Sales Uncharted Podcast: Suresh Madhuvarsu, CEO of SalesTable: The Founder’s Dilemma

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Sales Uncharted. And as the story goes, I am always the most hyper excited every time I bring someone really, really, really interesting on board. This time, I think you're gonna enjoy this because I brought someone that I highly respect, someone who's doing an amazing job in blazing a trail when it comes to sales enablement. Ladies and gentlemen, I have Suresh Madhuvarsu from Sales Table in the house. Suresh, welcome, sir. How are you?

Very good. First of all, Deepak, I mean, I'll tell you, I don't know how much of energy that you have. I'm always impressed and you are always motivating me to have that high energy, by the way. Thank you for that. And again, I'm Suresh Madhuvarsu, co-founder and CEO of SalesTable. I'm really excited to be here with you today, Deepak.

Thank you very much, Suresh. Suresh, you are what I call a serial entrepreneur, right? You've been doing a lot of stuff. You've made investments all over the place. But every time I engage and I talk, it's like you're doing it for the first time. You're so committed, you're so focused. You never come into a room with the answers. You leave a room with the answers. And I've always wondered, how do you do that? Now, before we get into any questions, I just want to remind everyone, this conversation was titled The Founder's Dilemma: Selling versus Ideating versus Surviving. Now, when I and Suresh were discussing exactly how we wanted to theme this, I really wanted Suresh to share with us his journey as a founder, the trials, the tribulations, Look, this is a very powerful story. It's a rich topic. We know that. But I also want to make sure that Suresh shares with you the journey of being an entrepreneur, the thought process. He's also been a great corporate citizen. He understands the corporate jungle that is out there, right? I wanted to talk about this a bit and talk about that. We're also going to talk a bit more about SalesTable as well. Suresh, I do want to give you an opportunity to tell us a bit more about the magic that you're creating. So, Suresh, if I were to start off, Suresh, do you want to give a quick biographical sketch of yourselves? You know, where you're coming from, where the journey is, where do you think you're going? And then we'll get into it.

Yeah, absolutely. I've really started my journey as a core software engineer, by the way, and I spent almost 6 years in Bosch Germany, and that was a fun, amazing 6 years of time that I spent working with automotive customers. Especially my customer was Porsche and Volkswagen. So I had amazing time in Stuttgart, Germany, by the way, that I can absolutely say for sure. And while I was developing software for cars, and really looking into the opportunity where I can really carve out my career, the one thing that really stood out to me was I was always interested in deep problem solving. That's really who I am at core. It didn't really matter for me what technology I'm using or what industry that I'm working with. That really self-analysis in a way really brought me to the point that if I'm doing this, I should really get closer to customers. I need to understand what problems that they have. Why are they even asking to solve a problem? Just because somebody asked you to solve a problem doesn't necessarily mean that that is exactly the problem that they have. And I think that's really the bunch of insights that I gathered at that point of time, Deepak. When I say that, that's really when I moved from more of the engineering role to product management role, really taking care of the product, working with the customers directly, and then also the sales. Because think about, right, as an engineer, I didn't even want to talk to customers initially. I mean, it was like there is a mental block as an engineer that, you know, why should I talk to them? I know what to solve, right? Like many of the engineers that I was definitely in the same boat. But then the more and more I spoke with customers, that's when I realized that when people talk about problems, they may not be exactly saying the problem that they have, that's only a symptom of the problem that they have. So that's really when the more and more customers that you talk to, the more insights that you are able to get. And that really gives you an opportunity to build something that is great and that is for the bigger set of people. I think that's really one of the biggest takeaway for me during that time, Deepak. And that's when after that I moved to the Silicon Valley. And after that, I did about 4 companies, by the way, and in each of them I was a product co-founder. And I've learned a fair bit of lessons from every single startup that is out there. But the only one thing that stood out to me was the first startup that completely failed. And again, there is a lot of founders and gurus that say, oh, you know what, you know, don't call it as a failure, that is a stepping stone, you are learning. But again, I mean, I don't want to kind of sugarcoat anything out there. I mean, again, you want to do a startup, you want to run a company to make it successful. That's it. I mean, there is— there are no two ways about that.

You know, Suresh, I'm sorry, but you really got me there. That's actually a very powerful point. You and I know the power of words, right? And we tend to sugarcoat because we don't want people to misunderstand us, right? Our job is not to pull people down. But there's also something called gravity and reality. And you and I know that even if you're not a startup, even if you open something which is very powerful, cash flow is a reality, right? Someone's got to pay the bills. Someone's got to make sure the money comes in right now. This is where I'm actually going to pivot now a bit here. A founder's role is actually multifold. He has to think about his idea, the power that he has in terms— and you're a product guy. You mentioned that a few times, right? And you're always led with product. And I really want to talk about the pain element you raised, because I think that's extremely critical, right? Pain is what you mean, which I think is You're solving a problem for someone. If I go back to you being a founder, and I focus on that for a bit here, when we were discussing titles, as I mentioned, selling versus ideating versus surviving, they're 3 different words, right? And I think that you call upon energies, but how would you say, and what resonates more strongly with you? And how do you balance these 3 things, right? When you're getting pulled in 3 directions, then how do you bring it back to what is critical at that point? What tips can you give to the listeners who are typically B2B sellers who are really curious to understand what thought process you can share with them that they can apply in the sales game?

Yeah, absolutely. So if I take a step back to answer your question, I think we all come from our own biases. When I say biases, somebody coming from sales business background, somebody coming from the product background, somebody coming from engineering background. And because of those biases we inherently have, it is very natural for every founder to do over-rotate on few things and then probably not focus on the other things. And I want to really think about it as that is a very natural process and people kind of get worked up saying that, oh, am I over-rotating on product versus sales versus whatever? The idea is not to really think about am I over-rotating on one or the other, but the phase of the startup that you are in, are you doing the right things? That's really how I would really think about it. When I say that, for example, initially when you start a startup, when I say when you start a startup, it's really the 0 to 6 months of time. Your idea is not to really go there and then market your startup shit out of it and then say, oh, you know what, I have a Google ranking of 60 domain ranking, because that doesn't matter, honestly, right?

Yeah.

Because even if you are able to actually make it happen, Nobody cares. The customers don't care. You don't care. And it just doesn't matter. But whereas during that time, all that you need to focus on is talk to your potential customers as much as possible, get the insights as much as possible, not having the bias of saying, hey, this is the problem that I want to solve. And do you have that problem? Because a lot of founders, what we do, I mean, I did that myself, by the way, Deepak, is I come to you and then ask, Deepak, do we have the sales enablement problem?

Right?

And then you'll be like, yeah, I mean, I have some people I need to work on it. Then I'm like, you know what, I have a great tool, by the way. But instead, what I need to think about is, hey, Deepak, today while you sell, what different challenges that you face? Because it's not really about one part of the problem that I'm solving that is relevant. But it is really about all the challenges that I want to learn from you. and see which one of those challenges can I solve using this startup. So again, coming back to your question, Deepak, that's really where I would say I think we all get kind of really pulled over in many directions for sure. But the idea really is based on the state of the startup that you are in, you absolutely have to prioritize your time, whether you are working 16, 17, 18 hours a day, It's really about what am I doing? And is that the right thing that I have to do at this point of time?

I really liked that response, because it actually made me realize one thing. I think the argument you're making is that rather than giving a prescription that says 33%, 33%, 33%, what you're saying is, it depends on where you are at a particular time in a place. Depending on that situational situation, you now adapt your style, you dial up certain things, you dial down certain things. And yes, product ideation requires more emphasis at a specific point. Maybe when you're raising funding and making presentations, you need to now start talking about the marketing and the sales element to it. I think that resonates quite a lot with me. Now, the reality though, is that every founder struggles with this no matter whatever the stage is, right? So if you were to go back and think about that, if I were to force you for an answer and say to you, if you were to redo things, would you look at the selling effort differently? Would there be one idea that you would say a founder should actually look at selling from this perspective and do it at this stage or not do it at this stage or something like that, that could make it more relevant from a sales point of view?

Yeah, absolutely. So from the first startup that I talked about, where we raised almost $1.5 million, and then we had to shut it down after 2 years. When I look back, I think it is a super classic case of engineering founder trying to do sales. When I say that, it was really like I built a product and then I over-rotated saying that, you know what? You build the product, great product, and they will come, and nobody came, right? And the reason why I'm saying that, I'm really proud of that lesson, by the way, is we all have this notion of, you know what, there is this great product, great user experience, great UI, and all that. Yes, that matters for sure. It has to work, and it has to solve the problem. But then beyond that, your great product is only as good as the problem that it's solving. So that is why for me at this point of time, it is really about talking to your prospective customers, no matter where you are. It doesn't really matter which state of the company that you are in. It is always about talking to the right set of prospects, understanding their challenges. And then, because the reason why that is very important is compared to 10 years ago, 15 years ago, in the last 5 years, the businesses have been growing really fast. The environment is really changing very fast. And sometimes, honestly, the startups are not even having the time to course correct on what they have to do. And that is why, no wonder it is unfortunate that so many startups are dying every single month in the last couple of years, is because it doesn't really matter how much money that you raised, But then the problem that you were solving before doesn't exist anymore, or the way you are solving the problem, you have to completely rethink on how you want to solve that problem at this point of time. So that's really how I think about the whole of how do we come together on the sales side of it.

This is, you know, there's so much that I would love to unpack there, but I really want to be cautious of time and There's so much else I want to know about. I'm going to make a pivot. We've used the word pain a couple of times, right, Suresh? And I think you've also emphasized the point. We live in dynamic times. To be honest with you, I would argue COVID and AI, the two together, have actually made me realize that everything I learned for the first 25, 30 years of my life literally got flipped.

Yeah.

And it's now we're playing from a different cheat sheet. We're playing from a different— sometimes I feel it's like I've had a religion change. Question for you. When you were putting together the thought process for SalesTable, what exactly were you reacting to? And if you don't mind also just kind of giving us a feel for what is SalesTable about, what problem or pain were you solving when you ideated around it? And where are you in the process of that organization's life journey? If you could just cover that for us a bit, because then I really want to do a double-click on SalesTable and your effort and work with that.

Absolutely. So one of the things that I did was last, company when we got acquired into Oracle. I was taking care of their product strategy and enabling the sales teams. And that's actually the first time ever that I was actually interacting with about almost 250+ sales reps that are out there as part of our business unit. And as you can imagine, over the 6 years of time that I was with the business unit, I unpacked a lot of things working with sales teams. One, as an engineer, it was always like, you know what, no, you just throw the product out there and then salespeople will do their magic and then get some things done. And there was always— I have to probably admit on this podcast, I was really thinking salespeople would just sell any shit that is out there. But I have to say this, after 10 years of me working closely with salespeople and now with Sales Table, me selling on every single day. I have the highest respect for any salesperson that is out there because a salesperson job is not just transactional, it is actually value creation. And not a lot of people think about it that way. And that's exactly the first realization that I had while I was working through at Oracle. That's number one. Number 2, there is this constant pressure that salespeople used to have. We need to meet these quarterly targets. I'm not able to sell this product, so I will go to some other product and they will combine a bunch of products and then go on to the heavy discounts. Or there are times where you are actually retraining some of these salespeople because there is a new product version that has come in. And clearly, even 6, 7 years ago, the rate of the product changes was so high It was virtually impossible for the sales reps to actually keep up with that pace of innovation. And now what does that really mean? It means the sales reps are always on the constant struggle and stress to actually keep up with what's happening on the product side, the industry, the customers, and all that stuff. And on the top of it, because it is such a high stress environment, you have this what you call as the 30-40% attrition rate in the sales reps. And nobody likes that. Leaders don't like it. Reps don't like it. It just happens in the industry. And unfortunately, we all take it for granted. And that's one thing that I basically looked into it and said, I don't want it to be that way. I don't want sales leaders to think of it and take it for granted. And that's really the genesis of SalesDevil.

Right. So this is interesting. A lot of people, and I meet a lot of founders, right, Suresh? And I'm also working with a few of them. And one thing I've noticed is that ideas come from all over. But this is very interesting. You literally are going through some pain, some experience. You are now getting firsthand experience of it, and you see a business idea. Now, one would argue that's obvious, isn't it? But the reality is that sometimes it's surprising. When we go to a doctor, the doctor asks us a simple question, right, Suresh? How long have you had this pain for? And you'll be surprised to know that 50% of the time we usually say, oh, a couple of weeks. That's interesting, isn't it? If you're in so much pain, why would you? And that's exactly what happens with us. We run complex organizations, we have pain. We become so used to the pain that you sometimes need an outsider, Suresh, like yourself, who sees something and says, why do you guys do it this way though? And then you take an idea and you build out of it. Cool. Sales Table, though, I must ask, what's with the name though? Where did that come from? What was the thought process when you think of a sales table?

Just to step back, Deepak, I think, you know, we were actually working with 2 industry-wide stats, if I may call us. The 80/20 rule where they say 20% of the reps bring in the 80% of the revenue.

Yeah.

And then for me as an engineer mindset, product mindset, I was always wondering now what's happening to the rest of the 80% of the people? What are they doing? How are we improving? How are we helping them? That's number one stat. And number 2 is where they say every sales manager is spending almost 10 hours per week per rep. in helping them, coaching them. And now when I think about it, which basically means if I'm a sales manager, by the time I actually spend and help 4 sales reps, my 40-hour week is done.

Yeah, right. The math is against you. Correct. The math is against you. Yeah.

Yeah. And now sales manager is not just doing the sales coaching and helping the deal execution with the reps. But they're also strategizing. They're also helping with the quarterly strategy and the pipeline development strategies and everything. And now when you really look into what a sales manager is expected to do and what they're doing, it just doesn't match. I mean, it is humanly impossible for a sales manager to support, let's say, 10 reps and still do the sales strategy and management. So I think those were the 2 things that, that really bothered me a lot as to say, why are even people taking it for granted in that sense? So for me, it really came out to be that sales leaders have the right intention to help sales reps.

Yes.

And sales reps, of course, has the right intention to actually meet the quota. But the gap that we see out there is really where We need to come together, discuss, and solve. And that's really where we said, you know what, that is the sales table.

As you were moving your hands, I just imagined you doing that. Bring everyone to the table and let's resolve. Let's figure it out. And I was also thinking about the 80% that you said, right? If 20% at the table are dealing very well and winning, how do you get the other 80% to come to the same table and win also? So for some reason, my Las Vegas vibes kicked in, right? So I was looking at it. And then also, I'm an ex-deal desk guy, right? So for me, when we talk about the table, we always talk about metaphors, right? Hey guys, I think that on this deal, we left money on the table. Hey guys, this— on this deal, we were not at the table. Our competition was at the table and they closed the deal. So for me, that word table is so powerful. It's coming together of people, resources. It's coming together of the ideas. It's also people at the table Right. That also conveys that I am now sharing in the richness, right? That's why they say, let's give everyone an opportunity to sit around the table, right? Not sit on the periphery. Powerful name. Love it. Now, so let's get digging into it because you were talking about sales managers, right? So if I'm a sales manager, I think what I heard was as follows. You have a product, a product that actually helps sales managers manage their guys better, better training, better outcomes. If I were to force you a bit, and I, and to be honest with you, when I hear sales enablement, I have heard 3 or 4 different definitions. What is your definition for my audience as to what sales enablement is from your point of view, Suresh?

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think we probably, I have to put in some context to come to what we are doing now. If you really think about, Deepak, what sales enablement has come across previously, I'm sure, I think, you know, there are these sales processes that are out there. I mean, there are a bunch of great sales process companies and methodologies that are out there. And now it came to a gap where, oh, okay, all these methodologies are there, but then how do I let my sales reps train on them? And then this whole of the sales training came in, sales coaching came in, and then the next thing came out to be, okay, this is all great, but then how do I make sure that every single rep is actually getting trained on the product, trained on the sales process, sales, on the sales methodology, and then the CRMs and all that stuff? And then we introduced the entire sales enablement team. But the one of the biggest complaints that we keep hearing from the leaders is that sales enablement unfortunately has become a function of training and not the real revenue generation. And again, I don't want to get into the argument of whether that is the right thing or the wrong thing in a way.

Yeah.

But the net-net, what happened was to say we need something that enables every single sales rep on how they are executing their deals. We need to help them on a daily basis on how do I send this email, what is the best email response for this one, and what are the next steps for this particular deal? Can I know a little more about the pharma company that I'm actually going and working with? I want to understand how I can position this product to a leader that I'm going with, knowing the kind of products that they are selling to their customers. So there is so much of complexity that is out there.

Right.

It is virtually impossible for managers to actually support that. And that's exactly where, Deepak, we created this, what we call as the AI Sales Manager, where it is actually a copilot for the managers so that managers don't have to spend time on the training, the coaching, the role-play angle, as well as answering the questions of the sales reps. But at the same time, for the sales reps, it's really about becoming confident before I go to a customer call. I think that's really where we combine everything together.

This is interesting. Now you brought the word AI and SalesMaj in one sentence here. Is this a form of a role play or is AI making the sales manager smarter in terms of how he interacts with, or is it a combination of both? Just, could you just clarify that?

Yeah. So again, a little bit of context on this one is we've definitely seen in the industry, Deepak, I'm sure, you know, you have seen every single day as a leader, you know, I'm sure you get bombarded with your inbox with all the sales tools and everything. I'm sure, I think, You're not surprised to that angle. But where I think what's happening now is because of the AI, the cost of developing software has dramatically reduced. Somebody can very easily go to Vercel, Replit, Lovable, all these kind of things, and then say, hey, I have this great app, which is fine. But what's happening is everybody is trying to build point solutions. One solution for deal preparation, one solution for role plays, one solution for onboarding. And now, Deepak, I want to probably ask you, if you are there sitting there as a CRO and VP of sales and you are trying to decide these 100 tools that are out there, I would imagine you would actually be highly, highly stressed, not because there are no good options out there, but you have no idea which ones will actually work together seamlessly for your team.

Absolutely. In fact, as you were talking, I had an image of me as a CRO with a club in my hand, bringing in all of these 100 into a room and saying, only 4 will survive because I want this to work together. I don't know what to do with all these bits and pieces. And I think that's a very important point. In fact, I'm doing a lot of work and I'm very big with AI in my own work and stuff. And what I was actually trying to explain to people is that everyone is going crazy about videos and vibe coding and stuff. And my response is, Yes, that's awesome. But you— that's a point solution at a particular point for a particular thing you are excited. Now the question is, in the enterprise space, and when you're giving solutions that need to scale, how are you going to make everything to talk to each other? And 2, do you really think that salespeople— one of the biggest things that salespeople hate is, Suresh, pivoting, right? I don't want to swivel from one product to another product to a 3rd product and have to see 5 different colors, 6 different formats, and 17 times I have to re-enter or regurgitate the same information. And as it is, you already have bring your own AI happening like crazy on the side. I mean, the more salespeople I talk to, honestly, Suresh, they're using the company AI facilities and they're grateful, but they're also running their own licenses, $60, $100 per month to run their own custom ChatGPTs and stuff on how to write an email, how to write a DM, how to analyze an RFP. There's absolute chaos that's going on out there. I'm excited at the same time, I must be honest with you. Now, very interestingly, with this conversation, you've actually literally opened up where my next thought process was gonna go is that where do you see AI in sales enablement and its impact? I think you've already kind of given me a flavor for it, but is there anything else you wanna add to that conversation?

Yeah, absolutely, Deepak. I mean, one of the things that I want to be very cognizant of is in the recent Harvard study, and then I think, you know, McKinsey, everybody's doing the same thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 90% of the enterprise implementations have failed. Again, I don't want to necessarily take that as a negative thing. I think that's really where a lot of press went really bad on the AI, but that is actually a great learning opportunity for us to say, why did they fail? Number 1, is it because of the technology or is it because of the process and the people? That's really where we have the greatest of the opportunity to bring the technology process people together in a way that we always think about the KPIs, what are the outcomes, rather than using AI just for the sake of using AI. What I mean by that is this. A lot of sales leaders, Deepak, that we are talking to, they say, oh, you know what? It is super overwhelming for us because we are analyzing AI, CRMs and AI pipeline development, AI SDRs, and AI contract management, and AI closers as well. Now when we think about it, clearly, of course, they are confused. If I'm the decision maker, I would be confused as well. That's exactly where what we are saying and seeing is we brought the whole of the onboarding, training, the entire collaboration of the sales leaders and the sales teams and the role plays and the knowledge base that can actually answer all your questions about the deal preparation, the deal help, everything together so that as a sales leader, all that you have to worry about is what are the outcomes that I'm expecting out of Sales Table when I bring in Rather than thinking about how do I want to really integrate these different 10 tools that I have. And that's the biggest, I would say, pivot that we have taken last year because of the complete richness of the platforms that we are seeing in the AI market.

So I'm going to ask you a question. There are many B2B sellers on this call now. They can see how Suresh benefits from AI and how Suresh is going to make the world a better place for them. There's some of those guys who are going to ask you maybe a question. If I give an opportunity, if this were a live show, I'm sure you'll get a question such as, Suresh, do you believe that AI is a threat or is AI going to take jobs? I do see a lot of rattling that will happen, but I'm just curious, what's your perspective on AI and whether it's this so-called, you know, the sky is going to fall type of comments, right? 250 million jobs are going to disappear and so on. What's your reaction to that? I mean, what does that make you feel as an entrepreneur, as a founder, as well as someone who's got this very powerful product? that's actually helping salespeople get better at what they do while releasing time back to sales managers?

Yeah, so the way I really think about it, Deepak, is in every single department that we see out there, there will absolutely be changes and challenges because of the AI. I think that's something that I want to be very cautious about. And when I say that, for example, When there is mechanical repeatable jobs that are out there, those are the ones that will absolutely go away. And with the risk of getting some criticism, I will say this. For example, when we think about the data science jobs previously, we actually— data science jobs are one of the highest paying jobs in the industry that is out there, 6-figure jobs. And then people doing a lot of analysis on the spreadsheets and the databases, bringing the data and everything. Now when you really think about it, the job that was supposed to take a couple of months for a senior data scientist is now probably done by ChatGPT, the likes of the Claude and everything within an hour or one day at the max. For example, even accounting for some complexities. That's one. But the places where I would say that there will still be a lot of leeway would be think about customer success. When I think about the customer success, a lot of folks who are doing the customer success, they are directly interacting with the customers. They are learning from the customers on what is working for them, what is not working for them.

Yes.

They are providing that feedback to the product and the tech teams and the sales teams. That's definitely one part where I would see these are less impacted per se, Deepak. Again, to your point, my long outlook would be definitely there are some jobs unfortunately that will go away and disappear because of the AI that is out there. There are some jobs that will be much more efficient because of the AI. And again, just to make sure, when I say efficient, instead of having 10 people to do the same job, you will probably need only 2 people.

Correct. And, and Suresh, as you were speaking, I actually realized, and the job will change because the way that we are today acting and behaving or the way we do selling will change dramatically, right? I just look at sales enablement. There used to be this era whereby a physical presence of an individual in a room with slides to teach you sales was supposed to be de facto, right? If you remember the brochures of all the sales training companies, you would always have an image of a man or a woman standing in front of an audience talking. And now when you look at those same brochures, you actually see the image of most likely an artificial, you know, AI persona or an avatar, you know, just talking out from a screen. To me, this is a shift. And I think those salespeople who are impacted are most likely going to be salespeople impacted by other salespeople who are using AI to their advantage. That I think is the biggest threat that I would position. And you actually made a very powerful point very early when you spoke about the 80/20 principle, right? If those 20% of the people that already had certain behavioral traits which were smart are now latching onto AI the way that they should be based on those characteristics that put them in the top 20%, your ratio is going to end up being most likely 10% delivering 90% of the results. And you can have a huge shift because someone even challenged me. Someone once said to me, Suresh, no, what if 50% deliver 100% of the result? I said, yes. The problem is how big is the 50% now? Maybe it used to be 10. Now you can get the same job done with 5 people. So either ways you cut it, Suresh, I think you've got a very valuable point. Now, can we put a mathematical number to it? I'm not sure, but we'll see how it plays out. Now, Suresh, I would like to start wrapping up and I would like to just make sure that the audience knows where they can find you, where they can reach out to you. What's your best locations? Give me an idea on that and sales table website and stuff like that. You know.

Yeah.

This is the moment where I get sad because I have to say goodbye. But this is why I'm struggling with this segment.

No, Deepak, I mean, I'll say this. You are one of the natural conversationalists that I ever known. That is for sure. And thank you for—

Please tell that to my wife because she tells me that, God, you're gonna die because of your mouth. You talk too much or you eat too much. End of story.

That's a separate topic for sure.

That's a separate topic. You're right. You're right.

Yeah. So from my point of view these days, I'm actually spending a lot of good time. Of course, SalesTable is my high priority. And then I also work with a lot of founders advising them and investing into the startups as well. And from that angle, I am really big into LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most powerful tools I've ever found as a professional person that is out there. And some people use it a lot, some people not. But I would definitely say if you are not using LinkedIn the way it is supposed to be, please do start using LinkedIn to the extent that— I'll tell you a small story, by the way. There are a bunch of friends, Deepak, who actually are on LinkedIn. They keep posting. They won't probably get too many likes, for example, but Unfortunately, we all look for that likes, right? I mean, how many likes did you get on the post? But then hit. Yeah, that document hit. But then I think what they actually shared me was really very important for me to understand. It seems when it was the time for them to find the next job, next role in their careers, when they actually reached out to people. They actually said, hey, you know what, Deepak? I saw that you are actually a sales leader. I keep seeing your post. I really appreciate your post. And now the reason why I'm saying that is it is not just about the likings on your posts, but a lot of people are observing without liking your posts or commenting on your posts. And that is one way for you to actually think about building your credibility and trust. Again, if somebody is using ChatGPT, we all know that they are using the ChatGPT content. But then as long as you are authentic and you are really coming with very strong viewpoints and ideas, I think that's what everybody loves. So that, that's one definitely takeaway I would definitely encourage a lot of founders for sure. But from my point of view, definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn, uh, is one area and on anything related to sales and sales enablement and what problems we are trying to solve in the sales space, I'm really happy to chat at suresh@salestable.ai is really my email. But other than that, I mean, I really respect a lot of what Deepak puts out there on LinkedIn as well. I'm sure we keep commenting on everything that is out there.

Cool.

That's really a great place.

And it's a great place because, Suresh, you're also putting in a lot of effort in ideation. At the end of the day, there's one thing that's very interesting for everyone, right? There's a lot of noise. Sometimes you need certain people to break through the noise to make sense of that noise, right? A lot of buyers actually go into panic mode because when they hear all this noise, they actually don't know where to start. So sometimes being present and being a sanitizing voice or a voice of sanity— I think that's right English— Can be very powerful, and I think that's where. And I like the point you made, Suresh, about lurkers, and I agree with you. Everyone is fascinated with that three or five percent that will bite, but there's another ninety-five percent that are so quiet. They may come two years from now, but they'll come one day. And I think this is what we need to do—that patience that one needs to have. Now, I and you and I would agree this is not a LinkedIn lecture, nor do I want to sell LinkedIn and position LinkedIn. I want to position Sales Table. Ladies and gentlemen, Suresh is at Suresh at SalesTable dot ai. salestable.ai is the website. Have a look at it. Please follow Suresh. I will drop his LinkedIn details when I do the posting with this video and other information about him. Suresh, I want to thank you very much, sir. Really great conversation. I always like to bring people that bring in a different vibe, right? And I think the experience with Oracle, finding that pain point and sharing that journey with a lot of people on this call can actually give people some understanding. And I really like your point that you made about Failure, right? We shouldn't sugarcoat it. And I think no one starts a business with intent to fail, nor should we then use that failure as a way to justify that failure, right? We need to dig in deep and understand why did we fail. And look at you, you had a choice. You could have said, I have failed, and therefore go back and cover yourself in a sheet and cry. You came back with a vengeance, and here we are talking about that vengeance, right? And sometimes that's what matters, right? Coming back, the knock— if you fall, you come back again. So, sir, Suresh, thank you very much for sharing the time with us. I am going to call it quits now, sir. We've just crossed the 41 minutes mark, and I think this is the zone where people will say, "I'm going to turn into pumpkin. Please let me go home." Suresh, take care so much. Absolutely appreciate my my pleasure having you. Take care, boss.