E3: Dini Mehta on Mastering Multi-Product Strategy & Building High-performance Teams

How much do you think is luck and at what point did pinking the right companies become a skill game?

I think a lot of it is luck, if I were honest. I mean, there's signals, things like founder quality, the mission in the market that they're going after, the team quality that they've assembled, and investors to some extent. But I think a lot of it also ends up just being luck. And so, I'd be silly to say like, I knew exactly going into these roles that these companies were going to be massively successful. Successful. So a lot of it is luck.

Yeah, I loved your podcast with Robert on Science of Scaling, talking about how you were quite thorough in the Lattice evaluation. Obviously by that point you were, you were starting to be a pretty sharp picker, but, uh, to have 3 of those is, is awesome.

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Hello and welcome to the Revenue Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Norton, and today I'm joined by Dini Mehta, who is an executive in residence at Peak15 Ventures, uh, Peak15 Partners, uh, formerly known as Sequoia India. And had two amazing runs at Drawbridge, where she was the VP of global sales, and then Lattice, where she was the CRO, taking both those companies from single digits to $100 million plus outcomes. So really excited to dig in, and we're going to spend time on two topics today. One is how to go multiproduct as a revenue leader, which is a massively important and complex topic. And we'll also get into how to lead high engagement teams. So thrilled for the conversation, and thanks for joining us, Sini.

Thank you, Kyle Norton. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to go deep on these topics. And yeah, there's— I've had a lot of hard-earned lessons, and so hopefully sharing these lessons can save folks making the same mistakes I did.

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure they will. So let's just give folks like your 60-second background. Tell us a little bit about the career story and how you got to Peak 15.

Absolutely. So, um, originally I'm from India, born and raised there, moved to the States for college, fell into tech, um, cuz I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and then definitely fell into sales. The first few years I tried to do every other job in go-to-market except for sales cuz I had this negative impression of what it meant to be in sales, and then eventually realized that there's a lot of positives and decided to make—

Familiar story.

Yep, yep, we all have, a lot of us have that story. And so, got my first taste of sales at a company called Quantcast, which was in hypergrowth. I was an AE there, and, you know, for 2.5 years, we went from like $10 million to $200 million in revenue. So, it was like really fast, rapid growth. And from there, I wanted to see, I loved management, fell in love with management, which is what took me to Drawbridge, where I joined as the first sales hire. And was there for about 5.5 years. We went from a single product to 3 products, eventually sold the business to LinkedIn. And finally, my most recent operating run was at Lattice, which is an HR tech platform, completely different than what I'd done prior, which was mostly selling to marketers and doing large enterprise sales, versus Lattice was an HR tech platform, PLG, high-velocity transactional sales. And so, learned a ton. Uh, was a great run. Also joined at about $3 million and was there past $100 million. And now I'm in residence at Peak15, helping a bunch of founders in the— on their own journey of scaling go-to-markets.

Very cool. That's awesome. So Quantcast, Lattice, and Drawbridge, all quite a magic touch. How much do you think is luck, and at what point did pinking the right companies become a a skill game?

I think a lot of it is luck, if I were honest. I mean, there's signals, things like founder quality, the mission in the market that they're going after, the team quality that they've assembled, and investors to some extent. But I think a lot of it also ends up just being luck. And so, I'd be silly to say like, I knew exactly going into these roles that these companies were going to be massively successful. So, a lot of it is luck.

Yeah, I loved your podcast with Rob Baer on Science of Scaling, talking about how you were quite thorough in the Lattice evaluation. Obviously by that point you were, you were starting to be a pretty sharp picker, but to have 3 of those is, is awesome. So in terms of queuing up this conversation, the topic we want to really go deep on is how to go multi-product. And so Jack Altman, who was your founder CEO, who's on our board at Owner, and said wonderful things about you, gave a talk at SaaStr last year about some of the unexpected ways that going multiproduct benefited Lattice. And it wasn't all just expansion into the base. It was about higher win rates, bigger ACVs at the top of the funnel. It was a really fascinating talk. The other side of that coin, and that was product-centric, and the other side of this coin is how the heck do you do it and go to market? You go from selling one single product to many. And, there's so many complexities that we want to unpack. So maybe just cue up before we get into the details, the, the Lattice journey, like where they started and, and where they were in terms of this multi-product journey, and then we'll dig into the how.

Absolutely. Um, so I had some experience with multi-product from Drawbridge. And so when I joined Drawbridge, we had a single product that was majority of the revenue. And then at about $50 million, we decided to add in a new product. But this was like, we decoupled our platform and said, now we'll sell parts of the data, parts of that product as modular pieces to different personas. So, I thought going into Lattice, I know how to do multi-product. This is like, check, check, of course, we've done this. But coming into Lattice, it was a completely different experience, and I'll touch on sort of on the high level. When I joined, we were about $3 million in revenue at Lattice, 35 people in the team. And we were just getting— when I joined, 2 months in, we were getting ready to launch our second product. So, our first product was the performance suite, which was like performance reviews, one-on-ones, feedback. And our next product was this engagement surveys. And it was a big bet for the business because we were a fairly small team. On the end side, a lot of our capacity was going into building this product for the last, I think, 8 months, 12 months. And so, high-risk move. We had advisors telling us that this is too early to be going multi-product. You know, you've got a good thing going, like continue sort of going down that path. But the founders had good conviction. And so, they'd taken this bet and my job was to come in and figure out how do we like How do we go sell this thing? And we did that. And from there, it sort of became our playbook where every year we had a new product. And in my tenure there, over 4 and a half years, we went from a single product to like 4 different products. And so, yeah, a lot of, a lot of learnings of like how the complexity also increases, incrementally increases as the scale of the business. And the new products get added on. But yeah, definitely a fun thing to navigate.

For sure. And now they're a full-blown HRS, which is a whole other can of worms, another huge, you know, bet the company type of thing, which is fun to see.

Yep, yep.

That was a journey. So let's unpack the first time going multi-product and launching the engagement product. So you're 2 months in. How did you try to get with a small team I would imagine at that point, uh, how did you think about preparation for going multi-product? How'd you think about the go-to-market messaging? What were the key components that you needed to, to put in place to be able to sell that second product?

Yeah, I mean, I think first of all it was understanding what the product is. And so what we were launching was engagement surveys. Secondly, understanding how does this second product connect to the current product Third was like, is it the same persona? What I was used to in my prior job at Drawbridge was selling to different personas, which is, which is a different version of multiproduct where you're selling into the same, same account and it's primarily expansion-based, but selling to a completely different persona. Versus here, we were selling a new product to the same persona. And so, first was understanding what the product is, then how does it fit into our current product story? Is there a connection, or is it just an added SKU that we're adding onto the platform? Third, how do we tell that story? Because, because now we are no longer a performance management company. We are now transitioning from performance management to what is the thing we're transitioning to? So, working with marketing, working with the exec team, which is fairly small at that point, and figuring out what is our messaging. And then, we were at that point, gosh, how big were we? We were like 5 AEs, very small. Like early, this was 5 AEs, couple BDRs, our marketing team was like 3 people, including our head of marketing. So, it was a very, very lean team. And we were like, I think a week away from launch, week, one week away from like launching this product. And we're like, well, we need to like figure out how we're going to train the team on it. We've gotta do something. And so, this is the chaos of startups where the, like, I literally cleared my calendar for 2 days and the COO and I, we just locked ourselves up in a conference room and said, we're gonna do certifications for every person that's client-facing. And so, we had, we came up with materials for the team. Saying, you're gonna study this, we're gonna, we're gonna do a demo, we're gonna tell you what the positioning is. And then we locked ourselves up in this room, came up with a rubric, and basically did all day for 2 days certifications across AEs, BDRs, CSMs.

Wow.

Um, yeah, early days. Fantastic.

Very cool. And, uh, in subsequent product launches, did you still run, uh, similar certification process, obviously more robust, but was that always a part of it?

Yeah, thankfully a lot more robust and run by, run by enablement, not with just us sitting in a room, because that wasn't the best use of time. But at that point, it was the early, earlier days, and it set the tone. We also sort of made sure people knew, um, like, not everyone passed on the first go, so it wasn't just like a check-the-box type of certification. We really wanted people to feel the importance of what it meant to represent a second product and make sure that we're telling the right story. Because a lot of times when you launch a second product, it's easy to be like, yeah, I got it. I got the main features. I'm going to get out there. And then what happens is you sort of still keep selling the primary, the first product that you launched with, and you undersell your new product. And so, the goal was to like really stress the importance that the reason we're sitting in this conference room and the reason we're doing certifications and partly keeping a high bar on who gets certified is to make sure people knew that this is an important part of our new messaging or new sales plays. And so, yeah, we definitely got more robust, but it was, it was like a good signaling to the team of how important it is that we're doing this right now.

And when you launched engagement surveys, was the focus to go upsell a bunch of existing customers? Was it more about enabling people to win new business? What was the priority?

You know, we thought the focus was going to be primarily selling to new customers. It was mostly about growth. And we thought this was going to attract a mid-market customer. At that point, we were primarily an SMB business. In terms of the segment that we played in. And we thought this is going to be more interesting to mid-market customers. That was our assumption when launching the product. And we thought, yeah, maybe some of the existing customers might be interested, but this is going to really allow us to sell to a different customer base. But that wasn't the case. Our existing customers were interested in consolidating or at least looking at the product. We also had a lot of interest from SMB in this product, for this product. So, there was a certain level of like the assumptions we had, and that happened with most of our product launches, the assumptions we had around who's going to be interested versus post-launch, what we'd learn was, was there was always new learnings in that, which is like, oh, interesting. We didn't think this was based on the, you know, research we'd done and the product work we'd done. We thought this was going to hit this part of the market, but actually— so we learned to stay open.

Interesting. Um, and how, when you got more sophisticated, how much validation were you doing? You know, like you have this surprise, so in future launches, did you go out and try to like validate that stuff ahead of time, or did you say, you know, if it's new or existing, we're happy either way? Like, how much rigor did you put around that?

Um, you know, we talked— we were, we were very good about talking to our existing customers, um, around product strategy, what we're thinking about, and making sure we were building products that we think would resonate with, with the, with the customers. Um, so we definitely did our validation, but there's still sort of, you know, you can't you're not doing every segment and every cut of the market when you're validating. And so, there's still consistently like parts of it, and it was mostly healthy surprises, which is like, we didn't realize that this was the impact we're gonna see in this part of the market, which is interesting. So, yeah, it was a big, you know, when we launched it, it was primarily to like, can we open up a new segment of the market? In reality, it helped us It increased our win rates, it increased our ACVs, even to the existing base that we were selling to, uh, which was a, which was a happy surprise.

Mm-hmm. And so what were the other big benefits? So increased win rates, increased ACV, you got expansion revenue. What, what other big outcomes did you find with launching subsequent products?

Yeah, help, you know, I think the win rate and the ACVs were the highest pieces. Um, that also led to healthy attainment rates for the sales team. The other part was like, we're in a fairly noisy space. Lots of companies were doing the same thing. Like, you could get a performance management suite for free if you have ADP. So, like, in some ways, we were competing with free. There's a ton of more mature competitors in space that, you know, had 5 years of heads up on us in terms of product buildouts. And so, and there's a ton that were like copying us. And were cutting their price in half. So, it was a fairly noisy space. So, the ability, the chance to have a second product and saying we were the first in market to consolidate performance management and engagement surveys was powerful. Because now we could say, this is the first time you can connect and see how are your top performers feeling? Because those two things should be overlapped and like, you don't have that insight today. And a lot of times, you're surprised when a top performer leaves. What if you could do something about that proactively? And now, because we are connecting those data sets, we can help you proactively manage that if there's, like, hotspots that, that aren't doing well. And so, it was, you know, I think that positioning and that story really helped our, the sort of increased win rates. It translated into increased win rates, higher ACVs. It also opened up new opportunities.

I would imagine, yeah, stickiness.

Stickiness and then consolidation. Folks wanted— they didn't want multiple vendors. And so, it opened up new types of opportunities for us. People that were coming in and would say, well, I only want engagement, but a completely different ICP. And so, you know, understanding if that would be a good fit for us, but it did open up a lot of our top of the funnel conversations we were happening— having. And, you know, eventually it became the thing that people knew in market, that Lattice launches a new product every year. So, product velocity and product breadth became a core part of our strategy, where it was like competitors knew, like every year we're gonna launch a new product.

Very cool. The more top of funnel one's an interesting one because there's just an entire new category you can go rank for and be featured. Against. And, uh, it's like a totally new way to, to come in if somebody doesn't need the first product at that point.

And then it's, you know, it's so much of it is like the story you tell. Even if someone comes in with employee engagement, uh, because we kept a single sales team selling all products, which was another debate, uh, okay, I wanted to get here. Yes, because that was, you know, it was like every time we launched a product, we thought about, well, Should this product be like a specialized team that just focuses on this product? And we consistently made the decision of like, no, we're going to let— train our current teams and have them sell all products. They both— both those approaches have their trade-offs, but ultimately, we decided to like stick with our current team learning the product, just given the sort of buyer experience in that. And also, like, you can pivot if somebody comes in asking for Product 2, but you know that you could really help them see the value in Product A and then bundle and give you, you know, sort of make commercial discounts happen to get them to buy multiple products. That was a core part of the sales strategy, which was easier to deploy when you have a single AE selling all products versus multiple AEs selling different products.

Right. So, how did you make that decision? So, so we talked a little bit about the outcomes like the buyer experience, the ability to have more things in your bag to sell in, in that moment, bundling, like, what's the other side of it? In, in what situations would you have a specialist rep? Or like, what, what, what's the, what are the pros and cons of each?

I think a special— in a Drawbridge, we had specialist reps that even within the same account, these were large enterprises, but within the same account, we'd have Rep A sell product A, product 1, and Rep B sell product 2. And it made sense because there were different personas and there weren't, there wasn't a ton of, so I think persona, if you're selling to the same persona, that's one reason to think through, like, does it make sense to have multiple reps sell to the same persona under the same umbrella, which was the chief people officer. Two is the, the, the velocity at which you're shipping new products too. If you're shipping them twice a year, I would think, and even this was like towards the end, it definitely became more challenging to train the team on we've got 4 products, now you've got a 5th one. So, you've got to remember as a rep, lots of breadth, but also depth in each of those products. And so, it becomes a training and enablement challenge. So, that was the flip side of it. Third, it's like who's accountable? 'Cause yes, reps are gonna maximize ACVs and try to maximize win rates, but ultimately, if your product through 2 and 3, like ultimately who's owning the quota for those specific products? Like those are the trade-offs we thought about. And ultimately, you know, my answer was, I'll be accountable to make sure we have the right comp plan, the right incentives, the right training structure to make sure our current team sells through products on the in new business and then expands it post-sale.

Okay. I want to come back to incentives. So in terms of the structure, buyer experience, the personas, bundling, like if you don't bundle a lot, then maybe this single-threaded rep isn't necessary. And so the reasons to not, the reason to have multiple reps would be like maybe the technical breadth. What else would get you to have multiple reps selling the same product as opposed to one?

Technical depth would be one, just the ability to go really deep on a specific product and, yeah, and be the specialist on that product. Two, the accountability per product, revenue per product, right? Another piece, because now you've got quota assigned to a specific product versus sort of general quota assigned against all products. So, it's accountability. And third, it's like the rollouts become so much simpler because now you've got basically a GM structure where the product manager directly talks to the PMM that's associated with that product, talks to the sales team, versus in this org, you've got, even though you've got specific product managers, they've got to go sell to all of customer-facing employees, which is, which is a challenge. So the complexity internally of launching new products, uh, there's a real overhead to that on the, on the, on the flip side.

Yeah, the— so when I joined Shopify, it was to like greatly expand the sales-led motion for our point-of-sale product. Point-of-sale had been like a downmarket product-led thing, and they rebuilt the whole suite. It was ready for primetime. They wanted to take it upmarket and needed a sales-led motion. And it was interesting being a new team over on the side that had no connection to the existing sales team. Like, we didn't even roll into the same CRO. The two org charts didn't overlap until basically the CEO, I don't think, because it was owned by a VP of product who owned that category that had its own marketing team, own sales team. And the decision there was, look, this other team's never going to pay attention to point of sale. Their number for next year is like $1 billion in net new revenue. And my target was like $130 million. It's not worth paying attention. And so to give it its own life and its own space to be successful, we needed a totally separate thing. And then we got it to a level where arguably we were too successful for our own good and they wanted to collapse everything together and bring it under one roof. But it was really challenging to be a separate thing and then try to bring it all together. That product basically didn't stall out but didn't grow anywhere as fast as it should have in the year we tried to bring it together because now it was a small thing that wasn't going to drive the main number. Now it's come back to prominence and they've restaffed it. But it was interesting for me to see the other side of things. There were 3 different sales teams that never overlapped in the org chart. Yeah. Financial products, point of sale, and then our core plus product. And now everything's all together. And I think for many organizations, that's a more effective approach if the rep can handle it.

Yeah, I think that's the big question mark. Like, can you handle it?

Yeah, I almost think as hearing you talk it through, the default answer should be give it to the existing reps unless it is so complex that they can't do it. It's so different and it's going to take them away from their existing things so much that you need a specialist, but the default should be try to make it work with one rep. Even from a buying perspective, buyer's perspective, that, that would make sense to me.

Yeah. Or, you know, it's like there's clear reason to do it if it's a different persona. I think HubSpot had done that, um, where, you know, they, they'd done it really successfully where they, they've had this motion going and then they sort of seeded a new one with PLG. Actually, they started sales-led, then added PLG, and then consolidated it all. So, I think it can be done, but there is just so much complexity and there's complexity on both approaches. I always, when I thought about all the things I faced at Drawbridge, when I had two reps in the same account, um, with the two different products, it was like the, the sort of attribution challenges and the, the, the, the confusion on the buyer side, even with two personas is, is, yeah. So, I, I agree with you. The default, especially if you're a mid-market SMB-focused business selling to the same persona, is default to the same rep and to enablement. And eventually, we added in a layer of SEs that played specialists, product specialists, so we could pull them in for like, and I wish we did that earlier, like in hindsight, we waited too long to like add that layer in instead of continuing to like force reps to learn everything. And we could have just said, here's an SME, a specialist that'll help you with anything related to comp, compensation, or anything related to OKRs. So, maybe that is one learning in hindsight.

That's a really interesting takeaway. Yeah, I think that's one that I'm going to put in the old memory bank. So let's go to incentives. How did you think about incentivizing? You know, it's this new product. I'm not really comfortable. It's harder to sell. The market doesn't get it. How do you actually get a rep to be excited to go sell this new thing when all of our status quo bias would push us away from embracing that new thing?

Yeah, I mean, I think using SPFs was really big for us in the beginning, and then bragging rights. Like, we had a huge culture of celebration on deals and watching a rep being able to turn a $7K deal into a $13K deal because they added on a second product and seeing what that did to their quota and how they were able to navigate it and the fact that they get bragging rights of, you know, so we had fun contests of like who sold the first 10 deals. 'Cause so much of it is just creating momentum in the beginning. 'Cause once you get that initial momentum, people pick up and sort of drive it. But changing the status quo and letting inertia win is the challenge. And so, SPIFs were huge, contests were huge. A lot of this was like, we tried not to touch the comp plans because when you touch comp plans, it's like there's always trade-offs to it. So, we tried to sort of focus more on like, what are like short-term SPIFs? And what are the cultural things we can do to really celebrate? Like even at company all hands, we talk about, oh, these folks closed the first 5 deals for this new product. And so, I think folks really tried to live up to that. And then, it became part of the fabric of the culture of like, we launch a new product and I want to be the first 5 on the leaderboard that sells it.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I'm reading, The Power of Moments right now by the Heath brothers. And one of the things that they talk about is the importance of the recognition feedback loop. So, they talk about this research by Carolyn Wiley. And so, she's University of Roosevelt University. And so, they did a study of employee engagement over 50 years in the thing that came up every single time in every survey they did across 50 years was as the only thing that stayed a top 2 input in every single one was continuous ongoing recognition and not like a recognition program. The point they're making is it's not a program. It's just like every week, are you— is there a drip feed of recognition going to your employees on like a one-to-one basis? And all the engagement research, like, the Gallup Q12 stuff that I really like. And so I think that's a really interesting piece of it. It doesn't need to be just about the money. It could be that recognition and the reinforcement. Yeah.

And we saw that even with other things, like when we launched outbound and getting people to actually go into outbound. It's a challenge when you've got good inbound demand and you're in a place where you can find your way find their way to quota just through inbound, like getting folks to say, no, now let's spend time on this thing that's painful, but it is important long-term for you. And like, we didn't, I think using recognition and creating that culture of bragging rights, like really went a long way where people wanted to step up and help figure it out. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more with that.

And like making it a thing, making it a moment, like this is, this is the thing that is sort of everywhere in our in our ecosystem, in the company, the shoutouts, the leaderboard, the SPIFs, you know, that, that all that added momentum. That's cool.

Yeah. And I think it's like important to only do one or two things. Like what you can't do is like have 10 things that are all we're going to get recognized and they're all important. And so like, you've got to pick one thing for this quarter. It's like, we're going to launch this product and do an amazing job at it, or we're going to launch outbound. So yeah, I think I agree with like making it a thing across the board.

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That's great. And so just going back to incentives, did you change the structure of the comp plan outside of SPIFs, or did you— you were still just going to pay on ACV and this was a way to get more ACV? Or did you have your comp plan broken down by product and like certain products got higher percentage? Or just walk me through what the comp plan looked like.

No, we thought about it almost every, every 6 months. We'd be like, should we change our comp plan? Should we add in the product-based quotas or give people guidance? And we decided against it because it could, it could lead to odd behaviors. I did that for outbound, which was a mistake, where we actually said we'll pay you more on outbound deals than inbound deals. And it's into just incentivize action on outbound. And it actually drove the, the wrong kind of behavior, cuz people were like, well, I don't wanna share this lead with, with marketing when they're running the program, right? Because I wanna get credit, or I'll spend more time on a $5,000 outbound deal than a $10,000 inbound deal. So, it was like weird incentives. And so, we decided to, instead of changing the comp plan, educating the team on the upside if you sold these additional products, what that does to your ACVs, what that does to your quota attainment. Like, you have to sell less deals to get to same or higher levels of performance on a quarterly basis. So, we put in resources around your, you know, quota calculators. We'd sort of talk about it in all hands, saying, here's Kevin. Kevin's crushed selling new products. He sold less deals but has produced more revenue. Here's what it meant. So, so much of it was less the comp plan changes and more, you know, again, part of like just beating the drum on the advantages that you have. The company has a ton of advantage of selling multiple products, but you've got— you can give yourself a raise by adding this to your playbook.

Hmm. Yeah, that, that comp visibility is so important. Like QuotaPath does a good job with this. Their whole shtick is like, we're not going to just calculate quotas for finance, but we're going to show the rep and help you incentivize people. I think that we don't utilize that enough as revenue leaders, like helping people see the math and visualize, hey, this is like a $12,000 paycheck if you can get X and Y by selling these new things. So the whole time you had just an ACV-based comp plan. Nice and simple. Accelerator.

Yep. We had accelerators and that's it.

You were listening to Robert. Simplicity is a part of the comp philosophy from Sales Acceleration.

100%.

That's awesome. So I wanted to go into enablement. So let's maybe fast forward beyond you and Jack in a boardroom certifying. What did a, what did a great enablement and rollout look like? How far before you launched did you start doing stuff? Just walk me through like what best-in-class enablement looked like.

Yeah, I'm a huge believer of enablement. I think a lot of times, yeah, revenue leaders underutilize enablement and think it's just training, but enablement can be so much more. Like, it always reported directly into me. Partly because I wanted to make sure people— it's strategic if you leverage it such, can be the glue that really connects all the pieces of the org. Because as you start to scale, the thing that's hardest is like, how do you make sure, especially in a remote hybrid world where we're not all in an office all the time, the risk of people coming up with their own versions of what this product's meant to do is so high. Like just their own versions of reality. Forget product launches, but for anything. And enablement can play the role of really making sure product marketing, product sales, customer success are all sort of saying the right things. So, product marketing is like pre-product, when you're building the product, plays that role of the quarterback across product and marketing content, all the pieces. And then, once it's closer to launch, that's where enablement takes over. And enablement's responsible of working with product marketing and saying, "Okay, now how do I translate this, this new feature, this new product, and make it relevant and translate it for the different audiences and stakeholders?" So, a BDR doesn't need to know all the details about every product, but they need to be able to speak to the value and what it means. A CSM might need to go in much more detail and explain sort of how an existing customer might see value and the reporting advantages or whatever the feature advantages are. Sales has to tell the story. So, I think there's like different ways to construct enablement that is personalized to the different stakeholders in the business, which I think a lot of times people think of enablement as like, well, they take stuff from product marketing, create a deck, and train the team. Which is the base level. It's like the most— at the foundational level, that's what it is. But I think at its best, it can truly be the glue. That connects all the pieces together.

For sure. I've been very lucky to work with awesome enablement people, and I'm super picky about it, but it's absolutely such a strategic asset for me. So shout out to Mel and Rob and Ray. Who wrote the narrative? So when you took things to market, who wrote what the reps said?

It's a good question because it was a joint effort. 'Cause when we had it where it was just marketing doing it, or just enablement doing it, you know, it had its blind spots. So, what we learned is like for every product launch, we'd pick a small team that would workshop the positioning. So, it'd start with, you know, product marketing would lead that exercise. So, they come to the table saying, here's what we're thinking, here's the positioning, here's the story, here's the market, and then sales would come back with, "Well, I don't know if that resonates. That doesn't feel like how I talk." So, how do I now turn this positioning document into something that's usable at the different levels? And so, we'd have 1 or 2 AEs from different segments. We'd have enablement, and we'd have marketing. For smaller features, enablement would play that role. But for large product launches, we'd create that group, like, a couple months before launch. And so we're workshopping it. Yeah. So we'd— this was when we were fairly mature and had enough resources when we weren't planning 2 weeks before launch.

And so when would you have reps in the— like, would you have reps pitching the product before it's officially announced? Would you like sell it ahead to get feedback or how did you stage like, okay, we're, We think that our customers are going to want this product and we've got this messaging and we're building it. But like, when did you go validate with real-world conversations and ask people for money? Like, how did you think about getting— because, you know, it's asking people if they want it and asking people for money are two very different things. When did you start to do those things?

Yeah, I mean, we'd, we'd launch it to our existing customer base. A month in advance, typically. And so, that was our, like, first, like, let's get them to use it, let's get some feedback. So, our CSM teams in partnership with the product lead would have those conversations. We'd get insight from that. And then, the sales team would start practicing pitching the product a couple weeks before the launch, at a minimum. And so, we'd have it launched internally. On our demo products, but wouldn't be— we weren't allowed to show it to customers till we publicly launched it. And so, for 2 weeks, we had certifications going on, people were pitching it, we wanted to make sure that we were ready. So, as soon as we launched, that's basically where everybody would start having the conversation, and the race starts to who's gonna sell the first 10 deals.

So, the first time you pitched it was after the public launch.

Yeah.

Okay, interesting. And had you guys considered like getting people to pitch it before the public launch in order to get the kinks out, or what was the reason to stage it that way?

Yeah, I mean, we did it with existing customers, so some would pitch it early on. So we like would, you know, through those cycles, we'd get a sense for like, what are the bugs? What are the things we need to like clear? Clearly misses that we need to fix. But on the new biz side, when we're talking to prospects, typically the whole team got the go at the same time.

One big bang.

Yep.

Okay. Ready to go. Very cool. And so, no selling ahead, like that you could, you would announce it and then that product was available and live, like ready to sell and implement that day?

Yeah. No selling ahead, which was hard because reps were like ready. They're like, well, I have it in my demo. I can already start selling it, which was always the hardest part. 'Cause on the flip side, then the product's like, well, we don't wanna get all these features into the demo if we're gonna already start selling it 'cause we haven't launched it. So, that was a hard thing the first few times, but then we got to a place where we were good about just holding, saying, hey, this launch is Tuesday, that's when we talk about it to give it the surprise element and market.

Probably the right customer-centric way to do it. 'Cause, you know, many companies, you've got a product launch coming in on Jan 1st and it's September 26th, then we're, we're pitching, oh, we got this thing, it's great. And then you're just sort of sandbagging the implementation until it's actually ready.

Which, yeah, we were very conservative with that. And, you know, there were, there were debates on that, like, should we be more aggressive? It's like, launch it 6 months before it's ready and start pitching it ahead. And we just never did that. We're like, we'd rather just wait.

And that's a cultural thing that was, you know, basically, you know, you were highly customer-centric. Is that the reasoning?

That was just, yeah, we didn't want to, we didn't want to like lose customers' trust by pre-selling and now they're getting a bad experience and we're figuring it out. So, we wanted to be buttoned up when we showed up and sold a new product. And so, they had high confidence in that Lattice, when they pitch a new product, they're ready.

Yeah. And HR, HR tech is such a small ecosystem. That buying community is pretty tight. I sold HR tech for like 3 years and it's a unique one and they've got very tight groups. So that makes a ton of sense to me. I want to talk a little bit about, so when you were talking about the comp plan and incentives and being able to basically guide people to this new outcome without having to do, you know, like crazy comp plan magic. It really sounds to me like you need a team of people that are willing to do things for the company. And, you know, that's more missionary versus mercenary, as oftentimes people say. So I would imagine that the culture you were able to build enabled you to launch a product and just be like, please go sell this and have them say, okay, let's go sell this versus— I've seen many companies where you need to, like, triple commission for the new thing and you're putting, like, specific KPIs and you don't get any commission and you sell this certain amount of the product. I'm guessing that this was possible because of the engagement and mindset of your team. Am I right there?

100%. Yeah. I think there are people deeply engaged and cared about the mission of the company. Not just— one of our values was ship, shipmate, self. And it was one of my favorite values. And so, I think people like very deeply internalized that, which was, you know, I've got to put the company first, my team second, and myself last. And it's the hardest to implement and live up to in sales, given that it is competitive, it's high stakes, it's high pressure. But I was very proud of the team that like really lived up to those values and sort of put the company first in scenarios where it was hard to.

Cool. So let's transition to how do you get to that point? How do you build an engaged enough team where they are legitimately ship, shipmates, self? And maybe just start with your business case for engagement, because I think people hear this and they think it's squishy and soft and maybe not in some of the sales DNA that exists in our world. And so, how would you make— what argument would you make for the business imperative of driving to engagement?

Yeah, no, it's— I feel very strongly about it, and I've always felt strongly about it. But now that I've seen the results that it can drive, it's like I have very high conviction that building a high-performing team that delivers consistently starts with a people-first approach and a highly engaged team. Like, there's just no two ways about it. Like, you can get performance from people through transactional approaches, through fear, through scarcity, which is what a lot of sales orgs are built on. They're built on a foundation of fear and scarcity. When I first started in sales, I was surprised that, like, we're all part of the same company. But somehow you're like pitted against this different region and you're not supposed to share best practices and it's just odd. Or like, you know, managers would tell you things in a one-on-one or team meeting and we'd all agree that, yep, we'll do that. And then you leave and like, people are like, we're not going to do that.

Yeah, there's no way.

And it's just, my mind was blown. Like, what kind of team doesn't just tell the manager that I'm not going to do it and here's why not. And so. Yeah, one of the reasons I went to Lattice after Drawbridge was to try to build a different type of revenue org. Because a lot of people asked me, like, why would you, you know, you sort of just went off of a big run, why would you go to a $3 million Series A business? Like, that's, you know, it was sort of a head-scratching move for a lot of people that cared about me. But the reason partly was, of course, I believed in the market. I really hit it off with Jack. But, part of it was also the chance to build a different type of revenue org where a younger me would've felt more like I belonged and felt like it didn't have to go against the grain. Because I think there's this misconception that salespeople are coin-operated and all they care about is money. And, it's just not true. Like, everyone from engineers to Even commission-driven salespeople want the same things. They want to feel like they're part of a community. They want to feel like they're getting growth and they're getting the development on an annual basis. And if there's a purpose that they're going after. And I feel like those three pillars make up so much of highly engaged teams. And I think there is a huge opportunity for sales teams to embrace that.

And what are the business outcomes? Like, you know, what does an engaged team get you that a more mercenary-style team doesn't get you?

Yeah, I mean, I think what I've seen, it's like it drives— we had over 100% attainment for the 4 and a half years I was there. We missed—

like, why? Like, why? Like, I'm trying to get you to make the argument to the skeptics. Like, you know, what's the thing that translates, like, engagement to outcomes in your mind?

Yeah, I think it's people just, people care so much more than when it's a transactional thing. When you get treated like a number, you sort of treat the job as a job versus when you're bought in and you think you're, you feel like an owner in the business, which is a big part of driving engagement. You feel accountable to the business. And you're not doing it because your manager is asking you to. You're doing it because you care. Because you think you have a voice, because you think you can really— this is your company. And that's what— when you care, when you invest in your people, the people invest back in the business. It's like such a simple concept, and so many companies get it wrong, where it's just you give trust and you get trust. You give care and you get care back. And so, I think a lot of it is hiring people. And we were at the height of the talent war. We had less than 1% voluntary attrition over 4.5 years. Which—

Wow. That's a good business case.

Which was a testament to, like, we have these amazing high performers that could go get any job, make a lot more money somewhere else, and they were getting poached all the time, but they chose to stay at Lattice, partly because they felt like they were part of this team, partly because they were getting the growth through the career tracks, and partly because they were, like, bought into the mission of the business.

Yeah. And I've heard Jack talk about this a bunch where he talks about the value of years 3, 4, and 5 of an employee. If the average tenure of a tech employee is 2 years and you can have them stay 4, how impactful are they in year 3 and 4? And if you knew that, what would you put into it to get them to stay for that extra period? Like product management, engineering, when you have this— Sales, obviously the same thing. Like when you have a knowledge of the market and a craft depth, it really does make an impact. The book I always steer people to is Drive by Daniel Pink here. And so it's almost the same framework. You're talking about community growth and purpose. His framework is autonomy, mastery, purpose. I would argue that community instead of AMP, it could be CAMP. Community, autonomy, mastery, purpose. And he makes the case for intrinsic motivation, and that is from feeling connected to a mission and like you're a part of something bigger than yourself and people care about you. Yeah, the attrition thing is like such a big one.

I think so many people forget, like, as you start to get into hypergrowth, you put in all your effort into hiring. You've got a recruiting team. You're thinking about You've got headcount, you're all, you know, all your effort is there. But the thing that people don't realize is like, if you've got a leaky bucket, just like in a business, like if you've got that churn and you're like crushing your new business, but churn's just sort of, it's a leaky bucket. And the foundation that a tenured person who's been in the business for 3 years provides in hypergrowth environments, it's one of the best things you can do. It's like this undervalued piece that people don't put enough resources and attention into retention of their top. It's like an accepted reality. Like, 18 months is good enough. 24 months, people leave. Time's over.

But yeah, for sure, I'm right there on this bandwagon. I am always sharing that. The thing I like is the Gallup Q12 research, which is sort of the top 12 inputs to engagement. And when you study it, like, comp isn't even really on there. Like, nothing necessarily office-centric is on there. Once you understand the components, it makes a lot more sense. They make a compelling argument. So the key pillars for you, community growth, purpose, how did you make that come to life? Because I think a lot of people struggle is, one, this is a much more vulnerable way to operate. You have to sort of be exposed and give before you get in a way that is uncomfortable. Um, but what are the key ways that you like made those 3 things come to life? Like, what can you tell people that they can implement in their business today to like actually drive a sense of community and give people growth and purpose?

Yeah, I mean, I think early on building community is easy because you're like in a small team. Um, it's, you can all fit in a conference room to feel connected, and there's easier ways to drive that. But I'd say like, how do you do this at scale? Like, it starts with hiring. You've got to hire people that are, of course, excellent at what they do, but are also very passionate about what you represent. Like, we've passed on people that are amazing at the role that we're trying to hire them, but didn't seem as excited about the mission that, that we represent. And so, really sort of thinking about our values, thinking about our mission as part of the recruiting process, and it's hard to do in practice, but we had a values interview. Every role in the business that, you know, sort of forced us to look at sort of, is this person going to be here through the hard times? Because it's easy to be excited to be at a company during hypergrowth, but what happens when, you know, you hit a rough patch, which all companies do, and you want people that aren't going to be transactional and say, I'm out, you know, I'm going to go find the next best thing instead of—

We'll all hit that rough patch.

Yep. Because we all do. There's no, there's like no way you avoid it, right? Even in the best of environments. So, I think finding people that are excited about the mission are folks that'll, like, stick through the storm. And so, really looking for that in the hiring. Two, onboarding. I think that is an undervalued place where people don't onboard folks onto the culture. Like, most people think of onboarding as, like, okay, here's my product, here's my market, here's how to do the job. But really spending time on, like, what does it mean to be part of this culture? 'Cause if you don't do that, people just bring what they've experienced in their past job. And so, so much of it was we'd give people specific exercises. So, like, clear eyes was another one of our values in the company. And I would do an onboarding session with the team around the revenue org's ethos, what we care about. And one of the exercises was, I want you to go give feedback to someone in management about something that you've noticed that you think needs to be changed. Because you want to, as a new person, you're like, I don't know anything. I'm just going to sit here and learn. The reality is you've got the gift of fresh eyes, which all of us don't, because we've been here for a while and we're in the trenches. We're drinking our Kool-Aid, and we need you to come and tell us. And, you know, we got some really obvious things that people would point out. Saying, "Why is there segmentation like that? And why don't we have this?" And we're like, "I don't know. It shouldn't be. You're right." But giving people the sort of confidence to say, "You're part of this team. You're hired for a reason. We want you to have a voice, and here's an exercise for this specific value for you to go do that." It was uncomfortable for people, but then once they did it, they saw how openly people were like, "Wow, that's a great, great call. We'll do it." Then, it became part of the culture.

And so what's, what is the Clear Eyes value? That's a value about giving feedback?

It's like basically honesty. Like, how do you, how do you treat your customers, your partners, your employees, your coworkers with honesty? So, like, if you think of something, you've got to give that lead with honesty instead of, so that, that was the, that was the value about. And so we really sort of honed that in.

Very cool. Any other, like, actionable things you did in onboarding to onboard people into the culture, which is a saying that I love and I'm going to borrow now.

Yeah. I mean, we did, like, get people to feel the culture, not just talk about it. And so, our all-hands, like, you would feel the fact that we were excited to be here, we really believed in the business, in every touchpoint, whether it's a sales meeting, whether it's an all-hands. And they would feel that. At the end of the first week, We would, we had a channel in the sales channel and Slack channel. This was in the remote world. We used to do it in person before, but basically we would share like, these people just finished their first week and people would like share things that they loved about meeting them in that thread. So, now you're like seen as a person, like, hey, I enjoyed learning this about you in our one-on-one, or, you know, here's, I'm super excited for you to bring this to our team. Given that that's a unique skill. Like, as a new person, that's very empowering that these people see me as who I am. I'm bringing something unique here. You build their confidence. And there's like a lot of little things we did like that to really get people to come in and be their authentic self in the business.

Cool. I am so stealing that. I love that, like, first week graduation, have everybody tell them something they like learning about them. That's a That's a great one.

I love it.

I just want to go back to hiring and ask, so you have a values interview in every hiring process. What does a values interview look like?

We basically— and this was led by, you know, we used to do it as part of each of the departments used to do it on their own. So, we have people that'll take the 4 values and you have questions against each of those values. And basically, we're evaluating It's like, does this person at their core embody the values we care about? Doesn't mean they have to have every value and they have to be excited about all of them, but we wanna make sure that there's like good alignment on values, cuz that's the thing that we don't wanna compromise on. And eventually, we actually had folks where you couldn't, you had to be out of a different department to do the values interview, to reduce the level of like, cuz, you know, if you're excited to hire someone, it's easy to be, you know, confirmation bias of like, yeah, great values, we're gonna say yes to this. We actually added in another layer of saying, okay, if you're interviewing for a sales role, an engineer is gonna come in and interview you for values role. Cause he doesn't know your functional expertise, how you're, he's just evaluating purely on, to limit bias. That was another thing we did in the values.

Very cool. And, and would those people have to get certified on it?

On the values interviews? Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

To interview. Yeah. Any interviewer that was on a panel had to get certified.

Cool. It's a lot like the Amazon Bar Raiser program where it has to be from somewhere else and they have, you know, you're doing these 4 values and you're doing these 4 values. I like that one. Um, and so the questions, so you had like clear eyes as a, as a value. What type of questions would you ask like to determine if somebody is honest? Are they behavioral, situational? Like, what, like, give me a flavor for that.

Yeah, typically behavioral and situational. So like give people an example of like, Here's— and we'd have that by department, where in sales, it's like, okay, you're taking on a lead, or you've gotten assigned a lead. Somebody else has been working that account 2 weeks before you. What do you do in that situation? Like, how do you handle that? You've already had a great conversation, it's in your pipeline, but you just realize that someone else had just touched this account. So, to get a sense for like, how does this person resolve conflict? How do they— do they go directly? It's like, oh, I'm gonna go talk to my manager. Versus I'm going to go tell this person, or I'm going to wait till the deal gets done and then go talk about it. So, there was like, we had situational behavioral questions peppered in that were relevant to that department, in addition to like general sort of, you know, who you are as a person to get a sense for like how they would operate in different situations.

Awesome. And so, This is community, so it starts with hiring, then onboarding. Anything ongoing with existing employees that was like a key thing for you to build community?

Yeah, I mean, I think on the community part, it was people just— so much of it, we did a lot of our offsites or even our meetings would be like no agenda meetings just to hang as people. Like, every team lead would like host a Friday hang, where people would just show up and it was like, no agenda, let's just talk about what's going on. Like the things you would do in an office that are easy to do sitting around a sales floor, we would replicate that, try to replicate that on a Zoom. And so, it created— we had another thing that we used to do is called show and tell. So, this was across the whole org, across go-to-market, where we would pick a speaker and they would come in and talk about something outside of work. That they're super passionate about, and they do a presentation, go deep on it, and try to connect it back to like how that makes them a better litigian. And so it was very popular. You got to learn like all kinds of random things about people. Like folks, you know, were selling— someone had a whole full-on laser business, um, while they were selling lasers, very passionate about lasers. Someone else who was, um, you know, there's a lot, all kinds of like something from their past, something from their current life that they're very passionate about. And so, we did, you know, show and tells were a big part of also building community and making sure folks saw each other beyond the role they did in the company.

Awesome. Cool. So, let's get into growth and purpose. So, I would love to hear about anything actionable you did to connect Laticians and the sales team to purpose.

I think so much of it was more about purposes. Do they feel connected to the mission, which is our mission was make work meaningful? And so, we wanted to make sure they felt that their work was meaningful. And so much of it was creating an environment and culture where they felt the thing we were selling in market resonated with them on a personal level. Because if we were able to do that as a leadership team, then all the other pieces become easier. Because if you are if you are the sample where you experience this. So, a lot of it was around that. And then, our growth playbook was very much about, you know, let's talk about from 10 years from now, where do you want to be? We train folks to like start with that, like what's your north star? And I want to learn not just from a, you know, job and career standpoint, like where do you want to be in 10 years, to really understand sort of the full picture, Then talk about, OK, 2 years from now, what are the types of skills you need to get to that next role that you're really excited to get on? And then, for this quarter, out of the 19 attributes for your role, which we would do for every role, we get very detailed on, like, what are the specific attributes against for this, for an AE role or for a manager role? And then we'd say, why don't we work on 2 of these and pick specific sort of exercises. Because so much of it was around people feeling like they've got someone who cares about them, they've got someone who wants to invest in their growth, and then being very transparent around the opportunities in the business. So, there's like very— they've got good sense for sort of what it means for me in my growth journey here. But more than sort of promotions, I think people are just looking for having developmental conversations that connect to their own they feel like they're growing in their role. I think so much of it was around that.

Yeah. And it's so hard to feel the growth if you're working on 10 different things at a time and the coaching is like skimming across a wide variety of things over an entire quarter. It's hard to really get a validation and a visceral feeling like I've improved that. Thing. And this is the same reason I always hammer my managers. We teach one thing at a time. We only teach one skill and we're not teaching discovery because discovery is a bunch of things. You're teaching just reflective questions or I'm teaching just how to do pre-call research to understand the types of discovery, but just one tiny aspect of that thing. And so if you rep at that for 2 weeks in a row, you can viscerally feel that I've gotten better at that thing because it becomes natural. I think that's such a big piece of the 19. What are the 2? And how do you go deep on it? That makes sense. So it's about their long-term North Star, 10 years, 2 years in the skills they need to prepare, and then bringing that back to the quarter. How else did you, how else did you give people a sense of growth? Like, was it, was it about the, like, scoring and performance, performance review process? Or where else would they get, like, this sense of progression?

Yeah, I think most of it came from that, which was how do we make sure that people feel like they're growing in their skills on a quarterly basis, and then also having career tracks where Right. You know, a lot of times, like, having defined career tracks across different roles in go-to-market. And a lot of times, people view it like, oh, I'm a senior AE, I should become a manager. Where we created a lot of parallel tracks, where it's like, that doesn't have to be a promotion. Like, being an AE, top-performing AE, and a manager are completely different skill sets.

Yeah. Equally important.

Exactly. Equally important in the business. And so, I think your career tracks have to represent what you believe is the truth in the world and in the business. And so, a lot of it was around career tracks as well. And we typically had about 35% of our promotions go to internal folks and higher, you know, for first-line managers, it was much higher. For directors, it was like, so, it was like sort of a sliding scale. But we had benchmarks that we ideally wanted to develop our existing team to take on bigger roles in the company so they feel like actual purpose and growth connected to like the development that they're getting as well.

Yeah, not to go off topic, but this is one that I find comes up a ton. So, if you have a senior seller, like one that is great and they are in the top segment, you know, you're mid-market, so you don't have like true enterprise, for example. And they're like, I want to go into management, but you know it's not for them. How do you make it feel special enough and impactful enough to make them want to continue to do this rep thing when maybe management's not a good fit skills or traits-wise?

Yeah, I mean, it's such a classic example. It's a good one. One of the things we did was, of course, you talk to them, coach them into the why they're trying to do that. Is it just because they're competitive and want the next thing, or is it because they're actually drawn towards the job of a manager. And we'd help them by, because even, you know, you can have the conversation, but ultimately, if somebody's set on, I want the next thing, that's what they want. So, what we started doing was we had a team lead program, which was the job goal was we'd give folks exposure into what management meant. And so, we'd pull them into cross-functional meetings, We would give them projects to own, small projects. So, you know, you're still carrying a quota. That's your P1. But now we're giving you exposure into what is the life of a manager for a quarter. And we actually had, we had some folks that went through that program and we had like sort of defined what things you would do as part of that 3 months. Some folks that would do that and be like, "I want it. I still want it. I'm excited about it." And we'd be like, "OK, we're going to give you a shot. Let's do this management thing." For others, actually, we had a, it was 50/50, where 50% of the folks that said they wanted it after going through this would say, actually, you know what, I like my job, and I want to continue being an AE, and I think there's a lot for me to continue learning in that space. And so, we created a safe space where people come in, sort of test it without any commitments, and then decide if it's still for them. And based on that sort of, that was part of the career track as well.

Yeah. Wait a second. There's a lot of CRM hygiene in this manager job. I hate CRM hygiene. Be like, yeah, I've tried to tell you this. Classic. I think that's an awesome way to do it. I do something similar myself. I put, it's a little more informal, but I give people my reading lists and I buddy them up with somebody to mentor and coach. And you can see some people like they never miss that coaching meeting. They're devouring the books and slacking me their sort of enthusiastic updates and somebody and other people, oh, sorry, I had a demo. I had to move the coaching meeting. It didn't happen. You're like, okay, that's fine. I think it's great for people to learn what's for them because so much of the time we want to manage people because we want to be the boss and we want to get promoted. But it's really oftentimes being a manager does not feel like a promotion. You know, I had one boss and now I've got 7 bosses and like a lot of these 7 bosses don't listen to me. Like, this is not super fun.

Yeah, it's like, I think people don't realize that every jump you take in management, like, you've got less and less control and more and more accountability. Like, that is a hard thing to like, okay, you really want that and you have to be excited about really sort of going into that path to take that on. Because it's, it's not fun. It's fun to be a rep and be, be sort of in control of your own destiny and, and earn your autonomy, which is— yeah, I had some of my best times as a rep. So yeah, it's, it's so true to give people that flavor and then help them decide for themselves.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Um, okay, let's move into quickfire, uh, so that we can get done on time. And 4 questions, just like a sub-60-second, like, your first reaction. What do you wish you knew as a new leader that you came to understand much, much later?

There's multiple paths to the same destination.

Okay, say more.

Giving people— I think sometimes I was one of the top performers on a sales team that moved into management, and I had a very specific way of doing things. So when I first moved into management. I wanted people to do things my way, and it was frustrating to see people not follow that, which is like, I know how to get to the quota. And so, I think I learned that over time, that the best managers help people find their own path to the goal. And so, I think there's multiple paths to the same goal, and your job as a leader is to help people uncover that for themselves.

Lean into their unique superpowers.

Yep.

Very cool. What's the most common advice you give to mentees? So other revenue leaders, CROs, or aspiring CROs, what's the most common advice you find yourself giving to them?

You know, people always ask me like, what did you do when you were a manager to get ready to become a CRO? And I was like, I didn't know I wanted to be a CRO. I didn't even know if I wanted to stay in sales. And so my advice is more focus on the next 18 months, focus on your energy. What do you enjoy doing? What do you not enjoy doing? How can you do more of the thing that you're good at and enjoy doing and sort of carve your path using that instead of like trying to have a master plan 10 years from now? Because if you master the thing today and continue to sort of just chip away at what is the thing that really at its core aligns to who I am and my superpowers and what I enjoy doing, good things happen.

I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Um, what was the hardest lesson you had to learn as a leader?

Um, sometimes no matter how much you want it for someone, they've got to want it for themselves. I'm someone that cares deeply about people. I see potential. I want to see them live up to their potential. I manage folks to their potential. And, you know, sometimes people, whether it's life stage, whether it's, you know, what they're excited about at that point doesn't align with them wanting to put in all the effort, and it's frustrating. And so, I think I've learned that you can't force someone to want it.

Yeah. Heartbreaking sometimes.

Yes, very heartbreaking.

And so, you hire against that pretty heavily, I would imagine, just like, do they have the fire?

Yeah, hire against it and performance manage against it too. Because at some point, it's like, you know, if you don't want it, you may not be in the right spot.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, last question: what's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months?

Oh, I haven't read a lot of business books, but my latest—

best thing of anything I've read. Okay.

Um, Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. Oh, it was like an easy read that I picked up on, on a road trip, and I loved it. It's like, talks about how in life you take these detours and put yourself in hard situations and take anti-patterns when things are going well. And how do you like create friction to learn from it and grow from it? And like embracing, um, embracing red lights to ultimately get a lot of green lights. I thought it was beautifully, very entertaining to read. Also really some good, good hidden lessons in it.

Very cool. I love it. Well, this was awesome. I, I've pages of notes here. And I think this will be really helpful for people thinking about multi-product, like the team structure piece and the importance of layering SEs early, this specialist versus generalist rep and the decision-making framework. That, that's really great. I love the incentives piece and finding ways to drive activity with the new product without massively manipulating your comp plan, I think, is, uh, is one that I really I'm taking away. And then this whole piece around enablement and narrative creation and how you layer it over. There's a ton of awesome stuff here. So thanks for coming. This was a blast. I had a great time and this was really valuable.

Thank you, Kyle. This was fun. Thank you for having me.

And where can people find you if they want more from you?

Find me on LinkedIn. Find me on Twitter. I'm active on both. So yeah.

Okay, nice. All right, well, thank you again, and, uh, hope everybody else enjoyed as much as I did.

Thank you for listening to the Revenue Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe, and you can find a link in the show notes. And be sure to leave a 5-star review, share it with your network, and please join me next Wednesday for another great conversation.