Founders Are Their Companies' First Sales People with Wayne Morris

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So I am pumped.

Wayne, my man, welcome to the show.

Kd, thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here, man. I've looked forward to this for a long time. So let's make it worth it.

Long time coming and we don't let.

It take this long next time, right?

We should have done this long ago. But no, I'm pumped, man, to dive into this because I think there's. When I look at the companies that I work with, right, this transition between the founder selling to actually hiring a sales team is where a lot of people trip up, right? They never make that transition. So one of the things that you said right before we hit record was like knowing whether or not they have product market fit as the first signal. So what are things that you look for or tell the founders you work with to look for, to know, hey, like, do I actually have product market fit right now, or is this just luck?

Yeah, this is, this is. This is the billion dollar question in many ways, right? Because if you don't have product market fit and you're going out there and spending the capital that you do have to build a sales team without it, like, good luck, you're not going to get very far, right? So I think it's pretty distinct. There are three clear stages that I want to see my founders absolutely nail. And if you haven't nailed those three, these three milestones, then you just don't have product market fit. So let's run through them. The first one is you need to have a credible hypothesis. And that credible hypothesis is going to create value for your prospective customer. So what is it? It's incredible. You would think that every founder has a credible hypothesis, but so many founders stumble upon what it is that they're building. They didn't even think about the hypothesis. It could be they were at a company and there was a gap in the markets, they built their own little product and they went out and started selling it on the side. And then before they knew they had some customers, but at no point did they stop and say, I have this hypothesis. The hypothesis is critical because you have an idea that's going to create value, but you need to go out there and determine what is actually going to create that value. But how do you do that first? The way you do that first is by creating a minimal viable product. You don't go build an all singing, all dancing product because that will just cost too much. And most importantly, how do you know that's the right thing to go Build. So you have to go and speak to the market to test your hypothesis. So you go speak to 100 people, 50 to 100 people. Go speak to them. And when you've spoken to them, they'll tell you, yeah, this makes sense to me. I think this is going to solve some of my problems. And I think this is pretty interesting. But based on what you've told me, I would change this and I would change that and I would add this and I would remove that. That feedback in the hypothesis stage, the customer development phase is really critical because you're going to take that back and you're going to build your MVP on the back of it. Now can I jump in there real quick, Wayne?

Because it's going to be good.

Yeah, let's go for it.

I want to unpack here. So when you talk about doing those interviews right, there's actually kind of a two parter here. One, like what are some of the questions they should be asking in these interviews? But then the second part is how do you prevent them to coming back with all this feedback and building a bunch of stuff for people that either doesn't really matter or isn't worth doing right? So like, what should you be asking in these interviews? And I'll follow up with the second part, like how do you prioritize the feedback? Because you talk to a hundred people, you're going to have a hundred people tell you, I want it to be blue, I want it to be green. No, I want it to be red. How do you prioritize that? So I wanted to jump in there, Okra, because there's a lot in this already.

So in terms of the questions that you're asking, at the end of the day, you need to be creating something that's going to impact the KPIs of that firm and it has to. What I'm looking for is something that's core to that business, not something that's on the periphery, that doesn't really have a big impact. That's kind of a nice to have. So the questions you need to be asking are like related to the product that you have built is like, what are the biggest challenges that you face today across your business, both professionally and personally and in the context of your product? And what are the things that you're using today to help solve that? And most importantly, the billion dollar question is what would you do? What would you change to improve the situation you're in if you had a complete blank sheet of paper when you're speaking with potential prospects in your target, what you feel is your target market, there is no way that someone is going to come back to you and say, I operate in a perfect world. Everything is just fine. If they come back and say that to you, you've asked the question incorrectly with the wrong tone or the wrong phrase, because nothing is ever perfect. So I'm really trying to get founders to get to the core of what the real, real issue is, not something on the periphery. Because where you're going to end up is once you've built the product, where you're going to end up is you're going to have them test it and you're going to have them replay back to you how that impacted their lives and their business better. And you better be sure that what you've created is something that's going to have a big impact, not a small impact. Otherwise, the value exchange is not going to be big enough for you to be particularly interesting. So I'm trying to get to the real core of what their challenges are today in order to make sure that what I'm developing is going to impact that. It just cannot be peripheral. It has to be core. So your second question was, how do you prioritize the feedback so the feet. What I'm not focused on at this point is features. At this point, what I'm focused on is just trying to solve the biggest problem that they have in their business. So what I'm really looking for is again, coming back to the KPIs. If I add, let's just talk about discussion, where they say, well, I'd like this and you haven't presented it to me and you're not planning to present it to me. My challenge back to them would be, if I develop this, how is that going to make your day, week, month, quarter life better? And I need them to be concrete in their answers. I'm trying to educate the person that I'm speaking with to the point at which, when I get into the next stage, they're going to have to relay to me in concrete terms how this has really helped them. So my question is, often if I develop this and you use it, how are you going to illustrate back to me that this has been of value? What are the metrics that you're going to use to do that? Because if that's a real struggle for you, then it's probably not something I should be prioritizing. So can you measure, is there data behind what I'm going to develop that you can measure to illustrate impact? And if the Answer is yes, here it is. This is why it's important. It's on my list. If the answer is not really sure, yeah, that's a good question. It's kind of difficult. Then, like, I'm putting it to the side.

Awesome. I love it. I think it's important to call out because founders will go do these interviews. I work a lot with 500 startups, right? And so, like, they would do these interviews and come back and go, we have to build all of this because that was the feedback that we got from our customers or from our interviews. And so I love that question of, like, how will this, like, materially change your day, your week, your month versus oh, you. Just like that, right? And the other good one there too, was subtle. The way you said, it's like, will you buy now? If I commit to building this, right. It's like, all right, if it's that important to you, help front the cost, then. And I'll build that. But you need to actually buy, not wait until afterwards. And so, okay, so we got the credible hypothesis we're getting an mvp. What are the. What was the other two levers for product market fit did you look for?

So I'm now looking the next phase when I figured what I want to build is I need to find my beta customers. I need to find people, organizations, where I can test the value live that I've created.

Right?

These beta customers are critical because what they're going to do is they're going to actually use the product for the very first time. I'm trying to get as many of these as possible. So one question that I often get from founders is, well, at this point, I want to be charging for my product. Well, you can, but there is a trade off. If you charge for your product at this phase, you're probably not going to get the volume of signal that you would get if you were not charging for it. So there is a trade off here. Now I get it. Some founders have Runway issues. Ideally you wouldn't. Some founders do. Well, if you do, then, like, there is a bit of a trade off. They just need to understand that that trade off is there. But let's just take the perfect scenario where you don't have a Runway issue. You can go get a load of beta customers. I want these beta customers to understand that what I really need them to do is use the product in earnest and I want to be able to interview them deeply about how this impacted their business. So the key thing in stage two is not sales. The key Thing in stage one was really discovery and a little bit of selling. In stage two, it's a bit of selling but it's mainly customer success. It's mainly like, okay, you get the value, but now I need to make sure you're actually going to use it and you're going to use it properly. So that's going to be onboarding and that's going to be management post the agreement of being a beta customer. Because the worst thing that you can do as a founder is get all these agreements and then no one uses the product. That happens so much. Like I did all this work and then no one's using the product. Yeah, well, you know, well I, maybe I should have charged them. Well, there's the trade off. Like if you charge someone, people are going to take it more seriously and they're going to use it, but there's the trade off. You're not going to get as many people using it. So for me stage two is really all about success. A lot of founders skip out on this, they're like, well I built the product, then people should just come and use it. Well, that isn't the way it works, man. Like you've got to like hold their hand. This is a disruptive new product, otherwise they'd have bought something already. Right. It's already been developed so you're going to have to hold their hand through this process. So really critical in stage two with your beta customers that the founders are in there and just holding their hands through the process. Maybe it's not going to be a self serve product, but you thought it was. But maybe in this phase you realize, and I was in a company once where we realized like we built a self serve product. That's what it was all about. Product led growth, self serve product. And we tested it and it worked brilliantly. Making incremental millions of dollars of revenue for kind of in test cases, gave it to the customers, crickets. No one used it. Why is no one using this? And it's because it was complex at the time, but you needed to, it was an ABM multivariate testing tool. You needed to put code into the head of the page. And then there were all sorts of variables that you needed to manage in the back end to ensure that the, that the content was being served in the right way. It was just too complex. So we realized in the beta testing phase that this needed to have managed services alongside it. Anyway, when you've got these beta customers, this is phase two. What you're doing here is you're testing the value of what you've created. When you're testing the value of what you've created, it can go one of a few ways. It can be terrible. Customers can come back and say, this sounded good, but like, this thing that you've created for me is like, doesn't work very well, like it's too hard to use, or like the results are crappy, or like this just isn't great. Well, that's good feedback. It's hard, it's tough, it's good feedback. Get back to the drawing board and get developing. But what they should be telling you is what they want to see and how they want it to change. Again, the beta customers are there giving you all of this feedback. So as the family going back and developing it. But hopefully the beta customers will come back to you and say at least some of them will come back to you and say, this really did do what it said on the tin and I have got some really good value out of this. And if you've got 20 beta customers, hopefully 10 of them will, half of them will come back and say, this is legit, this is great. Like, this is, this is brilliant. And what this does is it sets up the next phase, which is the critical phase, which is, okay, so now we have created the value, we now need to realize the value. So the way we, so we've gone from creating value, testing the value to now realizing the value. And those 10 beta customers that are like, yeah, this is great, you're going to now go to them and say, I need you to pay for this because there has to be a fair value exchange in this moving forwards. How about it? And what you'll typically get is on one end of the spectrum, someone that will say, I'm prepared to pay for it, but not very much. And on the other end of the spectrum you get some that say, I'm prepared to pay for this, I cannot do without it, I'm going to pay you a lot of money for it. At this point you have this spectrum of lower paying customers, so your SMB and your enterprise and you have a decision to make, like, where do I want to be? Do I want to be in the high enterprise category or do I want to be in the SMB category? And at that point, that's when you know you have some level of product market fit. And now it's about like, where do you want to be? Where you know, how do you want to build your company? Do you want to build it? Bottoms up, do you Want to come top step, top down? Do you want to be more product LED growth? Do you want it to be more of a sales motion in the enterprise? And then you're at this point where you can begin to say, okay, I think we've got something here. I think we're approach. We've either got or approaching product market fit. So those are the first three stages, Katie, that I implore my founders to not cheat. They would cheat those stages. You cheat those stages, you're in all sorts of trouble. A little bit further down the line, for sure.

And I think it's something that just gets overlooked all the time, right? It's just, well, no, I love my product, so clearly the market will. But also too. And this will go in the next question. I think a lot of founders early on too, are like, well, I'm not a salesperson, right? I'm not a salesperson, so I have to hire a salesperson because that's. I don't want to sell. I just want to focus on the product, right? So, like, how do you work with them in terms of like, hey, you, you're not ready to hire a salesperson yet, or you need to wait for this. Like, how do you advise the founders that just feel like, I need to hire a salesperson today?

First of, in that situation, Katie, we were talking like an engineering or product LED or product founder. The first thing I'm doing is a bit of therapy, quite frankly, because it's like, dude, like, you might be. Sales is not bad. Like, I know there's all these impressions that people have of sales and salespeople. It's like, look, it's a critical part of your business and it's. You know, there are things about sales that are difficult. The repetitive motions that you have to go through. You're either that person or you're not. You know, And I'm like, luckily for me, I'm the kind of guy that was happy to go to the same restaurant every single day, every day of the week. I'm like, fine with that. But like, you know, that repetitiveness is tough for founders. But I think what founders really need to understand is, like, there's going to be deep insight that you're going to get from being in those conversations. Do not see them as sales conversations. Just see them as product development, customer development conversations. See them as ways in which to learn about the market. Because if you, for a founder, if they're abstracting themselves from listening to the market prematurely, there is a significant risk they're going to Develop a product that the market doesn't want. So it's really their responsibility to be in market, listening. Otherwise who knows what direction the company is going to take. So I don't think founders have a choice. They really do have to be in market now. You know, hire a sales coach, hire a sales advisor, have someone by your side that can put guardrails around this, can demystify this sales thing that you don't understand but don't, you know, real red flag if a founder isn't out there doing the selling themselves. A real red flag on a number of accounts. I think the optimum founding group though is really an engineering and product founder and a business founder. Right. And that business founder needs to be selling and needs to be in it. But if that's not there, then my advice would be hire a coach. Someone that's been there, done it, can demystify every aspect of it for you. But don't step away too early. I mean, the thing that I see a lot of is founders get to, they did two or three sales, right? And they're like, we've cracked it, done. I can just go hire a salesperson. Cracked it. But what have you cracked? Well, I've got two, two customers. I mean, like, come on, seriously. And that's like, you know, because that's like, I just want to get the hell out of this sales thing as quickly as possible. But really what you want to, you know, what you really want the founder to do is stay in it. So if it's enterprise, like go get 5 to 10 sales and then you'll have some signal that you can, that you can work with. But yeah, so founders need to be in it. And the other mistake that a lot of founders make is they just don't. They do a lot of really good work in getting to the point at which they've got their first five to 10 sales and then they are ready to hire that salesperson, that first salesperson at that point. But they've not documented anything. So then there's just pure luck. It's like, oh, so I'm just going to go out and hire KD and bring him in because he's this shit hot sales guy and he's just going to get it. Like what? Like you serious? Like you just spent like 12 months getting to this point. You went through, you had all sorts of conversations, all sorts of internal, external conversations, all sorts of product development and Katie's gonna just come in and just get it just like that with, I mean, come on, that's just, that's just nuts.

How does that happen? That's two things that I want to dive into there. Right, so let's talk about like, what are the things that they should be documenting? What do they need to get out of their head and on paper or in video to prepare that first hire?

Yeah, well, well, you firstly touched on it. So like I get them to try and just document everything, right? And by everything I'm like, look, just get anything that you think has been valuable, just get it down in writing. And if you're not good in writing, record it. Just record the internal, external conversations. But really I want to understand, like when you had those customer development, let's go back to the product market stages. How did you find these people? Where do they come from? You know this, you know. So one mistake a lot of founders make is they, they just, they just go to their incubator cohort and they just speak to those guys. It's like, well, that's not going to help anyone coming in, right? No one's going to. How could they can't do that. They don't have the founder rights to do that. And anyway, that's not the market. So when you meet, when you have been coached to move beyond that, how did you get beyond the incubator cohort? What do you do? Did you, did you use Zoom info? Did you use LinkedIn, self navigator? What was the segmentation that you used? What were the. So what was it? Was it email? Was it calling? How was it, you know, what was it that you did to generate that top of funnel? Because this person coming in is going to want to have to like build iterate and learn from that. When it comes to the backstory, like what is your backstory? How did you get to this point? What does that look like? There must be some kind of, if it's in your head, like there must be a way in which you can just write that down. Like if you've never written it down before, there must be a way which you can write down. Can you get it into a few slides? Because sometimes it's easier to visualize that stuff. If you do great, well, that's going to be documentation that you can forward on. How did all of these discussions go? If you can record every one of these discussions, it's going to be a goldmine for the person coming in. So I'm literally telling them to, if they can structure it, great. But I just, I'm like, just record everything. And often the founders. I was on a call with a founder today and you know, she was having like a side discussion with a prospect. Oh, it's just a short chat. Like it's not going to be that important. Like, what are you going to talk about? What we're going to talk about, like how long. It's the process you have to go through in order to get the funding to pay for this deal. It's a government deal. That's critically important. That's a side discussion in a complex enterprise sale. But someone's going to want to know about how the conversation came about, what happened in the conversation, what were the next steps. So basically documenting literally everything and not worrying too much about structure. So you've just got a whole library of stuff that you can give this person coming in that they can then do something with. Nothing worse than just having literally nothing.

Nothing. Just nothing. Or it's in the founder's head so they gotta ping you all day long to try to get those answers. And actually just a quick, you know, tactical tip to founders listening, record those customer interviews too. Those are phenomenal onboarding tools. Right. If you had 20, 30 of those customer discovery interviews that your reps can also listen to, that is just a gold mine for them. So now let's take the next step. What should a founder be looking for in that first sales hire? Because the first sales hire is really important for a lot of reasons, but also is a little bit different than hire number 10, 20, 50, 100.

Right.

So what are things that founders should be looking for in that first sales hire that really are important?

Yeah. Now if the. This is a, this is a. This is a great question. And obviously like these first sales hires, the failure rate is just unfortunately very, very, very high. So if the founder is. There's two types of founder. Right. So that I see. So it's the technical founder or they're a business founder. I think if you're the business founder, you can look for something different than if you're the technical founder. Because if you're the business founder and you don't want to abstract yourself from the sales process for a while, then you can be effectively the de facto head of sales for a while, for the foreseeable future, until that first sales unit is truly humming or even maybe longer. You know, at that point, what I'm really trying to do is get someone in that can really. I want them to be an evangelical salesperson because it's still disruptive, it's still new, we're still not necessarily known in the market. And I want this salesperson to come in and be able to like be by my side doing the evangelical kind of selling alongside me. But I also want them to be organized, super organized, super methodical. And I want them to be somewhat obsessive about creating the playbooks around what it is that has got us to this point in time. And I want them to have done a little bit of that before. I want them to. I like people that feel uncomfortable without structure when they're coming in, but I also like them to be the kind of person that has created structure themselves when you move further along. What I, you know, often you're bringing salespeople in that are expecting structure, that don't like chaos. Right. But this person is coming in and reveling in, in chaos. They're kind of like wartime, kind of wartime operators. Right. And I personally class myself as someone that has basically constantly operates in the wartime situation where it's just a mess. And look, the thing is the startups, you know, seed through, I don't know, B or C, they are chaos. And it's really, it's really for these people to come in and organize that chaos. So they have to, they have to revel in that kind of chaos. They have to be comfortable in that. They have to be comfortable with shifting sands going on, but they also have to have this drive to organize that whilst also owning. Owning a number. Yeah. So if there's a business founder, I'm looking for that kind of person. If it's a technical founder, then I'm trying to abstract, at this point, I'm probably trying to abstract myself from all sales. Once I have, once I have moved all the information from me over to this new person, I am hoping that this new person can come in and hire a team behind them pretty quickly. And that's a slightly different hire to the previous hire I just described. So this hire, I'm expecting them to basically have two or three salespeople, warm, coming in behind them and I'm expecting them to really take the reins of me. So that that person, I'm selling that person hard on the value of the future value of the company. And I frankly am hiring, I'm trying to hire someone I have no right to hire. I'm trying to hire someone at that point that is probably VP level, but I am going to entice them with as good as I can pay them. But really I'm going to entice them with equity and just position them as being like one of the foundational players in the team and Then they succeed and they're building a team behind them.

Got it. Okay, so you're. So it's kind of different, right? So you're talking about the early. It's almost like business side hire sales rep, technical side, you're hiring a sales manager, leader, VP or something to make sure that you have someone in place to hire behind them. Am I hearing that right?

That's correct. Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's a really good call out because I think it is. Like I see it all the time, man. The technical founder hires two AES and says go close. It's like, well, they don't know what to do or even worse. And this is actually where I'm seeing it more and more as they go hire SDRs.

Yeah.

And I'm like, no, you can't do that. You can't just go hire SDRs and not train them and not onboard them. And so actually, let's go one layer deeper here. A lot of people talk about going from founder led sales and hiring. What would your advice be to founders, managing salespeople? Because I don't think we actually talk about that enough. Okay, so you've hired a sales team and you are the sales manager. Managing salespeople is different than managing engineers or managing marketing or managing hr. Right. And when it's that founder led org, it's so small, they're involved there. What are some things that they should be doing as the leader of salespeople to make sure that they're getting the most out of them?

Yeah, well, the first thing they should do is just not succumb to the misconceptions or the popular conceptions of what salespeople are like, which is like, I really hate this in the industry. There's like this, there's still, there's still people that perpetuate this bag carrying salesperson, you know, that's not particularly refined in the way in which they operate. You know, very material driven. And so like those salespeople are from a bygone era. And frankly, in the world in which I operate, the salespeople that I'm aware of that are successful are extremely considerate of extremely high emotional intelligence and read around their subject and read around their organizations a lot. So they're not like this caricature of a classic bag carrying salesperson of times gone by. So I think the first thing they can do is recognize that, because the moment they recognize that, they will understand that like they, they do think differently to the way in which they may be perceived. And most Importantly, they're of extremely high emotional intelligence. And if, and if a salesperson is of extremely high emotional intelligence, they have feelings. And as a leader, you need to be able to tune into their feelings. Now here's the challenge is like the classic archetypal salesperson is also the alpha male sports person, right? So like, how do you break down those barriers? So like, you know, in this world of remote, it's going to be metaphorical, but back in the day when it was more face to face in the office, like, I can't tell you the amount, the amount of value I got about putting my arm around the salesperson when times were tough and just saying, hey, I got you. This is sweet, this is fine. You have ups and downs. Let's just work through what's not working for you. And nine times out of 10, it's just about giving them the confidence they're not going to get fired. Giving them the confidence that you're going to be there for them. Giving them the confidence that we can work through this almost all the time. When you've hired good set, when you've done your hiring, right, it's just about going back to basics for them. So I mean, my biggest advice to anyone, a technical founder, is be there for your team, Back them, understand that they're humans and give them the tools through which they can continually improve so that when things get tough, they inevitably will get tough. They'll feel like that there is room for them to grow out of the situation and grow into the next phase of success rather than have them looking over their shoulder because it's easy to get them looking at all this. Like, you're only as good as your last week, your last month, your last quarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not true really, is it? Like, what you're only really as good as is the last, you know, day or week of motivation that you got from your boss. Because, like, class is permanent, right? I mean, you need to be consistent. But if you've been consistent for quarter over quarter for the last three or four quarters, you don't suddenly turn crap. Like something has changed in your organization, something has changed in the environment. And that for me is on the leadership to figure that out. So my advice would be like, treat them as humans, you know, understand they might have this like, you know, this kind of alf if they're, you know, male sports background, like six, you know, I'm like, I'm five foot seven short, right? So like, you know, the six foot four football guy, like beneath all of that. Like there is a heart, there is a soul and there is someone that like is really caring and just be there for them and just don't succumb to these stereotypes that are frankly not true and just give them tools from which they can succeed. Here's the other thing as well and I think salespeople and especially like VPs coming in need to take note of this. People are always negotiating money and salary. Here's like a pro tip of what I would be doing nowadays because the market is just full of cash, right? I mean like it's just a rich market right now. I would be, here's the curveball that I would throw in my negotiation. I would say I know you're expecting me to negotiate at this point cash for myself and figure out the range. I would just negotiate a very healthy professional development budget. So you know, if it's you know, enterprise REP, that's maybe 150 plus 150200 plus 200. You know, rather than go from the 150, 150 to 200 plus 200 that may be like, you know, maybe they come back 175 plus 175 or 350 but you know there's room to go. The final bit of negotiation I'd be like 50k professional development budget.

Yeah, I love that because it's the non tangible things right where you know you can give someone a 50k bump but it doesn't go anywhere special. Like it's not like they're going to go anywhere with it and you're paying taxes on that and everything else. Whereas as a professional like professional development, right you're talking about expenses or you can like write that off as, as a company and it shows a different type of leader, right? Like yo, like no, like this is what it pays but we'll cover this two conferences a year this and give you a professional coach for two quarters like that right? There is a much. I love that way of thinking because oftentimes two founders get stuck I think early making that first hire, trying to save money, right? Well I don't have a lot of money so I'm going to see who I can get for the least amount versus investing in that first rep and really diving in there. And actually I want to see what you would you pick here. If I'm a founder, which is more important industry knowledge like they've sold to my prospect before or kind of that chaos knowledge right you talked about before like used to chaos. Used to like Building and documenting things. Like if I'm an early founder, where should I pick? Oh, they've sold to these people before or they've been a part of a fast build or a fast growing startup before.

My last three, I've done three back to back successes that were pre, some were pre revenue, all three were pre product market fit took every one of them to scale, right? So zero to $20 million a hour. Back to back. Those three and every other company in my past before that, which is about three or four others, were all in different industries. Let's go. I have zero KD, I have zero industry expertise. Zero nothing. VCs come to me and they're like, hey Wayne, we'd like to get you into our company. Like, you know, where would you say that you specialize? And I'm like making money, is that good enough? How's that? Does that work?

No.

Well, you know, we've got this cybersecurity firm. They really want someone with cybersecurity background. Okay, well there you go. Go get someone with cybersecurity background. I'm out. You know, so I just, I don't get it. I really don't get it. It's like for me, sales is all about understanding the buyer and understanding the buyer in detail. And the buyer is both a person and a person in a company. So like my skill set is understanding deeply who you are, Katie, and what motivates you and what drives you. And that's really that skill set and understanding that takes multiple years to get. Really, really, really. You can have some innate, but it takes multiple years to get really, really good at. I can, I can understand, I can become and sound like an expert in any industry in about three or four weeks. And I would teach, I build my onboarding with my sales team with that exact thing in mind. They walk through the door and I thought they said, hey, don't worry, you're going to hear all these three letter acronyms. You feel like you know nothing about this industry. Let me guarantee you one thing. In four weeks time in front of the biggest prospect out there, you will be in this industry. You in this particular area where our product is, you will be the most knowledgeable person in the room, bar none. You will be the expert. So whenever I see this like industry expertise request, it blows my mind. I'm like, you know what that tells me? That tells me your sales name is terrible. That tells me you do not know how to onboard your salespeople to your industry, to your product. Like to me, it's mind blowing. And thankfully, Katie, I've been doing this 25 years, so I'm living proof. So if anyone tells me that that's bullshit and I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'm a complete fraud. Maybe I don't really exist. Maybe everything that you see and everything you hear about me, all the references, I've got a complete B.S. maybe, maybe that's. Maybe that's the case. But like, I'm not living a parallel life, so I'm pretty sure that's not the case. So there's something else going on here.

I love it. I was hoping that was going to be your answer. I wasn't going to disagree with you regardless, but I was hoping that would be the answer because it is true. Right. I have a very similar background to you. There has been zero overlap in any of my sales roles and leadership roles. 0. No overlap whatsoever in any industry. And it's still comical to me, actually. I'll tell a quick story in this. Like, I had a company that was interviewing me right at the beginning of the year. Very technical product. They're already at about 20 million ARR. And they want to get to, you know, 100, 150 plus. I said, all right. We go through it and like, they love it. Da da, da. They're like, yeah, but you don't really know this industry. I said, you don't hire someone like me because of the industry. You hire someone like me because I know how to build a sales org to 200 people. That's all I need to know. You already know the industry. You've sold it for $20 million. I can learn that. I can't learn how to scale a team from where you are to where you need to go. They're like, well, so they passed. I got a call seven weeks later, like, hey, like, we need you. We figured it out. I was like, not too late.

I'm out.

Like, I'm already, like, I've already made my decisions. But it's funny, people get stuck on industry knowledge when it's the process knowledge, you know, you to know the sales process, you can learn an industry. Now, real quick, how do you get your teams up to speed on the industry that quickly? I thought you were going to say three months to expert. You said three, four weeks to expert. What are the things that you do in those first three to four weeks to get them up to speed on the industry?

Yeah, well, clearly industry documentation is critical. So there's, you know, everything about the background of the industry. And then there's some, some. I try and do some testing. So it's like, you know, there's. There's this knowledge, there'll be a test at the end of this week, so on and so forth. Honestly, the most valuable thing I've ever done, ever implemented. I've. I've done this in my last three. Definitely the last two. I think we did, we started doing in the, in the, in the one for this furthest back is.

I have.

Everyone that comes in is. So depending on the stage that we're at, if it's slightly later stage, like Series A or whatever, I'm having everyone just be customer success, customer support for the first week or two.

Love it.

It's like in. You can't. Like, I just need you. It's the only way you can do it. Like, here are the customers. You need to listen to their challenge, listen to their problems. You need to listen to what it is that they're saying is good, bad and indifferent. And you just need to live and breathe like a customer. It's the single easiest way that they can become authentic in how. In the value of the. In the value of the product. It's. There's all sorts of things that I've done with, with teams, but that by far is the most valuable thing. And sometimes I'll have like, salespeople coming in, like, are you serious? And like, well, I've prepped them before. But like, I'm like, yeah, deadly serious. But I want to be out there selling. Look, it's like, you know, let's just like, calm down. There's going to be no rush here. You've got to. That's why you have a ramp period. Like, let me control what happens in this ramp period for you, right? Just sit. We could do extracurricular stuff. You can try and get ahead as best you can. But like, honestly, like, there's nothing going to be more valuable than sitting down with customers. I would say. Here's the other thing I would say. I would say. And I heard this from someone in my network the other day. I would say the early. If you're being hired as a solicitor, all VPs of sales. Katie, the message to all VPs of sales, the market's hot. If you're going early, early stage VP of sales, here's what I recommend that you do. I recommend you close out the offer from a startup, have them send you the contract, have them sign it, and then. And so you're the preferred candidate. You're the. You can sign it, right? But You've got a week to sign it. And I would say you spend that next week in the client speaking to customers and people. I heard someone. Have you heard that? Have you heard companies doing that?

Not on, not before they joined. It's how I joined companies is I talk to the customers, but after I've joined, never in the like interview process to accept an offer. I think sometimes it might be limiting because if you have a job, it might be tough, but no, keep going. I like this idea though.

Well, I heard it from a friend who'll remain unnamed at this point. And a VC will remain unnamed, the company remain unnamed. But I thought that was genius. In a really hot market, if you know this is the candidate. What's a week? What's a week? It's a super hot market. It's going to be hard to hire these people. What's a week? The amount of times I've walked into a company and seen things in the first week that would have changed my outlook is just like beggars belief. I think events. I come home to my wife and gone, oh, I just had this hunch and I think it's, it's okay. Like I close the back door and I figure stuff out. But it would have changed my, would have changed my outlook. So anyway, something I heard in the market really recently and I thought that's cool. I really like that offer signed off a letter by then, you haven't signed it, you've got a week to sign it and use that week to be in the company with customers, with sales team, just like figuring out that what you've been sold is actually the reality.

Yeah, that's funny, man. Because I asked for all the reports, all the data. I back channel left and right. Like I was just speaking with a woman that I mentor and she recently took a new VP job. And I happened to know the CRO at that company and I was like, wait, how did I not know this was happening? So I asked her, do you know so? And so she's like, oh, I'm not sure if he works here anymore or not.

And I said, how do you not.

Know if the person listed as CRO works at the company you just got hired at? Like, did you back channel at all? Did you do any sort of research to find out like what you're stepping into? Like, you didn't even know who your boss was gonna be. Like, we gotta be better than that. Like we gotta make sure you're asking these questions. And so I love that idea. If and when I Ever stepped back into the game, I think I would do that. I'd make the signing on my end contingent upon getting three to four days with the customers, with the team to get a feel for it. Because it's so true, man. And you nailed it, right? You can find out fast.

We're like, oh, so fast.

What did I just step into? Like, goodness gracious. All right, hold on. I'm already looking at the clock. Like, holy smokes, we're already flying here. Okay, so we talked about product market fit, talked about, you know, what to look for in the higher getting things out of their head. I mean, what would be kind of like that parting piece? If, you know, you look at a lot of these founders and making the transition to a sales team, what else are you seeing out there? Just like. Like, must dos or this. These are things that, you know, will make that transition so much better for everybody involved, rep included. Yeah.

Well, ultimately, the only way I believe you have exited product market fit and you've found. Well, is when you found a repeatable sales motion. But. So that's like, I've done 10 deals, and there is a flow to this from top of funnel through middle through close, and it. And it's something that I've repeated on multiple occasions, and it works. So I think, you know, when you've got that, everyone kind of feels right and the flow is working. If I could quickly jump to the next stage, this is the stage where I have tricked myself that I've actually achieved this next stage successfully when I haven't. And that's when you have built this mini sales team that's actually working. I've tricked myself that I've nailed that before, and I actually haven't. And the reason I've tricked myself is because I have learned really well by osmosis from the founder. And I feel like I've documented stuff really effectively, and I've hired two salespeople, and they've done pretty well, and I feel like I've nailed it at that point. So then I make the case with the founders that, like, I think we're at a point now where we can really push for a Series A, and then we can take that capital and we can deploy it. Then I go hire the third salesperson, and it doesn't work. The third salesperson struggles, and I'm like, okay, what's going on here? Maybe it's a salesperson. So they churn out, and then I hire another one in. And, like, it's sometimes taken me a while to get from two salespeople to three salespeople. And what I've realized is just the onboarding, the documentation, the process wasn't quite nailed. So anecdotally, I feel like a sales org is in these early stages, has really evolved when you've gone beyond two operational salespeople into the third, and the third is operating well. I've always found as soon as I've got the third salesperson operating well, my sales team, my sales unit is legit. It's like, okay, we have this working. So for me, it's this. Like, did we get. Have we got to that third salesperson that's working well? If so, we're good. If not, we've still got a little bit of work to be. To do here before we can really step on the gas. Because, look, when founders take that series A, they're stepping on the gas, man. And when they're stepping on the gas and, you know, and things are just not working out, then you're in all sorts of trouble. You're like, wait a minute, do we even have product market fit? Do we have, like, centerpiece? Like, what's going on here? So you just do not want to be in that position. So that third. That third sales high, making sure that they have actually nailed it is a really big sign. Huge milestone for me.

What do you. What do you think causes that? Right? You get. You get one.

You get to.

What do you think causes that third one to fail? Like, what should they be looking out for?

Yeah, well, personally, like, on the two times that it happened to me, like, I. I had underestimated how much my two people had learned directly from me.

Okay.

And so it was a real failing. The documentation in the sales enablement, it just wasn't quite strong enough. And I also think that the hiring is a little bit different when you get to that stage. Right. You know, you're really looking. I was really looking for someone that could just take what we've got and just run with it. But what we had wasn't strong enough, so I had to go back to the drawing board. So I was hiring a slightly. I was kind of lowering the bar a little bit or changing the bar a little bit, and it just wasn't working. But I knew I had to lower the bar a little bit or change the bar a little bit because. Because that was how I was going to scale the order with these kinds of people. Right? But. But the documentation wasn't strong enough. So really, it was on me, Katie. It was like, well, okay, my documentation Is not strong enough. So what I did is went out and I, you know, hired someone to help me with that documentation.

Smart. No, I love. I love that call out because it is.

It's.

It's funny, man. Brings me back a little bit. When I'm scaling Snack Nation, I said, Give me three reps in 90 days, right? Give me three reps in 90 days. Because I wanted three. I wanted to. It didn't matter if I could do it. That doesn't matter. Could I get three other people to do it? If I could get three other people to do it, then I knew I could get 90 people, 70 people, a hundred people to go and do it. But it was. It was those first three. So it's funny to hear you mention that as well, because that was the magic number for me to know whether or not I thought it was truly repeatable.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly that. It's. I don't know what is. Two companies. I landed with that, and I was like, well, there must be something in this. So it's just stuck with me. So I've. I'm always holding founders back. Like, great, we've got the two A's. We've got customer success. Maybe we should, like, you know, abstract these sales guys and get SDRs. Like, we're rolling. We're rolling. In the back of my head, I'm like, oh, no, we're not. We need. We need that third one. We need the third one. You know, like, why? Why? Can you explain to me why? I'm like, oh, you just have to trust me on this one.

And it's funny, because I know why I asked for three. I had just finished a book. I think I need to find it because I reference it all the time. But what it talks about is, in business, things break in rules of three. So when you go from one person to three, what worked for one person doesn't work for three. When you go from three to nine, things break. Now you need a manager. When you go from nine to 27, now you got three managers. You might need a director. You go from 27 and it talked.

About, oh, I want to read that book.

I will find it might have been traction.

I'll go through it.

It's either traction or scaling up the Rockefeller habits. It's one of those two. But, like, I know. I just finished it, and I was like, I need three. Okay, I'm the one. I know I can do it. But it's so true is things break. And then you watch companies. That's why a Lot of things break when they go from 30 reps to a hundred reps. It breaks. The same systems that worked for 30 don't work for 100. And a lot of leaders struggle with that too. Because you can control the room with 30 and control the room with a hundred. And when you're used to being able to control the room and lead through energy and enthusiasm and like, oh, I can do this, you get to 100, 150, you can't control the room anymore. And it changes every rule of three. I will find which book. Yeah, because it's really.

Yeah, I'd love to read that because that just makes a ton of sense to me.

Awesome. Well, as we come to the end here, my man, we gotta wrap with the classic question. We ask it in every single episode, Right. Because the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better to have this weird idea, you know, that if we lived better, if we had more energy, joy, fulfillment, excitement, happiness in our lives, that the sales would also get better. What would you live better? Advice be for people listening.

Yeah, this is, I'm going to give this advice, but as I, as I give it, I'm going to look in the mirror and make sure I hear myself. You know, we all the stuff I.

Write is for me in that moment. It's just, I need to share it and get it out of my head.

Yeah, I like to bookend my days with exercise. Right. I live in Marin, in Northern California, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. I live looking out my window now. I live right by some beautiful forest where I can go trail running. I used to run ultramarathons on the trail and on my bike. I love to just bookend my day with exercises. And I know that if I don't do that, if I don't ground myself with that, I'm just a very different person. And here's the thing is, like, you know, sales is such a high pressured environment that like, you just have to take yourself out of it, I think on a very high frequency. Otherwise it can consume you. And I do all of you know, I have two young kids and at home it's like pretty intense. So it's hard for me to think, you know, of course, with people like yourself and with my clients. So just taking myself out of it is really important. And for me, I love cycling, but really it's running. So for me, like, trying to book in my day with exercise, but specifically start my day with a run is critical to me. Without it, I'm just a different person. Yeah.

I will never forget we used to have something called sensei sessions at Human and Snack Nation. Sean Kelly is the CEO and I will never forget that we did a session once and I'll never forget this. He said, you couldn't tell me that the world wouldn't be a better place if everyone ran three miles a day.

Yeah.

And I just, I just remember hearing that and going like, it's like if everyone ran three miles a day like that, the world wouldn't be a better place because of it, you know? And it's so funny. Like the next day like five or six people running, right is there. And so I love that because it's true. Like that energy needs to be there, that self care needs to be there. And what I love about the idea of running too is also a lot of us as salespeople, we always push right? So we have a high pressure job. Then we go lift super heavy weights or high intensity this or that. We're still pushing there and just always, sometimes just go for a run. Y' all just get out there. Not to say running is easy, but just not always pedal to the metal. So Wayne, my man, this was awesome, dude. Like, it's a topic that I don't think enough people talk about and is the true breaking point for a lot of companies is they never make it past this stage. Like, where can people get more of you? Where are you putting out content? You got a newsletter, a book, a course where promote yourself here real quick to wrap up where more of you.

Well, if you, if you want me to advise WayneMorris Co, just, just head to my website and if you want to subscribe to my newsletter, Waymorris me, I write about this stuff all the time, every week. And through there you can get into my community, which is basically a safe space for VPs of sales to come vent, come talk, come like share their problems. And then we do little co works where we're like, okay, cool, you need to build a comp plan. You've not done this before. You need to, I don't know, sell to this big customer and you're really struggling with how to get from one stage to the next. So we'll be coworking that community as well, which is something we've just started and building out. And yeah, that's been a lot of fun. So those are the few places to find me.

Very cool. I wish I'd had that when I.

Was coming up in the game.

I would have shed a tear or two in there for sure I didn't know that. Community.

That's awesome, dude.

Thank you. So, dude, this was great, man. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, and your insights, dude. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, man. This is such a pleasure coming on this show. Thanks.

We'll probably do it again is my guess.

This is.

This is definitely round one, so appreciate you. D.

Sa.