The Evolution of Prospecting with Mike Schumann

The CRO Spotlight Podcast hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This podcast is for Chief revenue officers, aspiring CROs and CEOs who are looking to hire or support a CRO to succeed. So join me and my expert guests as we debate, discuss and tackle today's complex revenue growth challenges and provide practical, practical insights to help CRO succeed in the role. We're really excited to have you with us. Now let's get to it. Hello, welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. I'm your host, Warren Zenna. I'm doing it solo today. Lupe's out, but I'm excited because we have a great, great conversation to have. I want to start out a bit first, talk a little about the downturns that we're seeing. Cause I'm getting a lot of input on this. So a lot of my clients and other people are, as you all know, seeing a lot of layoffs. So what I'm noting here, and I've been talking about this quite a bit, is the fact that most of the layoffs are in sales, some in marketing. We're seeing a lot of salespeople get laid off. And I think that it's a habit that a lot of these kind of growth hack based companies, they over hire salespeople, they hire these kind of SDR groups and they double up on their sales forces and then when the downturn comes, they don't need them anymore. And there's something off with that because I believe what's going on too often is they throw more salespeople at a problem and then they don't need them anymore when the downturn comes. And I see this as really a reflection of the focus that some of these companies have is on their sales channel almost exclusively. And so, you know, I have a lot of friends who got hired like a month and then after the month was over they got canned. So you know, and I've been ranting about this a lot and I don't think a lot of people are not happy about it. But you know, I think some of the we're going to be talking about this today. Some of the growth hacking and the growth at all costs mentality of some of these companies has been so focused heavily on driving pipeline growth. And I'm not denouncing the idea of pipeline growth. I think it's obviously critically important, but you know, it comes sometimes at the expense of other things. And I think to some degree, I think even the SDR organizations are doing the job that marketing should be doing. We'll talk about that a bit. But what I'm saying is I think that the key here is if you're from a chief revenue officer perspective, you have to be looking at your organization from am I bringing out the math? If I'm, am I maximizing the utility of my salesforce and are they efficient? Are they sufficient for me? Do I really need more? You know, sometimes I think what drives hiring more salespeople is because it looks good. You know, I mean, if you could tell your board you hired more salespeople than the natural, you know, reaction is gonna be, well, then you're gonna get more pipeline. Right. But you know, there's a quality versus quantity issue which we're dealing with right now. The amount of spam that I get, I got three cold calls on my cell phone over the last week and they were all pointless, not useful. And so in any event, I think that this is an important topic we'll get into. But I want to introduce our guest today. I'm really excited about it. His name is Mike Schumann. Mike Schuman is currently the CRO at Revenue Base, which is a Bessemer portfolio company. They help organizations more efficiently create top line funnel that converts to higher rate to meet revenue goals. Mike spent the last decade as a revenue leader for venture backed companies like Salsify, our work and cloud fastpath, which is now a box company. Mike and I talk a lot. We have really interesting perspectives on things and we share them a lot. And I thought it'd be a really good time to have a conversation with him because he has a lot of thoughts on some of the shifts that are taking place. So Mike, welcome.

Thank you. It's great to be here, Warren. Thanks for having me.

Sure thing. Good. So first, if you don't mind, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and what you're doing right now and sort of like what got you here. I think a lot of things what our audience likes to hear is so if you're a CRO, like how'd you get there? Right. Because I work with a lot of people that are sort of trying to navigate that. So that's always an interesting thing. So if you don't mind, love to hear a bit more about that.

Sure. So coming out of out of college, I really came to sales in business in general very late in my academic career. And I came out of college with a very rough plan. After a couple of happenstances that I Won't bore you with. My plan was I was going to get my street education in business by being in sales for four, three to four years and then going back for an MBA where I was going to focus on finance to get my formal business education. These were like very broad, naive brushstrokes, but it was the only plan that I had. But it was a plan, and part of it really had me focusing on sales as an extension of my academic, academic work where I took it seriously. I was the guy reading the books, driving around, listening to tapes. I watched other more successful salespeople, figured out what they were doing and adopted those behaviors, but really found myself getting very comfortable at operating with very little resources. I didn't realize that when I was hired at this small company, I was basically cannon fodder. Nobody cared whether I was successful or not. And I, I wanted to be successful. I didn't see myself as cannon fodder. So every day I, I continued to learn and grow and I got very comfortable generating and creating revenue streams from scratch. So I threw some twists and turns after my mba, ended up at a publicly traded company where I had launched a new product for them. They desperately needed to show that they could take their technology and put it into a new vertical and create a stream of revenue to try to get the share price up. And I went into my first day, I was working directly for the VP responsible for the product and pulled together a little team internally. And nine months later I walked into her office and I said, congratulations, you just generated a million dollars of incremental revenue. The sales channels are built and we're meeting our sell through rates. And when you do that, you tend to get people's attention, especially in a big company that's sort of been lagging. So I ended up working very closely with the president and CEO, launching new products or testing products from outside the US into the US market and creating more streams of revenue. And my, my wife and I at the time were living at where we live now, which is equidistant between Harvard and MIT in Cambridge. And there were all these early stage companies and at the publicly traded company I was at, it used to be a startup, and there were still people in the halls that had taken that ride. And I thought, man, I wonder if I could ever do this. Like, how good am I really? Like, can I, Could I actually generate a revenue stream from scratch in one of these scenarios where there's no brand equity, you know, there's a really compelling solution, but it's causing people need to think about the problem differently and the solution differently. And I threw myself into the early stage community where I knew absolutely no one, I had absolutely no credibility. And I just focused on helping other people accomplish the things they needed to achieve. And I really looked at these entrepreneurs as people that could really do it all. And what I didn't realize is a lot of them are, while they're extremely bright in areas that I don't necessarily count as my strengths, really selling and understanding how to build a sales process, sales structure, and a sales organization to drive repeatable revenue that's predictable is something I'm actually really good at in doing that without very little guidelines. And then I've, you know, Salsify, I was the first sales hire there, took them from zero to a million in like 18 months. They're now, you know, valued at over $2 billion. They have a great leadership team. Much of the credit goes to them and the terrific people they hired. I worked myself out of a job very quickly, but was smart enough to stick around to learn from a very skilled sales leader. That took over for me. And I just kept building and building and building my knowledge base, my skill set, demonstrating my abilities, until really I earned the right to take over the broad responsibilities that I have now. So the way I approached my career in general was both my parents were in the Navy, and I always believe that if I was going to have the privilege of captaining a ship, that I want to be the captain. The kind of captain that not only knew how to do every job on the ship, but I also know how to work as an effective part of a fleet. So if the bilge pump on the ship broke and my maintenance person was down, I wanted to be able to repair that bilge pump. And I treated sales and revenue generation that same way all the way through up to very complex go to market strategies and metrics, which is where I am today.

Got it, got it, got it. Great, thanks. It's really cool. So I want to talk a bit about some of that stuff because you mentioned some things in there that I'm interested in. The first thing I'd like to know, when you think of the role of a chief revenue officer, because you mentioned you came up through the sales channel, which most CROs do, and we can talk about that too. There's an interesting kind of perspective on that. But how do you describe the role? What's your perspective on the role? You know, if you were, let's say, advising a CEO, right, on hiring a chief revenue officer, how Would you advise them to appoint one and deploy one to them to their business?

Yeah. I think you really want someone who's going to be a steward, a steward of, of revenue and, and, and a steward of the, the different functions that participate in revenue generation from marketing, sales, customer success. Really a steward to the CEO. You know, they need someone who's going to be watching out for them. They spend so much time looking out for everybody else. Well, who's looking out for them? Right. And by being the machine that can drive revenue, that enables that CEO to make the really fun decisions like how do we grow, how do we expand, what new products could we be offering versus like oh my God, how are we going to meet budget this month, how are we going to meet payroll? Like we're like dying over here. Right. So I would say it's that mentality of a steward who really does need to possess not only a strong business acumen, but they have to have a high level of technical skills as it relates to reporting and metrics and other performance capabilities and how to influence the improvement of those KPIs. But they also have to have a high degree of professional skills. I'm told that now soft skills, credit my friend, are now I should call them professional skills. They have to be a steward of people. They have to be someone who is of service, who can set a tone for a team. They're like, they're, they're, they're not necessarily on the field as the quarterback of the team. They're more like, you know, the, the, the coach or the GM level. But you know, they're particularly effective with when they can really get down to that grass loots up grass rep roots, level on the ground with the team in the trench and be effective there as well. Because sometimes people just need a good example to follow.

Right?

Right. And I think a successful CRO, I think you want to see that person that's going to bring energy to the team. They're going to help the people around them really level up their games in a way where people may leave revenue based. Look, we operate from a revenue team that we're of service to everybody else in the company. Like, let's face it, right? Most people in an organization are scared to death of salespeople. They don't know how we do what we do. They don't wanna know what we do. Like they see us coming and they're like, oh no, here they come again. These people are crazy. And it's our job to be grateful to them for the work they're doing to appreciate what our colleagues are doing. Right. You want to have a leader that's going to set the tone for the salespeople and say, look, you're, you're not entitled to anything. You're actually responsible for the well being of these people and their families. And you better bring that intensity every day to what you're doing. And I think when you do that, it does set a really healthy tone for people and leads to some terrific. Not only professional growth but, but personal growth.

Yeah. So you brought a lot of things up there. I think it seemed like you emphasized a lot on the leadership and personal, or like call them professional skills. So I'm going to play a game with you because I have the conversation a lot with people. If you're interviewing a CRO, a potential one, like you're CEO of a company, you're interviewing a CRO. And that particular candidate, you can tell, possesses incredible personal professional skills. Great leadership, really motivating, great coach, great leader, great visionary. You know, someone who you know, would like you said, be that sort of like professional steward of the business. Right. But they're not as competent in the technical skills and then vice versa. Right, vice versa. You met someone who was incredible metrics driven, really data driven person, really has strong acumen, but lacked some of those like professional leadership skills. Which one do you think would make a better or suitable candidate for you?

Yeah, hands down, the person that possesses those, those professional skills. Because I think that that in my mind is more about who you are versus what you know. I can teach you technical skills, Sure. I can surround you with enough people to help you become quite astute in a very short period of time on some of the, the key metrics we're, we're looking for. But if you're going to walk around sucking the life out of people, making them uncomfortable and you can't preserve a team because nobody wants to work with you. I can't teach that. And that's a.

You know, I had a really interesting conversation about this. I bring this up for a reason. I'm really glad you had this. This, you brought this up. So I was at a dinner in Utah a couple weeks, two or three weeks ago, we were having this big conversation about this very topic. And you know, one of the questions that come to me a lot are, wow, the CRO role is so complicated. Somebody has to know sales, they have to know marketing and they need to know how to manage customer experience and they have to understand numbers and they have to be good in Metrics and have tech abilities and you know, who is this unicorn? You know, and it's a great question because I do know some people who are really amazing at all these things. But they, they get there over time. It's not like you're not, you don't come out of the womb that way. So the point is like if you don't possess those, you can't, you don't have some way to speed time up. You have to learn those things along the way, but you still have that job. So sort of the way that I navigate this particular conundrum is ask yourself, the question is, what are the sort of endemic skill sets that I know somebody has to have to succeed? Right. What are those? Right. So I think the initial thought would be, well, I need someone who's really amazingly good at managing business data because ultimately that's their job, right? They need to be able to manage business data and create more cohesion between different functions and develop an ability to read the tea leaves and have strong business acumen that based on that. But then they think about it, they're like, well, if I'm going to hire a CRO in the way that you and I are proposing, which I think we obviously were in agreement that they have to be someone like a more of a leader of a lot of different functions. It's really critical that person understands how to manage, manage people drive, you know, I mean, there's a lot of problems associated with that. Definitely you got to manage up, you got to manage down. So this is the sort of leading up to a bit of a punchline here. The way that I sort of described it is I could delegate technical skill. I can hire a rev ops leader who's amazing at this and that person reports to me and I can give that person really clear direction and over time accumulate some knowledge about it. I can find someone who's really good at marketing. I can put somebody in, in charge of marketing who's a genius at marketing and I can manage that person's outcomes based on them my direction. I can't delegate leadership. I can't have somebody else be the leader for me. Sure, right. You can't. You have to do that yourself. So you think about the thing you can't delegate. That's the thing that you have to do and give it. Given its importance, you have to do really well at it. So I'm in agreement with you. But I. The reason I bring this up is because while I haven't had anybody argue this point, the problem I'M seeing in the marketplace is that when people go to interview for a CRO job, they're not looked at that that way. They're actually looked at for the skill sets that they can delegate. So if someone would say, for example, a great leader would walk in the office and they go, yeah, it's amazing person, my God, he'd really be great on the team. But, you know, he really doesn't really have a strong sense of data management. Let's find somebody else. And so they end up sort of doing the thing I think that they look at as more. What's the word? Maybe more of a, an immediate superficial need in. They sort of do it at the expense of someone who can really manage things really well. You know, and I think that that's why a lot of CROs have a hard time getting the job for the first time, is because they have to earn their stripes by doing certain things and then they find out later on that it's the way someone actually operates and it actually is going to ultimately be more important. So I don't want to get into it too much, but I think it's an interesting topic and it's one that I have a lot. So I'm glad you brought that up. So the thing that you and I talked about as a topic here is, and you mentioned already is, you know, the shift that's taking place in the market right now. Right. This whole growth at all cost sort of mentality of the SaaS based or, you know, subscription based businesses is really was very successful for a long time. That's how unicorns get created. You know, these companies, they just build multiples and multiples and multiples and they're able to scale, scale, scale. And this is the conundrum that I kind of want to get into with you about this because there's two reasons businesses are created. Right. One is to serve customers.

Yep.

And the other one is to make money. Now, everybody wants both. Right. Everybody wants happy customers and a profitable business. Of course they do. Right. And there are some. But I think the thing is, is what is the context? You know, is your business built because you want it to scale and grow and get more like a higher valuation? Right. Or do you want it to be, you know, increase its stock price? Or do you want to create an outcome for people that's really great and that they love the product? And those things are not always easy. You can't manage both of those things. You know, they, they don't always work together. If I'm going For just making more money. I'm going to sometimes have to do it at the expense of the customer experience. We all know this, right? Yep. And I, and I think what's happening, I do, I think that what's happening is a lot of the tools in the marketplace, a lot of this automation now, the SDR sort of wave that's going on, these, these new sort of organizational growth segment that's being built and all the subsequent industry that's being placed around it. It seems to me that it's sort of hitting peak, you know, volume. You know, I don't know about you, because we're probably both around the same, you know, age and whatnot. Just how many inbound garbage messages I get through every single channel that I occupy right now. As I told you, I had three spam calls from salespeople on my phone yesterday, you know, in some very inconvenient places, I have to tell you. And so I just wanted to get into with you, you know, this idea of like, is it really a shift or are people saying this? Because it sounds good to say, but in the back room, people are still doing this stuff because they have to grow because that's what everybody else is doing. Like, is it really changing or are people just kind of giving it lip service that it's changing? I don't, I'm not frankly. Sure.

Yeah. So look, I think people are, you know, becoming more acutely aware of the fact that, you know, it's so valuable to keep really good customers. Right. We've sort of, we've known that people talk about, well, it's always easier to keep a customer than. It's cheaper to keep one than to go out and get a new one. And that's true. And that's not necessarily, you know, a great scenario, but okay, so that is in fact the case. And you know, I think that, like, let's, let's, let's talk about, like, where that starts. Right. And I'm not, I'm not, this is not going to be a commercial for revenue base. But I think it's one of the reasons why we, you know, we started the company is that this idea of really getting a sense of, does this person have this problem or not? Like, does this company have this issue potentially or not? Are they sending out the signals that tell us that? And for us to help our customers do that is yielding dramatic impact on their ability to drive not only the volume of the top of funnel, but the amount that it's converting. Why? Because we're just Talking to the right people about things they care about. You know, this idea of the B2C sort of level of personalization drifting into the B2B space, I think is really all about, like, all the noise and crap and poor execution that passes as work in some of these organizations.

And maybe, I mean, I hear you. I don't disagree in general, but I do think because I'm pretty intimately close to a lot of the people that are doing this sort of thing, and they have a lot of tools they're using, they have a lot of their sales stack and their martech stack is pretty sophisticated. They're doing a pretty good job of trying to scrape the marketplace and identify their icp. And look, they're going to get it wrong a lot. There's no question about that. We know that. But I don't think. I guess what I'm saying is I'm trying to understand it, do a bit, like, how much of it is laziness and how much of it is that. In some respects, I think some businesses are cannibalizing their market. Like, there's just not enough people to sell to. Like, they've already blown their opportunity with the people that they do want to sell to. And without those people being in the funnel, they have to go reach others. And so they're sort of like hoping that they can convert people to think a certain way as opposed to going after the people that they know they are. I'm just trying to understand the. From your perspective.

Yeah.

What's. What, what's going on here? Because there are some businesses that have pretty big tams, right? They're. They're big and they have a lot of opportunities or a lot at bats. But then there are a lot of companies who have a niche business and they have a very small opportunity. And, you know, if you don't go about it right, you ruin the opportunity you have with that small audience. And I'm wondering, like, how many of these calls or emails that I'm getting are due to the fact that either A, just really bad targeting, like, you're just lazy, B, and they've somehow made some assumptions that are wrong about me, or is it that they've actually already expunged all the people and now I'm like, on the fringe and they're hoping that maybe this guy will say yes to me. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Because I know you guys are doing this right now. What are the dynamics you think that affect this sort of thing that's going on inside these companies? Right now.

So not to be in bad form and contradict my, my host. But I'll give you. I know you're. You're smart enough that it's okay.

I want to know why we're here.

A little bit of a different approach. Right?

Yeah.

So fundamentally, I don't agree with the fact that, you know, that getting it wrong is. I know you didn't say it's okay, but like. Yeah, you kind of just. Are they gonna get it wrong some of the time and ah, they don't really know their Tim. It's like.

Well, I think it's just like anything, you know, things go wrong sometimes. I, I think when you're dealing with large sets of opportunities in repetition, you know, you're gonna have like anything, there's going to be some misses. Right. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I agree with you. I'm not saying that you should allow it. I'm simply saying it's a fact. It's like physics, you know, like, you're not going to get it right all the time. Okay, go ahead. So.

So part of our mission is to eliminate that whole assumption and that whole level of like, it's okay. Right. People do need to know exactly how big their TAM is. Where are those people? Where are those companies? Where are those Personas that we want to meet? And like, the acceptance of things like bounce rates in the 20 to 40%. We're like, that is not acceptable.

Okay.

That's, that's not. That's an assumption or a conclusion that we just simply don't agree is okay. Like that doesn't get it done.

Sure.

For us and for our customers. And then, and then I would also.

Yeah, yeah.

I would also add, you know, and I think people did the best they could with what they knew was available. But like the world and the availability of information and the technology around it, when applied in a more effective way, can yield dramatically improved outcomes, which is what we are doing.

Your supposition here is this. Your supposition here is that. Is that because of the way that we are today, in the world today, the sophistication that we have available today, there's no excuse like you should be able to get it right. Right. That's basically what I'm hearing you say.

To get it right.

Okay, I got it right.

Right.

So then my question to you is this because I'd rather avoid getting into a conversation about your company, but more about your philosophy, which is. So why is it not right? In other words, everyone has the same availability, the same technologies and everything. And everybody wants that. I mean, I don't think I'd sit down with any CEO right now that would say, oh, yeah, sure, I want to get crap in my system. They don't. They all want it to work. So what I'm saying is, why is it not? Is it because they don't know what they're doing? Is it like financial pressure? Is it culture? Is it technology? Is it skill? Is it knowledge? Like, what do you think it is, given the fact. Because I agree with you, there shouldn't be any reason why anybody gets this wrong anymore. But so many people do. What's happening in your view that's going on out there? That it's going on? What's the, what's the reason?

So sometimes I think it's, it's a little bit of a, of a, of a mindset around, like, cast that wide net, get every deal we can, even the ones on the fringe, even if they're not a great fit. Like. Like, let's just like, get it in. Right.

This is a vanity metric sort of thing.

Well, I don't know that it's vanity. I think these are. Look, these are all very bright people. They're not unintelligent. They know exactly. They. I mean, these people are, excuse me, but many of them much more skilled than I am.

Sure, sure.

Right.

I get it.

Are making some very good decisions with, with what they know. But there is this, like, risk of like, well, should we just cast the net a little bit wider? A little bit wider then you're doing that with some people that, you know, these young professionals that maybe not have been as well trained. So you're maybe starting sales cycles with people on the fringe versus, like those people at the core that you really meet. You know, they have an intense level of challenges that you solve with your solution.

That's like your ideal customer profile. Yeah.

I would say if you can put more energy into that icp, not only are you going to close deals at a higher rate, but you're going to retain them. You're going to have a chance to expand them.

Yep.

This idea of, like, we don't know now, I'm not saying that you sort of put your blinders on and focus. If you want to see what's out on the fringe, then go run some experiments that you can actually measure and execute against to, to run a test.

Right.

You want to go to a new vertical. Absolutely. Go there. I love that.

Sure.

But do it in a very structured way. With a degree of knowledge. And don't. Don't rely on maybe your existing team to execute that experimentation. It's. It's gonna debilitate them. It's gonna demoralize them if it's not successful. But if they go into it saying, hey, gang, we're gonna go out and we're gonna, like, go test, we're gonna go. We're gonna dive into the jungle and we're gonna see if there's a path here.

Got it?

Right.

So then you're. You're. Let's say. Cause I hear you. Let's say you're a chief revenue officer at a company. It's your job to, as you say, steward. Like, all these things that are going on and, you know, you're getting a directive that might sound. I'm sure it happens a lot. Something like, pipeline's just not big enough. I'm looking at the system. I did a run at readout of our salesforce, and we're just seeing. It just seems light to me, you know, given the metrics that you've provided us in terms of our close rates and our time to close and whatever the case may be, the sales cycles were concerned that, you know, we're not going to have enough opportunities in the. In the pipe in another three or four months, and I need you to get it up there. Now. You know that you've been following the philosophy that you've just laid out, which you've been really targeted and really focused on having the right conversations. And you and I know that those take a little bit longer. You nurture people, et cetera, et cetera. And someone's basically saying to you, look, just increase it. I need. My board is looking at this and they're really worried, and they have a concern now that, you know, the pipeline seems to reflect. Right. The opportunities we have in the marketplace, and that cascades towards, you know, some bad returns, and we need you to do something about it. What's the CRO's way to handle that in your context so that they can deal with that reality. That happens a lot. You know. What do you think?

Yeah, look, I think that there needs to be a level of understanding before it gets to that point. Right. Once that horse has sort of left the barn, it's really hard to get it back in. Like, you don't have a time machine, so you can't go back and start looking at like, why are we winning some deals? Why are we losing some deals? Where. Where maybe does this same issue exist? And maybe an adjacent market. Like the job of the CRO is to be seeing around those corners in advance.

Yep.

Right. So, yes, all of the metrics of what's happening today, but being fully aware and in lockstep with the CEO and frankly, the board, to know, like, where. Where we need to get to, they start seeing pipeline drying up. If they're. If their metrics are being followed and they know their unit economics and all the associated measures around their business, they should have seen this coming long before.

Okay.

Recognizing like there's a challenge, like, what do you do about it now? Look, you're going to. You dig in with your teams and you start relying on the people around you to see if there's any other insight. Is there anything we should be changing about how we're going about it? Has there been some shift, for example, externally in the market like we haven't seen with a competitor? What is, what is it that's bringing about all of a sudden? If we were doing really well, what is it that's changed? And now as a group, what can we do about it?

Yeah, I agree.

I would lean on the people around.

You're saying it really has to do, really, with the upfront work that you do, not the tactical work.

Absolutely right. And frankly, I would say it gets down to the level to some of your most junior people and how they're being supported and nurtured and how they're. How they're being groomed to level up their professional and technical skills.

Yeah. You know, I agree. It's all much about the framework of setting things up. And we'll get into this because I want to just chat a bit about some of the evidence of how this isn't happening. And, you know, I see these. Again, I. I don't want to sound like I'm demeaning, like, this whole group of people, because I talk a lot about the SDR thing and, you know, the pushback is, oh, come on. These are great people and they're doing a hard job, and, you know, it's a tough thing. And I totally agree with that. Like, I don't have any issue at all with the people that are making these phone calls. I don't. They're just doing their job. They're being told to do something and they're doing it, and they're doing a difficult job. And there's. Some of them are really good at it. So it's not that. It's the. It's the strategy I have a problem with. It's the deployment that I have a problem with. It's that some of these people are being asked to make 100 calls a day or whatever the metric is. And that maybe was fueling my earlier comment, which is, if I'm going to make 100 calls a day, I know that, you know, a good part of the show is going to be people that I probably shouldn't have called in the first place, but I have to make 100 calls a day. So it's sort of baked into the system to some degree that I'm going to do a lot of misses. But the volume gets the. The check mark at the end of the day. Right. And so. So the way that I would like to walk through something with you is so what? I counsel my clients on getting a Chief Revenue officer job. I tell them the same thing you just did. I say, look, your job success is going to be predicated on one thing, and that is the agreement that you have with your CEO on how you're going to go to market together. Because if you don't have that together, then you're sort of at the mercy of every whim that comes up. Right?

Yeah.

How do you do that? Right. How do you establish it? So I want to ask you that question. So. So you're look at it from both perspectives, right. You're a CRO or a CEO. What's the manner in which you'd suggest or advise counsel a new CRO to establish that relationship so that that doesn't happen? What's the way to do that?

It's the key element that has to exist in any meaningful relationship, and it's trust. I think there's a level of credibility that has to come along with that. I think there's a level of transparency and personal accountability goes an awful long way. You know, it's. It's doing those little things in the beginning, those things that you really can do as you're trying to get your feet underneath you, as you're trying to understand the business, it's over communicating, and it's really helping that CEO understand, like, wow, this person really, like, knows what they're doing. They're looking down the road. They're buttoned up. They're giving me, I'm going to say, like, giving me energy because they're not making me really think and, like, have to put in, like, a lot of extra work to understand what's going on. They're actually, they're. They're making me smarter.

Yeah, Right.

And I think that that goes a very long way in establishing that Trusting relationship and that healthy dynamic of, hey, we're not, like, looking across the room, pointing our fingers at each other. We're actually sitting next to each other at a table looking at the same problem, maybe from different angles, but really driving to that same ultimate conclusion that we've all agreed is our objective.

Yeah, I got it. And so, you know, my 100% agree, I think it starts at the interview process, right? I mean, so, again, big conversation I have with my clients a lot is when you're looking at a chief revenue officer role, like, instead of being in a situation where you're just trying to get the job, try and create the job, right? The job that's going to work, because this is a job that traditionally doesn't last. Most CROs last about 17 months or 18 months or something like that. And that's not good for either party, Right. I mean, it's a very expensive failure. Right. For everyone. And so, you know, and I'm in the midst of this discussion with a lot of my clients right now, which is what's the right way to set the foundation up. So to that end, this kind of gets into the conversation about hiring, which I know you and I have talked about a little bit too, and the way that CROs need to start thinking differently about hiring. And, you know, this is a whole other, like, big disciplinary problem we're seeing in the marketplace. I have more and more friends of mine or people that I know that are incredibly skilled at something, but they can't get jobs because the hiring criteria is not looking for the skills that they have. It's looking for other things that are different. Right. And so, you know, people are making the wrong very, I think, sometimes superficial hiring decisions, and they're not predicating it on what people really need. So I'm just curious, if you're a CRO and you're in a situation where you're building your team, what are some thoughts you have on the way hiring is changing and the way you need to be looking?

You know, I don't know that it's really. That it's really changed for me. So to call it. You know how I see it changing? I mean, look, there's definitely been this. This. This. This shift from it being sort of a candidate market to a. To a company market, right? It's, you know, people that. That didn't want to talk to me two months ago or now that now they're calling me, they want to talk again because, you know, we're hiring up the. The team. So I don't. I don't know that it's really changed for me. I would say that one of the things that I struggle with, and I hope the recruiters out there don't get angry at me because I know you're doing what you've been asked, which is like, I feel like when you're working with a client, sometimes, like, you're looking for the client to describe the ice cube tray, and then your job is to go out and find ice cubes that, like, fit into it from a technical skill. And given sort of my. My background and my mentality as it relates to people in general and professionals. I just like indications of people being interested in what they're doing and committed to it. When I'm interviewing candidates, I'm frankly, like, I'm. I've interviewed some great candidates, and when I ask them, like, tell me about the latest, like, sales book that you've read or tell me about, like, the things that you're doing every day to improve your craft. And I get. Well, you know, I follow this person on LinkedIn and I've, like, watched a couple of YouTube videos, and I'm. To me. All right, well, what have you. Tell me about the latest one you saw and what'd you get out of it? How did you apply it? And, you know, they're not invested in themselves. And I thought, I think, you know, geez, I'm about to, like, give a significant amount of my time and energy to this individual. I'd like to be met halfway. I'd like to be working with someone who's as. Who is as interested in themselves as I am in terms of their professional success.

Okay.

And it just. Sometimes you don't.

It sounds like that. That's. You're speaking to candidates. Right. Whom are bringing themselves to the marketplace and how they should be positioning themselves.

Well, I think it's. I think it's that. But also, you know, for. For people that we're being. That we're asking to help us find really good candidates. Like, we. We give them direction that.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

You know, it's not just about the.

Yeah. Fitting. Fitting a box. You know, I talk to a lot of recruiters, and the problem that most of them have, as you probably know, is that they do bring innovative people or different types of people to the table, and their boss goes, what'd you bring me this person for? This person isn't a fit. Get them out of here. You know, you don't know what you're Doing, you know, I asked you to get me the square peg to go into the square peg and you brought me a round one. Get out of my office. This person's no good. And I used to have this conversation. I was working at a big, big company and they had this, you know, recruiting department. They'd say to me, you know, dude, they don't, they don't want people that are innovative. If I, if I bring somebody to the table that has this specific type of, you know, business skill or this specific type of personality trait that I know would be good here, they look at them and they say, this person never worked in an agency before. I don't know, why are you bringing this person to me? I don't even want to talk to this person. So there is constraints, right? So it's broken. I mean, there isn't any doubt about that. I mean, the problem right now too is, you know, if you put your resume in any one of these online systems right now, a bunch of AI bots look at a bunch of keywords and that's how they get shown. So it's a robot that's making the decision. So, you know, I think there's two sides of this, right? One is you have a recruiting layer, right, who you've deployed into the marketplace that sift through the marketplace for you and bring you back bodies. I understand that and I know that, you know, if I'm a small company, you know, I have some degree of control over how I put those people to market. And I can say, you know, I want you to look for innovators or I want you to look for people that can like address these things. I don't think most people are that creative. Most people say, I need a project manager and I need somebody who's been a project manager at a company like this that's worked on projects like this successfully. Because I need someone to do that for me tomorrow, right? I can't afford to like build this person up over the next six months because I need this done tomorrow. I want someone that can jump right in here and get into my system and start doing it. And that's a real need. I don't think that's there's anything to be said about that. I think that we're working in an immediacy based society right now in our industries, which are, you know, very fast moving. And, you know, I'm guilty of this. I mean, I look for people and I'm like, I need someone that I can hire tomorrow. They can jump into my thing and fix it for me, you know, And I probably am overlooking people who might be better at it if, you know, I gave them a little bit more time. But I don't have the time. So, you know, I'm looking at this again. I don't want to get this new recruiting conversation as much as a chief revenue officer. And I'm saying this again from that perspective. You have a lot of people you gotta bring together. You got marketing people, you got salespeople, you got customer success people, you've got technical people. So, you know, what's the sort of. I don't know if there is an answer to this question, but you know, what's the CRO's sort of perspective that needs to be brought to that conversation when the CRO wants to build the right team? Because this team is going to be the way that that steward is going to fulfill on the obligations that you have.

Right. So I think one of the first things that you want to do is, you know, rely on the structure that any structure that you have in place you want to leverage. Right. Whether it's your head of customer success, focusing on their people and you're also supporting them. Right. That first team mentality of really helping out your teammates internally. So I think in a way you've got to have them sort of shoulder some of the load in terms of hiring and you really owe it to them to give them a structure in which to have candidates participate in an interview process that's really well thought out. Right. It has to be detailed and it's less about maybe the titles they've had or the companies they've been in and necessarily maybe the industries. But there are other elements that you will also want to have on that scorecard for a particular role. But you've got to do that homework up front in terms of defining like what is a good fit for this position.

Yeah, yeah.

But then also rely on the structure that you have in place other. Other managers or teammates. I mean, shoot, I've got AES on our team now doing role play interviews with candidates.

Yeah, it sounds like it's more like a competency based approach as opposed to a job totally based approach, which I agree with. And you have to assess those competencies. So we're getting close to end here because we, you and I can talk for another hour, I can tell. But I want to give you a minute to just expound on one thing before I close out and that is, is this. If you could give a. I'm trying to think how to do this the best way. If you could, if you were speaking to a chief executive officer of a company that you like kind of look at in the space that we are in like a revenue, like a subscription based or a SaaS based company right now, and they were looking to hire their first CRO in a, in a minute. What would be some of the things that you'd say they need to be thinking about to appoint their first chief revenue officer and the approach they should take before they make that decision.

So I would, I would have them do some introspection on themselves maybe where they see some of their, their gaps working closer to strength, some areas where they would really be looking for a partner in crime to, to collaborate with. And then, you know, maybe look at areas where they're, they have strengths that maybe they don't necessarily need this person to possess. Sort of a nice to have, need to have. I would also say that spend, get, plan on spending some time with this person. Maybe consider some type of arrangement where you're able to work with them on a contract basis for a period of time leading up to the hire. If they're open to that. It kind of gives both parties the chance to get to know each day.

Before you get married, so to speak. Yep. Okay.

And I would say that, you know, understand the technical skills that you want this person to possess and just ensure that they can either like lock that down or have resources to quickly get schooled up on the areas where they may not have as strong a visibility of the technical side of things. We talked about it earlier, Warren, is this idea of I would put a high emphasis on the professional skills, the leadership skills, times where they failed, they speak freely about that. Are they going to withhold that? Do they have the confidence to, to speak to that and articulate like where they've, where they've won despite those, those losses. Like what are they made of? Right. Spend some time doing that because it is a very important hire.

Yep, it's the, the most important hire. So. All right. We're running out of time, but this was great. Like, I really had.

Really find it helpful. Appreciate you asking.

Yeah, no, no problem. I mean it's a good topic because I think the CROs are being hired wrong. You know, to be honest with you, they're not being hired properly and your perspective is really valuable. So thank you for that. So how can people reach you and what's the best way they can get in touch with you and what are you up to?

Yeah, so the best way is Mike@revenuebase AI is my email. I, I will just say, I look, I've been where people are when they've struggled, and one of the things I'd always hoped is that somebody would just take a minute and listen to me and maybe help me out a little bit and not just, you know, dismiss me out of hand. So I promised myself that if I was ever in a position to help somebody, I was going to do it. And so I'm all ears to anybody that, you know, may want to chat and maybe have a. Have a method of sort of, you know, safe place to talk and someplace to provide them a little bit of support who isn't going to go around gossiping about the challenges, who's going to more revel in their successes. So that's probably the best way of getting a hold of me. I'm on LinkedIn. It's Michael J. Schuman is the handle and, you know, I'm, like I said, I'm just thrilled to have been here and thanks, Warren, and keep up the good work on your end, too.

Well, thank you. This great conversation and you brought a lot of really good things to talk about here. So thank you very much for your perspective and your experience. So we're signing off. Mike Schumann, thank you very much and looking forward to talk to you more.

Pleasure.