Rising the Ranks with Dan Wardel

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? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Live Better Sell Better Podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And boy, I am pumped today because I have a very unique individual to talk to today. Because when you think about the sales industry, what is actually very surprising is one how often sales leaders and salespeople don't actually use the product that they sell. And then also two, you very rarely get to speak to a leader that has come up through the ranks of their company, seen what works, seen what doesn't work, all with the same product. So I have Dan Wardle with me today who's the VP of Revenue over at Vidyard. And what makes this so unique is Dan has gone from SAE to Manager to Biz Dev, Director of Biz Dev, all the way up to VP of Revenue at the same company. So not only has he had to learn different skill sets along the way, but also he's seen the evolution of video over the last eight years and it has changed. It is different but at the same time still not utilized to the level that it needs to.

So Dan's gonna talk to us about.

Career growth, skill development and video development.

Damn. My man.

Welcome to the show.

Awesome. Thanks for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun. Like you mentioned, it's been a huge change over eight years. Some funny stories along the way that I'm sure we'll get into.

Well, that's the hope, my man. That's the hope. Because that's what I thought was so unique. Looking at your background is like you don't see a lot of people one just stay at a company for this long. So actually going to start there because in the SaaS world it's three and done for most people. You've been there for eight years. Why? What has kept you there for eight years?

Yeah, almost rewind a little bit and talk about my career before Vidyard. So I worked at BlackBerry when it was cool to say you worked at BlackBerry and I was there for seven years. So same idea. I stayed there a long time, really passionate and like you mentioned in the opening, I've had the unique career path where every job I've had, I've used the product I sold. And I was just telling some new grads this at a presentation last week. I don't know if I could ever work at a company where I don't sell what I use. And BlackBerry obviously used them. Then I went to Salesforce and then Vidyard and during that transition I actually talked to Vidyard. So I talked to the founders of Vidyard. When I was leaving BlackBerry I was like cool product. But the product market fit wasn't quite there yet because this was 2012 so video wasn't really a thing. When you joined a conference call, you weren't on video. It was a dial in Number still at BlackBerry I had to plug my laptop into the Internet like this was a while ago. And so I got their product but I was like Mike, I just don't know if it makes sense for me to join yet. And so we parted ways and I went to Salesforce and really learned how to sell in a B2B software because BlackBerry was a bit different, more of a channel sales. And then as soon as I saw them integrate into I think the first one was Eloqua, then HubSpot. I reached out to them, learned they were also making one with Marketo. I was like, all right, now it's like my space. I understand this world. Get me in. And I just understood how these connections were going to help businesses. After working At Salesforce for a year, you could hear their problems, that they were having the customers there. And so I was just pumped to join. So then, then became the wild ride of like, we were only video marketing back then. So everyone thinks of us now as a sales tool, but back then, like salespeople didn't use any video. You were, you weren't even on a conference call with video. Marketers were just figuring out how to create videos. It was costing them like 50,000. Every video they made 100,000. I met one that it was a seven figure video because they had like airplanes, like, so they were some kind of software for airports. I was like, that's insane. Like you're never going to get ROI on that. I'll sell you software to try to track it, but like you're not going to get it. And that's really where it just like blew up. And we realized like all these marketers were spending so much money on video they had no way to track it. And then along the way, like, this is why I love Vidyard is you just start doing different things. So I learned from the first VP of sales. Then I learned from a COO that we brought on from Hootsuite and his VP of sales that he brought on. And it was like just this learning experience of constantly seeing how other people run companies. And then it turned out that One of our SDRs started making videos in QuickTime, uploading them to Vidyard, grabbing a thumbnail, putting it in his Gmail super hacky way of what you know as Vidyard today. And our CTO was like, wow, Jake, that's really cool. Like, let's figure that out. Let's see how we can build that into Chrome. And a few months later we had the product. Nobody really used it for the first few years, just us and a few other companies. It was like separate. It wasn't even connected to our marketing platform. But now obviously things have completely turned around. We went from doing 90% marketing deals to 80% sales deals while still having a massive customer base and new acquisition. On the marketing side, marketers still need to track that. There's just a lot more salespeople than there is marketers. So it starts to change tides. So that's what's kept me here is you just constantly get to work on new things and learn from new people. I don't think it specifies even in my, my job descriptions there, but at one point I even ran digital marketing, which I have no business doing. And it was like during this Transition of becoming a freemium company. So then I've got to figure out what PPM is and everything else and hire some people, get the right people to get us out there. And now obviously there's a whole team dedicated to that, and they don't listen to my suggestions anymore.

I love it. And one of the things you mentioned there, I wish, I look back at my career and I wish I had learned how to code way, way earlier, because I think there are so many ideas in sdr, ae and even sales managers heads that if they knew what was possible to build, oh, my God, like, sales tools would be also so much better. Because then it's like, all right, they know what they need and how to build it, right? So it's really cool to hear that the sales side of Vidyard started with an SDR leveraging a tool a little bit of a different way. Like, that's such a cool story. And so then if we go to, like, this next part, though. So you did okay. Even digital marketing, how did you learn the different skill sets necessary? Right, because being an SAE to a manager, to be a good manager, which you must have been because you've continued to grow, is a different skill set. And then to be a director is a different skill set. To run marketing is a different skill set. And to be a VP over revenue is a different skill set. So let's talk about how you developed the different skills as you've moved up. And I guess if you could break down the difference between closer to manager, manager, director, director to the vp.

Yeah, for sure. So manager to rep. You know, you almost have to rely on your VP to really be a good coach on how to be a manager. And so I witnessed it a lot. I witnessed what not to happen. You know, a couple of people that I've worked for, but also the good sides of them. Even if it's a terrible manager, you still learn something good from them. We had some that were bad at managing people and helping them grow, but really good at helping them close deals. So you learn half of what to do and then you start piecing it together. And for me, the beginning of management became number one. I was about 70% of Vidyard's sales were coming from me. So the transition from me to becoming manager was a very, very risky one for the business as well. So I did have to have support from the executive team to do it. And essentially what I had to end up doing is take my deals and my revenue and still close it. But with the reps so then you're teaching by showing exactly how to go through the process. And they were all fairly new, so that took about three to six months. Then you get into real management skills, like how am I coaching them, how am I helping them develop their skills? And that stuff takes long. It probably took two or three years for me to get decent at it. And then by that point, if things are going really well, then you get to director and then it's a whole new set of skills. Because now you're trying to teach managers how to do what you just learned in a crash course over the last two years. That transition I found not too bad because when I went from manager to director it was manager of sales over to director of bd. And the reason it makes it a bit easier to do that is the managers you're managing are more junior and so you can get right back to basics. Whereas if you jump to director of sales and you're managing a 20 year sales veteran, they're going to maybe know more than you. So it's like a different set of skills you need to develop to really coach those people or work with them really in that case. And so I found that transition nice that the risk in that transition is in some organizations you could get stuck in biz dev and you're never getting back to sales leadership. And so that's where I was there for couple years and decided okay, well why don't I start managing the SMB teams as well. So I had the biz dev Org as well as a team of the small business sales reps, like a manager over there. And then that grew to that team became two teams. Okay, so now I'm starting to take over more of the sales team and then the director of enterprise sales left. So that's when I took over the whole org. But to stick to the director chat first, that learning curve, you have to now think and almost do a skill gap analysis on your managers and say like what are they really good at? You know, I've got some managers who are amazing at building rapport with the rep while also being very results oriented and like being okay with those tough conversations. But they balance it with having a personal relationship first. You know, they're really big on the radical candor book and that style of management, it goes really well. But it honestly I'm actually not great at the personal side of things so I have to work on that. It's like making sure I'm not just hammering on them, but I've got to have that Balance. So it actually came from our director of sales had a background in some enablement at his previous role and so he built out this nice framework that I work off of with the managers where it's like identifying and self identifying. Plus then you blindly do your own identification of scoring with them on a whole list of skills. Whatever you think is important in their role, how they're managing forecast, how they're managing their reps, what do one on ones look like, how are they working cross functionally? There's about 15 different line items we do. They fill out a score of 0 to 10, I fill up mine 0 to 10 and then we see what the difference is and we have a conversation with them about, okay, well how are you going to get better at working with the marketing team or working with the product team? How are you going to get better at coaching the reps? Your forecast was way off. And actually just having that conversation, it's tough. But if you make it open like that and have a set of skills listed out that they know they need to focus on, it gives them something to go after. And it's. I find it's a lot different than individual contributors where you kind of have like 50% of them actually do it and 50% of them don't. If you've hired the right managers, 100% of them are like eager to fill that out and work with you on those skills because they want to get to the director role or beyond. So that's been really successful for myself of really kind of mapping that out and allowing them to self guide themselves on what they want to work on as opposed to just dictating to them on things to do each week because you really just have to have trust in them.

And I guess how do you. So there's two things there, right? Like how do you identify those skills?

Right?

Because it's one thing for people like self reporting, right? I'm like, you know, what are you good at, what are you bad at? That type of thing? Like how do you identify those skills and managers? Cause I think that's very unique that a lot of directors and VPs never do is they try to have everyone manage the same way with everybody. So how do you identify those skills within? The second part of that question is how do you leverage it? It's one thing to identify it. How do you then leverage the skill sets of your managers?

Yeah, that's the tough one, right? Is then you've got to get into a spot of thinking, okay, how does that skill line up to this project we have going on this quarter, whether it's hiring, an enablement project, some kind of reshuffling of the teams, territory management, you know, where do those skills fit? Because we have some managers who are going to be really detail oriented, really good at, you know, excel and analysis and some that are just awful at it. And so you've got to match that to the projects that are going on. And if there is somebody who is way behind in some of those skills, like what is a project that will at least get them the knowledge so that they're aware of what that gap is and they know how to then address it. Whether it's working cross functionally with a different team like rev ops to help solve those problems when they can't instead of just hiding behind it. I think that's the biggest risk in managers is like they want to be the experts in everything and they're not, especially with their individual teammates. They don't want to admit when they don't know something because they're supposed to be the manager. But that's not the right thing to do either. They should even be open about like here's the things I'm working on and you can even show your team. But the key is like not all organizations are going to be big enough or have enough projects to be like working on those individual skills. And so what I end up doing then is connecting people with projects like sales assembly or one of those where they can join in with their peer groups and learn from them. We do some manager training but it's more, that's more HR manager training. So we can like focus on those kind of skills if they haven't been a manager before. But from a sales management perspective it tends to be I kind of connect people. So you know, now, now I'll get to know you a little better. Maybe I'll end up connecting a manager with you at some point like depending on what skills people are looking to build. You know, right now a lot of ours, a lot of our managers are brand new management. So it's connecting them with people who are okay with having the tough conversations and like tell me about how you actually structure your one on ones, test out different ways of how it works for individuals. Cause you can't dictate how one on ones work. Every manager will be able to handle it, handle it differently. Uh, I've tried doing mine the way that the manager I mentioned that does radical candor, does hers and it just doesn't work for me. We never end up Getting around to the hard conversation. Cause you get stuck in the personal stuff. Uh, so you've really got to match up those skills with what they're looking to do and actually find something for them to work on, like a specific project. Otherwise it never gets done. So we utilize OKRs for that objectives and key results. We do two of them that are focused on like pipeline and revenue, and the third one has to be one of those personal development line items.

I like it. I like how you weave in personal development there. Again, like for managers. I think manager development and training is quite possibly the biggest gap in the SaaS sales space where, like, you know, sales training for reps still is not where it needs to be by any means, but at least it's talked about. And at least there are like programs out there for it and consultants out there for it. Manager and director training. I don't know. Did you take Director of Sales 242 in college?

Yeah, exactly.

LTV to CAC 472 your senior year. Like, no one teaches us this stuff, right? We gotta learn as we go. And I think involving managers early is so crucial. So it's really cool to hear that you do that for your team. Because if they can learn that, then you have a team of directors under you. Right. What you mentioned too, is something I even do with my own team is my managers, as they get closer to senior manager roles, they start to own a segment of the business.

Right.

So it's your first attempt at being a director. You own the inbound segment of our business. Can you improve it? Because once you're the director, you have to improve all of it. So can you own this front to back cross functionally and show improvement? And I work with them on those projects to see if they can start to level up that skill set. So it's really cool. Sounds like you do something very similar there.

Which.

Which I love. And so then, now let's take that one step up now to the vp, right? Because there's a lot of people out there. They go, I want to be a VP of Sales. And like they, you know, people hit me up with this all the time. Katie, how can I become a VP of sales? And my first question back always is, are you sure? Are you sure you want to be a VP of Sales? I know it sounds great on paper, but are you sure? Right. So what are some things that people should know or maybe understand to actually consider whether or not they should be a VP of Sales?

Yeah, that was one that I honestly didn't Think about enough before jumping into the role. Taking a step back to what you mentioned there, right? Like, when you give people kind of control over a segment, it's a great way to see, like, are they gonna be able to come up with some of their own ideas? It doesn't mean they can't ask for help, but can they actually own something end to end and find the resources they need? If they try to do it all on their own, that's also a red flag. It's like they've got to connect with other things, the next level, you know, once you get to vp, the hardest part I had was all of a sudden the realization there's nobody to ask if you're doing the right thing, right? Depending on your org, if you report to a CRO, you've got somebody there. But for myself, myself and the head of CS both report to our CEO. So when we go to him, it's not like I'm asking him, hey, how should I structure the sales team? How many people should I have on each team? He's gonna be like, well, you're not the right person for the role. Gotta find somebody else. And that was the biggest issue I had, is like, you jump into it and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm up here by myself. The head of CS is a good peer to mind, so I can ask him some questions, but it's not like he's run a sales team before, so he's not going to have the right answers. So that was the hardest, definitely the hardest part to get over. It took me probably a year to realize I just need to have confidence in my decision is the right decision. And if I don't have confidence, ask the right people. So that I became part of a bunch of peer groups, which it's pretty surprising when you join Zoom with 20 different sales VPs, how open people are to actually helping each other, because we all realize we're alone. So you get on those calls and everyone will be willing to help each other. But the things you need to think about before you get and you kind of want to jump into that role is like, you mentioned this at the beginning, three years and out is like probably a VP's of sales. Their average last time I checked was like 16 to 18 months. Because if you can't make the changes, if the changes that you think up and implement don't have an impact, then they'll try again. Especially if you didn't come up through the org, like myself, where you have some Trust already built with the executive team. And so that's, you know, it's not just job security, it's also just like, are you sure you want all of that pressure? Because when you are done work or even if you have a break in your calendar, if you think of it as an ae, you've got a two hour break in your calendar, you're going to pick up the phone, you're going to prospect, you're going to follow up your deals. Well, as a VP of sales, what's your two hour break? You're thinking about things like what are you doing? And our CEO always says this and kind of reminds the exec team about this. It's like our job is to make two to three decisions a day and make them the right ones.

Yes.

And that's tough. What if it's not the right one? I had to do some things this morning that's like probably going to make me wake up in the middle of night tonight. Cause you just don't know, don't know how it's going to play out. And it's like, do you want that? You know, I, I think back sometimes to when I was in AE and I'm like, yeah, there was the stress of like, is this deal gonna close? But you know, if I needed to leave early, that's fine. That was actually the step to manager I had where like you can't leave early as a manager anymore. Like you are there even virtually until five. Like you can't cause it sets the wrong expectation. So yeah, for me, thinking about that step to VP is like, are you sure that you're just going to be confident in all of your answers and not cause your personal life to suffer? I think that's like the key part. With the support I've got at Vidyard, we have great balance with that. But I've seen other VPs and even directors of sales that I'm like, this isn't healthy. You're working 12, 14 hour days, you're doing stuff on the weekends. Is that really worth it? It's personal choice, but for me it's not.

And I love that. And you touched on something too. I can't remember where I read it. It was about two years ago. But what it talked about is like the best are brilliant in bursts. Right. They're brilliant in bursts. Right. Like 90% and we can come down to like 80% of what we do. Most people could do. It's the 20%. Right. Of like, okay, we're brilliant and versed in Knowing where to prioritize. That's where I see most managers when they start to go to director and vp. Struggle is they don't know how to prioritize. They try to do it all right, like into my VPs out there. If you're working 12, 13 hours a day, it means you're not prioritizing, plain and simple. Because you can't have that big of an impact in that many places. And if you're trying to, you're probably missing the big rocks that would have the big impact. And figuring out how to do those things right and being able to prioritize, I think is so key as a vp. And it is, it's a lonely game, right? Like, you know you're there and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And that is on you. And that's also what I ask people that want to be a vp, right? Like are you literally willing to lose your job over a decision over a dec. You make the wrong decision, you can lose your job, but you have to make it. You got to make the decision. Because if you let that fear prevent you from making the call, yeah, you're also not a vp.

And if you're, you know, the other thing that I learned along the way is we had some leaders that were amazing, rah rah, get in front of the whole team and get everyone excited and others that weren't. And it does make a difference at this level. Like once you have a team of more than 30, 40 people, I think mine's up to about 80 now. Like I don't know them all personally and I just won't be able to. I try to have a meeting with each person as they start, but it's, it's tough. And then I don't necessarily remember them all. And so all they see is this one sided conversation of me talking to them, talking at them almost. And they need to trust what you're saying. So like you also, you know, in the beginning I got an executive coach to bounce things off of and have a peer there that was constantly going back and forth and like I would show the board deck to him and he was an executive at a bunch of companies, so then he would tell me all the things that I worded incorrectly. And that's the other big thing is like you make a bad decision, you might lose your job, you say the wrong thing at a company presentation. Also, it's like one sentence, it's all that's between you and finding the next thing. So it's A weird one.

Leadership. You're one decision away from Mutiny at all times. You are one decision away from pure Mutiny. Right? You can say the wrong thing. You can make just the smallest of choices. That was wrong. And boy, oh boy, it can cause a. Just a spiral down. So I hope everyone listening, actually this is now two VPs riffing on like, what it's actually like to be a vp, right? Like, yes, the title is great and yes, the money can be great. But like it comes loaded with a lot of things that people don't understand. Where you can make almost, if not oftentimes sometimes more as a high performing ic. Yeah. Than as a vp. Right? And he mentioned it. I was laughing, whether you can see us or not, like, laughing. He's like, there's probably not a week that goes by. I'm like, man, I should just go sell again. I will, I will gladly take that stress over the stress of like the VPC R O world. Like, just sell.

That's it.

Just by myself. Okay, right. Make 300, 400K doing that. Yeah, like, that'll work. So, all right, so we got. Now I want to make this transfer over though, to selling, right? Because also it's very unique is you use the product, which we've mentioned, which you've seen it evolve, right? And you've seen the market evolve, right? And so when it comes to video, people know this. I'm a huge proponent of video, funny enough, right. You mentioned back in 2012, right, no one is doing video. I actually have one of my old sales binders. I was, I was doing video in 2012, not with Vidyard, but with QuickTime, right? Love, like recording a video and sending it out to people, right? And like, no one was doing that shit back then. So now if we look at video as a tool, where is it underutilized? I mean, I guess personally I feel like it's underutilized everywhere. But like, where, as you've seen it evolve, like, where are most people missing with video that if they implement it, they'd see almost an immediate lift in something.

Yeah. And I feel like this is a. You know, I blame my marketing team. They're not on today that like all of our marketing talks about prospecting, that first outreach, make the first connection, make them feel bad so they'll respond to you, whatever the message might be. That works great. We all know that works great. There's a couple of key points throughout the cycle though, that you should really think about. And the first one actually came up from Salesforce years ago when we met with their head of sdr. So their head of SDR has never been in sales, never made a phone call. He has a PhD in Mathematics and it's all about how do I get 4 million leads converted through the funnel at the optimal rate with the optimal number of people. So it's like all math, no idea about anything else. Very smart person. So that first outreach, he's like, that's not worth it for our SDRs. Cause that's going to take them 15 seconds. Right now we get a 20% response rate. Why would we do it? He's like, but we have a 40% no show rate. If we book the meeting three days ahead, we should send a video that morning so that they show up to the meeting. Like perfect, perfect use case. So anything 72 hours booked out, send a video, make sure they show up to the meeting. That's a really underutilized one. Is like, we all have no shows. We all know it's a problem in the industry that the SDRs or BDRS book a meeting and the person doesn't show. You've got to be diligent. Every morning, you know, I wake up, I don't wake up crazy early. I've got kids, deal with them first. But at 8 o', clock, all I do is I go through all my meetings of the day. I send out notes, send out videos, write all my notes in my. You know, we have fellow that kind of keeps track of all of our internal meetings because you have to prep before these meetings. If you walk into a meeting you've lost already without prep. And so the first thing you do as an AE is send a video to all those meetings you have today. Make sure they're going to show up. Two second video. It's like super simple. That one's massive impact right away. And we have actually a bunch of case studies specifically around that. The next one is a demo. Follow up email is like an essay. Nobody wants to read them, Nobody does read them. Nobody opens the attachments. You've sent it just because they asked you to go fetch a tennis ball and you did. It's like, let's shorten that up. You still have to have next steps in text. You've got to have some key things in there about moving the deal forward. Put everything else in the video. They're more likely to be like, oh, you made a video for me specifically. So just add a little intro and then the rest could be micro demos of your product, your integration, whatever. They asked you to go Fetch and the rest are just all in there in video because then you'll actually see if they engage with it. You could also use products like Showpad and things to see if it's more of a PDF content to see if people open it. So that one's really key is that demo follow up and then the next one doesn't help you close a deal, but it helps adoption and make sure your product is getting utilized. As you close the deal, send a video along with the CSM or the launch person or the services person, whatever it is, and they can even be pre canned videos, that is introducing that next person. Because there's nothing worse than being a customer. You've talked to an sdr, you join a meeting and all of a sudden you're like, oh, you're not, you're not Kelly. Who are you? Oh, hey, hey, Kevin. All right, nice to meet you. And then you close the deal and it's like, oh, all of a sudden I'm talking to Maria. Who's, who's Maria? Like, what's here? You've got to have a smoother transition and use video for that. It doesn't have to be a live meeting where you're wasting half hour of an AE and a services person. It can be a video that's sent out and that's the pass off. So you're saving time and just helping with implementation. Those are like the three big ones that I really try to suggest to people. But to your point, it's underutilized throughout the process. So anytime when you're just having trouble really building a relationship with these prospects that you're dealing with, just be sending more video than you normally would. My team, I would say it's, you know, it's not a 100% send rate on videos. It might be you send five videos throughout the cycle of a deal, but that's enough that you've built a relationship. What was the old billboards, they always said you have to see a brand seven times before you engage with it. So that's why billboards exist. It's like the same idea. You're just sending a little billboard. It's the new age voicemail. It's like, hey, I'm a human, look at me. And then they feel bad and want to talk to you.

I love it like that last part. Like the feel bad or like the, you know, feeling like they owe or at least they'll take it. It's the curiosity driver still, right? Of like people see it and they go, that's Unique. So yesterday I did an hour long, you know, email training with my sdr Org. But then as we wrapped up on it, it was also like, so now you know how to structure a great email. This is also not help you structure a better video, right? Like understand the framework of that. Then just this morning, One of my SDRs, John Smith, we were just talking this morning. So when you hear this episode, you.

Know it's about you, right?

Got an objection. And we had just talked about it yesterday. Handle it via video. 40 seconds, right? Record it, handle it and send it. That's exactly what he did. Sent the video out, already has three views on it. And whether it books a meeting or not, I think it's going to. But whether it books it or not, that's the right behavior I want to see. Right. And so how do you actually help drive that behavior? Right. So like, you know, I mean, I think all even for, for Vidyard, like is do you screen for being comfortable on video in the hiring process? Like do you teach people how to do the video? Like how do you ingrain, I guess kind of the video process, but also the video skill set into your sales team?

Yeah, it does start with the interview process. But what we try not to do is not include people who aren't comfortable off the bat. Right. Like, I want to be inclusive. I want to get people with different backgrounds. We've had people who really hated making videos in the beginning. So we start with screen recording. Then they started doing the bubble and after four or five months they were comfortable doing the selfie video because you know, it's. You want a balance of people on your team. You don't just want a bunch of artists who are going to be really good on camera. But the first step we do is when you apply to a job at Vidyard Sales, you have to include a video about why, which role you think you're fitted for. Because we just do an account executive post. So then we ask like, are you SMB mid market enterprise? And explain that in your video. And that just gives them something to talk about and then gives us a little feeling for who they are too. It's kind of like a pre screen for. But then it comes down to during the interview process, you're doing obviously zoom meetings and things. Not a lot of asynchronous, just more, more live zoom presentations. But then you get to onboarding. And our onboarding is, you know, take some trainings, send in a video as your certification so you don't have to like fill Out a survey. You're sending a video to answer the questions, and then we're giving you coaching on the structure. Mostly it's like lighting and mic and stuff like that because people are pretty good at just talking on camera. It's that they need to learn some of the basics of lighting and stuff. And so it's throughout that onboarding and then we have dictated areas inside sales loft and the cadence of, like, use a video here, use a video here, so that it just becomes a natural process. What we're working on now, though, is I'd love to have it all integrated into GONG so then we could actually see when they're not using it. So we're just working on that this year to get the videos actually showing up in the GONG analysis. So we can say like, hey, this deal closed and you used three videos. This one didn't. You only used one. It's like, got to get in a better motion of using video in there.

Now, that's one of the areas too, that we're like, we're still. That not dabbling is the wrong word. Just like, trying to figure out, like, you know, better tracking and optimization of videos. Right? Because so many of the videos are, you know, they're customized, they're personalized, they're not boilerplate. And so trying to figure out, okay, like, what is it about the certain videos that seems to be working right? Like, you know, it'd be great to have a GONG analysis of all the videos we've sent and go, okay, the ones that book meetings, say this, say this, or sound like this. The ones that drive a close sound like this, or hear, you know, hear these things from it. Like, to be able to break that down eventually will be just a massive value add. Because I've got, you know, I've got over 100 reps sending anywhere from, you know, shoot 100 to 150 videos per month. Like, a lot of data in there. It's hard to find it, it's hard to see it. And so we do talk about it a lot as a team, which is great, and I love to hear that. It's all the way through your process. I actually got some pushback for my recruiting team last year because I wanted to add video early on. Like, oh, that's going to limit the amount of people that get through the funnel. I was like, yeah, that's the point. Because I know people that are comfortable on video are going to do better than people that don't hear. And so, like, that was, you know, we went had to go back and forth and all that, so. All right, cool. So man, we've already been riffing for 40 like this flu. This is awesome. So I got two final questions for you here as we kind of bring this home. So first is the main three things we've talked about. Growth and leadership and video and those types of things. If there were three main points that you wanted people to walk away from from this conversation, what would those three main points be?

Oh, that's a tough one. I know one, so I'm going to spit that one out first before I forget it. Although it looks like I have this kind of great career trajectory at mid yard, it wasn't because of me. I didn't push hard enough. There's a balance. You know, you've probably got people on your team who are like constantly asking for promotions. That's annoying. But then on the other end of it you've got great people who aren't pushing themselves to do that next level of enablement. And that was me. I was never putting it on my OKR to do personal development, get to the next level. Asking questions about how to get to director. Like I just wasn't doing that. Whether I was, you know, having young kids and just comfortable with what I was doing or whatever, but I, I didn't do it enough. And so make sure you're really taking that step back every couple months as your individual and just think like what do I actually want to be doing and how do I get there and what should I be asking my leadership team? Like ask for that coaching, ask for that matrix that, you know, whatever your manager uses to evaluate your performance and like do it more regularly. Be proactive about asking for it. That's number one. Number two is, you know when you're at a company and you feel like you're stuck and you're not getting promoted, like make sure it's not because you're just not doing number one. I talked to so many reps that are like interested to come to Vidyard because they think they'll get promoted faster. And it's like, you know, I'm glad they're gonna hire you, but why don't you just do it over there? Like stay at a company. It's okay to have a seven year stint and an eight year stint on your revenue, on your resume. And I try to hire those people. My director of sales has been here for six years. Our leader of the emerging segment has now been here for four years and was like fresh out of school when we hired him. Like, it's okay to stay at one company. You don't need to diversify your experience unless you're getting pigeonholed in a certain industry you don't want to be in. That's the one. Like, yeah, get out of an industry you don't want to be in. But, like, don't be afraid to stay and ask for that next level and build a plan within your own company. Then if things aren't working out and you're getting a lot of pushback, sure, then you start looking. But, like, stick around for a bit and really make sure it's not not just you that's having the issue. And then number three, to your point, video is not everywhere. Video is scratching the surface. We did a TAM analysis of salespeople just in North America, and I think we have a like, 0.7% penetration right now. So, like, nobody's getting prospected with video. So if we're just starting with that use case, like, nobody. We were chatting before the recording started. I haven't been prospected with video yet this month. Sounds like you get it about once a month. And we both obviously talk about video constantly. So, like, use video, you'll get better responses. Use simple videos. This isn't. It's a voicemail that you're saying with a camera in your face. It's all it is. Don't be scared of it.

And also, too quick tip for all y', all, reuse the video. If they didn't watch it the first time, don't make another video.

Exactly.

Send it again like it's all it is. It's also a living billboard. To your earlier point, you can reuse it until they watch it. Because also, too, I'll just call this out real quick. It's not where I want to go. But we still got time. People are also lazy with their videos. Okay, so we were just talking about it. How many video prospecting messages we get per month? Maybe one to two. You know how many I get sent twice? Never. The first email has video in it. And then what?

Nothing.

Template, template, template. Y' all use the video over and over and over again. Drive that curiosity. It's a billboard. They have such a long tail. Right. We still get, like, we track this a lot, like, in our slack. We know yard so hard and all this stuff. But, like, I sent them a video a week ago and they finally watched it. Yeah, you don't get that with voicemail or with email. Like, no one, like, goes back and listens to a voicemail three weeks ago and says, oh, now I'm going to call them with video. You do you. It's always so at least three or four times a month. One of the reps is like, they went back to the video, right? They watched it once, never heard back. Two months later, they went back to the video and watched it and then booked.

When people leave Vidyard, we have to keep their emails live for a long time. And I just get them all because I got a response from an enterprise account that was like, pre pandemic video that one of my reps sent that's no longer here. And, like, wanted a quote ready to go, and they just remembered that video and replied to it. I was like, how did you even find this in your inbox? Like, that's insane. Search right now first. But, you know, here's a rep. They'll get you a quote right away, make it painless for you. Let's go.

Quick bonus tip there. That's why you put video in the subject line, because that is what people will go look for. They go into their Gmail and they type in video. And if that's in the subject line, there you go. It pulls it right up. So, okay, man, see, now we're about to go down another rabbit hole. Y' all pull it back here as we wr. Last question I ask here is, like, the name of the podcast is Live Better, Sell Better. This really weird idea that if we lived better, if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, more joy, more happiness in our lives, the sales would also improve. Right? So what is your Live Better advice for people listening?

Yeah, I strongly believe in this. And whether it comes from Sandler training where they always talk about sell like you're personally wealthy. The same idea, sell like you're personally happy. Not that you don't need this deal, but it's like, I'm just here to help you, and if you're not needing to be helped, no problem. Like, we'll just keep going because I'm happy and I'm ready to just keep going. For me, honestly, the pandemic did actually teach me this lesson that I wasn't taking as good a care of myself as I should have. Ended up getting some health issues and blood clots ended up in the hospital. Like, not a great scene. And because you're just sitting all day, you're just doing here and you can't do that. So get stuff in your calendar, block it out. Do not allow people to book over it. I don't care what role you're in. So, you know, I've got two mornings. You know, you booked me at a perfect time. I was like, trying to make sure I wasn't still sweating because I was doing all the personal training this morning as it could be for coming on this podcast. And like, you've got to take care of yourself. So there's, there's that. I also make sure that like, by 5:30, I'm wrapping things up so I can have dinner with the kids, the family. We don't have to commute anymore. Like, there's no excuses to not be able to really spend time with the family and. And make sure you're not taking that stuff home either. I'm pretty bad for popping my phone out at dinner and things like that. Like, have some separation. I've actually. This spot I'm in, I built this above the garage so that I could have separation and like, you know, take my little bag with my water and my coffee to work in the morning and walk out the door.

I love it. I love it. It's so true. Like my, my word right now is just intention. Am I being intentional with what I'm doing? Right. If I'm at dinner, I need to be intentional at dinner. If I'm with my daughters, I need to be intentional with my daughters. If I'm working, I need to be intentional with my work. Right. And there's no other distraction. Right. That's one of the reasons why we moved was I could get a smile in space because same idea. We were in an apartment. There was no separation whatsoever. And so I love that feedback, man. So, dude, this was phenomenal. We could have kept going for sure. There's other things we keep touching on. But where can people get more of you? Where can they find you?

Where are you sharing content?

Like, how can they get more of kind of what you're putting out there in their lives?

Yeah, LinkedIn's the best spot. I'm not a big social media person, so LinkedIn is my social media. I've got a few different talks coming up this month. Actually coordinated with our marketing team, so it's always fun. I'll be on with our VP of marketing at the same time. That'll be a Fun1@10bound. I post a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, so always follow there. Feel free to reach out on there. And obviously our website has a ton of great. If you do search for bityard Inspiration Hub, it's like all the funny videos that we've collected from our customers I love that.

Ooh. Okay, I'm gonna have to check that out. I didn't know that was there, so.

Hell, yeah.

Dude, I appreciate you, man. Thank you for your time, your energy, your insights today. Really, really appreciate it. And I thank you very much.

Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Hell, yeah.