HOW THIS REP GETS HUGE ENTERPRISE DEALS QUICKLY IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions Brutally Honest Answers Show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, The Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice before it's showtime.

Here we go. Hey, David.

Thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I, so I work at Netskope. We're a cybersecurity company. We're actually the leader of the SSE Security Services Edge Magic Quadrant for Gartner. So it's a very exciting place to be. I always tell people that we're the second step for zero trust security. So the first step is gonna be around multifactor authentication, SSO, knowing who your users are. And the second step is around inspecting your traffic that's leaving all your computers. And that's what we do that we do. We inspect all your cloud and all of your website traffic. So it's a really exciting place to be. Before that, I was at Okta. Before that, I was at a startup called Mapbox and I was at Tableau. And then before that, I was at IBM. So I've been at a lot of tech companies and I started in consulting at IBM. And then I pivoted to sales and it's been really great since then. I'm really in love with sales. I think it's a great career and I think it's a very underrated career.

And why'd you make that switch?

Well, I was at IBM in a program called Consulting by Degrees after college. It was a great program. We had a cohort every 6 months, we had training and then most people got promoted after 6 months. And I realized I was working a lot, like every week in the evenings I was working on deliverables and it just felt like a grind. And my peers that were in the sales program, they were having a lot of fun. And I realized that I'm pretty good with people. I like talking to people, I like meeting clients, but in consulting I would meet the client once a week and then I would have all these deliverables and present them to the deliverables the next week. So I was like, let's, you know, how about I focus on my strengths? I'm a big extrovert and I was able to pivot to sales. Unfortunately, not at IBM because it was a little difficult to do that internally, but I was able to apply and find a job in sales and work my way up.

And what was that first year like? Was it hard adjusting or learning?

It was hard. I mean, consulting out of college is pretty cushy. You know, the base pay is very high and there's a really good career track to partner. So I had to leave and go to an inside sales role at Tableau where my base pay was a lot lower than my base pay at IBM and I was paid on new logos. So it was selling individual licenses. And the big thing there was we would try to do these one-call closes where we would call people who get a trial and try to get their credit card on the phone. So it was the best training. I mean, if you're afraid of talking to people and asking for money, I think that that's the best place to start.

And you were good at that?

Yeah, I was good and I got a lot of energy from it. So I guess we could pivot to this at some point. But I think sales, like anybody can do sales. If you know how to talk to people, you can do sales. The challenge is I think sales can be very draining for most people because you're doing a lot of uncomfortable things. So I'm someone who gets a lot of energy from doing that. So I, for me, it was a good fit and I just kept wanting to do more of it.

Yeah. And how long did it take before you felt at home in sales?

I think I felt at home right away in sales.

You did?

Yeah. And I actually have ADHD. And I found out that a lot of people have ADHD in sales and it's a really good career for people that are a little bit neurodivergent.

Well, explain that. How does it help?

Well, sales is all about context switching.

Yeah.

So every 2 minutes you're switching context and that's gonna be draining for anybody who doesn't have ADHD. But for someone like me, it's kind of fun. Like I get on a call, I try to solve a problem and then I get on another call and try to solve a different problem. And I get energy from that. I'm like, when's the next call? So—

So you like the variety?

Mm-hmm. And I like that you don't, you don't have to deploy anything. Like really, I sell a product and then there's a team that deploys it. So—

But you have to close a deal, right?

Yes.

You have to not start a bunch.

Yeah. You have to follow through.

Yeah. And at Tableau, was it unlikely that they would buy if they didn't close on that first meeting?

No, that, that was just kind of an internal joke. We did it a few times, but— You did try it too. But it did work. It was just fun when it would happen and it happened a few times because if someone went on our website and downloaded a license and the license was $2,000, it was perpetual licensing then. So if they loved what they had, you know, you could probably get their credit card on the phone. But a lot of the times they downloaded it and they didn't really know what it was and you had to do a demo and kind of explain it and show the value. So yeah.

And how about the switch from Business intelligence. That's what Tableau does, right? To security. That's a pretty weird leap.

Yeah, actually it was pretty thoughtful because when I was at Tableau, I realized that Tableau was just such a game-changing technology. You know, people were on some legacy tech, they couldn't even click edit and build their own dashboards on some of the legacy players. But then a lot of companies came in and did what Tableau did and it became, you know, just a lot of companies did what we, it became crowded and I felt like BI was getting more crowded and at the same time cybersecurity was kind of this new hot field. And I was actually doing my MBA at Georgetown at the time. I was doing an evening MBA while I was at Tableau. And I remember one of, one VC who spoke about cybersecurity, he's like, if you're in DC, and you're in tech, you need to be in cybersecurity. And I was in DC, I was in tech, and I just felt like that was where I needed to be. And so I actually talked to a friend of mine who was at Tableau and had gone to Okta and was able to get an offer at Okta and go into cybersecurity. But that was also kind of a lateral move because I was already in enterprise sales a little bit in a junior enterprise role at Tableau, and I had to take a commercial role at Okta. So I had to start over again a little bit, but I think it was a great decision.

Yeah. And did it take you long to pick up the security lingo?

Yeah, maybe 6 months. I mean, it was a lot of learning from the fire hose and at first it was fun because I was in an office learning from my peers, but then very soon I was at home during COVID trying to learn on Zoom, which was terrible. And I had a kid at the same time, so I was very cautious about COVID Oh boy.

Yeah. And how about as far as talking to security people versus business people? Very different.

That's a good question. I think what I liked about Tableau, which is different here, is that at Tableau I could sell to head of marketing, head of HR, just any function could use Tableau. And really it was about getting all the functions to align on an enterprise agreement. That was the ultimate goal. But at Netskope, your ultimate buyer is really the CIO, but first the CISO. So you're not really selling to a lot of different buyers. So you really have to build a good network within the CISO community and start to get to know these people.

And that's a crowded community.

Yeah, very.

How did you get time allotment with a CISO or did you have a lot of inbound?

No. Well, we have a lot of inbound, but they don't really count in my opinion. So a lot of people go on our website and they click on things and then these are inbound leads. You're not gonna get far calling these people. They're not decision makers, they're just doing research. A lot of them are consultants. So you can pay attention to what's happening, but really you need to get in front of the CISO or the CIO. For us at Netscope, we sell only through value-added resellers. So my first motion at Netscope was to get to know the value-added resellers in my community and to become really close with them because they have close relationships with CISOs and CIOs.

And that's been effective.

Yeah, it has. I stack ranked all my accounts and so I know which CIO and which CISO I try to get in front of and then I know who sells to them and then I get to know that person, try to understand the environment that the customer already has, try to explain to that person how Netskope can help them and then get that person to evangelize my message and get us a meeting. Wow.

But what's the downside of working through the channel though?

You don't have as much control in theory.

Yeah.

And you give up margin to the channel. But I think there's so much money to be made. And the problem at a vendor rep is that I work at Netscope, I'm gonna sell a deal, it's gonna be a very complex deal. We're gonna provide a ton of value. As soon as they sign, I disappear because they have a customer success person, they have an implementation team. And really I don't have any value to add anymore. So it's hard for me to maintain that relationship with the CIO over 10 years like the reseller has. The reseller maybe has 5 accounts and they've known the CIO for 10, 20 years. So you're never gonna build that level of trust. So you have to work with them.

Yeah, because my experience with the channel is they're great when you bring them a deal.

Yeah, that's how it is. But you can't work with them, you can't work without them kind of thing. And I probably shouldn't say this on this podcast because they're not gonna bring you a deal. That's not their business. Their business is to advocate for their customer. But if you try to go around them, you're not gonna get a 7-figure deal. They're just gonna be in meetings that you're not part of and they're gonna bring in your competition. So you have to work with them. I truly believe that. But I, the way that I can get into a lot of other deals that they're not bringing me into is by becoming friends with a lot of vendors in my community. So a lot of reps at CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Okta, etc. And then we can exchange information. We can even do dinners together where we all invite our customers and your customers are my prospects and vice versa.

That's smart. Yeah. And because what I always found is that all they really did, and maybe it was just the market I was in, that they would be great with the paper, the contract and getting through Because I'm sure in the DC area you sell a lot to the government. Is that true or?

I don't. So we have a team that sells to the government, but I sell enterprise. Yeah. But to be candid, I'm good with paperwork too. We have an RFP team. It's fine. Like we have a good deal desk team.

You may be, but your company isn't, right? Because, you know, the customer wants it on a contract vehicle that's pre-approved and his accounts are already set up and Yeah, I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, I think for federal it might be like that. For me, it's still fairly straightforward. But I think they do add a ton of value when you're not in the room because you're only gonna get a little bit of face time with the CISO and the CIO and they're talking to them on a weekly basis at a minimum.

About technical stuff, not just about account management stuff.

About everything.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're a proxy for them buying anything.

And it's exclusively through the channel.

At Netscope. Yeah. I think other companies still have 2 motions where you can go direct. At Netscope, we're forcing a channel motion because we know that if we work with the channel, eventually they'll bring us deals, et cetera.

Sure. And what do you think makes you great at sales?

I think I appreciate that you say great. I try to hit my quota every year and it feels, It never feels easy. But I think that it's in my head, it's very simple. If you're in sales to make money, then that's the wrong reason. There you can be in finance and accounting and marketing. There's so many functions where if you move up, you'll make a ton of money. You have to be in sales because you love sales. Like, and that's, I think what I found with sales, I just get up in the morning, I'm like, who can I talk to? It's funny because we have prospecting days at Netscope, you know, we're trying to prospect, et cetera. And my boss is like, David, you prospect too much. Like we need to get you to stop talking to people. Like, and because it's like if I have some free time, I'm gonna look at my phone and be like, who haven't I talked to in a little bit? And I think that's the kind of person who can be successful in sales, not someone who's really obsessed with money because then it'll be all about you and people are gonna sense that and they're not gonna wanna buy from you. But if you really care about talking to people, building relationships, And identifying problems that you can solve, I think you're gonna, you're gonna have success.

Yeah. And is this a skill that you've developed or is this part of who you are?

I think it's part of who I am and then it's a skill that I've developed. So I think that there's a certain personality type that can do well in sales and that's fitted for sales. Like there's a certain personality type that's probably fitted to be a good accountant. And every function really has a certain personality type that will do well in. But I think afterwards what can make you great is really studying your craft. So I spent a lot of time reading every sales book and highlighting it and just rereading it. And not a lot of what I do is made up, you know, basically everything that I do is stuff that I've just stolen from other people. And, you know, best practices. So if you ask me why I did something, I'm not gonna say, oh, it felt like a good thing. It's like, oh, I read this in this book and that's why I did it. So I think it's really important to read a lot.

Yeah. Books to be the best. Is it sales books or psychology books or business books?

Sales books. I read a lot of, I've read a lot of business books too, but I like sales books. I know that's kind of contrarian because a lot of people will say that sales books are kind of BS, but I think there are some really great sales books. I think Predictable Revenue, Aaron Ross is a really good book. The Challenger Customer, which is the second edition from Gartner, and then Never Split the Difference with Chris Voss. That's a good book too. And there's other good books, but those are the main 3 that I really try to—

But only one was written by somebody who ever sold.

Yeah. Well, they've done other things. Yeah, I guess the first one, right?

And calling what he did selling is a stretch.

Yeah, but he has a, he has a method for the SDR motion, which I think a lot of us don't.

Well, yeah, hounding. But yeah, but it doesn't sound like that's your approach.

No, but I think it's helpful for the SDRs to have that approach.

Do you?

Then why isn't it working?

Why isn't it working? We get meetings through our SDRs and I think that the challenge is this, that, and there's probably a lot of answers to this question. In my opinion, the challenge is that any good SDR will get promoted to an AE role after a year and that's what should happen because they're more productive to the organization when they have A quota.

Yeah.

So there's an incentive for them to get promoted to make more money and there's an incentive for the organization to promote them. So I think that it's very hard for SDRs to ramp in 3 months, be productive for 9 months and then become an AE. But I think the best you can hope for from your SDR is if you give them a lot of love, they'll spend more time with you than other people and maybe they'll get you 20% closer to your number.

Yeah.

But I think you should really own your number as an AE.

And during the sale, what is your strongest characteristic? Is it prospecting? Is it building interest? Is it—

So I think what I'm good at is understanding our competitive differentiation and leading with that rather than leading with the market because I think what a lot of people do is they talk about the market. And then inadvertently what happens is they position their competitors because they're like, hey, you know, you should look at SSE. Like, okay, I'll look at SSE and then I'll look at everyone in the quadrant. But really I talk about insider risk and how we decrypt TLS 1.3 traffic and how that's important because otherwise your users can take your corporate information to their personal instance of Google Drive and then that's terrible for your organization, et cetera, which is something that we uniquely do at Netskope. So I think understanding your differentiation is really important. And then going to market with that, you need to inflict pain in sales. You can't go and ask questions to try to find pain. You need to literally go and be like, this is a problem that other people are seeing and you probably have this problem. Tell me about that. And then you need to, when they start talking about the problem, I think you need to ask more questions like, okay, that's interesting. Tell me more. And you need to get very deep before you start Start switching. A lot of people, they'll understand the pain at a very shallow level and then they'll ask other questions that are not related to pain. And so it's hard to build a deal when you do that. But I try to get into discovery, dig into the pain. Once I understand the pain, I try to understand the people, people involved in decision-making. Usually there's 5 or 7 people, et cetera. Just ask questions like, who are the people involved in decision-making? Or how do you guys purchase software? People will tell you and then understand their priorities. So pain, people, priority. So what is your main priority right now? Is it insider risk, which is what we solve, or is it MDR, like manage, detect, and response? You know, and if it's MDR, that's not what we do. But I can talk about how we integrate with MDR vendors and how we complement MDR. So I can try to become part of your number one initiative because otherwise I can't create a compelling event. If I'm important, but I'm not part of your number one priorities, then the deal is not real.

So that's because that's the classic security selling problem is that it does something that they need, but it's low on the list.

Yeah. And there's so many things on that list.

There's so many things on the list.

Yeah.

Is that the main obstacle that you find? Because it sounds like you got a strong differentiator that people recognize.

I think, yeah. Well, no, people don't recognize it. I think it's a strong differentiator, but I don't think people understand it.

Yeah.

I think you need to go and explain that to them. And then I think a lot of people, there's just a lot of status quo bias. Like people know that VPN is legacy tech, but it's very hard to move off VPN. And so that's why if you tell people that your tech is the best, you're not gonna get very far. What you have to actually tell them is that VPN is terrible and you have to explain why. And then eventually they'll come to the conclusion that they need your tech. And one CISO once told me, which I thought was really interesting, is integration beats innovation any day. So I try to talk about, okay, this is what you have today. This is how we integrate with your stack and really architect that for them rather than talk about all the cool bells and whistles that we have.

So you leverage your technical expertise because most reps haven't probably learned how to have that conversation the way you have. Is that true?

Maybe. I don't go very deep. So I ask you, like, you know, what do you use for identity? What do you use for endpoint detection response?

Right.

But CrowdStrike, Okta, and then I talked about how we integrate, but I don't really talk about it deeply. My engineer will do that.

Understood. But you're— you tell them the problem. You don't use questions to elicit the problem.

And that's maybe a little contrarian too. And I know this podcast is all about that, so I'm happy to bring it up. I don't believe in an interrogation. I don't believe in questions really. I don't really want to ask questions. I want to make statements and then have you speak.

Okay. It's a different style.

Yeah. I know.

It's more direct.

And I think in your market it may work better because you've got a reseller that got you the meeting. So there's some context. And trust that's inherited by working with them.

Yeah.

And you've got a probably an even keel buyer who wants to learn about what you do as opposed to evaluate what you do. So you've got to get them to recognize an active pain. Yeah. You gotta take them from latent to active in that short period of time.

Mm-hmm.

And you're using a case study type of approach.

Yeah. And I think that people just really hate interrogations and when they think about salespeople, they're like, oh, I don't wanna get on this call. I'm gonna get an interrogation. They're gonna ask me all these open-ended questions and it's gonna be awful. But you can, people, but the interesting psychology of this is that people hate answering questions, but they love correcting people. Yes.

Yeah.

And, and correcting people. So if I make an assumption that's wrong because I'm just throwing something into the universe and hoping to be right, but I'll probably be wrong, you'll correct me and I'll be like, oh really? That's so interesting. Tell me more about that. And then they'll just start talking and you'll get more information than if you asked an open-ended question.

I agree with that. They do love correcting people. So saying something that you may even know is wrong.

Yeah. Or you just, you don't know if it's right or wrong. You just don't know.

Yeah, because CISOs and security, is that how do you make it a priority is by getting that pain really activated and them seeing what can happen?

I think so. I think that's the first step. And the second step is helping them sell your tech to their board. So I think if you really need to document what they say and put it in a really pretty PowerPoint, And call it an executive briefing deck. And every time you have a call, you keep adding slides about this is, you know, what we do here, this is what we do there. And then eventually you have a 20-page deck that they feel like, wow, this is something really good that I can show to my board. Because how big is the board? Well, 7 figures. They do. Okay.

So it is a board.

For ACV. Yeah. And the board has a hard time saying no to security because, you know, if you say no to security and something happens, then That was bad.

But if you say yes to all of it, then it's—

But most reps won't create a board deck.

They won't.

So I think that if you really follow the process, you create a board deck, you're super thorough, then getting money will come. I think that's why I don't love BANT and other methodologies because if you go in first call, you ask about their budget, like nobody has budget for security. You know, we're not revenue generating. Nobody wants to spend money on security. So you have to build it in. They didn't call you then. Yeah. And by the time, if they have an incident and they call you, then you either have a deal or you don't, but you can't really influence that. Right.

And they'll try and buy as little as possible, not what they need.

Yeah.

And what other things have you learned along the way that you wish you knew back in your BI days?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think early on in my career, I was really focused on my quarterly number and I was really nervous. And I think now I really try to think of myself as a business person, not a salesperson, because I'm really building a territory here. So I need to sell a lot of value, but I also need to have a bunch of happy customers so I can go win the biggest deals that exist in my territory. So it's very important to take a long-term perspective and it's important to understand that, and this sounds maybe like a little bit metaphysical, but everything in the universe is connected. If you build a bad relationship with the value-added reseller, then it'll be really hard to win that big account later on. So my thing is, I want to create a lot of value for my customers, for my community. And I also want people to either feel positive or neutral when they hear my name. I don't want anybody to have negative emotions because that can really hurt me. So I try to always be fair with people and really think big picture, you know, how can I get a small deal this quarter is not important to me, but how can I get a big deal that'll influence a bigger deal is something that I'm really thinking about now. There's other things I've learned along the way, but I think that's the biggest one is nothing's gonna happen in a year or 2 in your career, but a lot can happen in 10 years. So if you keep that long-term focus.

And what have you noticed about learning the big deals that surprised you?

They're not that different than the small deals. They, Like it's about the little things. And I think what I try to do in big deals is just build a lot of champions and a lot of low-level champions. A lot of people are like, oh, I'll just try to get in touch with the CIO. I don't have to have a relationship with the CIO. Actually, I'd prefer if my CAO had a relationship with the CIO. I don't want to maintain that relationship. They don't want to talk to me. But what I can do is I can be really great to procurement. I can be really great to people testing my tech. I can send them books that are personalized. I can invite them to my dinners. And those are the people, you know, when the CIO makes a decision, they're gonna know that everyone had a great experience evaluating Netscope and that's gonna be how it's gonna be for them when they're a customer. So I think people try to go too high too fast and they forget that executives don't wanna talk to sales reps. If you're gonna go high, which you absolutely should in every deal, You should have an executive sponsor in every deal, but you shouldn't maintain the relationship between the executive sponsor and your company. You should really have that person's peer at your company foster a relationship with that person.

Yeah.

And you have to have something to say that they care about. Yeah.

And I think there's always something that they care about, like product roadmap stuff.

It's not your product though. It's something about— Yeah.

And that's how you get big deals because If you make it about your deal, the deal will be commoditized. But if you make it about their business, their future, then your deal is part of that future and it becomes one checkbox along the way.

Cool.

Hey David, really appreciate your time today.

Where can people go to connect and follow you?

I'm on LinkedIn, so always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through. The false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between Where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Um, just really, you know, read a book, uh, listen to a podcast. That's good, good start. I like it. But then you have to take action, and then you want both tactical and strategic.

ideas.

You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes. That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes.

And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the conversation, get the meeting, fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You get a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sales solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics.

of it.

Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back, come back, keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income. Really?

Yeah.

The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads, trying to close those deals and Do you have the game?

Few people do.

Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.