How to Grow a Sales Team in a Renewal-Based Business - Leslie Venetz - Revenue Today - Episode # 096

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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com. I'm joined today with Leslie Venetz, an awesome friend and a great seller. She spent 15 years in the C-suite enterprise selling, opening big doors and penetrating some of the biggest logos like AT&T, Kraft Heinz, Walmart, ExxonMobil, JP Morgan, Verizon, and Target. She went from that to be a 3-time head of sales, ramping SDR teams from 0 to 24 in 6 months and so many other experiences thereof. I'm excited to learn from her today. Welcome, Leslie.

I'm so happy to be here and I'm so intrigued to see how many rabbit holes the 2 of us go down during this recording. It's going to be a challenge if we keep it— I'm going to put the under On ten, I'm gonna be generous.

I like that. I like that a lot. I think it'll be under ten as well. If you said the over under on ten and said over, that would be something else. But so all these big logos that you've closed, or the ones I've read off, aren't traditional SaaS. How did you end up in software as a service?

I Because people said there was more money in it? Am I supposed to have, like, a better answer? Like,

no.

Because I thought there was more of an opportunity to help people? No, that's not it. I was, like, well into my career, and don't get me wrong, like, I'd, you know, been a 6-figure earner for, for many, many, many years. And I started talking to people through our LinkedIn community who were in SaaS, who had less experience than me. Frankly, some of them I was very confident were not as skilled as me in the sales arena, blowing my earnings out of the water. So I was like, I would like to, I'd like to be a part of that. Tell me more. So really, it was the opportunity to earn that first attracted me.

And this is fascinating because that's for a lot of people, right? Like, and having that stable income. But so you hop in, what then? What was, was it fast earnings?

So, I hopped in. And so, something happened at the same time as I was growing my LinkedIn community and getting more visibility into what was happening in SaaS. I also was the number one employee at a startup, not a SaaS startup, but a startup. So, it was like this exposure to startup culture and the startup world at the same time that I was being exposed to all of these opportunities in SaaS. And I just thought it was fascinating, having spent my entire career really like within the Fortune 500, within the C-suite. It was this opportunity to not just sell, but to explore this alignment between, you know, like marketing and sales messaging and like, you know, the full RevOps alignment, whatever buzzwords we're using for it now. Um, and to get to be creative in how I communicated with buyers in a way that prior to that I'd never had the flexibility to do because I had this notion in my head that it was like, you're communicating with a Fortune 250 CFO, you better, you know, keep it pretty much on the straight and narrow. So I, I just fell in love with the opportunity to be like more creative and more exploratory and place these big bets.

Explain some of the bets that you placed.

Yeah. Um, I mean, a lot of them.

And the creativity you had because,

yeah,

because when, when, and when I think of SaaS and we're going to go into, you know, scaling, um, I think of repeatable processes. I think of boredom because it works because it works.

Right. I do not think that repeatable processes and creativity are mutually exclusive. Okay. And certainly, like, my sweet spot has been organizations that are going up-channel, that have realized they need to do outbound. So, like, inbound is not my sweet spot. PLG is not my sweet spot. I do a lot of it, but, like, really outbound and up-channel is. Is where I live and what I love. And I feel like in that lens, partnering with startups who are willing to throw a GIF or a meme in an email, to use video, to have a text message touchpoint, to write a handwritten piece of direct mail out, to go outside of those very traditional, like, we only LinkedIn or we only email, or maybe in addition to email, we do LinkedIn and phone. Like those are the 3 channels that everybody is pretty comfortable using. And still to this day, not as many companies or sales leaders as you would assume are willing to just A/B test and be creative and be silly. And so I think that you can create those repeatable processes, but do it in a way that is fun and playful.

I like that quite a bit. And let's dive into your experience, you know, scaling an SDR team from 0 to 24 in 6 months. How hard was that?

You know, they paid really well.

Did you just hire 24 people or, or I hope that you had certain criteria to hit before opening the checkbooks a bit more.

Yeah, it was actually a really, really, really rigorous hiring process. And so in, in that role, I was launching North American operations for a UK company. So what I didn't have to do In that job was, you know, like the MVP, create the brand. I was just doing the North American go-to-market.

And which was this? Was this at Digital Reach or?

No, this is a company whose name I do not use because they are terrible people and I refuse to give them any airtime.

Fair.

But my team was great. I loved my team and I was sad to leave them. Took many of them with me when I left. But it was a really, really rigorous hiring process. But we had a huge pool of talent because, I mean, this was like 8 years ago, and they were paying at that point like a $50K base, $80K OTE for an SDR role, which like, I mean, now people are like, what? That's nothing. But 8 years ago, that was like big money for an SDR role. The roles just were not that prevalent or making that much money. So, we had a huge pool of folks to hire from, and I'm a huge fan of hiring from non-traditional backgrounds. So, I wasn't caught up with, I have to hire people with at least 2 years of SDR experience. So, hired like a lot of, you know, former athletes, people with theater backgrounds is one of my favorite directions to go. You know, teachers, people that were coming out of the hospitality industry. Mm-hmm. So, I think the combination of being able to attract a huge candidate pool, and then removing some of those artificial gates that we often see in SaaS, um, was, was critical. It was amazing. Yeah.

Now, you mentioned 2 things that might not be connected as well, because people trying to get into SaaS are more likely to not need that top dollar, unfortunately, right? Like, do you think, um, you would have had the same success without the best salary at the time to give, or the best comp plan, I should say? With your idea of hiring outside the box?

Yes, but I think it would have taken longer to grow the team that I wanted to have. Like, I was lucky to have an extraordinarily, like, high-caliber team of individuals that were, you know, I hate using terms like hungry to learn, but like, they were excited, right? Like, they were curious, they wanted to grow their careers, they were motivated, you know, by those opportunities to learn, help, all that good stuff. So, I think if I wasn't able to have such a big pool, and then, as a result, be like super selective with my hiring. It would have been harder to get the right people on board. It would have taken them longer to ramp. It would have taken longer to create the right culture because there would have been kind of the bad seeds. So yeah, but I frankly think it was easier because it was such an attractive wage.

Yeah. So, yeah, some good takeaways here. So, were you able to ramp people from outside of SaaS? Really fast?

So fast.

Like, like, super

easy.

So clearly the first step, if we're breaking it down, it sounds like getting the right people in the door, um, first and foremost. And, and whether you have the best salary or you could, um, figure out the right people and, and the best, um, pay in this case helped you do it so fast, right? You would have probably been able to figure it out anyway. But how are you able to ramp? This is the million-dollar question, not traditional SaaS people fast.

Yeah. So, a couple of things I think made a huge difference in this particular role. When I look at the SDR role, it is transactional. Even if the thing you're selling is not a transactional sale, even if it is a huge, long, expensive sales cycle, whatever, the SDR role really is more of like that 24-hour sales cycle. Most of the time you're getting the decision maker on the phone, you're setting the meeting on that call. So, you know, I think part of it is just the nature of the SDR role that you can get wins quicker than if you're ramping an AE team. Part of it was that we were selling to business owners and having come out of just having sold to the C-suite for like 8, 9 years, The accessibility of business owners truly blew my mind. I was like, oh, these people just like respond to emails and answer the phone. Like, this, this is amazing. Um, so that, that was certainly a part of it, um, that it— they were an easier group to reach than I was used to. Mm-hmm. And they were, um, they required less nurture. They could meet faster, like they just had shorter sales cycles, I think, because of who the persona was. But at the crux of it, I think, Jared, is that we in SaaS tend to overcomplicate things, I think, often to make ourselves feel special or feel better. But like, SaaS isn't— It's just a billing

model.

Like, it is literally just— we're just selling a subscription to something. Um, and so I, I think because I wasn't bogged down in some of that, like, gatekeeping or maybe some of those mindsets, I very much walked into it being like, we're just asking people to pay, like, a couple hundred dollars a month for, for access. Like, that's pretty easy value prop. Let's get on the phone.

So I love that. And, but times, they are changing. 8 years ago, I was able to manually write an email and I remember, and literally, it might've been more like 9 or 10 years ago, granted, but 1 out of 10 would book a meeting and they'd be big companies, right? Because the data was a problem at the time. Not anymore. It's a commodity now. Um, sales engagement platforms were new. Not anymore. It's a commodity now. Um, and, and every— and, and personalization didn't even exist, which bogged my mind 10 years ago. People were just like, come meet with me. So if you were personal and you had their data, there was like literally a 10% chance they would meet with you. It was crazy. Today that number is a decimal. So when you go into accounts today, your clients, what's the biggest disbelief that you see going on right now?

The biggest disbelief that I see—

Or the biggest thing wrong that needs the first thing fixed.

Yeah, I would say that it actually is on the point of personalization. And I think like folks now embrace that personalization is necessary, but what I see too often Is that personalization means to them that the things that you were doing a decade ago, that I was doing a decade ago, that was like, hi Jared, I see that you work at company, right? And like that, that worked and that worked well.

I said, hi Leslie, I see that Pizzeria Uno is around the corner from you. I was looking at like Yelp reviews and that your brother and my sister went to Penn State together.

Okay, I love that. That's a lot of what we were doing at the Rollaway Ramp, the, the SDR team.

It was crazy.

I'm going to be in Palatine next week meeting with so-and-so. I see you're 2 blocks away. We should stop in, right? But I think the thing that's happening now is that folks are, are having trouble distinguishing between meaningless personalization And what I refer to as hyper-personalization, which is personalization that digs a couple layers deeper and that actually matters. And I think the easiest way to distinguish them is through value and relevance. So if your message is adding value to that prospect's life and it is relevant to them, then you're probably doing a good job with personalization. If your personalization is Hi Jared, I see you went to college. I also went to college. Let me sell my thing. Or, hi Jared, I see that you are the founder at RevGenius. So

what was the craziest sequence you dove into? When I say craziest, what was the funniest sequence you dove into when you took over or were hired by one of your clients? Clients to be renamed remain nameless.

Clients to remain nameless. Oh, I don't know. I don't think any of them were funny. Some of them were just like really sad. Sad's okay. Sad. But you see it in their reps. Like, the reps want to do good. And they've obviously, like, often been given these, like, legacy sequences that the company's been running for years. And they don't work. But they're being told that this is what they have to use. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I'm not— I mean, just generally, like, really, really bad ones. And it's like the typical type of bad where the emails are like 5 paragraphs and it's like 17 bullet points. It's just all the things that we know now scream, this is a sales email and I did no research about you before sending it. But I also write a lot of stuff from scratch because I work with a lot of people that are like, oh snap, it turns out that we really need to do outbound properly and stop sending like, you know, one-off emails here and there and figure out what is repeatable.

Now, once you figure out the value prop, are you putting it into all networks or what's, what's the next step that you work through with clients?

Like their, their value prop?

Yeah, like it sounds like their messaging, I should say. Yeah. Then what? How do we, how do we get to a point where their team's performing and they could hire more?

Well, first I run this like a way step back, but first I run a really old school workshop on FABs. I don't know if people listening are familiar with FABs.

What is FAB?

The feature advantage benefit model.

Is this like AIDA?

Yeah, like literally that also. AIDA? Yes, yes, yes. It

was referenced on a call yesterday.

And you were like, okay. Okay, but the gist of it is so, so, so powerful. And for everybody listening, like, I challenge you, I beg of you to look at the copy that you're using, to look at the way you're communicating with your clients and see if you can do a little bit better. So, most copy that we get in our inbox, it stops at features. Right? It's just kind of a feature dump of what they offer, what the product does. Better copy will get to advantages. So it'll be like, you know, we have a seamless user interface feature that allows you to work more quickly, advantage, but then they stop. The really, really good compelling copy gets all the way down to the benefit. Like, we have a seamless user interface that allows you to work more quickly. Customers share that it allows them to bring 20% of their time back into the business to focus on more meaningful strategic work, you know, EBITDA goes up by 3%, whatever it is. So like really walking through exactly what benefit they can expect from that feature, from that advantage. So I found that to be an extraordinarily powerful workshop to go through, even with people that are doing pretty good copy, because it takes it from like good to great. Are you gonna do a FAB exercise now?

Well, do you want to?

I do. Sure. Rabbit hole 2, 3?

For those keeping track, this might be rabbit hole 1.

Isn't the whole conversation about rabbit holes the first rabbit hole?

Oh, now we're in that metaverse. But yeah, well,

I think, like, folks should do the FAB exercise, and I'm sure they can find us in the community, you know, on LinkedIn and Revolutize if they want to talk through it. But it's a powerful one. And then your actual question that I didn't really answer yet was, like, the what happens next. I do a combination of writing the copy and then also explaining to the team why the copy is so counterintuitive. Because if they've been writing these like really long emails, thinking that they've been using personalization, but not really using personalization, maybe they're still doing some of the old school, like, would you rather meet at 10 or 2 on Tuesday type of stuff? You know, unsolicited calendar links. And so often I find that the teams are like—

I got an unsolicited inbound. From a sponsor request from an AE title. So I looked him up and, uh, on LinkedIn he was somebody that I disconnected with for trying to sell me there. So those that are listening, the unsolicited request is a top pet peeve with the, the calendar invites and stuff.

It is. It's just kind of—

Anyway, so that, that, that was, that was a, a slight rabbit hole and now we're back.

But I mean, it shows like how committed people are to these old-school techniques. And I think like the narrative that happens so often is, but it works. And what I often have to do as a reset is like, sure, it works, but you send out 1,000 emails and you're getting 10 meetings.

Yep.

So like, sure, it works, it got you 10 meetings, but what if You can send out 1,000 emails and get 100 meetings, 200. Like, what— like, just because it, it works doesn't mean that it works as well as it should, and it doesn't mean that it's putting you in a position to connect with your prospect base in a meaningful way that's going to, like, catalyze them into wanting to give you time on their calendar or give you their attention to consider buying from you. So, so often, oddly, It's like a mindset shift versus like a hard skill teaching them how to use it thing.

I've been saying this for a while. Outbound appears like pickup artistry, where you're trying to trick somebody into meeting with you.

Ew, no.

I hear it. But the new way is just the shift is away from that and just drawing true connection.

That's— I updated my LinkedIn headline a couple of months ago based on a comment I actually wrote. And the comment was, absolutely, it's our responsibility to talk with our prospects instead of at them. And so now my headline is, you want to talk with your prospects instead of at them? I'll help. But I think that's the crux of it, is that so much of our copy, we're just kind of like word vomiting. We're talking at people and it's like, why the hell should they care?

100%. Now, once you get the copy right, are folks going on the phones with the same, the same copy or script, or how does that connect with the other channels?

Yeah, it's, it's pretty rare that I work with folks who don't do phone touchpoints because I'm just such a big advocate of using the phone and of cold calling. And it's really like what's old is new again. And Those connect rates are increasing as our inboxes get more and more flooded. But I write them as full sequences. So it would literally be like, you know, like day 1 triple tap, like LinkedIn invite to connect. Like here's a couple of different script ideas. Like here's your email script. Here's sort of the framework that we want you to use for a phone call. I Prefer frameworks and like helping people understand why they work or how to use them versus set scripts. 'Cause I think set scripts really take a lot of like the fun and the personality. Yeah. The joy of selling away. I used to be like, hi,

this is Jared. Do you have 27 seconds?

I can't. I also can't with a permission-based opener, like no hate to people that do it. It's just so misaligned from my sales personality, but like, that's the perfect point, right?

Yeah.

Like, if I think it's like, it would feel gross using it, but somebody else would feel gross doing like a direct, like, reason for the call-based opener. So like, let's give some examples so people can communicate the value and the relevance without feeling like they're robots.

Couldn't agree more. You know what's funny? I, I think exactly like how you are, but like when I give like, uh, demo cold calls or something, I find myself using permission based on like my terms. I'm like, wait,

give me an

example.

Give me an example.

Like, hey Leslie, uh, it's Jared from Rev Genius. Is that, does that, does that name ring a bell?

Um, I'd be like, no, I've never been on LinkedIn. You know what?

Right, there's some things that I can lean into that others can't. But, uh, and, and if you know what's weird, if I didn't lean into that, it might be weird, right? It's like, whoa, like—

Too, like, presumptuous that you're like, it's Jared from Rev Genius.

No, no, it's Jared from Rev Genius. No, are you familiar with, uh, Rev Genius? No? This is what it is. Like, the reason I'm reaching out is because I saw you sponsoring other communities' events. And I thought it made sense.

But that's a reason for a call. That's not a permission-based opener, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. Sometimes I go into— and part of me, I'm doing 2 things here. Yes, the reason for my— I

like the, are you familiar? I like that opener. Like, how familiar are you? Are you familiar? I think those work. What doesn't work for me—

it works if they might actually be familiar.

Like, do you want to roll the dice and See why I called or hang up on me now. I'm like, bitch, don't you hang up on me.

What's, what's, what's, you know, I, I once got a cold call from, I don't wanna say the name of the company, but it's one of, um, the dialer companies. And, and it was by the book, like how I've heard them do it. And I'm like, yeah, keep going. I'm like, no, it's not a fit, but thank you. Like, this was awesome to listen to. What was what? What's your most interesting cold call that you've gotten?

You know, I'm like not important enough right now to get very many cold calls, which is a blessing.

I just started.

Like, which is a blessing. I'm not complaining, but spiral. Look, most interesting maybe about my car's extended warranty.

I get those all the time.

It's like a kind of an insider like TikTok joke. Like I'm just calling about your car's extended warranty. I don't

have a car and I get those

calls. Hey, I live in downtown Chicago. You think I'm gonna pay for a parking spot? You're out of your mind. You know, I will actually, I will go the opposite direction because I've certainly had some that I'm like, what? Who trained you? What are you doing here? I can tell you're doing your best, so I'm not gonna pick on you, but like, good Lord, this is terrible. But I have on my voicemail that I don't check my voicemail, but feel free to text message me at this number for an immediate response. And so I've started getting some folks, I mean, some people just still leave the voicemail and I'm like, I told you the channel I wanted.

You know why they do that? They do that to mark calls.

Yeah, because they,

because they can mark it in the CRM and it looks like there's activity. Yeah.

Um, but I, every single time somebody does a Text, call with me, I respond in a timely manner. And if there's any possibility that it's relevant, I will schedule a demo with them. Because I just, I love so much that they are probably willing to, like, go outside of their set structure a little bit, and that they are most importantly listening to the customer tell them the channel that they want to be communicated on, and then, like, respecting that and And doing it. So shout out to people that, um, are taking that extra step.

That listen. So

listen,

and, and, and as you laugh, that's like one of the core tenets of sales. Like, just listen, um, empathize, slow down, um, don't be salesy. But okay, so You get the messaging with, with your client down and, or your company, you're scaling. When is it time to hire? Assuming you didn't get a round of funding and you could just hire, when is it time?

Yeah, so I'm really lucky to work with this company called SalesQualia. And it's very much like all folks that are kind of in that like seed Series A bubble. And so many of them come to us asking the question, like, is it time for me to start hiring? Is that the next step in scaling? And the sort of rule of thumb that I think most people follow, I don't think, like, I made this up or SalesFolio made this up, is that, like, once you have your— the founder has closed the first 10 sales.

Yep.

Then it's time to consider hiring. Consider hiring, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to hire. And it's not like something that we've come back to a couple of times during this conversation is like building out those repeatable processes. So I think like—

Who's responsible for building them out? This is a great question. Is it, is it the founder? Is it the first sales hire? Is it somebody later?

Does the founder have A sales background? Probably not, right? Very few of them do.

Yes.

Okay.

I did not build out our sales process.

Well, the reason I ask is because very few of them do. But I think often founders will try to build out sales processes, but they do it without a sales background, which I think is kind of disrespectful. Like, this is a craft and a profession. But like, I get it, you're trying to do the most with the least. But I think more importantly, they try to build out sales processes when they've closed 10 sales with complete control of the product roadmap and the price point, and almost certainly from their network.

Yeah. And I'll tell you what, right now, interjecting a bit, I've closed deals because people like know me. Like it. Whether they'll admit to it or not, I see, I see it moving way too fast because of that. And, and me playbooking my process is not giving credit to how hard it could be. It's going to be harder. It's going to be more different. Now, I don't have an investor network, but there are some things I could show people how to lean in into community, our community. And, and build their brand within our community. I think that's big. But for me to create a playbook, there's too many nuances.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then, and then not to mention, you have, you have like the, the certain day where you need money that you just drop price. That, that's nowhere in the playbook to just bring money on.

That's not— that, that page was like torn up and like burned and, and like sent, sent off. So I mean, I, I think though, depending on the type of model you're running, like if you're running a PLG model, I don't think like you're— a marketing person should be your first hire over a salesperson. Like I think that if it was my money and my budget, I would build out marketing first. Yeah. Sales second. If you are not running a PLG motion, if you are like immediately trying to go up channel, or you just know outbound is going to be a huge part of your lead flow, my first hire would be a full-cycle AE, somebody who is comfortable building processes. So like not somebody that just came out of a career of FAANG, like somebody that's kind of been like in the—

Oh snap.

In the nitty-gritty before and is comfortable like building out those processes, testing, iterating. And then you hire that person knowing that as you grow, maybe in a year and a half, 2 years and it's time for them to silo, they're probably gonna be like, I don't wanna get siloed. I like creating and growing. And you, you know, you might have to part ways with that person.

Always do. You hire above that person. Always.

Yeah. But yeah, that like founding AE who can, can build processes and who can, who's like really comfortable with getting it wrong as well and like not having the answers and just having to to test and iterate. And certainly that can be done in partnership with the founder, with the founding team, right? But yeah, I think a lot of it falls on the AE with the expectation that they're being provided the support and the tech stack to move as fast as they can.

Now, full cycle AE, it's something coming back. For those that are as ancient as Leslie and myself, I won't group you. Maybe that's a little presumptuous, but you mentioned 8 years ago, so let's

go

with the elder millennial crowd. Wow, my younger self would, would love me now.

Devastating. Yeah.

A full— let's be real, a full cycle AE is better at one of the 2 parts of the full cycle. Start— in general, you have exceptions. What would you optimize for more? Booking meetings, you know, like qualified meetings, or someone that could close and that might not be able to— somebody that could discover, do all of that, that might be, um, noticeably lesser at booking meetings?

Uh, I would optimize for top of funnel, like somebody that is an exceptional prospector, somebody that is exceptional at booking qualified meetings. that stick because you can bring in a second voice on demos or if you have a longer process, right? You can bring in that founder voice, you can bring in a second voice to support the AE. Like what an amazing opportunity for that AE to then grow some of those like consultative skills, flex those muscles. But 1000% top of funnel.

Would you ever believe, oh man, like A later in their career person could be the first full cycle hire. We've seen too much.

No, I don't think so. I think it depends on what brings you joy. Like what, right? What, like I've hired. So like really I'm going to date myself, but my like first job out of college, I moved into a hiring manager position super quick, like 6 months. quick. It happened to coincide with the Great Recession. And so, I was hiring folks who watched their entire savings, their entire retirement just disappear. And they're like, cool, I'm 65 and need to go back and get a job. But they didn't really want, like, a career job, right? Like, they wanted a job that they could show up to Monday to Friday, 8 to 5. Mm-hmm. and then be done. So, this opportunity was an ISR role, inside sales role. So, it was like full cycle, but very transactional. And some of those folks were exceptional. Exceptional because they had this depth of wisdom and experience.

Yeah.

That allowed them to connect with folks in a way that early career professionals Can't, like they just simply don't don't have that yet. So I think as long as it brings them joy, they can be exceptional at it.

And and I couldn't agree more speaking from experience. But you know you brought up a good point. The experience brings a level of connectivity to prospects. Understanding the nuances I can't write down in playbooks. That person. Ken, a bit better, right? How do you think somebody younger in their career could figure it out faster, right? Like those, those, the new, like, like how we hopped on a call and like we, if we had something the other person actually needed, we would buy from one another. Like, how can we— Are

you sure I technically bought from you yesterday because I bought your idea.

Technically you did. See, free 99. The idea was listening. But exactly, how could somebody get into like, just like honestly connecting, understanding needs?

Yeah,

no, yes, there's an ulterior motive, but like, it's so buried, the other person wouldn't even know.

So I think like, like broadly, if you're an early career professional,

yeah,

I like beg of you to take advantage of the insane wealth of free resources out there. Like, I genuinely can't even imagine how different my career trajectory would be if I had things like LinkedIn or like Rev Genius when I was a fresh graduate, like freshly moved from Chicago to Montana with no network, with no sales experience, with like no real understanding of like what the heck it is I was supposed to be doing in a corporate America job. And looking at free sales communities, or even like, I pay for a number of sales communities that I think are a good value, reasonably priced. Yeah. That might not be in the budget if you're early career, but like, look for those opportunities to connect with folks that are currently doing your job or have done your job so that you have that access to external perspective, and you have that community. And then I would also say, take advantage of all of these free certifications and courses out there. Like I, I do at least a few of them every single year, whether it's through something like Udemy or HubSpot, or like sales, whatever it is, like, there are real ways that you can both learn and also make your resume a lot sexier because it It shows that you've put in the work. It shows that you, you know, have, have these skill sets. Um, so I think those are 2 like super, super practical ways. And then the much harder way, something we've already talked about, is you just have to actually listen, like deeply listen and listen to learn, not just to hear. And that's, that one takes a lot more practice.

I read a book once a few years ago and it actually helped a little. But, uh, it's osmosis for sure. Now,

wait, what was the book?

Oh my gosh.

Was it You're Not Listening?

It's not You're Not Listening. And, and, uh, I know you want to read it. It was in a library, an Audible that another founder had, and I wasn't a founder at the time, and he gave me access to it that I no longer have access to it. Um, and it was the most obvious title, but it was all about like Empathy and like how listening is the beginning of empathy, but like, like actually digesting it and feeling it and, and how to go deep and like make sure the other person knows that they've been heard. And it was a super cool book and it was enlightening and, and I definitely learned from it, but I clearly forgot the name. Speaking of books, You have a book club? Like, what? Put the Chris Voss book aside. Everybody loves that book. No.

And technically, you've bought from me because you agreed to be a guest on my book club. So, you know,

this, this, this doesn't have to be a zero-sum. We could both win.

We're buying into each other's goals, aspirations, ideas.

Yeah. I mean, reading—

what book am I most excited about? Is that your question?

Yeah. So what prompted you to this? Like, This is amazing.

Oh, that's actually a really, a really good question. Probably more interesting than the actual concept of the book club. Everybody gets that. I think the book I'm most excited to read is Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes.

Okay.

But all of them are really good. But what prompted me was seeing this trend in 2020, 2021, of like a need for speed when it comes to consuming information.

Mm-hmm.

And it was really, really, really evident to me on LinkedIn because I was reading like a bunch of data about the algorithm. And something that they say to optimize for is content that people save because that's going to boost the amount of people it's pushed to. But the psychology behind why people are saving it is what was so compelling. By hitting save on that TikTok video that's teaching you how to overcome an objection or how to cook something or how to do a dance, you've tricked your brain into thinking that you're most of the way to having done it. So you get that dopamine rush, just the simple save. And it really got me thinking about how much of that we see on LinkedIn as well, where people are voraciously consuming these posts, or, you know, even people's, like, courses, or this white paper, whatever it is. And we've gotten so caught up with consumption, and so caught up with even bragging, like, I read 70 books last year, I didn't, that it's, like, it's more about how much we can consume versus what we've done with that knowledge. Like, how are we using it? How are we testing it? How are we figuring out whether or not it works for us. And so I really wanted to marry my love of reading books and consuming knowledge with something that I knew at my core to be super important, which was really creating a call to action to use what you have read in a meaningful way.

I love that. Do you, do you have non-business books in the club?

So, last year was pretty much all sales books. Yeah. This year, it is more like business acumen books. So, the one we're doing in March is The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Truly Achieve Their Success. Then, we're doing a Brené Brown, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. We're doing You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy, like the Shonda Rhimes book I mentioned. So, it's— I didn't want to silo it to just salespeople. And I also think that sometimes salespeople get maybe too bogged down and like, I'm gonna do this course on objections, or I'm gonna do this, you know, this playbook on writing copy, when some of the most important skills that I see, and tell me if you agree or disagree, but the skills that I see in, like, elite top performers, people that show up in that top 10% of the dashboards throughout their entire career, it's just as much soft skill as it is hard skill, maybe even more soft skills. So, I really wanted to focus on books that I thought would allow people to, like, dwell in those Soft skills.

I love that. And I couldn't agree more. I'm reading a book now that, you know, the only challenge I would give back is that those are very soft skill around business-oriented reasons books versus just like soft to be soft or like learning about life or some like Untethered Soul.

I need to be softer?

No, and, and, and I don't mean it like that. I mean, there's some awesome books like, uh, The War of Art.

I have it.

Um, which is spectacular. Um, that's inspired me more than any of this, uh, 7 Habits or, uh, 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. I like that book, it helps, but what I find is the true changing of myself is, you know, I, I post about this going inward and stuff, but like, um, not reading business books, right? Mm-hmm. Like reading— I used to have a rule that I wouldn't read 3 business books in a row because my head would explode. 2 would be like the max, and then I'd have to read it like— it could be a business inspiration book like Shoe Dog or something But I couldn't read 7 Habits of— the 7 Habits, Chris Voss, and, um, and Fanatical Prospecting 3 in a row. I, I wouldn't retain anything. I'd die. Do you find that?

Yeah, yeah, I see, I see what you're saying. And maybe that'll be— maybe that's the inspiration for like the, the evolution or like the 20— the 2024.

I want to do one. I want to do The War of Art for you all. I'm reading a significantly deeper book right now, um, but The War of Art is fucking good.

Yeah, I actually— I was in, um, Costa Rica a couple of weeks ago, and I spent a few extra days just to think, and I saw the guy at the pool next to me reading it.

Yeah,

and was like, oh, what an interesting title. And he told me the premise of it, and then I went and looked it up. was like, oh, this looks amazing. So it's— I can see it. Yeah.

So to those listening, find the books that the people going on vacation in the place that you want to go to are reading, versus the books people that aren't going on vacation. Maybe.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't know what I was— I was reading The Memory Police, I think.

Nice.

I read— I mostly read Fiction. Like, I'll read like 30 to 40 books a year. And it'll maybe be like, if I read 40 books this year, it'll be 15, like, kind of nonfiction of any variety books, and then 25 fiction books. I'd like voraciously consume fiction.

What kind of fiction?

All kinds. I, in a real moment this weekend, ripped all of the books off of my bookshelves and then completely reorganized them. I had friends in town and they were like, what did you do last night, Friday night? And I was like, I reorganized my bookshelves with a glass of wine. I will not be taking questions. Just one? I read a lot of historical fiction. I love historical fiction. I think it's this amazing way to put yourselves in the shoes of people that lived in other cultures at other times in a way that is, to me, often a lot more relatable than reading just like a history book or a biography.

So like an Elizabethan times drama?

No, the war. Okay. Yeah, I have like wartime fiction, like both World War I and World War II. I just find like incredibly compelling because it's also like recent. So you're like, 1920, that doesn't seem that long ago. I can't believe that 100 years ago, this was the type of life that people were living and the sacrifices they were making, particularly because I think it's so easy for us in our current timeline to be like, the generation has never had it harder. And dude, I get it. We've had— right? It's tough to have come out of college right during the Great Recession, to have been in the debt crisis, the prime of our career and been hit by COVID. But I think it's a good— reading historical fiction for me is a good way to bring myself back to center and realize that all times are both good and bad. And I read a lot of murder mysteries. I have a real thing for Agatha Christie, a whole shelf of Agatha Christie. And I read a lot of fantasy.

That's old school murder mysteries. Respect.

I love Agatha Christie.

That's like, I think I might have read her when I was in high school.

Probably, you probably had to. And I'm probably over here like—

You're like, um, so how do you think reading, um, if at all, makes you better at your job? Like, like reading far-out stuff, like not reading a manual, an SOP on how to do your job. I'm saying reading off-the-cuff stuff.

Yeah, it makes me a better human. So I know it makes me better at my job.

I could solve any mystery with the drop of a hat. Of course I'm a better human. I help the police.

But like, I seriously, I think it's twofold. One is that reading for me is a hobby that is very much rooted in self-care. I'm able to shut my brain off, which that's very, very hard for me to do, but it is something that I can wholly focus on and be in the moment with. And particularly when I read fantasy, there's also an element of escapism. So, it's like reading for me is truly an act of self-care. But I also Like, you know, going back to the historical fiction, it is this opportunity to, like, grow some of those empathy muscles and picture yourself in somebody else's shoes, even if it is, you know, loosely based on history, which I think is— it also— I say a lot of really weird words as a result of reading so much turn-of-the-century literature. I said to my husband the other day, something, something, if you do that, you're going to be in big Dutch. And he was like, I am sorry, I've truly never heard that phrase before. What are you talking about? And I was like, big trouble, big Dutch.

That was from a book?

Yeah, I had to look it up afterwards. I was like, everybody knows that, Chris. What are you talking about? And then I looked it up and it was like, fell out of popularity in literature in the '50s. And I was like, cool, cool. So just definitely something weird I say from how much turn-of-the-century literature I read. But yeah, I think it expands my mind and it also really gives me this incredible opportunity to

What, what are your— if you have to recommend 3 books to somebody scaling their sales development department, whether it's related or not, what would you, what would you say?

Okay, so first I'm gonna go with a fiction one. It's, it's like my, my favorite book that I've read probably in the last decade. It's a fantasy book called The Name of the Wind. Part of the Kingkiller Chronicles. And I just think everybody should read it, even if you don't like fantasy.

If I asked you any answer question, that would be the answer.

It's right. It's just, it's beautiful. It's beautifully written. But if you're trying to scale your company, what have I read recently? You know, Todd Caponi's new book is really good. It's the follow-up to Transparency Sale called The Transparent Sales Leader.

Nice.

I think that one is— I'm like looking at my bookshelf.

Do you like both of them? Quite a bit. Transparency Selling. How do they compare versus like Gap Selling or Fanatical Prospecting? Fanatical Prospecting is like just prospecting like crazy.

Yeah. So I think those books are, are more of a roadmap.

Okay.

Right. Like you look at Gap Selling and Keenan's like very much laid out a roadmap of like how to gap sell. If you want to become a gap seller, here's how to do it.

Yep.

Um, it's a sales process. Yes. Whereas transparency sale is more like, here's why it's important and how it works and some examples of how you might be able to incorporate positive transparency into your own process. Even like a perfect example for somebody scaling is that like having only 5-star reviews in G2 actually would make you less palatable because people wouldn't believe you. Yeah. But if you have a 4.8, which means that you weren't perfect, because we're not perfect, and that you had customers that were willing to say, you know, actually, these were the things I loved about it, but these things didn't, you know, these functions didn't exist, or this was not right for me, it makes people feel a lot more empowered to make, to believe that they're making educated choices, because they think they're getting the whole story. And transparency. Transparent Sales Leader is, I think, in that same vein. Like, here's why it's important, and here are ideas of how you can incorporate that type of transparency into your own life. But it's less of a, here's the method to follow. And, you know, my all-time favorite sales book, hands down, is The Challenger Customer. Hmm. Like, every single SDR, AE, full-cycle AE, ISR, customer Like, I don't care if you're in a commercial function and you haven't read The Challenger Customer, you are doing yourself an injustice.

How does it differ from The Challenger Sale? I've only read The Challenger Sale.

Most people have. A lot of people are like, I didn't even know there was a follow-up.

I knew it was there, but I was kind of lazy with it.

It's incredible. So, Challenger Customer is very, very seller-focused, right? Like, how can, how can we sell? Challenger

Sales is seller-focused.

Yeah. Sorry. Challenger Sales is very sales-focused. It's very, like, internal sales-focused, whereas Challenger Customer is very buyer-focused. And the sort of through line of the book is how can you communicate with your customers in a compelling way? Like, how can you create those real and genuine connections that help them understand why they should buy, like, what's in it for them, but you're not selling to them, like, you're helping educate them on why they should buy, and then helping guide them through that buying process in a really frictionless way. There are some incredible examples in there from dentistry, Supply is one of them, and Xerox is one of them, on how they had this amazing go-to-market for new products, and both of them fell flat. And by doing this exercise of, it's like that FABS exercise of not just selling the features and not stopping at what's the advantage of those features, but really understanding what's the benefit that sits behind them for this specific persona, and then rebuilding their GTM on that. like completely changed their ability to have a successful GTM. It's so a deep fantasy book.

I like

that. And then 2 sales books or 2 leadership books.

That's what I wanted. KPIs for sales leaders, what do you think are the most important if you had to pick a top 3?

Revenue. Is that a cheat answer?

Well, I don't know. I mean, like, do you believe revenue is a leading indicator or lagging? Like, if you just focus on revenue, are you gonna get more revenue?

Definitely a lagging indicator. I don't know. I feel like my relationship with KPIs has grown increasingly complicated the more time I spend in sales. So, I obviously deeply believe in data-backed decision-making. So, I think KPIs and metrics are hugely important to a business. I also get really worried sometimes that because it's something like a KPI can be so easy to measure, that we spend too much time focused on the KPI and not focused on, like, the intention behind, like, too often they become that, check-the-box activity, right? Like that person that leaves me a voicemail instead of sending me a text message like I asked because they need to hit that 30 voicemails a day KPI.

So understood that that might not be your top, but like there's got to be a top metric, right? Because there's something that guides every business to success if you optimize it.

Yeah, I mean, if I could pick

Sure.

It would be number of qualified meetings kept. I think that's, that's a pretty solid one. It's like in the middle of the funnel, right? Like it's pretty quickly after some of that like marketing, sales, dev activity, but it's like, you know, right at the beginning of your AE picking it up before that, that handover. I think that's an incredibly important one, assuming that we're in a renewal-based business.

I

mean, obviously you want to see incredibly high renewal numbers. I mean, I think, I think even like, like before maybe the past 5 years, because I'm a net new logo person, like that's what, that's who I am. That's what I, that's what I love the most is, is that.

Those are the rock stars, right?

Well, but that, like, that's, that's why I feel like I have such a complicated relationship because really. I don't think I understood.

I bring on $3 million a year and our company is a $1 million company. Oh boy.

Well, it's like, okay, great. Like, awesome, Leslie, you closed $1 million in revenue last year. And then you look at the customer success team and they're managing a book of business that's $30 million. And so, like, I, I think I got maybe earlier in my career so caught up with How sexy net new logo is, right? Because we do get the accolades and we do get all the money. That I was not putting enough emphasis on renewals and just the criticality of building a sustainable business.

So with renewals, you can make a strong argument, and I had Mark Robertson that that. Debunked the myth of, uh, in revenue, of most people think renewals are a function of CS and product, right? Like most people think like those two are like the main drivers if something will renew. And he said it's a function of sales. And, um, you know, bringing the right deals on, um, bringing the right clients on, bringing on people that could actually use the product first one cycle. And, and how he compensated towards that was he, was he paid sales a higher commission on the second deal closed with any client. So like, you could, you could game the system, Leslie, and your first deal could be $1,000 and your second deal could be $100,000 instead of the other way around. And he's like, great, great, because like it helped greatly with NRR.

Okay, I, I love that. Um, that's such an interesting insight. And it was a myth.

Obviously, you could take it or leave it.

No, no, no, no, I, I like that. And I've never heard that before. Um, and I always love new, new bits of information. But then I think that That brings me back to that initial KPI of qualified first meetings. I'm thinking about a recent role where I was building out territory strategies based on clients that we knew were most likely to renew. And so, we were looking at not just the basics, right? Like, how many users were active? What was the level of engagement? We were looking at How, like, which industries were most likely to renew, which revenue bands were most likely to renew, and were they renewing flat or were they renewing with their, you know, whatever 3% increase, whatever the annual increase was? Were they upselling to other programs? Like, where was the majority of our renewal revenue coming from? And then that became our criteria for like top-tier intro meetings. So I could— I can see the flywheel, like I can buy into that.

I just spoke with, um, the head of sales at an awesome company that looks at some of that stuff. And, um, yeah, it also— you could also look at what companies hired more people in the department that your product lives in. As well, right? So like if you're selling a marketing product, a company that brought on more headcount in that department, and, and there's other things that involve with that, but like I've seen headcount being like, geez, if not the single top, like a top 2 or top 3 indicator of a lot, like with intent, all of that. Renewals as well.

I built a lot of trigger campaigns on things like Count increase.

So yeah, let's take a step back to, um, the, the trigger campaigns because we spoke about writing the perfect, uh, email and having understanding everything, hiring the perfect person. But if you're sending everything to the out-of-business company, and I give an extreme example to prove the point, it doesn't matter, right? So like ICP, I see. What are your thoughts on ICP? What does it mean to you? And not just the acronym.

All the way back to one of the first conversations we had. I think the whole conversation was down a rabbit hole. What does an ICP mean?

Well, these are relevant tangents now.

They are. They are. He's giving us a hard time. ICP is super important. Like, what does it mean to me? What a weird and vague question.

Ideal customer profile, ideal consumer, your company.

Okay, so let me answer this a different way. So I view my ideal customer as my financial buyer, but like, that's not obviously the only person in the account map, especially—

Well, from an account level, let's talk about it to start, like, like the accounts you focus on, and then, and then we could go in and Find the persona before you reach out to the CFO?

Yeah, I think I focus less on account-based ICP work. You obviously have to have the basics, like they have to have at least 1,000 employees, or we know that if they don't have at least $1 billion in revenue, they're probably not at a complexity level that would justify this, or whatever it is. I definitely think there are those baselines.

Isn't there nuances there? Like, isn't it people that have $1 million that have a head of marketing roll up or something?

That, like, that's where I like to, like, focus less time on those account-based ones and more on the, like, persona-based trigger ones that it's like, and they are in financial services and they have a CFO that has been in seat for 1 year or less, and their—

Right.

CEO just announced that they were going to publish their first CSR report, right? And then you're building in these like layers of nuance. And the reason I like doing that so much is because, well, hyper-personalization is important. Like, I think there's a real argument to be made for a balance of hyper-personalization, like quantity-quality approach. And I think that sometimes teams, like leading-edge teams, can go too far where they're like, every single email has to be hyper-personalized and I need to spend an hour researching before I write any email. And it's just like, Jesus, like, just build in your niches. And like, so maybe only 9 people are gonna build it, be in that campaign, But there are like 9 people who you are 100% certain you're messaging about CFOs new in seat that are responsible for financing a new CSR program for their CEO in the financial services space. Like, you know that that messaging is going to be highly relevant to them.

I love it. So, so essentially we almost talked over each other. I understand exactly where you're at. 1,000 people could buy your product. That's your ICP. Who you reach out to is which ones of those 1,000 have people moving, people happening, people needing people, whatever else people do that causes that, uh, that, that your company determines that could track, um, happening. So, so, okay, uh, of that 100 or 1,000. Yeah. 50 of them, you don't even need to say anything crazy, right? Like, you could just say, hey, I feel you. Like, yeah, like, you just lost 13% of your workforce, but you miraculously gained a round of funding. You're such a small group. I'm gonna just say this.

What's happening here? Well, and like, I, I think when it comes So, it's like we're talking about startups and we're talking about scaling, right? And I, like, I think in the view of getting funding, it often becomes so much of a conversation around, like, look at our TAM, look at our TAM, because you want that huge TAM to be attractive.

That gets you the money, but it doesn't get you the sales.

Correct. But people, I think, like, forget sometimes when they pivot back to internal conversations to be like, just because they're in your TAM, doesn't mean that they are like your most qualified prospects. And just because they are qualified prospects does not mean they are ideal. And I, I think it's like creating this funnel between like everybody that could buy, folks that are most qualified, most probable to buy, and like who's going to buy from you right now. Like who's gonna buy with the, the fastest sales cycle at the, the, you know, best price point without negotiating and dragging it on. And that's who early stage you need to put like extra bets on.

That, that brings up such an interesting point because there's this, um, there's this duality. Like what, what an early stage founder puts in front of an investor is something geared to sell for an investment. They're gonna make it juicy. They're gonna make their traction juicy. They're gonna make And hopefully it's real, but they're going to make it look as good as possible, pull the metrics that look as good as possible.

Real.

As, as I hear about people like Elizabeth Holmes and others, right? Like, and I can only imagine the people we don't hear about, right? Because it's just not— because it's harder to do the work than it is to not. And that's just an unfortunate fact. But they also put in their market. Um, I, I'm selling— I have shoes. How many people have feet, right? That's the first one. And but the serviceable one, how many people have feet that are men? Come on now, like, that's not enough. Okay, a little bit. Um, when in reality— so, so, so cool, like, understood that you have to do that, but you can't take those same ideas and bring it internal. You have to have a heart-to-heart with yourself or your team and say, okay, we got it. Now let's do it the right way, right? Isn't that interesting, those dualities?

It is. It is. I also am realizing that we are like 30 minutes over. Probably like literally we are 20 minutes over. Um, like typical, predictable. Um, with, with us talking, I sent you

a note. I didn't hear back.

Did you really? Did you Slack me?

I texted you. Um, do you have 15 minutes to go over or hard stop?

I have— we're like now 25 minutes over. No, I have a, I have a, I have a call.

Okay. So Leslie, I'm gonna have to have you on again. This has been tremendous. So today we spoke about getting that ICP fine-tuned, some of the challenges that founders have with not your first hires, making sure your first hires are doing things the right way and making it easy. Books.

Books.

Not business books. Wine. Rearranging books. On a Friday.

Going on vacation.

Vacation finding books. We can make this podcast arced into, into any which way because we've spoken about so much. I would love to have you back, Leslie. I think, I think we're, we're getting somewhere really cool and I really appreciate your time.

This is a great conversation. Thank you for going down the rabbit holes with me because I really enjoy these types of conversations. where we can go deep where it makes sense to go deep.

I couldn't agree more. And for those that are listening, thank you for coming along to Revenue Today. If you liked what you heard, give us a like, share with some friends, have some more people come. This is Leslie Van Ness, and I'm Jared Robin. Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds, and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Thanks, Jared. I'll be seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.