Speaker 1The ingredients of great companies is actually pretty hard to find. And so when you get inside of a company where you've got a great founder, you've got a big market you're selling into, you've got differentiated technology, you've got a sales team that you're inspired by or leadership that you're inspired by, that ain't nothing. And that's hard to replicate.
Speaker 2Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time 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 3I'm John Kaplan here with John McMahon. And today we have a guest who built something rare. He's grown up. He's grown with one company for over seven years, from Series A to a category leader. Sam Costello is the Chief Revenue Officer at Harness, the AI-native software delivery platform. He joined back in 2019, right at their Series A, as the company's first sales leader under CRO Jason Eubanks. From there, he helped take them from under a million in ARR to 100 million in five years, and has climbed through nearly 100 million in five years, and has climbed through nearly 100 million in five years, and has climbed through nearly 100 million in five years, nearly every senior sales leadership seat on the way to the top revenue job. Before Harness, Sam cut his teeth at Oracle, leading transformational deals inside Fortune 500 accounts, and at Perfecto, where he had scaled the business ahead of its sale to private equity. He's built his reputation on recruiting elite talent, running disciplined sales processes at enterprise scale, and never losing sight of the customer outcome in the middle of a deal. He's built his reputation on recruiting elite talent, running disciplined sales processes at enterprise scale, and never losing sight of the customer outcome in the middle of a deal. He's built his reputation on recruiting elite talent, running disciplined sales processes at enterprise scale, and never losing sight of the customer outcome in the middle of a deal. He's built his reputation on recruiting elite talent, running disciplined sales processes at enterprise scale, and never losing sight of the customer outcome in the middle of a deal. He's built his reputation on recruiting elite talent, running disciplined sales processes at enterprise scale, and never losing sight of the customer outcome in the middle of a deal. In this conversation, we get into what actually changes when you move from carrying a number to owning the whole revenue engine. In this conversation, we get into what actually changes when you move from carrying a number to owning the whole revenue engine. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals.
Speaker 1Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals.
Speaker 4Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals.
Speaker 1Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals.
Speaker 4Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals.
Speaker 1Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. Sam walks us through Harness's approach to building champions, what he calls their Duplo sales process, how they qualify and structure proof of value with multi-threaded technical buyers, and where he spends his time today between recruiting, enablement, and staying close to the deals. the customer is going to be pulling on you because they've got confidence and now they want economies of scale. Okay. How do I get this technology at a price that I want? Cause I've got to buy a lot of it over a period of time. And so that's how you end up in a large deal. And I think, you know, we're very happy with a land and expand model. Let's go in, let's land where it makes sense. Let's delight a customer and make sure they're very successful. Once we've done that, we'll end up in the right transaction from there.
Speaker 4I think you're right. I mean, the big deals that I've been involved in over time have been where you feel like you're inquiring, inquiring, discovering, quantifying. You feel like you may not be going anywhere. You feel like you're getting a champion and stuff. And then all of a sudden you get a champion and now they're getting engaged. And all of a sudden there is this, to your point, there's this dynamic shift where all of a sudden now they're pulling on you, right? They can see that this is really going to benefit them for a personal win and benefit the company in a big way. And now they want to be part of your team. Right. And that is the definition of a champion. But there is this dynamic shift and you can feel it. You know, you can, you can sense it.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I think what I'm seeing sometimes is the trap is people, you know, you'll go in there, you'll build a champion for a deal. And then the excitement starts to build an organization around what's possible. And you start to head towards a larger deal, but you don't rethink about your champion during that process. And the champion you built was for a $500,000 deal, but now you're trying to do a $5 million deal. And you haven't got up to the new champion that needs to be the person that's going to champion the size of transactions. And you want to do now, has that changed during the process? And you get stuck now at the end where it's hard to nail down the decision criteria and the process and how's the paper going to work and all the things involved. Cause you don't have the right person with the right influence to answer those questions.
Speaker 3Sorry. When you talked about land and expand, you're talking about champions in the sales process. I'm having a lot of conversations lately with CROs that are struggling a little bit with the mechanics of the, the qualification of the land to then expand. And so there's a lot of proof of value. I'm going to ask you in your business, do you have proof of value, proof of concept? How does that play in? How does it qualify early and what's kind of significant about your process that you think gives you guys an advantage?
Speaker 1Yeah, we have a, we sell a very technical platform and that's made up of today, 14 different products. And so, it's a big lift technically. And to the point John was just making about multiple champions, we must go in usually two to three champions to do a deal because there's some kind of platform team that has built the tooling that we sell. There's a developer engineering team that's consuming that tooling. And then there's a security team that's got standards and governance and policies they want followed. And if you don't win a champion or at least technical mindshare in all of those places, you will get stuck in your deal for sure. And so even when we land, like, you know, we're going to come in with two 50 or 500, we still have to cover up on all those bases to get ourselves in a place where we want to go do a POV.
Speaker 3You have to set it up first. Like, do you have to demonstrate it inside their working environment? So you have those three parts of the platform. Talk about the nuances that with multiple champions, multiple technologies, is it multiple POVs? Is it one POV with a collaborative showing of all three of those?
Speaker 1I can't say we've never done more than one POV, but we pretty much got to the place now where we can do it on one POV. I can't say we've never done more than one POV, but we pretty much got to the place now where we can do it on one POV. I can't say we've never done more than one POV, because we do more qualification ahead of it. But I think in the early stages of the business, we always POV because it was the only way to get mindshare in the organization to get them confident. You know, fast forward the clock. We're now the magic quadrant leader for this space. We've got a thousand customers, champions that have moved from one organization to the other. And so I'd say probably 30, 40% of the time it's some kind of workshop where they show the features and functions, but it's not actually installed in their environment. But still like 60% of the time we're going in and installing the technology in there to prove that we're doing it right. And so I think that's the only way to get mindshare in the organization to get them confident. To prove that it works in their environment and that can solve the complex problem they're trying to solve. And so we're looking for a few things. One is, do we have champion, at least one, but multiple champions, ideally. And then do we have mindshare in those other places I talked about? Two, do we feel good about the criteria for the POV we're going to go run? And do we have confidence that we have a line with the EB, that if that criteria changed, we'd have a conversation about it? And then do we know the competition we're going up against? We want to know who we're competing against. Oftentimes for us, it can be do nothing. They don't necessarily have to change. We didn't. That's software delivery. They do that today. So that's always a factor in the conversation. And so we're very methodical in our POV structure and process. And I think Carlos has done a lot to help us there. But there's very few times now where we go into a POV that's not well-structured, well-qualified. And the only reason we shouldn't get a deal coming out of that, because our win rate's very high technically, is M&A or chart changes in a way we couldn't predict. So otherwise, we're pretty solid coming out of it.
Speaker 3On the POV, you talked about, you talked about certain criteria. I'm assuming that there's like a threshold of highly differentiated criteria that we would want to have a part of the POV. You're growing very rapidly now. Is there a process where people say, go, no, go inside your company of, yes, we'll do a POV, no, we won't. Where by seven years ago, it was like, hey, just get in there and show them some stuff. Well, how has that grown? Yeah, totally. And what are some of the guidelines around it? Because I think this is what a lot of CROs are struggling with today is the more customers they get, the more mature they get, the tightening down of what we've learned about how to make a successful POV. Tell us kind of what you've learned and how that's shown up in the sales process.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, we are very buttoned up in the process of how we define, do we have a champion? Have we tested them? Not just the rep in the first line, but somebody above that. Do we feel great about the criteria? For the POV, we feel confident that we're highly differentiated if we go into the cycle. We're very structured on that. And then the SE leader globally signs off on POVs and as well as me. So if we don't put our hands in the middle and say we want to do it, then we're not going to do it.
Speaker 3Awesome. So every POV has your sign off on it. Correct. That's legit.
Speaker 1Yeah. I think the one thing, John, that I would say though, is like the biggest challenge I see is total commitment to the process. Because the thing that you'll find is like, you know, when you're close to, the closer you are to the deal, the more emotional, the moment is, you know, and you want to convince yourself, this is a unique situation. I've got this highly differentiated champion or we don't need the EB in this one because of this reason, or it's so competitive and everyone's going so fast. If we try to slow it down, we're going to lose. And there's always a reason why you shouldn't follow the process, I find. And so it's what I see is the biggest thing is you don't have radical commitment across the company to like, we're going to follow this process because we know it's the best way to win. And if we decide we want to deviate for some reason, then man, Carlos and I are going to make that call. We're not going to, we're not going to hand that down the line. We're going to, we're going to call the shot if that's the right thing to do for the company.
Speaker 4What about when the customer wants to deviate? How many times do you lose when you deviate?
Speaker 1Well, I think I can think of one time we did in the last two years and we got a deal, but not the deal we wanted. So I wouldn't say it was a wildly successful strategy on that one, but that was a particularly unique company that we felt a little bit handcuffed.
Speaker 3How do you get the customer to participate in the POV? Meaning it's not just a stop me when you see something you like type presentation. It is purposeful. The customer has got some type of commitment in it. Do you charge for POVs? Like how do you get the customer to participate in the process?
Speaker 1No, we don't charge for POVs today. We do that out of our pocket as long as it fits our process. But I think the biggest way to get buy-in is you have to get alignment with the champion or building or champions that you both want the same thing at the end of the day. And because we've done this a thousand times now with a thousand customers that I have a unique set of experiences around how you get to them and the outcome that would benefit that champion. And champions don't buy software very often. You know, most people that we would call a champion, they might buy software once a year. They're not doing this all the time. And so they don't know all the ins and outs of how do you get from point A to point B and be successful. But if you know that what their personal win is and what they get out of this, if they're successful and you can come alongside them and you demonstrate your intent, like, hey, John, I'm here to make you successful. It's the most important thing to me. And I've done this a bunch of times and I've got some experience. Could I show you what I've seen be really successful? And how that would work? Oh, sure. Okay, here's the one of the things we're gonna have to do. We're gonna have to prove the technology, right? Because your boss's boss is gonna wanna know, does it work in your environment, right? Okay, let me show you some pitfalls I've seen. Like, as an example, if you're in the central team and you wanna do a POV, but I don't go include end users in that POV, as soon as you say this is a success, they're gonna say, well, we never tested it. We didn't get to see it. We don't wanna do it until we get that opportunity. Now you're in POV number two and we wasted another 60 days. So it's like, let's be structured and methodical. And so, a lot of success just showing them you have experience, showing them how this benefits them if you can walk through this process together. And it's not about us, like jamming some process on them so that we can get a closed one deal. It's about helping them be successful and get to the outcome they're looking for. And we just have a lot of experience in how that works.
Speaker 3Do they have like verifiable outcomes that they have to do something? The reason why I'm asking these questions is I get this question a lot from CROs that will ask me, how do we get the customer to participate in this? How do we get the customer to participate in the process where there is a revelation of how hard it was to solve that or how hard it was to demonstrate that? So they have to be involved in it. And then also the commitment aspect of champions and economic buyers to say, if we do this, we're done. Like we're gonna buy this. So how do you build those two things in?
Speaker 1I think ideally your POV is tied to a business. case. You've done some straw man. It doesn't have to be fully baked, but you've got some straw man business case that says, this is the value to the organization of solving this problem. And the things I'm going to prove in the POV tie out to that business case. And with some kind of metric, you know, it used to take this long to do it. Now it takes this long. And I demonstrated this capability is how you close that gap. And I showed it to you in the POV. So that's the first most important thing is creating that linkage. And then secondly, is going to see the economic buyer before you do the POV. Like, is this the problem they care about? Is this the criteria they want to see? Do they have faith in this straw man business case? And it's not fully baked. Are we directionally accurate here? Is this the person that you're going to be looking to, to say, yes, this solves my problem? Or is there other people that should be involved? If something changes, can I come back to you? Like that is the most important part of the whole process is getting
Speaker 3alignment before you actually go do the POV. I love that concept. Why is it so hard to get in place with customers, with sales teams? I mean, you could have that where you're saying, okay, we're not signing off unless an economic buyer has said that if you guys do this, this and this, then we'll go ahead and execute. Why is that so hard to get in place? I know what I'm being facetious. I know it's not easy. But why is it so hard? Super hard, super hard. I think
Speaker 1it's hard. My experience has been when a champion doesn't want to take you to the EB, it's always down to confidence. They lack confidence. If you are 100% sure if you put this person in front of your boss, your boss is going to think you are a genius. You do it every time. Yes. That's human nature. So if I don't want to put you in front of my boss, it's I'm telling you, there's something I'm not confident about that you need to find out about and then solve for. That's the brass tacks for me.
Speaker 4Doesn't that all come down to even connecting the dots to the required capabilities or the decision criteria? It all comes down to your rep doing a really good job in the discovery process. If they don't do a good job in the discovery process, you can't connect the dots, you can't lock down the criteria. The customer doesn't know what problems I'm really solving, why am I solving them, how much pain I'm in. They don't know any of that if you don't do a great job in discovery.
Speaker 1Isn't that true? That's it. Yes. And you run a great sales process. The champion will be wanting to show the executives in their business what they've been working. It's when it's been a little longer, you skipped a step or you didn't quite tie on that thing. And then the champion's like feeling a little squirrely. Now they're like, let me just do this POV. Then I'll know if it
Speaker 3works. You got to solve for that problem. How do you ensure that you're doing such a great job on this, Sam? Thank you. I think this is really valuable. How do you ensure that a technical validation gets connected to a business outcome? Because one of the things that I see is a lot of POVs create technical awareness and understanding, but lack connection to business outcome. Therefore, struggle with how to connect the EB to it, if that makes sense. How do you deal with
Speaker 1that situation? There's only one way I know how to solve it. You got to get to the true economic buyer and you have to ask that question. If I could show you this would solve that problem. And if I know you know, is that something you want to make an investment in? So the people
Speaker 3that we're selling to, they have no problem signing up for the validating the technical connection. Where they seem to have the struggle is taking that technical validation and connecting it to a business outcome. Because many times they're not thinking that way. They're thinking about developing software. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And I think what you're
Speaker 1describing for me is probably a technical coach or technical champion. You're not talking about a true champion because a true champion has influence and access across the organization. They understand what's happening in that business. They might not be able to tie it all about to NPS and increased revenue or something like that. But they can tie it out to, hey, this is a problem that my EB said they want solved. And I know this, if I can prove it would solve it. And that's enough usually business connection to get a deal done. But if they can't articulate that, or they're not in the room where those problems are being discussed, you probably got someone that likes your technology, someone you want to spend time with, because they're going to give you information, but you would probably need to go look for a real champion. Well said.
Speaker 4It also ties into Johnny, I always think that it ties into like how the economic buyer is measured. Now, whatever level that EB is at, how are they measured? And then I want to try to tie it to one
Speaker 3of their job measures. Yes. I would say, you know, in the, and I think it's getting worse right now than better. In the majority of the companies that I interact with, it's amazing to me. If I ask the question, no matter who I'm talking to inside of the selling company, what's the biggest business issue facing this customer? That I don't get a technical issue that comes back, which is great because you can't have this discussion. We're selling technical solutions. You can't have this discussion without having technical superiority and technical understanding. And it's amazing to me how our own sellers, and if our own sellers aren't doing it, then therefore they're not communicating it, can't answer that question. What's the biggest, try it, listeners at home, ask on every deal that you have. Just start off with what's the biggest business issue and see how many times you have to go back and reframe that question. You'll get great technical answers, but they'll have to continue to go to a business issue. I think I find that it's Egypt old and it's, I think it's getting worse too, because of all of the, you know, all of AI, all how we're doing it technically. There's so much focus. Look, your name as a company harness is almost like Kleenex. Because people say harness, but there's, but there's hard, like when people say harness, are they always talking about your company? It's kind of become, you with me? Yeah, totally. Not yet. I wish they were, but not yet. We're on our way.
Speaker 1You know, what's fun too about that is like, you're right. It's probably worse than ever. And it's also probably easier than ever to solve. Like if you could prompt any LLM and tell me what's the biggest business problems at this company that I'm about to go sell to. And then how does my to actually solving that business problem? Like it'll do most of the work for you. I agree. That's the wild part. Like it's actually never been easier to solve that problem and understanding that you can go like at least a hypothesis. You can go test with a, with a
Speaker 3potential champion and say, Hey, is this land? I agree with you a thousand percent. I just want everybody listening. You can do exactly what Sam just said. And then ask yourself, if you're leading these businesses, why are those discussions not being take place? Because the LLMs will identify it, but why do we struggle to connect with them? Yeah, that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I believe it happens, you know, it's with the competence and conviction that's especially in technical solutions. I want to be ultimately sure that it does everything technically that I needed to do before I go have any business conversations with anybody else in the company. I find that it's just like, that's Egypt old. And I think it's worse now because I see more and more deals, more and more instances where deals are, the time it takes to get a deal is actually getting longer and longer. I don't know what you're seeing there, Sam, but you know, it's the propensity in the industry is it's, they're getting
Speaker 1longer. I think we're seeing, we're not seeing a material uptick in the length of it, but what we're seeing is priorities shifting really fast. What you think you knew about that company, even three weeks ago, four weeks ago, it could be materially different today. I was on the phone this morning with a very large financial institution. We're talking about the funding for our project and they're like in the middle of a cost overrun and a data center that was unexpected to the tune of $60 million. And the hardware providers are picking up all that spend, but, but there's no money for software projects right now in that environment. And that's shifted in the last 10 days. Wow. So it's like the, the, the we're living in the most exciting time in technology ever. And it is a wonderful to be a part of it, but it's also the fastest moving and any assumption that you have about the business or your deal needs to be tested like very frequently because there's a lot of shifting, shifting, shifting.
Speaker 3Which means you have to have access to the right champions. Cause the only way you're going to learn that stuff is either early or late. There's no in between there. You're either. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1it. And oftentimes they're, I mean, you know, they're second to find out the EB is more than know about what's happening at the top of the pyramid and how fast is this stuff moving. And then it's getting down to the champions, then down to the technical people. So like, ideally, you've got some cadence with the EB that's telling you is something shifting that I need to be aware of. So good. So good.
Speaker 4And I want to go back to this discovery, Sam, cause a lot of reps have told Johnny and I that one of the most difficult things for them is they can find the pain. They have a very difficult time for some reason, quantifying the pain. Why do you, why do you think that is? And what's your experience with your reps quantifying the pain? I think quantifying the pain is usually,
Speaker 1okay. Cause there's a couple of challenges there. One is you think you found pain because you're not sure about it or the champion doesn't care. I see that all the time. It's like, I go to boot camp and enable it. I work for this one company. This is one thing I find that pain statement. I'm looking around trying to find it. And as soon as I think you have a problem that I lock in on, but you don't think you have the problem. That's the first breakage. So it still could be a problem because
Speaker 4it has to be discussed or maybe it really isn't a problem. It's a problem. It's just not in their
Speaker 1top 50 they care about. And so you're going to wait three years before it becomes top of the stack. Right. That's the first thing. And then quantifying it usually after that is about asking the right question. It's like, okay, if you find pain and it's important to them, then I'm down to what's my question. asking how do i get down to like what are the metrics that they care about that relate to that pain and if i then once you get to metrics then quantification is not that difficult it's usually getting the metrics that they actually measure that pain by that's the hard part
Speaker 4i actually think a lot of times it's because they think they have a champion but they haven't built any trust with the champion and it could be a champion but they haven't built any trust yet and they just started i'm the poor guy with questions on quantification a person why would i want to tell you that you know i don't trust you yet so yes and they think well i can't it's really hard for me to quantify no you haven't built trust yet so then i can get that type of information which is like some of the most critical information to really build as you stated earlier a business case or a cost justification you have to have that totally yeah
Speaker 1you're right you got to make champion deposits to get to get into a give-get situation early on champion deposits are usually education and awareness that person's probably trying to solve a problem and they're out in the market trying to get educated and learn about what's the best way to do that for their company and so early stages you know make giving them education awareness is a way to build some measure of trust that you can then get into a give-get situation where they're getting things that they need and you're starting to get things that you need to understand is there something here worth solving yeah
Speaker 3now with this we're kind of bumping up against you know medic and med pic and you know this is a machine that's as old as dirt uh it's amazing uh careful i say it's old as dirt i mean it's it's egypt old those things are priceless for me and and when i when i say it this way what i mean is the process has been around a long time the way you maneuver and the agility that you need inside of qualification today looks nothing like it's looked in the past 30 years in selling and what i mean by that like you talked about everything is related to speed and the expectation of the the information that you have could you give me your thoughts on that a little bit you've been a you've been a student of the game with med pic for you know for for several years and and you've used it very very successfully where were you when you were when you were when you were when you were what are some of the pressure points that are created in med pic with the expectation of the customer with ai with just the the state of enterprise selling today yeah i think the first
Speaker 1comment i'd make is if you do med pic well in an organization it should be very very much embraced by the the sales team like med pic is an incredible tool for qualifying where do i stand in a deal and how do i get to the place i'm in and how do i get to the place i'm in and how do i get to the i want to get end of the day we want to win of course we want to close deals the reps want to make money and med pic is a beautiful thing to help you understand what are the gaps and when you know i always feel very strongly like the rep is the most emotional around the deal the first lines the next closest person probably the sc and as you get layers away the emotion disappears and you start to be able to think more logically about what's happening in this actual opportunity so med pic is a great way so when we do a med pic review like i would tell a leader if that rep didn't leave that med pic review really excited that they did it something didn't go right because you should be helping them uncover the gaps in that in that opportunity so they can go close it so they have a better chance of winning and every rep wants to do that right so that's first like how do you think about it and how do you implement it in your shop is super important and then i think you know you got to be hyper aware today that things are changing quickly and so examples for us right now are there's now ai committees are being stood up so if your tool has any kind of ai in it and your champion thinks they know a buying process they're going to be able to do that and they're going to be able to do that and they're going to be able to do that and they're going to be able to do that and they're going to different because there's now an ai committee that wants to review all ai investments there's probably an ai addendum because like hey i'm forecasting this deal it's in commit and i've already got an msa with the customer and then as soon as you get to purchasing and you only got two weeks left in the quarter and they're like well hang on we don't have an ai addendum on this msa so we got to send you to legal that's the process you just slipped your deal so like there's a lot of things happening in these processes right now and so we need to be uh you know what we're we're having success with a doing that for could use to talk about it and then be we're talking a lot in the ecosystem around other software providers like what are they seeing in these shops when they're interfacing with them are new steps being introduced does the champion we think we know about actually have they done it before somewhere else do they have a track record here is this eb you know usually consistent with their word will they honor what they say that kind of thing like we're having to do a lot of triangulation to try to find pitfalls and make sure we don't step in them and even then it's still very difficult community sure all other student color software companies are non-competitive that you know and we call leaders and other companies and go hey i hear you're running an opportunity here so are we what do you know what do we know what great idea love it yeah it's one of the best ways to get real-time information about what's playing out because they might be four weeks ahead you in a buying process and they're they know things that you don't know or vice versa now in the old
Speaker 3days we would say that yes i'd smile at you'd say yeah but you are how are you not competition for access to funding you don't compete with them but there's only so many funds available yeah that's fair i think my experience
Speaker 1right now is the buying environment so difficult that you're looking for any information you can get to know where you stand and what the pitfalls are that's more important than than like will they steal my funding because there's funding out there for these projects if you're tied to the right things you're going to get money the other thing i'd like to highlight that you said sam so
Speaker 3good brother this is so good the other thing that you said uh is the if they don't come out of it excited then something didn't go right i love what you said on that because i'd like to encourage people to go to these deal reviews and you do med pic reviews or what have you you should expect gaps because that's where the that's where the golden nuggets are and so i think that people go to these med pic reviews and they're like i can't show any chinks in the armor like i gotta try to convince my company that i have a champion and too much time is wasted in these reviews that's it
Speaker 1yeah you agree yeah oh yeah i mean if it's a compliance effort then you're just trying to prove that you already got what that person wants so that you can get off the phone as fast as possible right if it's an exercise on until we're in closed one we should assume there's something we don't know and if we learn it we'd have a better chance of winning and let's find any gaps we can then it's it's a hunt now it's a hunt to figure out like what's going what could go wrong and how do we get ahead of it or what's not going right and how do we fix it and then the other important thing is like it's very important that you don't leave all the work to just ae like when med pic review when we come out of there with a strategy and what we want to do next i'll always have at least one action item in my play that i'm going to go do for that for that rep might be call a board member or reach out to an executive or look at the pricing or unpack the business case or something but i don't want reps to ever leave that thing going i gotta do all this work by myself and i'm like it's like no let's divvy up the work here to the appropriate person let's go execute on together and then circle back in two weeks and find out where we stand i love that i
Speaker 3heard one great leader say one time that it's not a crime it's not a crime it's not a crime not to know when doing a med pic review the leader said it's not a crime not to know but it's a crime punishable by death not to be doing anything about it yeah which was which was just i mean it kind of sets the stage for stop trying to defend and if there's value in the gap let's go close the gap yes i think that's just a really good mindset for listeners to you know leaders like you said don't turn it into a compliance because that's it's it's over you lose so much and then people that are experiencing it with their leaders expect to get great value out of the discovery process of med pic
Speaker 1if it becomes compliance in a shop imagine this comes compliance a rep follows your process then doesn't win the deal what does it say about your process yeah the process isn't worth following like you lost knowledge you not get what you wanted then you lose the mind share in the organization around that process so it's like the process has to work
Speaker 4like they use med pic as like a checklist they check check check but they don't really use it as like a true deal qualification weapon they don't use it to say as we talked about like here's what i'm really missing here's where i am in the deal here's the information i have here's what i don't have here's who i have to go talk to next they don't use it as a a tool to understand like here's my roadmap on how i can win this deal they just think it's a checklist oh yeah check yeah i have a champion when you really yeah you're not i filled out the field i filled out the field in salesforce i'm good
Speaker 3yeah yeah you got it and it's the story behind the triangulation like i love what you guys are saying here because for me any one answer any one understanding in med pic is not the is not the answer for the deal people ask me all the time they'll say hey um what's the most component what's the most important component of med pic and i've refused to answer that question for 30 years or however long it's been around not because i don't think it's a good question but it's totally irrelevant to uh any any unique scenario what i mean by that is like i can look at and triangulate the identification of pain and if the identification of pain i ask myself if that is it big enough and if somebody says it's big enough and then i look at the economic buyer and i can triangulate the identification of pain that that buyer is going to care about that level of pain I can look at competition and I can look at differentiated decision criteria. It's like it's how it all works together as the story of the opportunity. And I can't say that enough for people listening out here. It's not a check in the freaking box. Totally.
Speaker 4Which a lot of companies use it for. Because if you ask somebody to walk me through MedPick and then how you utilize it, they fall apart.
Speaker 3Well, look at what all the AI companies are doing now, Johnny, trying to automate all this. It's, you know, they're just trying to automate whatever's in Salesforce to give you a faster answer of whatever slop you have.
Speaker 4Just because it's in Salesforce doesn't mean that it's qualified, right? 100%. It's like if, you know, you stand up in front of me and say, I got a $2 million deal. And I say, you have a champion? You say, yeah, well, what am I going to do now? I ask you 20 questions to figure out if you really have a champion. And just because it's in Salesforce doesn't mean it's qualified.
Speaker 3You've just articulated to me the exact definition of AI slop. That's what AI slop means to me in the sales. In the sales world, that's what it means.
Speaker 1You know, one of the comments I'd make to you about just MedPick in general or MedPick reviews, I think there's things leading up to that that are, if you get right, make that much better. Well, I'll give you an example. In our recruiting profile, we really have a strong bias for coachability. I think many people would say that. We screen hard for it, okay? And then I've built an environment with the rest of the team around radicalization. We speak openly in the environment about what's going well, what's not going well. And we find problems, we go aggressively, run at them. Okay. If I hire people that are coachable and I build an environment where we should talk openly about what's going on, and then I get to a MedPick review, the expectation is not that everything's rosy and there are no problems here. It's like, no, no, we speak openly in my culture and you want to be great. So let's start to unpack this thing and figure out how we go in. That is like, those leading indicators coming up to that moment, if you've got the right people, it's like, to my point earlier, it's like, it's a great exercise. They walk away feeling awesome. They got five things to go work on. They're going to help them move that deal forward when they walked in the deal, kind of feeling stuck. Aren't sure where to go next. Like, it's a really great opportunity. But if it's like, hey, my coachability is low and I just want you to think everything's great. And I come to this process and tell you everything's great so I can get out the other side of it. And then I go struggle through my deal. It's like, that didn't work out very well for anybody.
Speaker 3Talk to me about how that shows up in recruiting. Because what you just said, I'm sure everybody on this podcast is listening to it and say, I agree with that 100%. And yet, you'll see people get into companies that don't have to prove that they can do what you just said. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Are you talking about specifically, like, how do I find out if someone's coachable? If I'm remembering. Coachable and.
Speaker 3How do you? Coachable and they have the. Adaptability. They have the adaptability and the agility inside of qualification. How do you do that?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, I think the first thing is you look at their background. A person's trajectory over time is one of the greatest predictors of, who they are as a person, not the story they tell you on the interview. So, you know, you probably won't be surprised. We teach our leaders, go bottom up on the resume and LinkedIn from the very beginning to where they are today. Then you're looking for things along the way. Like, you know, we tend to go towards athletes because athletes got coached. But there's all kinds of things you can coach. You can be part of a debate team where you got coached. You can be in a band where you got coached. Did you, somewhere along your journey, did you spend time around a team? And does someone give you direction? And did you follow it? Secondly, I love to ask, what's their favorite thing about a leader that they worked with? You know, the answers to that question are super telling. You'll get people that are like, oh my gosh, man, I worked for Johnny Kapp. And man, the guy was incredible. He would just tell me this, taught me that, it made me better. And four years later, I was like a different person. Or it's like, I liked working for Sally because she just got all the problems out of my way. And just let me sell. It's like, well, that's not someone like, that person doesn't clearly value the environment of education and development. You know, you can ask them what kind of books they like to read, what kind of podcasts they like to listen to. What's the last time they got feedback and how do they handle it? You know, what's the biggest thing they've learned in the last year about their professional career, their expertise? You know, there's all kinds of things you can ask to find out what's the person you're dealing with and do they value coaching? And then oftentimes, like in my environment that we've created here with Carlos and Tina, it's like they know that we value this. So they'll come to the interview like hungry. Like, I want to be in your business because I want to be developed. Right here. That's what you do. You'd probably deal with someone that's coachable, right? That's their number one driver. It's not tell them about the technology. Show me the compensation plan. You know, did someone make a million dollars? Like, can I be great? And will you show me how to do it?
Speaker 3And another one, I love this. I, you know, these seem so simple, but I hope people are writing these down because they're, they're so powerful. Another one I like is, you know, what is the deal you're most proud of?
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 3And then actually, this should be an interview. Actually walk me through. How you qualified it and how they talk about how they qualified that deal is going to tell you everything about how they're going to, you know, do it inside of your organization. Yeah. You want to hear another great one?
Speaker 1Yeah, please. Tell me about a deal you lost. And what did you learn from it? What'd you learn from it?
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1Well, my SC screwed up the POV and then we are, you know, it's like, okay. Or it's like, Hey, I, you know what? I found out. I thought. And then I got there.
Speaker 3Blah, blah. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. But it's like, Hey, I thought I had a chance. But then I found out I didn't. And, you know, we lost the deal. It's like, okay, that person took ownership. Not a fun experience. They probably won't do it again, but they took ownership at that moment and learn something from it.
Speaker 3Can you imagine recruiting a person today and interviewing a person today and not asking them in a way to prove for evidence that they understand actually what MedPick is and how it's, how it actually manifests itself in an opportunity. But yet, if you're listening to this podcast, ask yourself. Did you ask that question on the last interview that you did? And if you didn't, Hey, it's not a crime not to do it, but you're going to get, you're going to not get a great situation going forward. If you hire those people, I don't know why they don't do it. Assumption. They say, Oh yeah, we work. We got force management training. We got that force management training. I, I do the MedPick playbook and they tell you about all the great leaders. But no problem. Just give me an example of how it manifests on your favorite deal. And on a deal that was an opportunity. An area of opportunity for you to the point.
Speaker 1So true. It's a lot of, uh, we make, you know, interviewing is so interesting. I've gotten a lot better at it. I probably interview 400 people a year right now. So I've, I've honed it a lot over the last couple of years. I would say I was not a great interviewer a few years ago. What did you change? What did you change? It's separating the story from the facts. Yeah, that's, that's the biggest thing. And then learning a pattern of right. Asking the right questions at the right time in the interview to get what you're trying to suss out. And then one that's a little bit uncomfortable, but I've had to get better at is interrupting people. I prepare them for it now because time's constrained and I need to figure out what I need to know to make a decision. And so I, oh, like oftentimes you're, they're in the middle of their story. That's if they practiced it, they're, they're trying to win a job, right? They know what they want to say. And so kind of breaking the flow and getting in the questions you need to get in to make a decision that's super important. But I think a lot of people are just sitting there listening and trying to parse through the kernels to see if they got what they wanted. Versus like kind of directing the dialogue and owning that discussion to make sure they're bottoming it out.
Speaker 4Really qualifying is when you. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 3And what about the war on talent? Cause you're in this tech stack. Yeah. And the war on talent, Johnny and I were just talking earlier today about certain companies that are sucking the life out of the industry with all their resources. And, you know, they're sucking the talent out. They're offering huge amounts of money with this talent. How is interviewing changing? For you, uh, as it relates to how much you're qualifying an individual and how much you're actually developing a value proposition to draw them into your company? Has anything changed? What's the situation today?
Speaker 1It's a great, I mean, I would not say on that front, nothing changed. We're always selling until they're buying once they're by, we qualify them. So we're, we're in sell mode until we have a candidate that's, that's, that's leaning into what we're doing and then we want to qualify that we're getting what we want out of it. What is happening today though? Yeah, it is a talent war. Like we had one a few years ago during ZERB. Uh, when every VC was flushed with cash and wanted to expand their sales team. This is different, um, because it's, it's OTEs and guaranteed compensation and things that we haven't seen in the industry before. Um, and so, and based on companies with like crazy product market fit out of the gate with, uh, up to the right revenue curves. So that is, that's an interesting situation we find ourselves in. And I think that's when it's really important to have, um, built something that gives them more than just money. Like I'm big on, like, if you're in sales and you're good at your job, you'll always make money. So is that the number one determination, determining factor for how you're going to pick your career path going forward? For me, it's not like I'm motivated by things that are outside of money. Although I do like to make it and I don't have enough of it yet. Uh, but the things that really drive me are, could I build a durable company? Something that really exciting to be like, could I build something that would stand the test of time? And that someday when we put our bag away, people will talk about. The thing we built and they would do with like the way people talk about you guys. Could they do it with like a measure of respect? Like, wow, that was incredible. They accomplished that business is exception. Could we build an exceptional team and develop them so that in our industry, we'd be known for having the most of the go-to-market team. Like that's something I aspire to try to accomplish and people that are motivated by those kinds of things, they want money, but they want to do something great. Could we build a leadership tree? Could we take people and develop them over time to be exceptional leaders that are well qualified to go run their own company someday? day and build their own go-to-market teams. And would they be able to do that in their shop? And would they value that in a way that would make them want to dedicate themselves to the career here? Small things like I talked about radical candor earlier, but that's a big deal. Like there's not many companies that talk openly with each other about what's going well and what's not going well and give each other honest feedback. You're doing great here, John. I really value what you're doing there. Or hey, I see a gap. I think we need to close it. Here's how I think we need to close it. Are you up for doing it together? And doing that consistently. like that's so we're trying to build an ecosystem where the most elite people in the world are attracted to that because they can make money and and and they get a bunch of things with it
Speaker 3at the next qbr for people that are listening i would prepare yourself if you're leading a team to be prepared to talk about why you're here because what i would do is i'd i just i'd start to get i'd tell people in the beginning i'd get one person up and i would say why are you here and the first person's going to do it and they're gonna they're gonna stumble on their story a little bit but they're gonna find their way and and you know then you tell the next person and by the time the qbr is over you have people understanding that if if if i'm not excited to be here why would anybody else be and in this war on talent right now you have people understanding that if if i'm not excited to be here why would anybody else be and in this war on talent right now if i'm not excited to be here why would anybody else be and in this war on talent right now if i'm not excited to be here why would anybody else be and in this war on talent right now if i'm not excited to be here why would anybody else be if you don't have your value proposition down and you can't honestly say like why are you here like what's so exciting about this place you're you're not going to compete with the because left to its own devices where are you going to go you're going to go to ote you're going to go to equity opportunity if there's no other comparatives uh so i just highly highly uh recommend that i love that i mean
Speaker 1you're right you you nailed that i shouldn't have had that in my answer but like knowing their why is like what motivates them and what are they trying to accomplish is super important to keeping not only attracting people to your business but keeping them in the business you know one of the things that i'm really passionate about is like can we can we we stop moving people every two years across companies and can we actually stay somewhere and build something like building things is very hard it's very difficult to build a company and you know you're moving around every two years or so as a seller like what do you really accomplish
Speaker 4uh or what do they really learning to your point like because the money will come and go but the the skill set and the knowledge that you gain over time that's going to propel you the highest in in any organization but if you're just making money but you're skipping jobs every 18 months at 24 months
Speaker 3you're probably not going anywhere you know how how funny is it that we're having this conversation when we were growing up they were you know if you moved around a lot you were some type of an enigma and then it went to if you stayed someplace too long you were an enigma and now we're back to if you you know if you move around a lot you're an enigma and i think that i think that if you're offering the opportunity what do i what do i get to stay like what do i get to be a part of this because i can go make money anywhere that's it and it's it's the company's responsibility yes you know i remember johnny when you stood up at blade logic and you sat there and you talked about you know johnny did incredible job he said if i i'm going to paraphrase it but the purpose of their organization was to be the most dominating and feared sales organization enterprise tech
Speaker 4and enterprise sales do you remember that johnny yeah sure that's every every meeting i would lead with that with that i put that slide up first okay now we can go but everybody that was in that
Speaker 3room remembers that day and says like when john mcmahon got up and said that we are building the most elite yeah enterprise software company on the planet and and they did yeah so somebody somebody coming and offering somebody twenty thousand dollars more of an ote versus i was on the blade logic track that went to bmc that went to mongo db or to app dynamic or i mean that
Speaker 1is what you're selling it is and it's it's special when you get the ingredients right like the thing that i've learned and you guys know this very well is like for every great company there's a trail of carcasses of ones that didn't make it yeah and the ingredients of great companies is actually pretty hard to find and so when you get inside of a company where you've got a great founder you've got a big market you're selling into you've got differentiated technology you've got a sales team that you're inspired by or leadership that you're inspired by that ain't nothing and that's hard to replicate and so you you know i feel uh excited to put my head down and build inside of a company like that because i just think that the ingredients to do it somewhere else are are not that easy to find and if you get it wrong man you waste two three years of your life doing
Speaker 4something you're bummed out about and then you've seen it yeah you build those ingredients like you talked about sam which you guys have done a great job at at harness when somebody leaves a lot of industry they're like why did he leave harness you know the thing's grown like this it's got a great culture great leaders great product big market and the person left like why yeah it's almost a red flag you know certain companies i was associated with if somebody left the whole industry be seeing like what something didn't doesn't smell like right why would you leave that
Speaker 3company at this stage that's right it's a great point the last 10 minutes i'd encourage people to go back and put it on replay if you are getting your teeth kicked in by these frontier companies or i don't want to you know bite some of these people that are growing they're throwing some money around out there and you don't get value in the last 10 minutes that was just talked about
Speaker 1go back and listen again yeah here's another thought for you and i'll be i'll be thoughtful about my wording here but i'm selling a very technical complex platform middle and top down based on value to about 10 different personas this is very elite level selling that the folks at harness are doing and they're doing a great job at it if you go to one of the companies that you're probably describing that we don't have to say the names of where the biggest job you have is like finding the email address of the person you send the order form to you do that for a couple years it's like not going to the gym for a couple years like you're atrophying muscles that you spent time building and developing and while the while somebody else is out there lifting every day and staying in shape and then fast forward the clock a couple years when the next great round of jobs
Speaker 3are up who are they going to be wanting to hire and there's tons of examples of that skill set right sorry johnny go ahead no i'm sorry you guys are there's such it's such a good point without mentioning any names there's tons of examples of that when you know places have gone and gone through the roof or what have you and the great product market fit uh when you actually look at people on the back end of that that start to go out into industries and uh interview you really find gaps and that was that was something that was surprising to me in my early days when you know back in the day at the oracles or the you know it didn't just because they made it at one company and they killed it at one company did not mean that they were going to make it in the environment that we were in and so what i started to see is exactly what you just started it didn't make them hey if i'm on the end of that and i'm bailing the hay while the sun shines and i'm you know you just got to know that that's part of the value proposition if you're leading this is actually what we're doing and learning while we're here like this is why we're marketable this is why we're the best uh i think it's a great it's a great reminder that you guys landed on really good thank you it's also early days of ai you know i think you know it's exciting
Speaker 1it's moving super fast it's it's like i said earlier it's the most exciting time to be a part of it's also very early innings you know i was uh i'm listening to podcasts and reading like you guys are to try to stay abreast of things that are happening and it's like you go back to the internet era we used to pay to get onto the internet you know you pay all or one of these folks to get onto the internet and used to pay for operating systems and you know then the internet was given away for free and it became ubiquitous and then the value creation was actually in the applications you build on the internet not the internet itself and operating systems became free and now it's about what you build around those things and so it's like it's very early days right now and it's super exciting and i'm thrilled to be a part of it but uh you know what we think is valuable is still undetermined right now and there's going to be a bunch of great companies that come out of this ai area but but who they are is is uh yet to be seen i think i think you guys are obviously i don't even think we're in
Speaker 4the early innings i think we're in the top and first yeah it feels that way are you guys are
Speaker 3you guys hiring you talk about 40 of what you're doing is or 400 interviews or whatever how do how do people get a hold of you the company you know what suggestions would you get there
Speaker 1we have a careers page so they can go there my my uh my reps and leaders or my leaders are probably outbounding to them in the market hopefully trying to find them so find your find a leader uh in your market and and paying them on linkedin ping me ping carlos anybody you want we're happy to take an inbound from anyone and then get you connected to the right person
Speaker 3i mean hell we didn't even talk about carlos johnny but what a great draw for what a great draw for a company he's in that league i'm happy to talk about carlos oh my gosh that's what i mean he's in that's a value that's part of a value proposition absolutely absolutely yeah it was a great i mean
Speaker 1if you want if you if you're committed to excellence and you want to be a leader of your craft it's hard to find anyone that's better than he is and he has um shaped me in the last three years unbelievably and uh grateful grateful to join the business but grateful to share someone that we're like-minded you know we're totally committed to doing great things building great companies building great teams developing people seeing them get promoted and uh and whatnot and so we're like-minded in the way we execute the business and i think he is doing his best work i mean the guy is unbelievably energetic and uh dialed in right now so it's the thrill thrilled to be uh riding shotgun with him on the build you made that obvious today buddy well done thank you sam costello appreciate it man guys it was an absolute pleasure thank you for uh letting me be here a part of it and again thanks for everything you're doing in the industry much appreciated
Speaker 4sure thanks thank john cap thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the revenue
Speaker 2builders podcast thanks for listening to today's episode if you enjoy the content please subscribe rate and review the show to help us reach more people this show is brought to you by force management where we help companies improve sales performance executing the growth strategy at the point of sale check out forcemanagement.com for more information
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