Impact Starts By Identifying The Problems That Need To Be Solved - Ryan Scalera - Revenue Today - Episode # 036

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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. So today I'm with a special guest. This person I've known since before starting Rev Genius and far before where he is in his current role. This is somebody that went from a top-performing AE at some incredible companies like a sales guy in Dooley to being a top sales leader. He's currently the head of BD at Flossom. Welcome, Ryan Scalera.

Welcome. Yes, and we, we've known each other for quite some time back in the, back in the days. Both Rachel May saved, uh, saved and helped both of us. Look at that.

We've, we've built quite a relationship, and, and the cool thing is, without going too tangential here, we, we, um, We've both watched each other blossom and flourish, which is a really, really warm feeling. It's good to have you on, Ryan.

Likewise. Likewise. Great to be on.

Yeah. So I'm curious, Ryan, jumping into things, debunk a myth about generating revenue today.

A myth about debunking, uh, myth about revenue. All right. So this is one thing that I talk about a lot and I talk to a lot of different founders and companies about. Most companies, founders, sales leaders included, have no idea the actual business problem that they solve for. Typically, and I'll run people through this exercise all the time, typically what they think is the problem is what the marketing messaging that they'll put out is going to be. They lose in translation the actual business impact that it will have on their clients, and they continue to nail their new TAM before they have product-market fit with this messaging over and over again. But there's pretty quick exercises you can do through discovery to really peel that out. So if you're coming into an organization and you see sales going pretty well, fairly not, I tell reps to continue down this path to truly find out what the business problem is that you solve for. For example, I'll take something like Lavender. Lavender—

So hold on. Let me Grip this. They think they know what they're solving, but they don't actually know. That's wild to me.

Because think about it, when you're starting to create a product, there's a lot of pivots, there's a lot of changes, and then you end up with a solution and then you figure out how to message and market around it. But I feel like some of that causes you to lose the actual business outcome of why your clear ICP, why the CFO is going to sign. And if they get a piece of it, they may not get all the way through. Happy to deliver the Lavender example that I—

Yeah, tell me.

I ran by. So if you think about it on the top, Lavender, great tool. Suggest everybody download it. My team uses it. It helps you write better emails. That's the first layer of messaging you would do. Helps you write better emails. Well, why do you want to write better emails? Well, better open rates, better reply rates. Ah, better reply rates. Great. That's the secondary. Awesome. Why do you want better reply rates? Well, you can generate more revenue, maybe quicker. That's cool too. But what is that really? The CRO is going to think about customer acquisition costs. And when I bring this even to the founders of Lavender, they're like, yeah, I never thought about it that way. But in reality, it's the speed to TAM penetration. You're not going to waste that many junk emails and then alienate certain clients that you could have had if you were able to do this correctly. And you're also, at the end of the day, you're fixing the distribution channel to be slower. I mean, to be like— reduce the time it takes to acquire a client, which is customer acquisition costs. You're paying SDRs less and they're going to write less emails because the emails are more effective at getting them converted. And really going through this exercise with folks can really build a clearer sales process and cycle for them.

Now, is it safe to say anything being sold to A salesperson or a sales persona has exactly the same problem they're solving on that note.

It can. So you have to know which part to input when, because everybody comes out with like, oh, we're a productivity tool for salespeople, or we're this for salespeople. We increase revenue. So that's why just saying like, hey, we help you increase revenue. How many CROs get hit with that day in, day out in their inbox? How do you do it? How do you do it differently? At this point, most people don't even want to take the calls. I mean, I get tons of email messaging that's like, hey, do you want to 5x your pipeline? It's like, yeah, of course. But what makes you think you can 5x? 5x of what? Just whatever my current pipeline is? How do you not know I'm maxing out every metric?

Well, yeah, I want to 5x it, but I'm not convinced you could do it.

Uh-huh. So if you know all the way down to the business problem you solve and not just the generic, but how you actually get to that business problem, why you solve for it, back to gap selling really, you can reverse engineer walking them through discovery, talking through messaging, how you write your emails, even the symptoms of that. I mean, you may, in a quote with Lavender, it's like, Out of curiosity, is your reply rate under 3% on emails? If your reply rate's under 3% on emails, it's likely that potentially your messaging is not correct, which is meaning that you're not converting as much, which means you may be hitting spam inboxes more, getting sent to junk. So that's the symptom of a bad email is maybe bad replies or bad open rates. Yeah. And then you can take it all the way down. The dial.

Now, what percentage of teams do you think don't really understand their problem?

No, I just did a post on this today. I think 90% of salespeople can't do good discovery. And then I think that's being generous. Keenan says it's a lot higher. I think that's why they do bad discovery though, is because they don't know where they're actually trying to take it. I have a product that I absolutely adore, but I know that they're— and I won't name them, but I know their salespeople don't do good discovery. And it's a product with such a clear ROI if they just asked for some very specific data points that sales leaders would probably be happy to share.

So do you think— so I get that they don't understand the problem. Do you think they also perhaps don't understand the space? Like, like, is this like a deeper thing? Because like, let's say you understand the problem. To really understand it, you need to holistically understand it, right? You can't just be like, I know this is because of CAC. First off, what does— what's the acronym mean?

Customer Acquisition Cost. Got that.

Second off, um, Where does that align with their objectives and key results? Where does that align with the industries? Third off, what's standard? And fourth, what's benchmarked against their 3 competitors, right? Their top 3.

Yeah. No, I mean, you're so right. I know you talk about your father and you mentioned him in your post too. I still— I'll give my dad feedback sometimes and he does— he's a 401 advisor and sometimes he finds out that, oh my God, this company, their They're overspending on this fee by like $80,000. He reaches out to the CFO and he tells him, you're overspending by $80,000 a year and it's costing your participants even more. Then when they don't respond, he's like, I don't get it. I'm like— Because an $80,000 problem to them on a balance sheet with $10 million problems, $5 million problems, and $20 million problems means nothing. So to truly understand, you have to really understand the day in the life of a CFO and what their main things are. may just not be big enough of an issue for them to actually solve it. So yeah, understanding how it stack ranks, all that industry acumen, that's the hardest part to learn. Um, not all reps get the right resources, I think, from their company to really learn. I'm trying to do that with my team right now. I'm bringing in people that are in DevOps to speak to them and be like, tell me about your life, what you go through, what your actual problems are. Mm-hmm. If what we're saying sounds like a marketing newsletter or if it sounds like, you know, a real thing that you would say to your friend, man, I wish I had this.

So you know what's cool about what you're saying? Like understanding the problem and the trickle-down effect. So we've trickled down to discovery and, and doing that right. And, and listen, I, I don't need to ask you, your deals are won and lost in that period of time. But isn't it fair to say this also goes to targeting? Like if you understand and like relevancy, dare I say?

Yeah, 1,000%. I mean, it helps me so much with my relevancy. We found, uh, you know, we, we had a chuckle before we started the recording of like, what, what is DevOps? You know, as a salesperson, you might not know, but one of the key indicators that I know that we can solve a major problem for DevOps at Flowsem is when they're hiring DevOps release managers. And the reason why is because that's a symptom that they're trying to work on their release capacity. And when they're working on the release capacity, it's taking time away. They're strained. They're trying to get releases out. They're probably delayed. They're not meeting business objectives. They're throwing money and bodies at the problem when they could deploy a technology like ours to make it quicker and more effective. So when I— and that's what I tried to figure out immediately getting in here is how can I define the external symptoms that I can go be relevant with? And for some reason, I'm cold calling myself there just for fun. I got a guy on from a large, large hotel chain, and I said my original spiel, which was the pitch that they had. And he was like, eh, not a big thing. And then I said, well, I noticed you're hiring for DevOps roles. Out of curiosity, are you trying to do XYZ? And he goes, yeah. Now, I fumbled the call after that, but that's besides the point. But it was the fact that I pointed to that and it connected. Mmhmm. It's something that you have to get through understanding their industry and their acumen. Like, all right, you just raised a funding round. You know what happens when you raise a funding round? The pressure's on. You got to get that revenue.

You get, you get a ton of inbound calls with zero relevance knowing you have budget is what happens when you raise a funding round.

That's true.

I'm on the other side now, Ryan. That's exactly what 15 people are telling me at the same time when you raise a funding round. I know, I, hey, I waited a week because I needed to let all of the people hit you up first. Now I'm here to deliver, uh, you know, the staying message, right?

And at the end of the day, when, when you do, when it— when a company does, you gotta, you gotta increase revenue. Um, you gotta get those numbers up because with money comes expectations. And, and that's something that, you know, they're being told that that's the case. They're, from your point of view, is like they hear you have budget.

Yep.

But hopefully what their companies are telling them is that, hey, we solve a problem for people who just raised revenue. This is the impact of it. If they don't get it solved for, go find it. But instead they're just canning a message out. You have budget, buy my software.

So,

which is not the way to go about it.

No. And back to the problem, right? Like, like in bringing it full circle, You're hiring more people, so this problem's getting bigger. How would you recommend, so a company, the next Lavender, 'cause Lavender figured it out since you helped them, right? Yeah, now. The next Lavender, how do you suggest them going from one thing to the right thing?

So I always ask a few questions right in a row to a founder. What's the problem you solve? And then I say, no, no, no, no, why is that a problem? 'Cause their first answer is never the answer. that I'm going to use. Mm-hmm. And I dig deeper. I kind of ask why on that a bit. Okay. That's the problem. What's the alternative? And I try to figure out every tech alternative, every competitor alternative, and then every indecision alternative. What's the cost of doing it that way? What's the impact there? Okay. Perfect. And then I continue to walk them down the line with this exercise. And how do you solve it differently than anybody else? And then I try and figure that out. And once you get that down pat and you figure out basically the root cause, the problem, both technical and business, and then the impacts of those, you can start designing questions to ask to get you quicker to that. You can just start designing prospecting messaging that will actually get you closer to that. 2 different sides, 2 different parts of the funnel, but it's what I'm doing right now at my current company.

I love this. If I may add one cherry on top, and this is me going through like growth courses now on the other side, it's understanding what your industry's North Star metric is. That might not be CAC, right? Like, like you might help them with CAC, but everybody might want weekly active users or whatever. Right. Or like active users.

And why is it valuation figures? Is it like, what is it? What is that? That the leading indicator that you're going to be able to hit this multiple, that you're going to get this much revenue is. Yeah, it's, it's funny, but yeah, finding out that North Star metric is usually easier said than done. You know, how many companies can you go to right now where you speak to someone that's below a VP level where they could tell you what the North Star metric is?

So you, you, the, the answer is it depends how the company is aligned, to tell you the truth. Um, and like, and, and how things trickle down with their OKRs. Honestly, but you could look at, you know—

No, no, not, not in the company, in their clients. How many people below a VP title knows the North Star metric of their clients? I would argue probably not that many, which is why you get messages like you do right now.

Yeah, yeah, not, not that many is right. But this is great, Ryan. Let's, let's, let's jump into some other things here. You're A BD leader at Flossum. Congratulations, by the way, on the new role. Thank you. What KPIs are the most important to you?

Personally, revenue. That is the North Star. We're driving revenue. There are other metrics that are indicators that we're getting closer towards that. We've switched into a problem-centric framework, really trying to solve problems, lead with value, relevance, sharing information, teaching within our prospecting so that when we're speaking to a client, we can get them into a meeting. The AEs are aligned and they know that there is a problem that is existing that we can solve for, and then their discovery is directed towards it. And then customer success, the same thing. Like your CS plan is being built during the sales cycle because we're uncovering everything short-term, long-term. And trying to build it through into the middle. For my team, obviously net new meetings, building more funnel is important, but qualified is more important, and revenue close is more important than that. So it's— the problem is you'll sometimes find BD leaders that just wanna max out the heck out of the metrics of getting meetings, but if that doesn't turn to revenue, then what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again.

Sorry. No, no, very relevant to those that, that don't follow Ryan. Um, you realize that he's got a lot more to offer than, uh, than running the most badass teams. I'm curious. So like, let's go back. Let's take KPIs. Let's go back to your original thesis that people don't know the actual problem. What KPIs can we put around that to understand we're moving in the right direction? Right? Like, to revenue, like, like for a leader, right? Like we talk about activity could lead to more meetings or whatever for a rep. From a leader's perspective, Ryan, how could, how could I hold you accountable that you're finding the problem?

So it's funny because I threw out the whole quantity thing and I posted that thing on Kyle Coleman's the other day. I dropped the, the, we decreased the volume of outreach drastically when I got here. We went with quality. Mm-hmm. And guess what? The quantity of actual results and opportunities increased. And then another thing I'm looking at is that I need my reps to be able to answer this question to me. Why are they showing up for the call? What problem are they looking to solve? And the metric that I'm going to be using to track that is if it's a sales accepted opportunity. Mm-hmm. Because the way we align sales accepted opportunity is that it has to hit specific metrics that align once again to gap selling, but are, do they have a problem? Are they aware of it? Are they actively looking to solve for it? And are they willing to go on the journey to solve it? And now all of a sudden my SAO metric is a sentiment, um, and the gap between that and my SQL, my sales qualified lead, the meetings booked, great. How many of those are making it to SAO? If that starts widening and getting crazy, then I know that what we're doing is not right at the top. Yeah. You know, and then at the same point, like, It may be more AE controlled, but we wanna know what's leading to more revenue. But I know if I get them more SAOs, they will get more close won revenue.

Yeah. And

even if it's not necessarily my responsibility to close the deal.

This all makes so much sense where, where my head is at. And, and, and I'm not disputing any of this. Is this too much to put on a rep?

Not at all. I think—

Like, where's, where's the gentle balance? The balance, right? 'Cause I know that's what you need. But can they perform to that, like, realistically, as sub-5-year, sub-3-years people?

They— I got some of those, and, and really they need coaching. They need training from their sales leader. They need someone who's willing to get in and show them how and why. Uh, first couple weeks in here, I prospected myself and I wrote out the reason why they're taking the meeting. Got the meeting, um, and, um, I showed it to my reps and I said, here's my thought process. Here's what I found. Here's the research I did. Here's what they said during the call. Here's how we got them into the meeting. And I was like, does this make sense? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, all right, let's repeat it. Let's do it. Let's do it again. Let's do it with yours. So when they're like, oh, I got this meeting. And my question is, okay, why are they meeting? Why did they take it? Yeah. And some of them are like, well, I'm not sure. They said that this is too slow. I'm like, oh, if this is too slow, then this is probably an issue. And this is probably an issue, and this is probably an issue. Wouldn't you say that it being too slow or too clunky or this and that is taking away from these points? They were like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was like, then that's why they're probably taking the meeting, and that's where you want to point the AE in discovery to expand and dig upon. So I think that with the right support from leadership to train these new folks to get them to think, I think they're better off starting to think this way Yeah. Then, then eventually it's gonna be harder to train the person 20, 30 years into their career than it is gonna be to train someone 2 months. And

really well said. And, and, and, and I wanna, first off, any sales development managers listening to this, take that in because unfortunately I don't see this level of intricacy out there. What, what's, what's really awesome about this, and I wanna give props, like when you're saying how you move in the career, If you go into demand gen next, or if you go into RevOps, or if you go into sales, you understand at a granular level how your process works and how best to optimize it. So you're gonna be a better leader. You're right. Like,

you know, I think that's why I'm glad I went to AE before I went into this role because, yeah, I was an SDR and then I was an AE. And then I went in, I sold to sales leaders. So I started to understand them and what they measure. That's how I got familiar. That's how I became a better sales leader is by selling to them and really just running great discovery on them to learn like what good looks like, what bad looks like, and where you can spot problems in a funnel. It's the same way with this. I mean, like you started, you've been in sales for a long time. Like you may have not had community when you needed it. You didn't have these programs, this training. So when you go in to take on a project and build something like Rev Genius, you kind of know what's needed. You knew it. You knew what you needed at that time, so you built it.

I mean, let's be real. We— neither of us had a job when we met, and no one— I

know—

and no one was giving it to us outside of Rachel, this angel from above. Um, you took her help. I went a separate way, but yes, it's, uh, I, I, I wish I did as well. No, I'm just kidding.

No, no, no.

I mean, there's benefits to both, but

yeah,

this, this is super interesting getting into your mind here. Uh, but, but what's keeping you up at night now? I'm curious as to your challenges, Ryan.

Hmm. Um, the feeling and inclination to double down and strengthen my weaknesses is versus just doubling down on my strengths. And I, I always tend to move towards going towards my strengths. Uh, maybe that's a mistake because I, you know, much like yourself, I have a bit of ADHD. I can't sit still. It takes me a bit of time to, to focus on tasks that really just take sitting down and staring at a spreadsheet. I'm never going to be a spreadsheet manager. And at this point, maybe that's going to hinder me being a CRO one day. It's probably why I will never be able to be in RevOps. Um, but from a trainer, a coach, a sales director, someone who can really get in and work a deal and understand And how to design a GTM strategy, I can do that. So that is one of the things I think I'm struggling with the most nowadays is, do I figure out little ways to level myself up in ways that I'm struggling in or weaker in? Or do I just focus it all on my strengths and pray that I don't need to— pray that I can delegate properly?

Wow! That is so powerful. As somebody that had far more weaknesses than I do today, I have so many weaknesses, but like going into, going into areas that I had to as a founder, um, I could say like, oh man.

That hit home.

So yeah, yeah. I mean, so essentially you could just take out the whole outbound org, right? And start doing projections for that and then realize, oh damn, Darn, I kind of am RevOps for Outbound. And then go like, like, what advice would you give for other people that are going through exactly these, um, these thoughts? Like, what have you found to work?

Uh, you know, I, I think I've always just kind of swept my own opinions of myself under the rug and just tried to take a chance at doing something challenging. I definitely run towards things that I'm a little more afraid of than I used The first time I was a BD leader was scary because it was unknown. And then once I got in, I was like, oh, I know some things here. I can do this. And then the results followed and then that validated it. And then my next BD role, which is where I'm at now, I implemented the things I already knew and I changed some of the mistakes I made when I first started. And what do you know? The results came too and it validated again for myself. If you're seeing success in any metric, in any particular area, have confidence in yourself that you can do it again and execute it again. And then just try to learn from your mistakes or correct little things here and there. I don't think, Jared, you or I focusing all of our energy on time and our weak points would've gotten us to where we are personally.

Now, I couldn't agree more. you, you kind of thrust yourself in situations that force you to get stronger. And then, and then like you said, you like went into a couple different roles and then you're just like, wait, I actually know this this time. I'm actually like 90% sure I know this because I haven't really done it. Yeah, let me, let me test this 90%. Oh my God, not only is it 100%, it's 110%. What was I thinking?

Yeah.

That gives you confidence to test something else. And now all of a sudden everybody's coming to you for advice. Because they don't know that. It's funny how that works.

It is. And being able to pat yourself on the back with those little wins is extremely important.

It took me personally 2 years before I taught anybody on community because I thought it was all luck in the beginning. And now there's no luck in building, you know, something, anything big. But like, now I'm able to see the structure behind it. Because like, It was moving too fast.

It's easy to get caught up in those things that you might tell yourself. I mean, listen, it was a community that you built during the beginning of COVID when everybody needed community. Does that mean that it couldn't happen again? Not at all. And we've seen more stuff pop up. And the same thing with me, I thought I was terrible at sales for the first several years of me doing it in my early 20s. And then I finally got a little bit of training, a little bit of support, and I started doing well. And then I got laid off and I was like, oh, then I'm never going to be good at sales again. I just understood that product. And then I was good the next time and I got a little more confident. And then now, so on and so forth. It builds over time. And now it's like, all right, now I get this. Now I understand it. Now I can roll with it. My next challenge that I feel like I can accomplish, I'm going to have to approach it the same way. Because there's other stuff that scares the heck out of me still.

I, I, I, I could guesstimate what those roles will be, and I've got news for you, man. You're gonna do much better than you think in them, and that's gonna be exciting, and you're gonna earn it. What excites you for the future? There's so much.

Uh, what excites me for the future is honestly, I— it's something scary as well as exciting. I don't think the BDR role will exist the same way it does. And for a BDR manager leader, that, that That might be a little scary, but I think what will come into its place is kind of going back to a lot of our roots, is full cycle. And I love full cycle, and I'm very efficient at it, and I love training on it. And I think that the separation of BD and AE caused a ton of salespeople to only have to focus on taking inbound opportunities and trying to show them a demo and close them. I think that the people who truly know how to prospect will reign supreme over the next year, next several, when the market goes to wherever it goes to. You will need to not only know how to fill your funnel and do it in a way that's more problem-centric, but you'll also need to know how to do discovery to be able to actually hit— I think someone ran data. It was like 23% of teams hit quota in Q3. I

thought the number was 50% to 60%. This is beyond me.

So I'll try to find the data point that we found. I think it was Jesse that pulled it up, but it was alarming to see that so many teams happened, which is just showing— it's like— oh, I think it's actually Sahil. Yeah, I think it's Sahil from Bravado who pulled the data. But it showed that in economic downturn, there's not much you can do. But there are 23% of teams that did. I think that if you can double down on yourself, join communities, learn as much as you possibly can, and become a really, really good salesperson, and not just like who can put in the most effort. No, no, no. Craft-wise, really good at solving business problems for businesses. You won't be one of the ones that doesn't hit it during an economic downturn.

Yeah. But is that going to get everybody to 80%? Right. Like, and what I'm saying is Let's go back to 5th grade. Can you get everybody on the same page there? No, this is like ingrained in our systems, Ryan. Like, I, I want to like break it all the way down. So like, and, and I'm gonna gently push back. Like, I don't care what enablement you have. You have everybody with the same enablement in that 5th grade classroom, and some went to Harvard and some went to nowhere. Yeah. Same effing enablement.

Yeah.

Okay, fine. Some parents might have done after-school programs, had very little gap, right? And now, now, as somebody with an income, you have the ability to— the difference between 5th grade and now is you have the ability to pay for outside-of-work programs as well. So like, is enablement— and don't get me wrong, I do think enablement is part of the solution, but is that the whole solution?

I think outside training enablement is really going to be the holy grail. If you look at the people that are heavily connected in and looking at all the different trainers, I ran into a first-time SDR. He is 2 weeks off the boat from Ireland last night at the event in New York City. And he came with a slew of questions for me, had no idea who I was, but knew everybody else that I'm connected to and around. And he just started asking me all the— oh, you're a BD leader? What would you do? Started asking me questions, started really digging in and saying, oh, do you know this person? Do you know their method? Do you know this person? Do you know their— oh yeah, I follow Morgan Ingram. I really like this. He was so inquisitive and really just such a student of something that he's been in so freshly. I have no doubt in my mind that that will be a very successful rep. Mm-hmm. Just because he's going outside to get even more than, than what's just going to be provided to him, which is why communities, why training, why these little groups, why these different platforms that provide extra is going to be so important, which is also why next few steps in my career will probably be to give as much of what I'm learning back to as many people getting into sales as possible.

Now, Ryan, in the last 2 years, there's been more communities and more learning opportunities, I believe, Yet I think numbers have gone down. How is that working?

I think they've been diluted. I think that the people giving advice, the voices being listened to— and maybe I'm a voice nobody should listen to, I don't know— but ultimately, I think that there's a lot more clatter and there's a lot more clutter. There's a lot more people saying things that sound nice, but I don't think they're actually effective. I think the communities are bigger. And there might be more of them. But I think that the essence of what they were there for and the— listen, more options on the menu doesn't mean you're going to sell more food.

It sometimes makes it harder to make a decision.

Exactly.

Harder to qualify, harder to understand. You know, I— it's funny, whenever I ask a server, what's the best thing on the menu? And they say everything. I'm like, oh boy. Like, like, there's a chance, but there's a better chance they're wrong.

You immediately respond with chicken nuggets.

Um, yeah, no, agreed. And then I make it objective. I say, what's the most popular, right? And then, but regardless, let's— so the first half we learned from you, right? And like, I love how you break down the metrics and how you teach your reps that. You teach them to look for the actual problem. Heck, you did it with them to learn yourself on cold calls and did that. And then how that leads to everything else and looking for that and making them stronger as a result. This half, I want to learn about you. I want to learn about Ryan the rapper, Ryan the Rachel May 3 years ago, 2 and a half years ago, younger. New Jerseyan. So who—

New Jerseyan.

Who are you?

So in West Philadelphia, I was born and raised. I am— I'm just a kid from New Jersey that married his high school sweetheart, had kids early, and figured out that music wasn't his thing, even though he thought it was for a bit, and decided to get into sales because it was what I— the only thing I thought I could do. And now I'm here and I love it so much. passionately, and I love to give it back because it changed my life. In a nutshell, I'm a dad, I'm a salesperson, I'm a goofball. What's it?

I'm a lover, I'm a fighter,

I'm a— I don't want to say it. I'm a rap— I'm a rapper. Yeah, yeah.

I

mean, what's,

what's What's important to you outside of work?

Friends. Having really solid friendships and activities to keep myself satiated and non-stressed. I like picking up a lot of hobbies. If you do find me on Instagram, I think the thing that I have on my personal one is I do a lot of random stuff. That's the only thing that's ever kept me happy is just having a lot of real— I shoot bow and arrows every once in a while.

Do you throw axes?

I really love cooking. I don't— I'm terrible at throwing axes, but I can shoot a bow. I don't shoot guns, but—

There's axe throwing around the block from me. I just found it the other day. If you ever come to Brooklyn, axe throwing and coffee is on me.

Axe throwing and coffee. That seems like a rough combination, but yeah.

Coffee first.

Coffee first? After?

Both.

So you're on point, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And my family. I have 2 little girls that I like to spend a lot of time with and really be there for them in my off time. So everything you see me doing on any of these platforms, that's the North Star. That's what keeps me going. And, uh, cooking and shooting bows and being in the woods is what keeps me sane.

Yeah.

And then sales is what keeps me paid.

I, I like that. And, and one thing I'm curious about, you, you clearly have a creative side, right? Like we spoke about early music, we see it coming out, um, people are rooting for it to come out more, myself included. Um, but how, how How have you balanced like that creativity and then went into this? You know, 15 minutes ago we talked about how granular you were getting with, uh, metrics, right? Like, how does that work and how, how do you balance that?

It's funny, I think the creative, creative side helps me do this. I think I balance both sides of the brain pretty well, but I'll notice if I'm getting way too into my work and, and being a lot more data-driven and all about analysis, I crave the creative side to come out. I found a really good flow when I was an account executive, being able to sell and do all the things I wanted for work, and then on the side create all these music videos and public prospecting. To be honest, it's not easy to balance. And right now, I'm way more out of the creative than I'm in the creative. And every once in a while, I'll think, oh, well, I'm going to do another video, which I have. an idea that I've been scripting out that I'm gonna put out soon. But yeah, it's, it's hard. Uh, I do have to figure out more time for the creative or I'll explode. My— it'll just implode. My brain doesn't do well all the time.

I empathize to the point where I had a 13-meeting day today. When I had a half an hour gap, for those that are listening, I ran home to bring speakers to my new bigger office. And I'm like, if I'm gonna have a 13-meeting day, I'm gonna Busta 21 Savage and punk rock all day in between. I hooked the speakers up, but I'm missing the one cord that hooks in, you know, to my new system. We all know how that goes. But I find—

That's Monday. Monday.

It's the little things around your desk a little bit that— this is something I'm clearly trying to, you know, wrap with myself. But Ryan, this has been awesome learning from you, learning about you. How can people get in touch with you or find you?

So LinkedIn is always gonna be the, the easiest way to get in touch with me. I'm not really on other social media. I am on TikTok at Ryan's Scale Sales as well, where I'll put up some videos, but you'll probably just see those on LinkedIn anyway. Um, and yeah, building out some interesting stuff. Gonna be doing a video prospecting masterclass in, in Q1 that I'm gonna be releasing to the public, or video selling masterclass, not just prospecting. Um, and yeah, that, that's number one ways.

What, what's your Cameo profile link?

Not yet. Not yet.

Not yet. Ryan, thank you again for coming on. Like, like to be able to have a conversation like this with you, I don't want to say started from the bottom, now we're here, but we definitely started from a different place than we're at today. We both feel a lot— I mean, I think I could speak for both of us, feel a lot better about our future.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

This means the world. Thank you again, Ryan.

Likewise. This is a very full circle, great Great, great experience. Thanks.

Yeah, and for everybody that's listening, thank thank you for tuning in. You mean the world to us. That's it. This is another episode of Revenue Today. Whoa! Another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank. 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. Catch you on the flip side.