Crafting Sales Pitches and Managing the Sales Process With Ben Fiechtner

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute. And deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions. Especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail. But you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or miss on revenue. Foreign? What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we're talking about going up market, right? Something that gets whispered in the boardrooms, spoken about in the hallways. It shows up on a deck here or there like we need to go go up market yet. So often companies don't actually know how to go up market. They don't have a process for going up market. They don't know how to measure it, sell it and expand it. And that is why I'm so excited to have Ben Fickner on the show with me today. He's the new CRO over at Clary, but he's been at other companies you may have heard of. UiPath, Salesforce and driving large scale growth at the enterprise level is what he is good at. And he's going to be diving in with us today on how to do it, what to look for and what to look out for. So I'm pumped for this one. Ben, my man, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Katie. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, this one's going to be good. So I'm going to start with probably a semi loaded question, but it's going to open up everything else for us here right in your eyes that you've been in the game for a minute now. You've seen a lot of this. What is the biggest difference between the enterprise sales motion and I'll call it the mid market SMB because I think if we can open with this, it'll help to start people's ideas a little bit. So you've seen this. What's the biggest difference? People need to be aware of as they start to think about going after the big accounts.

Totally. It's a great question. I think so. And I was fortunate enough in my career to join Salesforce actually in the commercial team way back when. And a lot of that was about activity.

Right.

A lot of it is. It's a similar sale, but a lot of it was numbers and how much activity you were driving and that often it was a numbers game that actually drove the answers that you need. Obviously in enterprise it's much more big whale hunting. And then I was fortunate enough to kind of get promoted into enterprise at Salesforce too. And I think the biggest shift is like the deals are very similar. It's just the amount of complexity. So the complexity internally and externally of the number of stakeholders that you would have to manage. Right. And we like how you actually. That's a bad word. How do you actually orchestrate the politics internally, the politics externally and actually solve bigger business problems rather than potentially people looking for a feature function or something specific and small? I think just moving the ship is a lot bigger and a lot harder to do in the enterprise.

And I'm glad you said it right there at the end. Right. Where it is harder. And I don't think people always grasp that, where it's like, oh, we'll just do more of what we're doing now and move up. But it's significantly more challenging because of some of the things you mentioned. Right. The number of people involved, the internal politics and the external politics. You're the first one to say that on the show. So I want to go deeper on that. Right. You said for lending these large deals, you have to deal with the internal politics. Right. The company you're at, but also the external politics, the politics at the company you're trying to navigate. Expand on that a little bit more. No one's talked about this part yet. And I think it's so crucial.

I think the external politics too is like covering and I've been fortunate enough to cover the Fortune 100, a couple of different accounts like. Or a couple of different firms, I should say just the amount of people involved.

Right.

And it depends from Clary. Right. We're selling mainly to the CRO CFO. UiPath was an interesting one where you had to sell oftentimes cio, Chro, supply chain, qa, fna like it ran the gamut. And to drive an enterprise wide sale, you just have so many more stakeholders and people are going to have either preferences for certain vendors or potentially biases Right. Towards a certain type of product versus Another product or wherever the overlap is. And that becomes one of those things that I think the best enterprise sellers, if you're starting with the right executive point of view and understanding what that business is trying to achieve, that you're actually the one helping to orchestrate and organize the politics of your, you know, of your customer, which is the ultimate magic trick that's hopefully a win for them, hopefully a win for you. But it takes a lot of practice and a lot of muscle memory and a lot of at bats to figure out how to manage all of the different personalities, all of the different goals, measurements, biases, all of those different things we just talked about.

And I think like it's one of those things that people just don't think about, especially when they're dealing with a champion. Like they got a champion. So like I've got someone, we're okay and we're not always empowering, enabling that champion to deal with those politics and who might be a blocker and everything there. So let's keep, we're going to keep unpacking this a little bit, right? Because you talked about that business POV like really coming up with a strong point of view for their business. Let's talk about that a little bit further in terms of what you've seen the best do to craft it. Because I hear often even getting pitched to. But sellers I've worked with, companies I've worked with where it's like, it's like they're almost always presenting the same POV just to different accounts versus really crafting like and the word you use, like orchestrating and like almost like a magic of this pov. Let's talk about how to craft that, like what steps go into that.

I think clearly like great discovery, great research. And I think that the biggest thing though for executive point of views that I've seen over the time is. And look Clary, when I got here we had some executive point of views. It was like, hey, we're going to prove you in forecast accuracy. Accuracy that isn't necessarily a board level initiative or a CXO level initiative that's clearly important to the CRO for sure. But we are so much more than that and I hope we're delivering so much more value than that. So how do we think at the highest levels of what's important and how our solutions fit there? Because honestly that's only the place that you should be spending your time. And that's what we did@Salesforce, UiPath, Clary, whatever it is, I think that's one I think two is beyond discovery, beyond research and solving their biggest problems and thinking bigger, like being able to actually paint a picture and tell. The corporate storytelling is also a very, very big gift because it's the classic cheesy interview question, right. When people say, hey, sell me this pen. And 99% of sellers go immediately into, well, this is the ink, this is the comfortability, the feature function. But they don't go into the emotional connection of you only use a pen when the keys on a keyboard won't work to write, I love you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Like, that emotional connection on top of what your actual business challenges are, are the best executive point of views that I've ever seen because. Right. We all are human at the end of the day and we're all trying to achieve something bigger, hopefully in our jobs. And those are the ones that absolutely differentiate and stand out that I've seen over the years.

Okay. I love that. And I'm going to go a step backwards on something else. You said that longtime listeners, I'm sure once they heard you say this word, they're like, oh, Katie's going to go there. Practice. Right. This is something that you said very like intuitively and just in flow, like the best. Right. Like they're getting their reps in. They are practicing this pov. Right. They go through.

Yep.

And oftentimes, you know, when you talk about practice in sales. Right. It has this weird connotation of like, oh, well, I'm an enterprise, so I don't practice.

Yeah.

And I always laugh when companies and leaders tell me. I was like, wait. Because the big deals are easier. So these eight million dollar deals you don't have to practice for, but the $10,000 ones, you do talk to me a little bit. Because the best enterprise sellers I know that I've worked with, I mean, they were honing their craft. By the time they were in front of that CXO cfo, I mean, they had their stories ready, they had their everything around it. So talk about the how to practice at the enterprise level because I think this is important.

I, I think you're exactly right too. And this is where we talk about this a lot. Like even you see a slide deck and sometimes because you're going through the motions and it's hard, especially after Covid and we all live in our four walls and we, it's hard for us to get out. Like, you put the first call deck together and you think you're set. And so many times like, guys, this is a 78 figure deal. We have to absolutely spend weeks crafting this aesthetics matter down to the little. Is this, is this blue or is this green on every slide, right. Is one piece of it. But I think the other side of it is like, yeah, I think every executive briefing, center pitch, if it's an opening, if it's a welcome for 10 to 15 minutes, like, I've probably practiced it eight to nine to 10 times out loud. I somewhat wish I probably practiced for this podcast a few more times, but you made me feel right at home and comfortable and I think, like, that's one of it. I think the other thing that we do a lot internally Clarion, we did actually in our SKO last two weeks is dry run again and again and again and again and do it with different stakeholders because people are going to hear and understand different things. But it needs to be as clear as crystal possible for the executive point of view. Like, I should hear it the same way. You should hear it the same way. If you practice it enough because you're actually then solving the business problems, the challenges they absolutely care about rather than just rambling or showing up and throwing up or showing a bunch of first call deck slides that no one cares about your company or your product, they care about themselves. Right. And I think the practice is the hardest thing as you get older or not older, more mature into your career because you, you get the talk track again and again. But absolutely understanding their business, doing the discovery, the research, and it is crazy to me, the best ones make it look easy because they practice 12, 13, 14 times before they go into the deck.

Yeah, I wish, I wish more people understood that about the best of the best where it's like, you know, they make it look easy, they make it look natural, but damn it, like, you know, we were riffing right before this. I was like, you know, the bags under the eyes are real. It's like they're putting so much time into the prep for these sessions. I don't think people give enough credit and attention to. So I'm glad that, I'm glad that you said it. And I was like, all right, we're gonna, we're going to touch on this because I think it gets missed all the time around this with Sellers is that prep. And I've actually, funny enough, I wrote this down this weekend. It's like I'm actually stopped calling it practice and I'm going to start calling it prep. Same idea. But like this also I think helps managers craft. Like, I don't want you practicing Random calls. I want you prepping for a call that's coming. What is the next disco call you have that.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're exactly right and I think it's just kind of. And I, I keep coming back to this with our team of the again, post Covid world. We're all remote. Your calendar dictates your day so often. And if you allowed in any enterprise sales company, you're probably booked from 8 to 6 or at least 9 to 4 or whatever it is depending on the company and the size that you're calling on.

Right.

Like you could roll call into call into call as a CRO and even as an AE or an AM or whatever it is. And I keep trying to tell my team like live with intent and schedule. Fifth 30 minutes to prep.

Right.

Like, or the nights and weekends is the time where you're rehearsing these things because it's so easy that you just spill one into another and then you are showing up with a B minus, B plus, you know, effort if you're lucky. But the folks that are absolutely like curating their day and living with intent, prepping on the nights and weekends, understanding what they're getting into and making sure they're really, really smart about where they spend their time are the A players that I've worked with.

Yeah, that is quite literally my favorite word in the English language is intention. I talk about it all the time. Intention, right. Are you working with intention? Are you living with intention, Parenting with intention, like being a husband, being a wife? Like intention is the key too. And too often we do, we go through the motion and we wonder why we don't get what we want out of it. So actually you just mentioned something that's a good segue to the next point, which I'll say kind of is like I'll say time management or prioritization. Right. Especially for if a company or a seller is trying to do this for the first time. Right. The story goes a little bit like this. All right, Ben, you've got five named accounts. Go get them tiger. Where, where do you start? Right. Because you know, I've seen sellers and I, my, my first orgs, A lot of people actually don't know this have been very.

Yeah.

Over the last like, you know, six, seven years now. My first orders were enterprise. These, these were, you know, yeah, seven figure deals. These were nine 12 month cycles like and going through all this, I'd watch Sellers, you know, be really busy but get nothing done. So like when you only have five to 10 accounts. Talk to me a little bit about like kind of how you approach it, how you prioritize, you know, looking at something that seems you only got five, they're big. And how you kind of approach that process.

It's funny. So I like, I grew up selling capital medical equipment and then came to software as a service, right. And enterprise software at Salesforce. So I didn't know anything about leasing the Internet. I joke all the time, right. And, and my first thing when I got my accounts was I didn't know what a customer looked like. I didn't know what an account looks like. You obviously if you spend time at a company for a long time, like you know what smells, tastes, touches, feels like those clients, when you walk the halls, you just know like, oh, this is going to be my customer. I think for me, what I did is I sat with every stakeholder I could. So every other aegis who segmented their accounts, well, every se, every csm just kind of understanding, hey, let's look at these top five. This is what I think they are. Tell me make sense. And if there's, you know, gold on the floor here, for lack of a better term of something we could go after, clearly, like that's the most basic thing is the internal research and then once you actually know what you're doing of hey, how much do these folks spend? What is the tam? What is the SAM related to that industry? How do I look at this from like the different lenses of, you know, their current ARR, their sub vertical, is it a good fit for our product? All the way to geo, all the way to like to the competitive pressures, all of those things you can do that I think most of your folks probably know from the research. But the thing that I always did as a new rep coming to a new company was just ask the best of the best. Like it is amazing to me how many people still don't ask the guys and gals that are 150 plus percent of the plan, like, how do you do it? We have two folks internally Clary that one, this guy's built a spreadsheet that's the craziest TAM and propensity to buy and he is the best at tiering his accounts and no one knew he was doing this until we started advertising it and no one asked him. Right. Which is, it's, it's back to your point on intention of just ask what others are doing and then all the standard things as it relates to the enterprise playbook, depending on your product and what you sell I'm sure folks have that at home, but I would always, I don't know, probably too much like lead by democracy and ask every stakeholder and every person in the company that touches an account how they would think about it.

I call it the Wiggle. Right. So the Wiggle is the acronym that I use with my teams a lot. And the Wiggle is wgll, which is what good looks like.

Yep.

Yeah. And defining it. Right. So we do the wiggle and the four Ds. And the four Ds are defined, document, demonstrate deliberately practice. So it's like, once we know what good looks like, like, we're gonna study that. Yeah, right. We're gonna study it. And I do think sellers should be taking far more, I'll say ownership to reach out to those best sellers. Like, I will say, I'd love your feedback on this. 90% of the top sellers I've ever worked with or had on my team were more than happy to share. There was like the 10%. They're like, nah, sorry. But like 90% were. Were willing to share. Have you seen the same?

Yeah, I think, look, I think. And I think because there's been so much growth in the last 10 years, a lot of those bestsellers wanted to get into leadership too. So they looked at as an example of like, hey, I can help take on more than myself. But I think, look, your best employees always are looking at how do I help the entire team? And I'm. To your point. It is probably 10% that we all know and we still love them. But yes, they're. They're. They're. They're protecting their bases. But yeah, I think everybody will help. And I think the other piece too is like the extended teams. Right. There's. You know, I talk to our chief product officer all the time. He has very different background than I do of. What do you see when we look at this Fortune 15 company. Right. That I don't see? And just getting differences of opinions specifically for folks that have different lenses. Yes, of course, the AES are great, but I also think, like, there's a ton of wealth of resources in the company. And whenever I got stuck at Salesforce, at UiPath or whatever it was, I'd fly to headquarters and ask questions and get. Get reinvigorated and rejuvenated by learning something new.

Yeah, I, I love that. And that's where, you know, the next part that you mentioned there, which is like, a lot of these top sellers do get into leadership. This is a place that I feel Like a lot of leaders don't actually invest enough time, which is defining the wiggle. It's like you were a top performer.

That's great.

Did you ever define that process? Did you ever like actually document what that needs to be for others? But then also, are you paying attention to what's happening on your team? Right. So every quarter for my management team, we do what's called studying greatness. I assign a metric out to each manager. It is your job to go find the person with the highest metric and tell me what they do differently.

What does that mean? I love that. Every quarter. Yeah. And I think it's funny, I mentor mine at Salesforce, so. Because going from an AE to an rbp, you can be a super ae, you just can't scale. Right. But you can help affect enough deals to hopefully get to the number probably in the first year. And then I think the difference between being a front line to a second line, we always talked about it was like codifying your playbook of how do you teach the best practices and how do you make sure everyone's codified on their approach to drive scale. That was probably one of the biggest unlocks for me as a leader to make sure something that you may take for granted because to your point, you've had so much muscle memory, you've had so many at bats. It comes naturally to you to think about how do I navigate external politics, but no one's ever written it down. Right. And it is amazing to me, from the basic things of like forecast categories all the way to what a world class executive point of view looks like, all the way to what are my biggest and smallest negotiation levers. Internally, it is shocking to me how many companies and how many firms don't have this codified in a scalable way. So I love the best practice. I love the analogy.

For me. Yeah. It's just you have to, to scale. Scale. You have to. And again, you'll bring it back to enterprise specifically. I think it's even more important because you're, I'll say you're, you're, you're, your wiggle room is less.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you're doing a lot of demos, you get a lot of it bats. Like, all right, you could be off a little bit and still be okay. You can have one bad meeting or you can step on one landmine on an account.

Yeah.

And you could throw the account off for three years. You can't even get back into it again. So bringing it back now even further into enterprise. Right. We've talked about kind of the prep and the planning. We've talked about the POV a little bit. Let's now talk a little bit about, I'll say managing that sales process, right? When you think about 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, like I'm going to take this two directions, one I know really talked about and then we'll go the sales process. But the first time as a seller, like, how do you stay Sharp over that? 9 months, 10 months. It's your third call with legal, you've got a procurement call coming up, then someone goes on vacation. Like, how as a seller are you staying sharp mentally throughout that process and not, you know, whether it's falling back on your laurels or I don't know how to phrase it, but it's like, how do you like stay at the top of your game month after after month after month on these deals?

I think it's, it's. There's a dog. The, the, the most interesting thing. So I think when I was fortunate to cover the third largest account at Salesforce at the time and the way one big global company, right, and the way I thought about it a lot is you're exactly right. You had your eggs in a basket in one big, big deal, which was difficult, right? Because it's the same way when you go through your email inbox and you delete 181 emails or answer 181 emails, you don't feel satisfied. Right. It wasn't like you built something. So how do you manage that? I think the way that I always did it was I broke it down into start what I would say, starting as many brush fires as humanly possible. So you always had something to work on, right? Depending on the product you sell, if you're all in one or if you have a portfolio of products that you can sell. If it's the latter, for me it was how do I start? And brush fires is probably the bad analogy, but 17 different brush fires, a bunch of different accounts to constantly have conversations going. So ideally you're closing small deals every month, right. While you're building towards something bigger or more importantly, like you're just trying to. Like that was the way that I felt, I guess satisfied and fulfilled in the fact that I was moving the needle is if I could start a bunch of different conversations. And I think, I think it's the best practice that I've carried on because if you put all your eggs in your basket, you could be in trouble if that deal doesn't happen. So it's hopefully served twofold. One keeps you fulfilled, keeps you motivated, actually sees the progress you're making as you have more and more conversations, more and more introductions. But more specifically, I think you also get overall, like ubiquitous demand from the company that we talked about with the politics, with the stakeholder mapping. Like, if everybody's talking about your product across every division and every bullet, you have a much higher likelihood that that big deal is going to come together.

So this might be a loaded question. Not that there's a right or a wrong answer to it, but I want your take. Yeah, land and expand or go for it all. What was your preference or style? Are you just trying to get a piece and grow it or you're like, no, I'm going home run, top down. What was your go to as an ae?

I think because I grew up in commercial and it was interesting because I had, I think my first territory. I had probably 60, 70 accounts back then. And then I went to the third biggest account and the way I kind of broke it down was it's actually 81 little accounts because I have all the different BU's, I have all the different regions globally. And I'm going to treat this some. I didn't know any better. So I treated it like a commercial territory of I'm just going to get a ton of activity and a ton of things going. And then it started to bubble up. So I think that was my natural probably gravity as I've gotten. It's funny as you become a leader, like, you see both styles work, but it still scares the living hell out of me when I see someone being like, hey, I got one $10 million deal in Q4. Like, nothing makes a leader more anxious. And it's fun because we all love the big whale hunt and we all want to be a part of that deal, but we're all, we're all scared shitless if we're being honest. If we put all the eggs in one basket.

Absolutely, absolutely. Because I think that's something where again, early, especially people getting into it to start, it's like they. They're not thinking that way. They think I need to land the account and well, the only way to do that is get all of it versus I. I've never heard it phrase that, which I like, which is like it was. You treated the account like a territory. And it's a really, really clever way to put that because it's the truth. You break it down, you research the segments, you find the stakeholders, and then you approach it from from there. So very good. Now, something else you've said a few times that I'm catching that I really want your take on it. You mentioned walking the halls, you mentioned gold on the floor. You mentioned going to hq. In this remote world. Are you encouraging your reps to be on site more with prospects and customers? Like, is that something that is built into the process? Talk to me a little bit more about that.

I think always right. And I don't know who taught me that, but I think that was an early playbook that was taught of like facing the place always matters. A I'm an extrovert and I get a ton of energy from being around people. I'm the only one that probably really enjoys sales kickoffs and those types of things and. But I also think so at clary, we sell mainly to tech companies. Right. Like, you know, 65% of our base is a lot of enterprise SaaS, which is tough because we all scattered. Right. We all went all across the country during COVID and every CRO is someplace different. So it is hard to get like as much human face to face time as possible. But 100%, if my team can do it, I don't care deal big or small, like it makes such a big difference. I think too you can absolutely add value over zoom. Right. But I think if we were in person and I was sitting in your office in Austin, like we're going to become friends a hell of a lot faster and probably have a lot of more micro moments and conversations that we should have. Right. Like, so I do think it's important to get the face of the place.

Yeah. So can you go a little even deeper on that a bit in terms of like how. Right. Because I think this is a place that people struggle. Like especially in the remote world now when I could just fly up to San Francisco and I can, you know. Yeah, I know where they're at. I can book that call. Like, you know, are you trying to coordinate multiple people to be on site? Have you dabbled with like, call it like micro events where it's like, hey, we'll fly your CRO and your VP and your ops person here. Like, you know, talk a little bit about kind of how to approach that.

I think two things that we do. One is naturally, like when they have an internal meeting, you're trying to draft off of it. So if they have sales kickoff, they have something like that, which is actually a really good fit for us at clary, like that's a no brainer to drive enablement or drive you Know, broader conversations there. I think the second piece that look, events are tough to like. I've seen this, you know, and Salesforce is still the best at it. Like inviting folks to formula one races and things like that. Like that's awesome if you have that budget. Very few of us have that budget. So I think what we've tried to do more is you pick the big cities, the New York, the Atlanta is, the Austin's, the San Franciscos. Right. And what we're trying to drive a lot is either like a coffee, chat, a meeting, a dinner with hopefully like minded folks. So if I can get like next week actually in San Francisco, I have 10 CROs getting together. Right. And it's three to five. It's not a big commitment. It is casual conversation and we're picking the right topics that we all care about based on the macroeconomic trends going on. And we're using one or two marquee relationships, you know, hopefully to drive that conversation that isn't us but is more peers to peers. That's the one thing that I've seen work. But it's tough, right? Like, and unless you have oodles and oodles of cash, like the event's got to be really, really sweet for folks that come out these days because we're all super comfortable living in wherever we live. Right?

Yeah, it's, it's a challenge. And it's like, you know, back to what you said at the very beginning, like this is harder and it's really being willing to do the hard things, being willing to say, all right, this isn't how we've normally done it or this is outside the box or yeah, this is going to be more expensive. I do think that's like, it's so I'll never forget, you know, I won't name the company I was at. I was at the company and we had some big investments. Investors, you know, we had the, the best. Yes, we had all that. And we were going through like a board like meeting and I was getting into like, you know, CAC and all these things. And I will never, ever forget, like LTV to Cat was like some stupid, like 20. Something like just unreal. And yeah, we were in there and we're kind of like bragging about it and one of the board members looked just like, wait, how much does it cost you to acquire? And again, it's like you, you are underspending right now. You are absolutely underspending. You should be spending significantly more. And that had like never like even crossed my Mind like the long term value of these customers is so high, you are underspending, you are not investing enough. And that was when we started rolling out lunch and learns where we were going on site and doing lunches and all these things. Because again you're trying to land you know, seven figure, potentially eight figure deal with three to five year terms like don't skimp on the lunch or the dinner when you're trying to do it.

I, I agree and I like and I think those like the heyday right was crazy. Let's if we were looking back at it right probably 10 years ago. But now I do think about it right And I know T L is important and rule of 40 and everything is always I know top of mind for everyone probably listening to this. But I look at it if, if you, if it costs you a grand to get on a plane and have a dinner like any enterprise software professional that's listening to you is probably selling their licenses for a hell of a lot more than a grand and it's going to change the nature of your conversation. It's going to build trust much faster. And I do think it's not just like the relationship for the client. Much more importantly, I think you're going to understand them a hell of a lot better back to the executive point of view of like what are they actually dealing with because it's hard to get three layers deep on a zoom. But if you're breaking bread or having lunch or having a cup of coffee like you do get to understand a hell of a lot more about how that person fits within that organization or is going to help potentially navigate that organization for you.

I love it. It's something people, they need to get more creative and they need to be willing to take those, those steps to get there. And as we start to wrap up here, I would love like what's one of the more creative things you've seen done or you've done to you know, drive a deal forward or get a deal across. We always, we all got some glory stories. I'm just always curious like especially the enterprise level, like what's something like you either saw a seller do or you were a part of that. You're like yeah, that was, that was pretty good. That was good.

So I think the most embarrassing one was one of my first deals end of quarter or end of fiscal year January 31, procurement sitting on a seven figure deal hasn't responded back to me. This is back when folks are in the office. I'll come up with a Better one. This one's more cheesy. But I sent 60 pizzas with my business card on them and just said like trying, trying to get the procurement person to call me back. And it works. I think the thing that I think a little bit about that though is like when I tell that story to folks and I would never suggest folks do that because it's really cheesy and you look really desperate. But what it was was kind of the fourth wall, the conversation of. And I do this a lot of like, I talk a lot about attitude, aptitude and authenticity. And authenticity probably matters the most of like how do you just become a human in that last conversation?

Right?

Because the negotiation between you and procurement becomes so people are digging in and you're not necessarily connecting. The best sellers are the ones that actually can create that human connection and you realize you're still talking to a human, it's not just a salesperson. I think that was what the pizza trick did for me of this person was like, all right, like this is, this is a funny attempt. I get what you're trying to do. Like I'm going to pick up the phone and call you back and we're going to be fine. I'm trying to think like back to your point before on like preparation and stuff. If you've done all the right things, you hopefully don't have to get that creative. But there are so many insane salespeople and insane abmers and mark that have done the most. If like the ones that are impressive to me are the ones that are not like crazy amounts of money like we talked about. But I've seen a lot of folks just, I don't know. The other best practice I guess I'd say that I've had is and mentors taught me this is just connecting like minded people. Like if you're honestly going into a conversation and it's probably more earlier days, but this weekend was one, a mentor of mine reached out, we were talking and I connected to him to a recent CXO candidate that I talked to that just happened to live in the same neighborhood. Random, but the connection is like flourishing into something interesting that just creates more human connection over time. And I think that's the other big piece is just how are you making those introductions? And kind of not selfishly, but when you think about it like, hey, these are two like minded people. Let me help them connect them. That's the other thing that just kind of catches up to you over time. If you keep doing it like it's Amazing how rewarding those types of things can be. I don't know how I went from pizza parties to that, but I did. And, Katie, you did a great job being patient.

Well, because what's funny, man? And actually, I think it's a perfect example of something that to you was, like, intuitive of, like, yeah, you connect people. But for a lot of people listening, that is creative. They actually haven't thought to go, wait a minute. Yeah, like, who could I connect them with? That doesn't serve me at all, but just strengthens that. And it's just being proactive to know those things. Like, I could pull up LinkedIn messages. I said, like, if I ever give up on this sass thing and become a rapper, right? My rap name is, you know, KD the Connecta. And I sign off messages that way because I'm just constantly like, ooh, someone says something like, oh, I just talked to Ben about that.

Yeah, y'.

All. Y' all need to chat and. And to connect people. And I just think it does. It goes so long and then all the way back to kind of you mentioned, you know, with Clary and like, referrals is like, when you provide value to someone and then they do go somewhere else. You're that first call because they're like, this person helped me, even if it wasn't for the deal.

I'm with you. And I think, I think. I don't know who taught me that. I'm sure I had some mentors that did. And I think a lot of it was, like, just mentors doing it for me of Ben. You could learn a ton from this person. Come to San Francisco, sit down with this product manager. Like, they're going to give you a different insight there. And I think it just happens over time. You're exactly right. When people do it without. When people do it selfishly because they want something out of it, it backfires immediately. And I, I. You never want to try that line, but you're exactly right. Like, it has been so rewarding just connecting folks for jobs. And I have the fortunate opportunity of, you know, my first 90 days, got to meet with 42 CROs. 60 of the time, right? I'm their therapist. 40% of the time, they're my therapist. Right. And a lot of it is us just dealing with a lot of the same things. We're all in the same boat. We all have the same revenue objectives, and some of us are better at some parts of the game than others. And, like, a lot of that becomes then the network that you're connecting other folks with just to help round each other out.

It's. It's fun when you get those messages a few months later, like, hey, by the way, I don't even know if you remember this, but you commit connected me with Tyler and yeah, like we're. We're doing a business deal now or now we're running an event. You're like, oh, that's cool. That is awesome. You know, to go through it. So. Hell yeah, man. Okay, so this was, this was phenomenal. I got one last question for you here before we wrap up because the name of the podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea, right, that if we had more energy, more joy, more fulfillment in life, that the sales would also improve. What would your live better advice be for people listening?

I think it's where we started right of I have been in so many times in your career, you highs, highs and low lows. But when you think back to the high highs, and I'm on one right now, in the honeymoon period, of course, at Clary, a lot of it is because you're a new job too, right? Like, I have to think very, very consciously, prepare very well for my day and think through my day. There was times in my career where you do that. But then you get home Friday night and you're exhausted. You took the red eye home from San Francisco. You're not there for your family. I think what I've seen is absolutely. It's very hard to put your phone down. It's very hard not to work throughout the weekends for me, where I'm at my best. And it's maybe because it's finally 60 degrees in the Midwest. And I fired up an actual grill last night and was outside for the first time in a long time. Like, living with intent with my family has been the biggest thing, which sounds cheesy that it started with like, hey, I'm gonna schedule dinner time from 6 to 9 on Friday, so I make sure my laptop is turned off. Right. And like we are all so in tuned, I think in enterprise software, specifically about how hard we work, how much you grind through the day to make sure you're making so many call connects, whatever it is, but so many of us just then like give up when you get at home. And I've been in that role too before in my career. Right. I think for me in the last Clary has kind of given me that revamping as you start a new job to make sure you're being great at work and great at Home. And the last piece, I would say is just like living an intent for me for, with my family and making sure I'm not just wasting away the weekends on the couch watching TV or whatever sporting event is on. But actually being present for my kids has been mind blowing in the last three months for me.

Yeah, I just think that is, that is so key. Right back to the word intention. It's funny. Just, just this weekend, right? Like my, my daughter's, you know, playing soccer and you know, she's like, she's okay. She's okay, right? She's out there. She, she's.

Yeah, yeah, she's having fun.

You know, she had her first game, you know, this season on Saturday and I remember you saying like, oh man, like, you know, it's a one o', clock, so it's in the middle of the day, you know, so it makes it hard to go do things. Parking's a nightmare. Da, da, da, da. And it's like, oh, I could be doing something. It's like, no, like I'm gonna go, I'll be there and go through it. Scored two goals, right? She hasn't scored a goal in like two years and she had two, you know, in that. And like to be there and to be present for it and to engage there. I think it's just so important that we just don't always think about, it's like what we do at work. If we apply it same to home relationships, whatever else, it'd be amazing what that could do for us.

100%. Like I would, you know, like how many times you're scrolling on your phone. I would sit on this podcast with you and look at Twitter. But like there's so many times you could be at your kid's soccer game and you're like, yeah, I'm just going to check in this. So I try to like evaluate those two things in my life just to make sure you are present in work. And much more importantly, I think as I mature at home as well.

I love it. My man. This was, this was phenomenal. Ben, where can people find more of you? Where are you putting out content? Where can they connect and learn more about what you're doing? This is great, man.

I think I got a lot to learn from you, right, in terms of getting better at posting best practices and learning and connecting folks more publicly. But Ben fox@clary.com if you need anything or if there's follow up questions and you can find me on LinkedIn as well. But Katie, I appreciate the time, man. This was a ton of fun.

Hell, yeah, man. No, really nailed it. Really got tackled tactical. Serious value, man. So I appreciate. I'm sure we'll be having more combos down the road or connecting each other to people that we connect with, that we can connect with further and do do the whole game. And I appreciate you taking the time today, man. Thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Have a good one, Sam.