeah. So a lot of this stuff started out as Sandler, and I think there are still a lot of Sandler consultants around. I happen to have the really good fortune of working with three former Sandler consultants who said, hey, there's something about the traditional Sandler method that makes me a little uneasy because it was a set of selling tactics that was developed originally 25 or 30 years ago. Like, there's something manipulative and maybe even disingenuous in this. Like, it just feels like we're doing something here that's not right. And so I had a chance to work with some wonderful consultants. So a guy named Guru Ganesh, a guy named Steve Krainer. I'm currently working with a terrific gentleman named Ross Morgan. And they. They are no longer part of the Sandler franchise, as far as I know. But, you know, through their own work and my work with them, they sort of took the Sandler principles and applied a very, very high standard of ethical integrity. Right. And so they sort of made sure that everything that was being taught had its roots in honesty and transparency. And they did a remarkable job of sort of ringing out any of the stuff that might have sounded like a little bit weird, a little bit manipulative in some of the early Sandler stuff. And I give a lot of credit to. To them.

Yeah, I. I love Ganesh. I've met him a few times back in the day. So it's really funny that we have that point. Right, listen, let's talk about upfront contract. We'll come back to that, because I promised I would release you at the top of the hour. It's a very busy time for us. I'm going to do that. But before we go, Adam, you said to me something a few weeks ago, and you absolutely made me split my size with laughing, which was a story about hiring some business specialists in from. And they don't always work out. And you said that, you know, you had a kind of. You come up with a new rule of thumb about when you bring in executives. Can you expand on that just before we go?

Yeah, yeah, Great, Great question. So, you know, I, when I was. When I was a younger executive and I was building teams, whether they're account management teams or sales teams, I made what I think is a fairly classic hiring mistake. And that is. That is too closely acquainting a person's experience in a market, a person's experience in a particular industry with the likelihood of success. And yeah, sometimes I would hire people who came out of a particular industry, came out of a particular vertical and they would work out swimmingly. They didn't work out because they had relationships, they didn't work out because they had a lot of industry knowledge. They worked out because they had underlying personality attributes and skill sets that accrue to success in that position. And I think something that I said to you that cracked you up is I said industry experience has a very short half life and as a element, as in the periodic elements, depletes to worth strength almost to zero in about three months. Because it takes about that amount of time for somebody who you've only hired for specific expertise, you know, in your market, in a competitor's market, in a particular industry vertical to expire. They burned through their relationships. They've told you, they've told the market everything they know about that vertical, that industry and the applicability of your business within it. And now what are you left with? Like, you're left, you're left with personality traits and skill sets. And so, you know, I, I, I think, you know, as something to consider when you're hiring people, because I used to do this all the time. I'd hire people out of competitive situations. I'm like, wow, they, I admire that competitor. They're kicking our ass in the marketplace. If I hire their sales reps, I'm going to kick their ass. Yeah, doesn't work. Because if you overlook like important things, growth, mindset, right? Resilience, tenacity, like urgent curiosity, like proclivity towards sales method, sales process, the ability to, you know, quickly assimilate new information and do something with it. If you overlook all of that at the end of three months you're going to be like, what do I do? What do I do?

I love that I was, you know, and it really resonated with me because I've made so many mistakes like that myself. You hire a specialist, but you completely nailed it when you said, you know, just like a radioactive element, these, these people, they've got a three month half life and at the end of that, you know what happens to radioactive elements after that? Well, it becomes toxic waste. You know, if they're hanging around, they're slowly going to decay the rest of the business. So you've got to either exit them then or you've got to, you know, you've got, they've got to become part of the solution and too often people don't think about that. So what I wanted to try and end the podcast with Adam is to say thank you so much for sharing everything you've spoken about and this whole thing about, you know, disarming honesty and self deprecation in this whole prospecting and sales experience is so under underused. So thank you so much for bringing that with us today. Adam, any last thoughts before we leave today?

No, none. This was a delightful conversation, Adam. They bring you dry as always as all. Yeah, yeah.

I'd say it's so good to hear the story about sales and then carrying in. It's very rare that we get somebody who's got these real kind of like acquisition and customer success skills. So Adam, I'd love to thank you so much for your time today. I know you got a quarter to close. I really appreciate the time you spent with us today.

All right, thank you Adam. Cheers.

I.