Speaker 1Being consciously competent, the way I always explain it is you've got artists, right? And some people, they just wake up and they start painting and it's incredible what they can do. And then you ask somebody, you know, how do you do that? Well, I don't know. I just get up and I start painting and something beautiful comes up. No, but come on, you need to tell me if I want to do something like that, you got to explain to me how you do it. Well, I don't know. I mean, I might just smoke some weed or something and then I get more inspiration and I paint even greater, right? Remember Bob Ross? Crazy hair. Exactly. And he would be on TV a long time ago, but he would tell you exactly how you needed to, you know, paint or do a face or do something. But if I see that, then I'm like, you know what? I think I can actually put something on paper that looks decent because he was telling you the science behind the art.
Speaker 2Well, welcome to the revenue builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives hosted by five times CRO, John McMahon and force management co-founder, John Kaplan. The show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that and seen the results. Revenue builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.
Speaker 3In this revenue builders replay, we're revisiting a conversation with Frederick Maris. Who was CRO at Atos Software SE when he first joined the podcast and is now co-founder and chief revenue officer of Elite GTM. Across leadership roles at companies including Splunk, Zoom, DataRobot, BMC and PTC, Frederick has built and led enterprise sales organizations through periods of growth, transformation and international scale. In this conversation, he shares what it takes to turn sales knowledge into repeatable execution, develop consciously competent managers and train teams to succeed in complex enterprise environments. Let's dive in.
Speaker 4So, Frederick, you know, let's talk about a lesson that you might have learned selling enterprise software that you wish you really knew earlier in your career.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it's so the the one of the lucky things that happened to me was I joined PTC at a very early age. I worked for reseller only for nine months, so I basically got a paid university of sales at PTC. I really see it that way. And when you when you look at the lessons that I learned there, I mean, I was forced to learn. I had to learn. But I think that early in your career, you want to learn as much as possible, right? It's clearly just suck up as much as you can, try to figure out what's going on, what's important, you know, how things work. And then the other thing is that the people that you're working with is incredibly important. So building that network. Network and and building that because it's going to deliver you so much for the future. And in the beginning, you're going to have to prove yourself, you know, you're going to have to get experience. But it's only until later that you can really cash in if you do those things well. So you need to improve in what you do and you need to build that network with with with a lot of good people.
Speaker 4Yeah. And what worse? What does stand out as maybe one or two or even three? Lessons that, you know, that was really cemented in my head in the early days.
Speaker 1Qualifying was incredibly important. Yeah, that's that's just where it starts.
Speaker 4Qualifying everything, right? Not just qualifying deals. Qualify everything. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Qualifying deals, qualifying, you know, recruits, qualifying the customer, qualifying everything, right?
Speaker 1Exactly. And even, you know, why? Why am I at the company that I'm at? Right. Am I am I am I wasting my time? Am I doing things that are going to bring me to whatever I want to achieve at a certain time in the future? Yeah, that that's a that's a huge one. I think the other part is I'm a big believer in becoming consciously competent. So you want to you want to know. Why, you know, things and why they're important. If I think probably, if anything, after five or six years of PTC, I became unconsciously confident, competent. And when I joined the companies between that and BMC, I kind of naturally did the things that I did. Even, for instance, recruitment. Right. I would speak to people and I would I would it could go anyway. I could go an hour and I could. I don't really know where it went. I just at the end of the hour, I have a feeling whether I like that person or didn't. And then when when I joined BMC again, I was really brought back to, you know, becoming consciously competent. And Jeremy. Yeah, Jeremy Duggan, you're not going to get away from anything there. So he made me so consciously competent around recruitment, for instance, that you you're lazy, you're focused on what you're looking for in that hour. And you start to. You know, prepare a sequence on how you can qualify those things. It goes back to qualifying again. Right. But how you can qualify those things that you're looking for during the interview. So at the end of the interview, instead of saying, I like this person, you know exactly why you like that person and what the risks are. And, you know, you know so much more than.
Speaker 4Yeah. And, you know, things you brought up, you know, to to learn really early in your career and be around people that, you know, can make up your network for later. Were you conscious that you were in with a group of people that that you would be able to network later in your career or or do you look see that only when you look back?
Speaker 1I think that so clearly as your career progresses and you start to see where all these people went, you realize that you're in something special. I think, though, even when. You know, when I was there, just the speed with which things went, the the the pace, the it was you could tell that that was a special, you know, thing, because when you spoke to your friends, it was different. You know, it's just a different story. So I don't think I was like consciously competent or really aware of what that meant to me at that point in time. And I was pretty young kid having a good time. Even regretting that I wasn't playing tennis at that point in time. But when certainly looking back and quite quickly, you realize that that was something special.
Speaker 4Yeah, it was funny because you just made me think about it. So when people would come up to interview with me eventually at a secretary that would go down and get them out of the lobby and when she would come up, she almost knew like almost everybody kind of was starting to act and almost. She would look at me when the person was walking away from her towards me and basically like, like, there's no way like this guy is not going to make it. And after I would do the interview, I don't think she was ever really wrong. You know, she would shake her head like, yeah, this guy's going to make it or this person's not going to make it. It's really amazing because it was a certain special read of people. Yeah. And then. Now, when you look back, it was also the sales process was pretty well cemented, too, right? Was do you think now, even after all your experience, that there's a certain step in the sales process or stage of the sales process that's key to being successful?
Speaker 1No, totally. If you look, it starts and that's where everything basically gets done. It starts with the eye in the sea. It starts with the pain and it starts with a potential champion. And it sounds simple, but all these things, they're made simple, but they're not easy. You have to you have to understand what that pain is and not only what is the pain to the company, but what is that person? What are the personal wins? You know, fears, pains, whatever. And the more you understand that, the better you get that, the easier it becomes to build that. That person into a champion. And once you really understand the pain, find the pain above the noise and you build that champion and the rest kind of does take care of itself. It's still hard work and there's a lot involved. But without that foundation, you're never going to get to the place you want to get.
Speaker 4Yeah. You have to do an excellent discovery process. If you're not doing an excellent discovery process, like you said, everything downstream gets harder to do. But if you do a really good job, everything gets a lot easier. You're going downstream, right? Easier to find the champion, easier to build the cost justification types of things. So when you're teaching some of your people about discovery, are there certain key aspects that you tell them like you have to pay attention to in the discovery process?
Speaker 1It really starts with the preparation. It's an interesting one, because now as a CRO, I'm actually the amount of people reaching out to me. these BDRs with their sequencing and everything, it's just, it's crazy and you're you're really always adding or trying to add work to somebody that's pretty busy right so i'm seeing all this stuff coming in i'm like i don't have time for this i have to do my important stuff and once in a while you'll see something that that is like something you're working on at that point in time that kind of gets your interest but then sometimes the way that the the the messages are sent is is really poor so it's like if if that's the way they start off
Speaker 4what does that mean for the whole sales cycle and um that's very important you know because now you're seeing it for people that are trying to sell to you right and the ones that it sounds like the ones that resonate with you are the ones that actually are talking about some of the pains
Speaker 1or issues that you actually have exactly you you need to you need to prepare and you need to differentiate yourself right that's that's what you when i always tell my guys you're really want to differentiate yourself from the other people that are trying to reach somebody and and you you obviously want to do it in a good way because you can also differentiate yourself in a in a poor way that's never good um and and that differentiation is by understanding what somebody is dealing with what what their issues are what their you know what what their priorities are and if you do that then um i think then you're going to stand a chance to actually get the opportunity to ask questions because that's really what you want to do if you don't ask questions then you're never going to understand what the implications are of the things that they're facing and what it would mean to them if they could fix it and really start to dive into those things so you can start to get a sense whether there's going to be a cost justification or not um but if if you don't if you don't if you don't get to the point where you actually earn the right to ask those questions you're you know it ends right there
Speaker 5uh frederick as a cro let's talk about roles and responsibilities for a second so um what role and responsibility does the company have of getting their act together and aligning behind the pain personas sales process buying process what role does the cro play because there's a lot of people looking to get their act together and there's a lot of people listening are saying my company either has that or they don't have it and i have to create it and get it to my people and now we got sellers out there that are you know using differentiation or using some form of discovery hopefully calling on the right icp as a cro what did you notice about that and and what advice do you give cro's on how to get
Speaker 1everybody together on that that's actually a really uh really good uh question john um so when i was going through the whole interview process um you know again qualifying right am i going to be able to have the opportunity to make an impact here um or which which in many cases i think what the average tenure of the cro is a private company under two years public company it's like two and a half years or something um i joined a company that uh that's been in business quite a long time the interesting thing is that i've been in business for a long time and i've they've done a complete uh switch to cloud native solution uh product is incredibly strong um they've been very successful um over the last i think 19 record years in a row it's uh it's it's a very stable growth profitability is through the roof but they've been doing things pretty much the same way over those 19 years and we're getting now to a point where we need to scale and where the market is expecting us to go international they're very strong in germany um there's there's you know enough opportunity if i say it in uh uh in a in a in a polite way outside of germany and um the the whole the whole conversations around the the recruitment or the the when when i was interviewing was how do you guys see that next step because if you think that somebody's just going to come in there and magically things are going to change or going to go differently then it's not going to happen and as a i think you're right the whole organization needs to get behind that it's how do you develop your products because you're getting input from the market that these and these things are important but how do you provide the data to make sure that you can do the things that you know all these modern startups are doing and and in some cases companies with with a lot of money out there you know how do you mean remain competitive how do you change how do you actually put a sales process in place because that's something that the company had never done before and um uh the what i for me what a big real um uh big reason was to join was i got along well with the ceo ceo and i think he he clearly saw the need to change um and and giving me the reins of the sales organization of the revenue organization actually more than sales organization only but also the fact that they have an external um investor in there um since uh about a year now a year and a half they're becoming more and more active who obviously uh this is general atlantic they deal with you know they have a huge portfolio of companies so they know what good looks like and they're also from their side ensuring that we become a modern company not from a product perspective but from from a total organization perspective so we're we're setting rev ops uh setting up rev ops right now uh we're hiring data analysts you know we're doing we're setting up sdrs pdrs um the the renewals people customer success those are all functions that in the past they haven't really had and they didn't really need because the churn is incredibly no we're like a two or three percent churn um on a on a year-to-year basis so those are good things but that's good for now you want to make sure that that stays good for the future and then you can start to really build your your business and start to grow more aggressively as well i think you started with some really really good
Speaker 5advice on like when you're interviewing for these companies and or if you're a company you're thinking about these things you know we talk a lot about the three whys like it should be clear the cro is not coming up with these is my point meaning part of the role of the cro is to get a company to coordinate their thoughts and get out of their heads you know the three whys why buy anything why buy anything now why buy anything for me uh the four essential questions of value what problems do you solve for your customers how specifically do you solve them how do you solve them differently or anybody else and where have you done it before the how a buyer buys um and then mapping a sales process my expectation is these things exist inside a company many times in multiple ways multiple ideas uh multiple opinions and the cro's job is to make sure that you have the ability to get that information out of the heads of what i call the hundred pound brains and get it into a three-foot conversation in front of a customer and so i think today cro's have to be really really good number one qualifying that before you take the job is the information there okay now how do we get it in the hearts and minds and souls of the of the individuals the men and women that go to work every day and then like you said how are we on the alert i think this is where companies miss it because they don't map how the buyer buys and why the buyer buys buyers change buyer things change in the marketplace praying changes for the customer and if you don't really understand how they buy and why they buy you might miss an opportunity to have a sales process set up for an old way of buying in an old way of reason for buying so i kind of i'd like your feedback for you from you guys do you guys agree with that like a lot of times ceos and investors are saying hey i want the cro come in and do all that and i think it's i i think it's it doesn't happen without the the basic foundations inside the company cro needs to optimize it and operationalize it what do you guys think about
Speaker 1that so i i think you're you're very much describing the things that i'm you know i've been dealing with for the last three months i've only joined three months ago um the there's there's a tremendous amount of knowledge in the company yeah it's very siloed people are not working together which is something that we're changing now um the the to make the process repeatable so that people new people coming on board that they can ramp quickly you know what what are the sales plays with the personas what are the material that you can learn quickly to to to start to practice these things our sales cycles are way too long we need to we need to reduce them significantly um and and then um work speak the same language so that when when you speak to each other that people actually understand what you're talking about and i those are those
Speaker 5are exactly the things that i'm going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this is what i was thinking you were going through right now this I tell people that all the time. The things you just listed was one One of the reasons why the company scaled so fast is that it had a really, really good way of getting what was happening to the customer into a process that would allow us to discover with the customer to get them to participate in a conversation and qualify themselves. And I think that's really, really good advice that you just said. Really good.
Speaker 4Yeah, go ahead, Frederick.
Speaker 1No, no, go ahead.
Speaker 4What I was going to say is a lot of this goes back to what Frederick said first is, you know, it's preparation. And what you were basically alluding to, John, is like making sure that the reps know what to prepare for before they go into an account. You know, so that material or information or knowledge is in the house and easily accessible by the reps so they know what to prepare for. Then I think it's that now it's the job of the CRO to make sure that. They implement effective training and the training on what do I do with this information and then how did how do I do it? So the knowledge of what to do and then learning the skills of how to do it, you know, so how to effectively open up the pitch, effectively ask the right questions, those types of discovery things that you do. And then it's also the job of the CRO. Or any sales leader gets not just the CRO to do as Frederick said, you know, repeat it over and over because these are skills. So you have to repeat it with your people over and over and over to get them to really understand how to do it and to then be successful doing it. So it takes some discipline around constantly repeating it with your people until they master that because it is a skill. And skills don't happen overnight. You know, they take many, many repetitions. And that's the real hard part of getting if you went if you're in Frederick's job. To now get that those skills instilled in your people and the only way you do it is with repeatability and then winning. And once they win because they learn these new skills and they know what to do and how to do it, they're never looking back. They're gone. They're on their own. And you can see it in the people, you know, when they won and they got through. It and they were frustrated, then they got it. And now you see them take off in the way that I used to think is I don't have to worry about this person anymore. I'm going to go worry about these other people over here.
Speaker 5I like that. I think that's a. You highlighted three things that we've been talking about this for a couple of minutes now, which is which is related to what Frederick brought up in the beginning with culture and stuff like that, I see three things like knowledge, skills and culture. Exists for a sales. Organization and for a company. And I think the message I'm trying to relay here is that the best arrows I've ever seen are the ones that really understand knowledge exists inside the company. Therefore, create skills on how to bring that knowledge to the marketplace. And then there is a culture that is created by the application of that knowledge and skills. And for me, that kind of sums up for me, it was a culture of accountability. And you can hold an organization accountable. Think about that if you're a seller and you have the knowledge that you need, which is the pain of the customer, the persona, the ICPs, how they buy, why they buy. And then you've been given the skills on, let's say, how to attach to the biggest business issue, how to differentiate the decision criteria. Those are really specific high end skills. Now you have an expectation. It's so easy to lead in that environment because you have an expectation that now I'm going to create. A culture of execution and accountability based upon those knowledge and skills. The point I'm trying to make here is that when I talk to a lot of CROs and they tell me, I say, hey, what's the first thing you're going to do? They're going to go, I'm going to figure out the ICP and then I'm going to and then I'm going to really understand what our differentiators are. And and they're like they're thinking they're creating all this stuff. And a lot of times I back up and say, hey, does this stuff not exist already? Like, does the does the knowledge of the customer problem? And sometimes what happens is people start to put in processes. And try to recreate stuff that's already in the heads of the hundred pound brains. I think the great CROs are the ones who get the company to look outside in and say, hey, time out, let's get all this stuff down. Let me put it in knowledge buckets. Let me put it in skills buckets and therefore I can create a culture of accountability. I'm working with some CROs. They're like six months. They're still trying to figure out what their differentiators are. They're asking the wrong questions internally. So does that resonate for you guys? Mm hmm.
Speaker 1Now, totally, totally. It's it's an interesting one, because here we we have kind of two buckets. There's a couple of people that have been here for ages and they you know, all the knowledge is in their heads. They know exactly how to do these things. They don't need any pre sales. They and it's it's a pretty complex sale. And then. There's a there's a lot of young people and especially for these young people, the knowledge isn't shared. They come in, they're expected, they do an onboarding and then they're expected to go and sell. So if you want to build that, because the enablement is super important, they're what I like about the young people is they're they're hungry, they're coachable, they're driven, they want to be successful. But if they don't get the right coaching and development, then. They're going to they're going to just be butting their heads against the wall. Right. They're not going to be successful. And the only way you do that is you need to make sure and it's something that I'm trying to figure out. How do I scale that organization? How do I transform that organization as quickly as possible? That first line manager role is so important because if they don't if they don't lead right, if they don't ask the right questions, if they don't coach, if they don't develop, if they don't support you in the important meetings, if they don't. They're not there with you in the in the new business meetings that you're doing, then their people are. How can you expect their people to do something that their manager doesn't want to do or maybe doesn't know how to do? And then, you know, it becomes very difficult. So and you know that I mean, the force management, it's come out of the message with with all these things, getting the managers to do it. You need you need them to be in a situation that they can actually, you know. Convey that message to the people on the floor. Just I've seen so many companies only train AEs and nothing in between.
Speaker 5Yeah, Johnny, that, you know, one of the things I learned from John McMahon was and that's kind of what we brought to force management. John McMahon realized or him and his staff at PTC back in the day that the frontline sales manager is so crucial. Not only do you have to win the hearts and minds of the frontline sales manager, most companies aren't. Set up to even educate or coach and develop the frontline sales manager. They spend all the time with the reps and the resources and they forget like it's never going to get done without the hearts and minds of of the sales leaders. Johnny, how did you did you just understand that? Or did you, you know, five times CRO? Did you did you learn the hard way?
Speaker 4Well, we had to our attrition was way too high. So, you know, when I got the job, I said, I got to bring down the attrition. I'm tired. I've hearing people say somebody that they recruited when you said, okay, why are you getting rid of them? And they would say stupid things like, oh, he's a shit bird or he's, you know, he's this or he's that. And then I'd feel like saying, well, wait a second. Who who hired him? Who is supposed to train and develop them? Who is supposed to lead them? So when you failed, I started putting attention on the first line and second line leader saying when somebody leaves, you got to go down to the bathroom and figure out. Was it because you recruited the wrong person or you couldn't train them and develop them and coach them to be successful? It's one of those. So go figure out what it is. So we don't keep making the same mistakes. Then I started putting the attention, you know, hard attention on those first line managers to make sure that they knew what the hell they were doing to your point. And holding them accountable to making sure that brand new reps were getting their first deals, the quicker they could get those first deals and you get them through that. And then the process I had put some MBOs in the, in the comp plan saying you have to help these reps get their first deal within a certain period of time, or you don't get your MBO. So now they're attention because most first line managers don't know how to really spend their time. So what they would prefer to do is the veteran sales rep is going out to get a million dollar deal. So where does the rep, where's the leader go? The first line manager with not a lot of experience, they go to drag the bear in from the woods with the million dollar deal. And bring it back to the campfire. So everybody could say, oh, you were great. You were fantastic. Meanwhile, there's a rep suffering over here. They can't really, you know, do proper discovery and can't get their first deal yet. And the next thing you know, they're retreating and you got to get the attrition down, right? You got to get these people successful. Otherwise, you're going to go recruit the same people with a different resume or different CV. Same thing's going to happen. So how do I stop? How do I break this chain? This loop? What's going on? And the only way is to hold people accountable to making sure that those reps are getting their first deals as soon as possible.
Speaker 1that's where your focus is because i i think that's uh that's like the third uh uh thing that if people struggle for too long they're going to give up right that's why the the grit and the the perseverance or the in in the character you know you're going to find a way to get things done you're not going to give up that's so important uh and especially even more so i think in these days with the new generations coming up you look at resumes people are changing jobs five times in five years they try something don't get immediately the result that they're looking for they try the next thing and if you've got some longer sales cycles you know it could well be you're not going to close your first deal until maybe and especially if you're on the new business side install base is always different but on the new business side it could take you know nine months twelve months before you actually after you're onboarding after pipeline generation going through the sales process to close the real first deal and and that's when people somewhere along the line do you continue to see and believe you know see the tunnel the light in the tunnel and believe that you're going to close deals and be successful or you're going to give up and you're going to try
Speaker 4it somewhere else yeah it's so important that that first line manager really going back to your point frederick really knows what to do because think about it i'm a new sales rep and i don't have a lot of experience i'm looking at my manager like they are the coach and if they don't know what they're doing i don't know that i came to this company thinking that they do know what they're doing so if they're telling me do a next week do b next week do c and all of these things i fail at because they don't know what they're doing next thing i think well it's my fault that's the coach they know what they're doing so maybe i'm not cut out for this company and selling this product because they don't know what they're doing they tell me to do a and then b and then c and every time i do something i'm failing so it must be my fault and then they are tripped they're gone yeah or in some cases they're they're
Speaker 1actually good they understand that they're pretty smart and they see that their leaders aren't doing the things that you know they they would expect and hope and they're like why am i you know wasting
Speaker 4my time here right i'm gonna go what am i doing with these bb managers of c managers i'm an a player i'm gonna go leave somewhere else and i'm gonna go do something else and i'm gonna do something
Speaker 5else because i want to be around this conversation goes full circle to what frederick said in the beginning of i think one of the number one challenges for an individual contributor that goes to a frontline sales manager is the realization of competence and if you know why you're good you're going to be a great leader if you don't know why you're good and you you're unconsciously competent i think you're going to really struggle as i did when i first became a leader i was a really really good individual contributor and i would just tell people hey just go do what i do like watch this and i would go and in and and do an individual contributor's job at that frontline sales manager i know this is resonating for people out there i know their second third line leaders that know they have basically great individual contributors in these sales leaders role but you'll never scale a company that way that's why understanding what to do johnny i love your idea of getting to the first deal i you know what i have not thought about that in such a long time that could be one of the greatest pieces of advice that a company could do frederick said one of his challenges is he's got a long sales cycle i hear that from every single company that i'm talking to right now some of its economy from last year and the years before what have you and a lot of it is what we're talking about right now you help people get unstuck the quicker you help them get unstuck the sellers can can become consciously competent and now you
Speaker 4can really scale an organization but the reason i also like that then it's not just up to set frederick to figure this whole thing out right because otherwise he has to watch all these reps and managers and figure out okay why can't we crunch the sales process quicker but when i get my first line managers and even my second line managers focused on getting those reps their first deal guess what they start getting pretty good at it and they're not going to be able to do it
Speaker 5pretty smart about how to crunch that sales cycle and one way to do that johnny is what frederick you said also is let's really understand if i'm a cro i'm probably starting with you know icp i'm starting with why does the buyer buy what does the buyer do in each one of these stages and really get to the detail of understanding who's doing what because that's how you get it down to the tactical level that says okay these are the steps that's what i loved about my upbringing at ptc is that i was you know led by leaders that said john these are the stages this is why the customer buys this is the pain this is how people become champions this is how they buy this is why they buy these are the steps they go through based upon that this is what we do in each one of those steps and do that to excellence and completion to exit those steps and you will be successful don't do it not only will you not be successful but you will be successful and you will be successful but you won't be here and i don't mean to be rude or but that was the culture of accountability and
Speaker 1excellence and that's where those two worlds came together uh i think it's always um that the the being consciously competent the way i always explain it is um you know you've you've you've got artists right and some people they just wake up and they start painting and it's incredible what they can do and then uh you ask somebody you know how do you do that well i don't know i just get up and i start painting and something beautiful comes up and no but come on you need to tell me if i want to do something like you got to explain to me how you do it well i i don't know i mean i might just smoke some weed or something and then i get more inspiration and i paint even greater right but then remember uh remember bob ross yeah do you do you know the guy he was the big crazy hair exactly and and you he would be on tv a long time ago but he would he would tell you exactly how you needed to you know paint or do a face or do something and when you looked at that you're like i mean i'm not an artist right i have i have very little artistic uh capability i'm a sports guy but if i see that then i'm like you know what i think i can actually put something on paper that looks decent because he was telling you the science behind the art and it's it's exactly like that if you don't understand the science of what you're doing you're not going to be able to do it right you're not going to be able to achieve what you're trying to achieve take champion building right some people natural champion builders why they kind of feel a person and they gravitate to that person and they're able to make a connection with that person but if there's a whole science behind it and if you understand that science then you can teach other people how to do it you can coach them you can
Speaker 5develop them big hey one last thing on this topic if you're a cro and you are hearing an early stage company let's say early stage i think this is when it happens with like technical founders and i'm always leery to hear this we need people with more domain expertise like the ceo the executives the high level people are saying that to me and i'll be like okay that's the situation for me they haven't figured out how to turn zoologists into hunters and in the beginning of a company i think you need zoologists like the zoologist can tell you where the bear eats how the bear sleeps when the bear feeds how it moves around blah blah blah but hunter like you can't teach a zoologist how to shoot a bear like you can't do it like so what you need is to bring in those two worlds together is to really understand how do you get the knowledge and the skills of the zoologist into the hands of the hunters and you will scale a company if you're interviewing right now or you're a cro and you're a leader and people are telling you well we need more people with domain expertise all that's telling me is that domain expertise has not been translated into hand-to-hand combat skills in front of a customer if that makes sense well why don't you just have your sc sell then if you need a domain experience happens all the time yeah the hundred pound brains have to be on every call the people the technical domain expertise have to be on every call and it doesn't scale that's why companies don't scale yeah yeah that's an interesting one i mean it's
Speaker 1something that i'm definitely dealing with uh as well so uh and then how do we how do we translate that and what what type of people you're really looking for and i think the more and more i'm just convinced that you need some really strong first-line managers you obviously need your leadership team to understand what they're doing but if you've got strong first-line managers that can hire you know the hunters that are going to go out there and are going to learn quickly because you obviously need to understand how to speak to the person that you're speaking to and to to understand what their issues are but that's something that i've done so many times switching
Speaker 5that knowledge and skills go frederick you could have a lot of hunters sitting in a room with loaded shotguns and they start shooting each other because because there's no they don't know how to hunt the bear and you got to have that knowledge and skills that we talked about it needs to be it needs to be
Speaker 1transferred transferred yeah good point this almost brings up the next topic let's talk a
Speaker 4little bit about recruiting so when you're trying to scale up your business you're trying to scale up your business you're trying to scale up your business you're trying to scale an enterprise sales team you know what qualities are you looking for when you're hiring some or to try to hire top performing reps fred Frederick, are there any certain qualities or questions you're asking during an interview to uncover some key qualities that you want in these people?
Speaker 1Yeah, like I said, I mean, this is something I learned from Jeremy and it's not going to be a surprise. But the ICE criteria, intelligence, character, coachability, experience. And even during an interview, you can start you can check how somebody scores against quite a few of those. Where like one of the most basic things for somebody to come to an interview is they need to understand what I'm looking for. And if they don't ask those questions, then how in the hell are they going to go to a customer to understand what their issues are and what their criteria are? If they're actually looking for something, because in this case, it's very clear. I'm looking for people. Right. I'm buying. I mean, it's not a question if there is a latent need or anything like that. I'm buying. Right. That's that's clear. The question is, am I going to buy them? Or somebody else from an intelligence perspective, it's clock speed on one side, but it's also the ability, the EQ, the ability to build champions, to get people to do things for you. And that's valid for customers because you need to build champions there. But it's also valid internally, because if legal puts you on the bottom of the pile, then you're going to struggle closing your deal on time. From a from a character perspective, I'm always looking for people. I'm always looking for people that want to find a way to get things done, that want to win and that are not going to give up. I'm looking for people that they have to be very competitive, but they have to be team players as well. I'm just not interested in the people that don't give a shit about anybody except for themselves. I look at people glass half full versus half empty, positive mindset. And there's a whole science behind that, what that brings. Happiness Advantage is a really interesting book. It basically describes that science. I'm looking for the self-awareness, for the accountability, for curiosity, because that's super important. And then I'm looking for honesty, integrity and the people that do what's right for the customer, for the partner, for the company. And I always say it's a bit naive, but, you know, I think we should also do something that's good for the world. We're not here to only drive in a nice car. We're not here to live in a fancy house. I think we've got a responsibility towards, you know, our children, whoever comes after us to try to leave this place in a better way than we found it. And then your coachability, because you're probably going to be changing things and you're going to be implementing new things. So for people to be open to those things. But then at the same time, the experience is important because they have to have a minimum level of, you know, whether it's sales. Experience or prospecting experience or fast growth experience or, you know, SaaS or whatever it is that you're doing or customer base. If you're putting somebody on one big account, there's a limited amount of experience that you need to have with people for them to be able to become successful. And then I probably because I was always young and did quite well without the experience. These days, it's a different story. But, you know, I usually take people that are very high intelligence, character and then coachability as well over the over the experience, because those people are going to grow quickly. Experience is only a matter of days, could be weeks, could be months, all the other stuff. And especially the first two you have or you don't have.
Speaker 4Yeah, those are really good things. Competitive team player, positive mindset, self-awareness, curious. How do you test for EQ? How do you how do you probe for someone's EQ? How do you do that? I think it's hard to ask a certain observations you're making.
Speaker 1It's definitely has to do with observations. And it's it's it's like, how does that person behave in the meeting? I mean, some people are just they're called there. You know, you just it's difficult to to have a conversation with people or it's just they don't. That's something you can feel pretty clearly. And I think I've learned to feel. A lot of things as well, because, yes, you want to be able to look at the numbers and write something down. But I think that triangulation with gut feels super important as well, because we are still human beings. Right. So if if somebody could come in and quickly bond, whether it's with your secretary or PA that's bringing the people into the room or yourself or maybe somebody else they speak to somewhere else, those are things that are that are important. And then the other part, which is. It's incredibly important as well, because even though you might have gotten quite good at interviewing, you're still, you know, you're dealing with salespeople. Right. You're dealing with people that they're they're there to present themselves and they're not they're not stupid. They're not idiots. None of them is. So you checking references and not the reference that they give to you because they'd be incredibly stupid if they give you a bad reference. But checking with people that, you know, that know them or somehow, you know, you trust to really tell you how they are and and what the good things are and what the bad things are, because everybody has those things. Right. That's just incredibly important.
Speaker 4So sometimes what I like to ask is, especially for salespeople, especially for self-awareness. How do you think you're doing in this interview? I love that question because they now have to. Give me how they perceive that they're doing and what they perceive, you know, my reactions to their answers and and their questions are. And it tells me a lot about how they feel that situation is going, because at the end of the day, that's what we do as salespeople. Sure, there's a science behind it and the questions we're going to ask and how prepared we are. But when you're sitting in front of a customer, don't you always ask yourself? I do. Like, I wonder how I'm doing right now. And it's great to get to understand. And I'm not saying that there's a right answer or a wrong answer, but the way in which they lay it out to me about how they think they're doing and how how they think I'm reacting to it really is an amazing it's an amazing question and response.
Speaker 1Well, and maybe I shouldn't say here because you never know how many salespeople are going to listen to this, but I usually first 20 minutes, I tend to just have an open conversation. And then sometimes I ask people, like, how do you prepare for a meeting or when you go to see Excel, what do you do? And they start to tell me everything that they do. And then how do you run the meeting? And they start telling me all the things they do in the meeting. And then I'm like, OK, that's really interesting. So why why haven't you done that in this meeting? You know, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, shit. Right. Which is to your point, like how you're doing. I mean, what were your goals? Right. What were you trying to set out in this meeting? And then I'm like, these are my goals. How do you think you're doing against those goals right now? And the smart people, they're like, OK, you know, I'm not going in the right direction. And then they immediately take over. And that's that's good because, you know, that somebody is incapable of of actually. And you want to you want to push people out of the comfort zone. You want to get them out of that standard demo.
Speaker 4Yeah, well, that's they're going to be out of their comfort zone a lot of times in front of customers. Right. They're going to get knocked off their feet and they have to you want to see how supple they are to get back. On their feet.
Speaker 1Right. And if they don't enjoy that, then, you know, that's maybe not the right place for them. Right. Then they need to be somewhere where they can stay on their feet all the time because it's hard work. It's tough work. And people are going to throw you curveballs all the time.
Speaker 5You asked a great question about EQ. I want to come back to that in just a second because I want to summarize what Frederick, you were saying and Johnny, you were saying. So I heard how they learn is really you have to figure out how people learn because a lot of people will say, you know, intelligence, they're not intelligent, they're intelligent. I think that that's that's not enough. That's not deep. Everybody, they're getting to you. They have some form of intelligence that they gather and analyze data. They might not do it the same way you do, but you have to understand how somebody learns. And then you have to understand if that fits, if you have a mechanism inside your company to provide that to them, because people might learn in a different way than you're actually presenting. So I think that that's a great question. And I think that that's a great question. And I think that that's a great question. And I think that that's a great question. This is a big one for me. I can see that people are intelligent. I can see that they learn in a great way. I can also feel a little bit like not invented here syndrome, like that, that they're not going to be open to learn a new thing. So it doesn't make any sense for me to bring somebody in who's intelligent, who's capable, but chooses not to do what everybody else is doing. And assimilate it into their own way can be a really, really big problem. And the third one you said, Frederick, was this collaboration in the ecosystem. There's no sales jobs today that don't collaborate. There are no sales jobs that aren't involved in an ecosystem, both at the customer and internally. So if you don't have the ability to collaborate in an ecosystem, you're not going to make it today. And then this last one on self-awareness, I think, is a huge one, Johnny, and your point is like, you know, how do you test self-awareness? What I like to do is I like to listen really intently it's hard to do, but you listen really intently to the interviewee and you, I'm looking for, if they're trying to understand why I'm asking a certain question or why I am making a certain statement, I find that those people are emotionally intelligent because before they open their mouth, they try to understand why the other person in front of them is making a position, making a statement. It's hard to do, but I'm telling you, if you're, if you're trying to find great people and find people that are self-aware with high IQ, they're first analyzing why they're saying something, why they're answering a certain way, why the customer is asking a question, why they're making a statement. That is a real good gift, right? Especially today for, for sellers. If they're not, I think that's a really interesting point.
Speaker 1They're just rolling. Yeah. John, I think that's a really interesting point because everything goes, we, we tend to react to things, right? That's just the way humans are, are, are wired. And if we can, can refrain from doing that, but try to figure out, first of all, what am I trying to achieve? But the same goes for my counterpart, right? What is my counterpart trying to achieve? And if you start to think about those things and then how do I best go about achieving that, um, my reaction, because somebody presses on some kind of button is probably not the right way to achieve what I'm trying to do. So calm down, think about that. That's not going to give me the outcome I want. I should be doing this. And for the other person, you know, why is that person asking me those questions? What are they trying to achieve? What are they trying to find out? That takes you to a, to a whole different level. And I think that's a really, really good way to do it. And I think that's a really, really good way to do it. And I think that's a really, really good way to do it. And I think that's a really, really good way to do it. And I think that's a really, really good way to do it.
Speaker 5Highly related to self-awareness, highly related to self-awareness. That's a good one.
Speaker 4I think a lot of times too, I, I love to listen carefully to the questions that they ask, which tells me a lot about how much they've prepared, how well they've been listening to me, how deep they have can probe into what we've said in this conversation. You know, if they're not just asking superficial questions, but you can tell when somebody based, upon your conversation, all of a sudden they ask something like the third level down and you're like, Whoa, okay. They not only got what I was talking about, they've extrapolated it down and they're way down here. And it kind of tells me the level of, of, uh, their expertise or their preparation, you know, for that meeting. And whether they qualify Johnny, like Frederick,
Speaker 5you were saying, we asked somebody a question and we're like, Hey, you know, explain to me how you get to the economic buyer. Let's just say. And if a person doesn't qualify what I'm asking and why I'm asking it, and they just go, here's three things you do with an economic buyer, or what is your sales process or whatever. But I'm always aware of people that are, and these are the best sellers that are qualifying before they answer. And they want to make sure there's a 10 things I could tell you about how I get to an economic buyer. I want to make sure it's really, really relevant for what we're talking about here. Are you talking about during the sales cycle? Are you talking about prior to if I'm empty, you know, and they qualify and I'm like, this person's not only listening, but they are understanding that their job is to gather their thoughts before they make a response. And to try to make that response as close to my question as possible. That is like, when that comes across in an interview, you're going to be like, Oh, my God, I'm going to be like, Oh, my God, I'm going to be
Speaker 4like home run. Well, then they're telling you exactly how they're going to operate right in front of the customer. Walking audition, right, Johnny? Yeah, it is. It is. It's like Frederick when he was at PTC early on, he learned qualifying, qualifying everything, right? It goes all the way back to the beginning of this episode here. So what are a couple reasons why sales rep fail? Why do they mainly fail? If we had to pick one or two reasons? Let's talk about it. Why do they mainly fail? So aside from from hiring the wrong person? Okay, so maybe you did it, maybe it's on you,
Speaker 1you hired the wrong person, right? So, so the way I see it, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's really three things. You either hire the wrong person. And that's why the recruitment is so important. And the references are so important, because it just costs you so much. I mean, you do the math and you figure out, you hire somebody, so you're in the recruitment, you hire somebody, you're on board them, you give them a chance, then usually you don't kick them out before the probation. So then after six or nine months, or 12 months, you find out that they're not going to be successful. And then you have to go let them go, it's going to cost you a lot of money, especially in Europe. There might be, you know, PIP involved, those kind of things, then before you get to the next person, you could well be 18 months down the road. Yeah, that that is just really expensive. The other part is just not being able to make them successful by by the development and the coaching you're giving them. And it's it's development is coaching, but it's also inspiration to keep them going through those difficult times and to give to get them over that hump. And, that has, I think, on one side, it has to do with with the direct manager. So they play a crucial role. But it obviously also has to do with the the overall company, the support that somebody's getting within the organization, whether it's from from, you know, BDRs, or sales process, or marketing, or, you know, whatever else is there, or do they feel that they're carrying the weight by themselves? Or are they getting support from the organization? And are they treated fairly? Are they are they being? Are they are they enjoying what they're doing? Do they do they see that they're developing in their careers? I think those are, I'm always trying to look for, besides the growth and the money, which is important. But it's like, if somebody is going to be, they can be on that same growth journey and make money somewhere else, right? Let's be honest. I mean, there's, there's hundreds of companies out there. And there's some very good companies and fast growing companies. And there's, there's a lot of companies out there out there. So there's enough choice. But you want basically somebody to be able to look back three years down the road to say, I enjoyed that journey. I mean, you're a cyclist, John, you, you know, that you don't cycle to get somewhere you cycle because you enjoy the journey, right? When you're a climber, you can't enjoy just being on the mountaintop, because that almost never happens. You're there, what, maybe five seconds, and you go down again, and then you start the you don't, if you don't enjoy the pain and, you know, the toil to make it all the way out, then
Speaker 4it's going to be miserable. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 5So, so guys, this question, I think is really a deep one, and especially for this segment that we're doing with you, Frederick, if you fired somebody, and then we're asking that question of why they fail, the first answer is, it's always us. Because if they've gone through the process of hiring, and nobody does that, like, don't say they're always saying what was wrong with the individual, what they lack. If they're in your company, then why they failed is somewhere inside of inside of you, not in all cases, something could happen, some injury, some death, some whatever happens in their, in their families, their personal life, I'm not talking about the obvious one. And for me, I think you got to look at yourself first. And why? So you got to go back to the interview. And you have to be able to say to yourself, after you've done that, you're going to be able to say, after the interview, that this person, I can see them in this job, I can see them with massive amount of energy in this job, that they not only know what to do in this job, but they're going to wake up in the morning and feel like they're less than 1% of the population that says, what I do matters. And that I feel like I'm really, really lucky doing it. Like, and I know I don't have people waking up in the morning and believe they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. They're at risk, plain and simple. And that all, you know, you have to be able to tie into that. And so I think you're first looking at yourself. Yeah, I think it goes to
Speaker 4something Frederick touched on one was the person, did you make a mistake because the person was not a good fit? He didn't really qualify them during the interview process. Then, now it becomes, if you did qualify them and you think they are a good fit now, which is already your mistake. Now you give them to your organization. So now did you give them, now it's training, development and leading. So did I train this person the right way? Did I develop them training being like classroom knowledge or constant knowledge development being the skills that they need and then giving them to the right manager, right? The manager, can have the most effect on their skills. You can train people in classrooms to give them the knowledge, but it's the manager that they're underneath. that can kind of do that repetition and give them the right skills. But it's all on you because you have to think about the risk. When I hired this person, they're not a unicorn. So they have certain things that they're lacking typically. So can I cover those risks? And when you're a small company, maybe you can't cover the risks because you don't have the right training program or you don't have the right manager to give them to. So you have to understand your risks. If you do understand those risks and you hired the right person, but you didn't give them to the right manager and you didn't train and develop them, it's all your fault again. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, I really like that. Everything is on you in the end and everything is a choice, by the way. I remember this one time when I ran into a difficult situation in a company, it was a Dutch company a long time ago. And I was basically blaming this and that and whatever. And one of the people on the board, actually, he took me for a walk in a forest. I thought it was a bit strange to go in a forest, but it actually worked out really well. You didn't think I'd come out of the forest? Yeah, I know. Instead of in the office, he said, let's go for a walk. We ended up in the forest somewhere. And then he basically said, look, and we're good salespeople, so there's always a million reasons why somebody else or something else or whatever. The only area we're going to, we're going to learn from and if we take full accountability, what could I have done differently? And that's also the only thing that you can do different to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Because the other things, they're going to happen again tomorrow or next week or next month. And if I can adjust to those situations to make sure that when they happen, they don't have those consequences anymore, that's when you're really doing your job.
Speaker 5Yeah. And also, you know, life is like a series of chapters. So somebody could be a certain way when they get hired and then life happens. So I think the greatest leaders that I've ever seen are the ones that are constantly checking the pulse. And like, if you're leading right now, ask yourself, when is the last time you spoke to somebody that you're leading and just ask them, what do you like most about what you do for a living with us? Number one. And then what do you like least about what you do? What do you like least about what you're doing with us? And I think when you ask that in a really authentic way, they say words that are spoken from the heart and to the heart of all who hear them, you're going to get some great understanding of where that person is right now in this role. And a lot of times, sometimes I hear people trip. They're like, man, I'm shocked. Like, I don't know. They did great in the interview. They started off great. And then something, life happens, something happens in the company, whatever. But when you don't have your finger on the pulse, and sometimes it's just like, there's some little tweaks that you can make with those individuals to make sure that you don't lose out on all of that energy they put in and you put in. When I used to do that, I used to say, when's the last time I asked that question? And when I asked myself, why didn't I? If I'm honest, I didn't want the answer because I knew the answer was not going to be good. And that you're just fooling, you're fooling yourself. So yeah, I wrote that down, John. Thanks, that's a good one. That's a good tip for the day, isn't it, Fred? Frederick, it's a good tip, man.
Speaker 4Well, Frederick Maris, thank you so much for spending time with us. Now, Johnny, Frederick, he's amazing to me and a lot of the Dutch people are, and he's a Dutch guy. So yes, he speaks Dutch. He's absolutely fluent in English, maybe more fluent than I am. And then he can speak fluent German. And maybe, I don't even know, can you speak other languages too, like French or something?
Speaker 1I can do French for the holidays. When I was a little kid, my Spanish was even better than my Dutch, but that's too long ago. I forgot most of that. So I can still understand it a bit. And then maybe just a little bit of Italian, but then it really starts to tell off.
Speaker 4I don't know how he turns his head from like talking to us fluently in English, then he'll get on the phone, speak fluent German, then, you know, go home or talk to somebody in Dutch like that. You know, that's a super talent. And he's talented in many other ways besides, languages. So thank you so much, Frederick, for doing this. I'm a connoisseur of hair, Johnny.
Speaker 5So, you know, I am struck by the Dorian Gray effect that if you're listening to this, go check out the video on YouTube and check out my buddy, Frederick, because this dude is getting younger every year. It's great to see you, buddy. Really good to see you.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's been a pleasure being with you guys, guys. Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 4Yeah. So thank you, Frederick Maris. Thank you, John Kaplan. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast. Thank you.
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