Building Best Ever Teams feat. #GrowthGuests Aaron Milner and Jason Dorfman

In this episode, Aaron Milner, Enterprise Account Executive at Orum, and Jason Dorfman, CEO at Orum, join us to share their expertise on scaling a tech business. Jason discusses his approach to recruiting top talent and the critical role it plays in a startup’s success. Aaron provides insights into sales strategies and the impact of a robust SDR team.

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Thanks for listening!

Unknown: 0:00

All these years, blood, sweat and tears, but I'm still here.

Eric Watkins: 0:10

Nothing could stop me. Welcome back to the growth show. I'm here with a special edition, no doubt. First off, as always, my partner in growth, Jeff winters, how you doing today? Nothing special about that. Nothing special about that. That's exactly right. And honestly, I gotta be honest what I said it twice. That's how honest I want to be good. I've been sitting here with Jeff for four weeks, and I'm getting tired. We had to bring somebody else on the podcast. Amen to that. And we have some special guests today. So we have a very good partnership with a company called Orem, and two special individuals from that company. First, Aaron Milner, who has been our main point of contact. Account Executive, one of the best buying experiences I've ever had in buying any sort of software. And let me tell you, I bought a lot of software. I've had a lot of terrible experiences. Kudos to this guy. Can't wait to hear what he has to give us today. And then Jason Dorfman, CEO of orym, who I just met today and had some great conversations earlier, and he's growing an incredible business, and they're poised for big things. So Aaron, just you want to kick it off, just a little bit about yourself. And tell the people what they need to hear.

Unknown: 1:25

Yeah, appreciate it. Glad to be here. Big fan of the show. Next time I watch the show, I'll be hearing my own terrible, nasally voice. So thanks to everyone who's who's beared with us for this full 30 seconds so far. Yeah, you know, I'm a long time sales leader. I went to school to be a teacher. Was working through college, got a sales job, and was making more than I was going to when I graduated and got a teaching job, and so I've been in sales ever since. But you know, that kind of teacher mindset and the love to help my coworkers and also my customers has always paid off.

Eric Watkins: 1:55

Love it. And sales rep of the year

Unknown: 1:58

I was last year, and I'm gonna be this year. No,

Eric Watkins: 2:01

yeah, no big deal. So I'd listen up when Aaron talks. By

Jeff Winters: 2:04

the way, I'm gonna be this year. For those listening back, it's June.

Eric Watkins: 2:09

Yeah, that's the call. That's the call. Yeah, yeah, back to back. No big deal. Play it.

Unknown: 2:15

It's a very blessed a great product. I'm actually a former customer, as Eric knows, used dorm for a long time before coming here, and it's been

Eric Watkins: 2:22

great, easy to sell something you believe in, right? That's right, yeah, Jason, how about you?

Unknown: 2:27

Yeah. Super excited to be here. It's my first time at in St Louis, first time at the abstract offices. So it's been a lot of fun. And like Aaron, I started off my career in sales as well. Most recently, I was the first sales hire rubric and stay with the company. I was, think was employee number 12 left when we were over 1700 people, and that was a super transformative experience for me. And was a sales leader there, had a front row seat into all the different sales tools that were out there, saw the gap in the market and decided to start Orem, and that's been a really exciting and fun journey so far. So we're Series B Company, about 125 people so far. And yeah, really been great working with the abstract team. Awesome.

Eric Watkins: 3:08

Can I say something little company called rubric? See him on the New York Stock Exchange? I'm

Jeff Winters: 3:13

not saying this because he's sitting here. That's not my nature, because I don't say nice stuff about you, and you're sitting here all the time. Yeah, he's got uber successful CEO vibes. I'm feeling it. I know they're blowing me over. I know I'm dead serious. I sat with them for two hours. Digit, Yeah, same thing, right? Legit. Just like, the whole thing works. Legit, yeah, man,

Eric Watkins: 3:30

yeah. Rubric, I mean, they, he was just talking about, they, just, how long ago did they go public?

Unknown: 3:36

Just a couple months ago,

Eric Watkins: 3:37

a couple months ago, you would have been, he would have been ringing the bell, he'd have been up on stage. Would they have let

Unknown: 3:43

you ring the bell? Most likely. I was probably early enough to be up there, but I had left before the IPO to start Orem, so I had to watch my friends on TV do the slow clap. But I'm really proud to be a part of that company. I mean, they're just, I mean, honestly, I think it's nothing but up for them from here. And learned a ton from the CEO there, bitbull. He's been a mentor to me, and really watching him grow that company was an inspiration for me, and I've taken a lot of lessons from that experience that I put into my own company. Now.

Eric Watkins: 4:13

Love that, love that good stuff. The

Jeff Winters: 4:16

name rubric. I also like, yeah, yeah. I don't want to put you on this with a K to use rubric in a sentence, Eric, but I'm not sure that it would go as well.

Eric Watkins: 4:26

Yeah, let's not do that.

Jeff Winters: 4:28

I thought you're gonna be like. Jason used to work

Eric Watkins: 4:31

at a company called Yeah. All right, we have the first section. So first section, you guys, we gave you a little lay the land of how this works, two truths and a lie from LinkedIn. I know you are both on LinkedIn, Jason and I connected last night. There's lies all over the place. They're spreading like wildfire, and we have the sheriff to make sure he's keeping people in check. I give them the whip one time, one time. There it is, whips. A little quiet, yeah, whip. Quiet. There we go

Jeff Winters: 5:08

to all of our long time listeners. You all know, maybe we're getting some new listeners due to the the Orem family and the Orem can it, dare I say, the Orem aura. Whoa.

Unknown: 5:18

My mom will watch. Yeah,

Eric Watkins: 5:20

terrific. My mom watches every episode. Yeah, biggest fan criticizes

Jeff Winters: 5:24

us endlessly. Yeah, thanks, Mom. We are on LinkedIn all the time because there's people, there's no rules. You can say whatever you want and no one. There's no recourse. You can just spew lies, and there's also plenty of truth. But if you don't have somebody separating fact from fiction, truth from lie, what do you have? Chaos. So here we are. We're doing our small part. First our truth. A somewhat frequent flyer on this segment. Jason Lemkin, sastor, you all familiar? He says, How long should you give a new sales rep before moving on. The tough truth is, from half to one and a half sales cycles, half to one and a half sales cycles. Think about this as I as I unpack it, because I think it's interesting most of the time, when you're talking about whether how to move on, and by move on. And by move on doesn't necessarily mean fire. It could be a different job. It's quantified in months or weeks or quarters. Jason says it's in sales cycles. And I think this couldn't be any more true, and it's interesting. Aaron, what say you that's

Unknown: 6:36

the first time I've ever heard that, but it makes a ton of sense. I'm a little surprised by the half thing.

Eric Watkins: 6:41

That's like half of a sales cycle. That's interesting. Well,

Unknown: 6:45

in the old days, you could move that fast. Now everyone's hands are just tied a little bit, and everyone's a little more careful, and it's the right thing, right? Like we need to be giving everyone the support they need to be successful, give them a full chance. So I'm a little surprised to hear that half, but I'll tell you many, many years ago, I have let go of folks rather quickly when it's just a clear, not correct fit, right? But yeah, that's what's jumping out of me. Me too.

Jeff Winters: 7:13

Jason, what do you think?

Unknown: 7:16

I think that's like a good heuristic, but I tend to agree with Aaron. It really depends. Some reps do have a slow start and turn out to be really good later, and sometimes it's obviously you've made a mistake a lot sooner. So depend on the details of the performance. But I think, as a general timeline, I think that's a pretty good heuristic to think about and to hold yourself accountable to.

Eric Watkins: 7:38

I have, I don't really have an opinion on it. Half. It seems a little low to me, but I like the idea of looking at sales cycles because it's a more accurate representation, especially if you're in long sales cycle products. I have a story though our top SDR on the floor just hit 3000 lifetime appointments. Wow, 3000 lifetime appointments. That's why, Yep, yeah, and I was talking to him when he hit it, and I mean, now he's got like, 35% close rate. His numbers are off the charts. I was like, did you ever think you'd hit this? He goes, No, I had two appointments in my first month. I had 10 appointments in my second month. And so we could have easily had this crazy corrective action, and that person's not here. Now, they're setting 100 appointments, and they've set 3000 100 appointments a month, and they've set 3000 career so it could be the anomaly, right? But I'm glad we didn't miss out on that one. No,

Unknown: 8:34

I love it. You know, there are more variables, like the more consultative and detailed the sales cycle is, right? So if we're talking about lead gen folks, SDRs, meeting setters, maybe it's a little easier to tell quickly, sure, but when you're running big sales cycles, maybe you have a new rep that has a big op that pushes for a year. Yeah, and, you know, thank God. What

Eric Watkins: 8:53

are you pointing at us? Yeah, yeah.

Unknown: 8:56

Slow start at ORM, yeah, not terribly slow. But it would have been a lot faster if

Eric Watkins: 9:02

we would have jumped on ship earlier. I wish we would have. I don't

Jeff Winters: 9:05

know if I got full agreement, but I got close, close, yeah, close, yeah. But that's, that's part of it. I think it's the the sales cycle thing. I thought, was thought,

Eric Watkins: 9:13

yeah, okay. It makes, makes sense.

Jeff Winters: 9:16

I think I will get agreement here. And this truth comes from Charlie moss. Charlie more rigor for sales teams per Amit bend off and Mark Benioff, how do Gong and Salesforce respond to the quote headwinds and budget scrutiny mentioned in many B to B SAS earnings calls earlier this month, and this was talking about this current month that we're in more rigor, more discipline, focused enablement and a refined go to market strategy are a major part of their approach. Gong CEO. Amit bendoff Last week on a podcast, and Salesforce Marc Benioff on May 29 earnings call stated similar approaches for how they plan to navigate the current quote. Headwinds and budget scrutiny expressed in these many calls. Here are some of the approaches that Gong has put in place. Gong, for the those who don't know, is just a software company valued at north of $5 billion weekly KPIs, weekly results and monitoring key activities, tracking every deal with medic, which is a sales methodology and greater accountability for the sales team and sales management. Amit also shared that at first, and this is gonna surprise you guys, some of the sales teams, quote, didn't love it, but now they are hitting their numbers and seeing the results. They are warming to the additional structure and discipline. So here's the fundamental underlying question. Many would say times are a little more difficult, budget scrutiny, a little some headwinds, more

Eric Watkins: 10:43

people involved in decisions. Yeah, as

Jeff Winters: 10:46

a sales leader, is it time to clamp down, more accountability, more metrics, more reporting? Aaron,

Unknown: 10:53

I'd say the short answer is yes, and I'm not surprised that Salesforce and Gong have gone that route. You know, they do a great job of identifying must solve problems in their sales cycles and honing in on those keeping focused on that pain that they identify right? They're not just letting reps forecast deals without being able to articulate why they have to buy it. So I would say, generally, I do agree with that. I think that some companies can slow themselves down, get in their way. They want to change things every three months, and they forget what made the best rep successful. But I think you can do both. I think you want to find that middle, that middle field there.

Jeff Winters: 11:30

Jason, what do you think increased accountability in more difficult times?

Unknown: 11:35

Yeah. First of all, we're big fans of emit and the gong team, and I don't know if I frame it so much is clamped down. So like medic in particular, I look at that as a framework that's something that doesn't just help the rep, but also helps the customer as well. Like it's a it's really a framework to help the rep qualify the deal, understand what to do next, so they're not just checking in with the customer. And I think when times are really frothy or bubbly, that allows people to run sales campaigns that are a lot more sloppy and get the deal anyways. But even in good times, it's not a good experience for the customer. It's not the most efficient way the rep should be working. So I think good times are bad. Times like rigor and a process is always a good thing, not just to track what the rep is doing, but to also inform the rep on what they should be doing strategically next to actually help and partner with the customer. Could I double down on that a little bit? Because I think that's something very subtle and very important. Think a lot of sales teams put processes in place just to help themselves forecast more accurately, a lot of managers are asking questions that aren't really helping the deal. It's just making sure they don't go to the VP of sales and forecast to pretend deal. So I think that's a something that all sales leaders should keep their eye open for. What's my goal here is this just to get the rep to admit maybe this deal is not as firm as I thought it was. The goal should be to help them get that deal more firm more

Eric Watkins: 12:56

Yeah, that's that's so true. That happens all the time, and frankly, it's a very tough trap to fall, to not fall into as a sales leader, because what's the number one question you get asked by whoever or that you're constantly asking yourself, what are we going to sell this month? What are we going to sell this quarter? What are we how are we in relation to our goals, but knowing, having heightened awareness about what you're going to sell if it's not filed by any action, does you absolutely zero good so how? Again, I really like that. I really liked your your answer there, Jason of not necessarily the standpoint of, we want to track every little thing that our reps are doing, but we have lost, we've kind of lost the margin for air in the time that we're in. Yeah, so I want to make sure that there's no wasted motion in what we're doing to help the buyer make a decision.

Jeff Winters: 13:47

I couldn't agree more. I think when the tide goes out, so to speak, a lot of a lot of negative habits that have been developed in frothy times are exposed and not having process, not having rigor, not having tremendous forecastability, reps that are held truly accountable, those things get exposed. So to your point, you should be doing it all the time, but it's boy, it's easy to get away from it when things are good, yeah, absolutely, yeah. All right, I think I got universal agreement kind Yeah. All right. Now to lie, this is what it's all about. Who cares about the rest of it? We've got a hot take. Oh, I think it's a very hot take, a very hot and bad take from Nick. Nick says solopreneurship is only for writers. Bootstrapping is a term that rich kids use to describe daddy funded startups. Read

Eric Watkins: 14:46

that again. What was the first part? It's

Jeff Winters: 14:48

a good one. There's two massive, insane comments here. I think we should all listen closely. Solopreneurship is only for writers. Bootstrapping. Is a term that rich kids use to describe daddy funded startups. Come on now, yeah, I bootstrapped only for writers only for writers

Eric Watkins: 15:16

like, what? Freelance, right? Writing? Oh, yeah, Jason,

Jeff Winters: 15:21

start start with, I'd love to kick it to the to the series B guys too. Because, you know, you, you know, yeah.

Unknown: 15:28

I mean, I think that's obviously false, because you just point to many different examples from nothing. I mean, certainly, like, there's people that are born into privilege where they have a much easier time starting a business. If they do have daddy's money, I would say that that wouldn't really be bootstrapping. That would be raising venture capital from your daddy. But yeah, it's clearly false. I think it also just depends on the business we had bootstrapped Orem for the first, like year and a half, two years of our existence, and for the type of business we are. Where we're a technology business, we have to hire top engineering talent, we have to have support, and all those things. It made sense for us to pursue a venture capital model. And not every company is met meant for that, but many VC backed businesses start off being bootstrapped. But there's plenty of companies that have started with, you know, little to nothing, people and I started ORM while I was still at my job and with another friend, and we were sort of funding it that way. So I think it's a good tip. Is that you don't have to. There is a point where you have to pull the cord and you have to leave your job and you have to go full time. But that's one way to start things up, is to take some of your income from the job that you're in and then start the business on the side until you can get it to be a full time thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, the first thing I think of is Jason Bootstrap and Orem years ago, and so, you know, there's obviously examples we can point to. I'm just curious, like, what's Nick's angle here? Like, what is he, is he saying, go take some VC money? Or does he just have a friend from college that was bragging about his bootstraps?

Eric Watkins: 16:58

It's been he's just trying to, hey, trying to be out there hating, yeah,

Jeff Winters: 17:02

you're, you're, you're subscribing motives like, they're not, they're not always motives like, generally, the motive with which is why we have to do this such important work, yeah, is they just want likes and engagement. Well,

Eric Watkins: 17:13

the downside here is, if you were to read this post and you were to take this seriously, and you don't have daddy's money, or you don't have easy access to or you have a dream of starting your own company. This tells you don't do it like you shouldn't do it. Yeah? You shouldn't do it because you don't have the money, or you're not backed by venture capital, and solopreneurship is only for writers, you know? Yeah? So I don't like the message it sends.

Jeff Winters: 17:37

I don't either, and we're living proof. I mean, abstract is a bootstrapped company. I've never taken any outside investment. No rich daddies anywhere. No series D rich daddies. Maybe that's a new I like that. But I think the most important message here of this lie, Jason pointed it out, is not all businesses are made or ought to be venture backed businesses, and not all businesses are started that shouldn't be venture backed businesses or aren't are started by people with rich parents who come from privilege. So do not be discouraged. If you've got a great idea. It solves a problem. People will pay for it. You want to take a risk. Do it? That's your

Eric Watkins: 18:12

speech. I like it. Did you know that Jason bootstrap ORM going into this? You took a risk here. Jason could have got daddy's money to start Orem, and then you might have had a might have been a truth

Jeff Winters: 18:22

I could tell by first time I met Jason, which was, you know, we've been friends for 12 minutes now, but in that very important 12 minutes, I could tell he was gonna have a thoughtful opinion. He's a

Eric Watkins: 18:31

boots Bootstrap, yeah? Nobody, nobody

Jeff Winters: 18:33

dogs the Bootstrap, like, when you raise venture money, nobody's like, oh God, bootstrapping. What a bunch of That's lame. Yeah. And

Unknown: 18:40

one of the reasons I don't like that quote is because I really think of sales as like the personification of the American dream. You don't have to come from anything, you don't have to have a silver spoon, you don't have to go to an Ivy League school. You can have whatever you want if you work hard enough. And I think that perfectly encapsulates why I love sales so much. And you know, it's just the good old fashioned American dream. So if we weren't having bootstrap companies starting from nothing, I'd feel much less romantic. Yeah, about sales, Aaron, we were talking about Genghis Khan last night. It's kind of interesting. I mean, Genghis Khan certainly did not have a rich daddy, and he conquered more than Alexander the Great By the time he was 28 right? Coming from a horse tribe where his parents were killed, yeah? So there's people that not, not that everything Genghis Khan did was great. I mean, he did a lot, basically what you can do with violence, yeah, but for the context of the times, you know he, he was able to accomplish a lot from very humble beginnings. Whether or not the a lot was something that was beneficial for the world. Is a it's a debated topic. I learned last night how much Jason knows about history. I went to school to be a history teacher. I can geek out about history all day, and Jason just, I don't know how he's got that much brain power to to spare on ancient Mongolian imperialism. Or it's. I love it. It was, it was a great, great nerding out session last night. And yeah, Genghis Khan was a big part

Eric Watkins: 20:05

of it. Genghis Khan, timogen, didn't think Genghis Khan was getting brought up. Wasn't on my bingo card for today. No.

Jeff Winters: 20:11

Also, the weekly thing, not a great sell for other people trying to come to St Louis and visit us. It's like, yeah, you come to St Louis, you get to go on the podcast and nerd out on history at dinner. Be awesome. It was a great restaurant. That was a great remind it was a great rest. A great

Unknown: 20:23

restaurant. Yeah? Trying to

Eric Watkins: 20:24

keep it interesting. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, in addition to knowledge about history, Jason has a lot of other knowledge, and as you mentioned, he bootstrapped this company and then took outside funding to grow it into what it is today, and it's a huge, promising company that's going to have a huge valuation and continue to grow. So Jason, 50 for 50 we go through 50 tips to help take your company from zero to $50 million what do you have for the listeners today?

Unknown: 20:56

Only one tip or multiple tips you

Eric Watkins: 20:58

you do? You do whatever you want. Yeah, 50 tips. Typically we do one, oh, yeah. Typically we do them up with 50. I memorized all 50. You memorize all 50? Yeah. We typically do one a week. But if you have 50 for them, I don't want to stop

Unknown: 21:10

you, yeah. So the first thing that I'm really passionate about is it, and it sounds, you know, typical, but it's all about the people, and specifically, having very, very high standards for the people that you bring into the company, especially in the early stages, and I think especially with a software or a tech business where so much of it is dependent on the engineering talent and the caliber of people that you bring in, it's real easy to say, well, we're a startup. It's myself and my buddy, and we don't really have any customers yet. So what good person would actually join us. And so then you settle for the second or third best person, because you don't think you're in the place yet to hire the great people. But the problem is the great people will never want to hire join you. Then, because you've hired B players, they hire C players, and what you want is a players that are going to attract other A players. So the kind of rigor that we have in place at Orem, which we've been talking about recently, is there's best ever world class, and good enough. So when I was at rubric, I asked one of the leaders, I said, I'm going to hire a world class SDR team. And he was like, why would you want to do that? That just means you're hiring an SDR team, like other world class people, don't you want to hire the best ever team. And so you can kind of take world class, which is kind of sounds on paper like a good thing, but you're really just kind of hiring people at the same standard as other good companies, and that bar is not high enough. So if you go for best ever, maybe you'll actually hit world class. You shoot for the stars, you hit the moon, but it's really and I think some people do have, like, a specific talent for recruiting, but nothing else matters but that you have to. You have to be judgmental in a way. You have to look at people and really only pick the people that are the absolute best, and do everything you can to convince them to join the startup. And that has to do with storytelling, sales, really understanding a lot about them to get them to want to join your company. So without that, all the knob turning and tweaking in the world isn't going to help your business if you don't have the right people on board. Especially true in a company that's doing software development, it's not about the number of people, it's about the caliber of the people. So I think that's a I think it's a big one. I think, you know, once you get that original kind of spark and product market fit like and you're the CEO that comes with a whole host of other decisions you have to make. I think one of the things I've learned is try to get ahead of decisions. I think it's real easy to react to things and do things late. And one of the benefits of experience is kind of knowing a little bit about what's going to happen next. So you hire the executive you need for the next 12 months. You can't hire someone that's appropriate a few years down the line because they have a really shiny resume. But you also have to be awake to the fact that when you get to that next stage, that person might not be the right person, and they still might work for your company, but you have to make decisions about where to place people, and you don't want to wait too long to do that. You have to be decisive and make decisions quickly. So those are a couple things, but there's a bunch of different areas. I think we could take the take the conversation, yeah, can

Jeff Winters: 24:13

we hone in on I've never heard that good enough, world class, best ever. I mean, there's on this podcast that's an instant steal for me, yeah, and I hope for other people out there, because it's sort of hard to bracket people, so far as hiring is concerned. And you know, you use different terminologies, use assessments, you stack rank like you hear all that you've got people who are, you know, bar raisers, who come into the conversation the idea that you want to hire best ever clicks for me. It's different. Like, that is different because it's like, Oh, are they great? Are they? Can they take your job? Yeah, those are all a little ill defined for me. Best Ever, I know what best. Best Everest? Yeah, I know what best Everest?

Eric Watkins: 25:02

Yeah, it's at least better than anybody in the building that you have right now. It's a true bar raiser, like, but people say bar raiser, and you're like, Oh, well, they kind of raised the bar. I like it, yeah. How do you what I was going to follow up with that? What is there anything specifically you do in the interview process to uncover that? It depends

Unknown: 25:20

on the position, because hiring for an engineer is a lot different than a sales rep. But I think one thing that might be relevant to the folks in this room is like hiring entry level sales talent, especially when they don't have a long track record. And for all the things that I did wrong in my job at a prior company, the one thing I did right was I was able, I did have an eye for talent. I was able to hire really, really good people. And the way that I think about my interviews is one I want to like. I want them to tell me their life story, and not just listen to it, but listen to how they describe their life narrative. Are they the victim of this story? Are they someone that hits obstacles and overcome them, and have they done other really hard things, challenging things, in the past, and been successful at it. Those are really telling so when the interview goes down the line of like, okay, well, your last job, you set this many meetings, or, you know, what was your GPA like? Those are, those are kind of fluff things. I want to hear their innate storytelling abilities. And I want to understand, like, what's their life trajectory, where this makes sense as a next step for them, and where I can understand the reason for them to be successful in the job.

Jeff Winters: 26:27

So the top grading interview guy was a guest. I did an interview with him, and he talked about almost the exact same approach, which is super interesting. I really I've never heard that. He's like, I make you go back to high school. I was like, start in high school or junior high, and he's like, I don't care how old the person is, doesn't matter to me. And tell me your three most impressive accomplishments from each phase of your life, and tell me a little bit about them. It's not the tell me your life story, which is a little more open ended, which I also like, but and he's looking for the same stuff. And you can you get it out of people that way, or you don't, but it's a really interesting like, I'm triangulating with two really smart guys on this.

Eric Watkins: 27:06

I like what you said there. At the end of I have to be able to really sort of sell myself on why this position makes sense in their life right now, because so many times you interview someone who has all the intangibles, and they're great, but you're like, Why do they want to do this? Why they want to do this? Like, what would what's in it for them? Why are they I know they're here. I know they're interviewing. I know they say they want it, but do they really want it, or is this one of the 10 interviews that they're going on?

Jeff Winters: 27:36

I'm really, I can tell you. I like, what a great segment. Good point, good

Eric Watkins: 27:40

segment. You

Unknown: 27:40

know, this isn't my section, but if I could put not a different view on it, but a slight, slightly different lens on it, or just something to keep in mind, I think when you're interviewing salespeople, you don't want the perfect candidate. In fact, if they think they're perfect, it's kind of a red flag. I think what you want is the person who's fastest at identifying and fixing their mistakes. And so I love the question you asked. You know, tell me about something very challenging that you accomplished. I love asking. Tell me about something that you thought you were doing great, but you actually needed to change. And then you did change it, and you started doing it great. And that could be something that they self identified, that they had to fix, that's great, or it could be because they received feedback and they heard it and followed it and did something about it. That's also great. So I think that's a sneaky interview question to identify, like whether they can be self critical and fix things, or whether they get defensive. And then the way you find out if they're BS ing or not, is something that Jason touched on, asking them to detail the problems. We've all fixed things in our businesses. We've all accomplished cool things. The more hands on you were on those things, you can articulate the problems that happened along that path better than someone who was just a casual observer who wants to take credit for something they didn't

Jeff Winters: 28:55

do. I would like to answer this question. What was the question? Again? Say it exactly so tell

Unknown: 29:00

me about something that you thought you were doing great, but you weren't doing great, right? And then you started doing it great. Here's

Jeff Winters: 29:05

my answer, and this is really profound and deep, smiling in pictures. I thought I was so great at smiling in pictures, and then I thought I was great. And then my wife told me, I look like an idiot. And then I changed, and now I'm

Eric Watkins: 29:19

better, and now you're better. He took the feedback. Look at that guy. He took the feedback. It was given to

Jeff Winters: 29:24

me in a non caring way. But I I was doing it, I'm doing it better now. And I thought I was

Eric Watkins: 29:31

good, so you feel like you have a good smile and pictures. I thought

Jeff Winters: 29:35

it was, I don't want to say I thought it was best ever, but I thought it was good enough, okay? I thought it was good enough, not world class, yeah, but it was actually bad. Okay,

Unknown: 29:44

okay, you're gonna eliminate world class from that. Yeah, we're

Eric Watkins: 29:47

not, we're world class. We're like other companies. Suck, yeah, yeah, suck. Get them out of here. I got a question. Real quick. You

Jeff Winters: 29:53

got a question? Yeah.

Eric Watkins: 29:54

Can I ask a question? I'm getting ready. You want to keep talking about your smile or what? I

Jeff Winters: 29:58

want to ramp up for your sex? Because I. So excited

Eric Watkins: 30:01

salespeople, you interested? You talked about the number one skill is the ability to self identify or hear feedback and change it. Do you? Would you rather start with an experienced rep that is sold before that is sort of stuck in their ways of what they're doing? Or would you rather start with someone very green who you know will be super coachable as you are now transitioning into a sales management position here soon. Yeah,

Unknown: 30:27

I I'm fine with someone green, who's willing to learn, who's a good listener, who's got good people skills, right? Like, kind of those intangibles, sure, you can teach someone how to use the CRM. You can teach someone how to use the SEP, right? So, like all of those scale sales skills that you learn after being in a business for a year, largely, they're teachable. You know, I do like to try to find the intangibles. I'd say, if we look at an SDR perspective, the best SDRs I ever hired were fresh out of college. They went to school for business. They did internships sales wise. While in college, they wanted to be in sales. Their parent, one of their parents, was a great, successful salesperson, right? But I've also had some that came from just very diverse backgrounds, right? So I'm totally fine with someone green. It's just, can they prove to me how bad they want it? Because I think that want is the hardest thing to find, the hardest thing to fake and the hardest thing to mess up.

Eric Watkins: 31:23

And then with the that's great. I like that hard thing to find, hardest thing to fake, hardest thing to mess up. And then on the the individuals who have experience, where do you draw the line on stubbornness versus ability? I mean, I mean someone is literally 150% of quota, but they're stuck. They're gonna do they're not gonna listen to anything you say. Those

Unknown: 31:49

are tough, and it's tough because it can affect the whole team, right? You can't just teach your new hires to go do what that person's doing, right? So you're always trying to find things that are repeatable and teachable and measurable, but a lot of top reps are that lone wolf, as we know, but historically, I'd like to find someone that is a team player. Maybe that's maybe you identify a little bit of that through team sports. Maybe you know there's a lot of ways to be a team player. So I if someone's at 150% of quota and they're interviewing at your company, they might be lying about their quota attainment.

Eric Watkins: 32:23

Let's say they are, though, like, what? And it's, it's just a good this. This happens all the time, right? You have the top performer, Lone Wolf, who's also maybe a jack s, right? Yeah, frankly, tough to deal with, yeah. And so two questions, if you interview someone from the outside, outside, and you have the chance to get one of those people. Do you take them, knowing you're signing up for probably someone who's going to hit above quota every month. And then if you have someone on your team, where do you draw the line of when it's worth letting that person go? It's

Unknown: 32:55

tough to be perfectly honest, if someone's at 150% of quota, and I've told this to one of my reps back in the day, miles, you can slap me in the face every single morning, and I'll take it 150% of quota, you can slap me every morning just hopefully, like, mix up the, you know, do one side every other day.

Jeff Winters: 33:14

Here's the here's the other side of that. Though I hear what you're saying, and I a, I think it's largely true. And B, it's funny. I think my caveat to that is obviously like anything egregious that's totally violates a non negotiable, or if they are negatively impacting a large portion of the sales team's work or other people's mood, that is where I don't care what you sell, you're out in to me, absolutely right.

Eric Watkins: 33:42

But I would argue, 100% of the time they are impacting others negatively, 100% like, if it's one of those types of it's gonna

Jeff Winters: 33:50

be flagrant, though it can't be, it can't be right, or figure out an arrangement that does make sense. Like, maybe that person is an independent contractor. I mean, there are ways to do it. I just, I It's interesting. It's such a slippery slope, because, and we could go down a rabbit hole on this, but you you got there is a cert to me, there is a certain cultural values violation that is unacceptable irrespective of performance. And if you define culture as the worst thing you tolerate, you got to draw line. I do

Eric Watkins: 34:21

appreciate the honesty, though, because I think a lot of people would sit here and say, you know, if they don't fit our values, we're going to let them go. And then they have somebody sitting on their team that's crushing quota, and every month, I think you

Unknown: 34:34

guys are both describing it right, values, ethics, honesty with your customers being a good or negative influence on the rest of your team. Those are non negotiables. When I'm thinking of a difficult salesperson, I'm thinking of someone who, like, doesn't update Salesforce, doesn't exactly follow the script. Those are things that

Jeff Winters: 34:53

got you can get away with and physical violence towards you.

Unknown: 34:56

Well, Nope, it's not violence. Yeah, it's not violence if they're at 150% no. I'll put it in the comp plan. There we go. They can slap me every morning.

Jeff Winters: 35:04

You can't slap me. I know you're looking at me. Eric, yeah, no touch.

Eric Watkins: 35:08

I'll slap you.

Unknown: 35:09

Perfectly Timed with there by the verbally, verbally speaking

Jeff Winters: 35:13

of Eric is about to share in his section how he's divin, dove, dive. Divin divin deep into the pool of generating leads in our lead gen process, and found a nugget. And we call it what

Eric Watkins: 35:33

do we call it? Mining for Growth Goal?

Jeff Winters: 35:35

Do we Yeah? Mining for growth gold.

Eric Watkins: 35:41

We just updated our Yeah, we just updated our interns. We play one more play it one more time. Yeah, let them, let them hear it. Yeah, you can't, you can't let it breathe for too long, because it doesn't stay clean. But you know, we're, we're in it, we're in it. So mining for Growth Goal, this little shout out to Orem today, in order to drive leads for your organization, you have to be able to effectively train and develop your reps and one absolute game so this is for this for companies and anybody in the audience who is making calls internally Right now, one complete game changer. That is really not a side effect, but it's not even the real purpose of why we bought Orem was the ability to see every single call in a transcript. So I don't know if you know the stats on this, Jeff, but typically you can read about two times faster than you can listen. And so we in we've been listening to calls forever. On our side, we listen to appointment calls. We listen to calls where you talk to a had a good conversation with a key decision maker, but you didn't ultimately get the appointment we call those non appointment calls. I bet there's companies out there that are just listening to appointment calls or just live monitoring and never going back to the game tape? And why? Because it's kind of monotonous, right? Like you go through, like to listen to a six minute call that didn't land in an appointment. You know, you can only do so many of those, but in Orem, we have the ability to analyze the transcripts. So not only does it summarize the objections, not only can you click to that point of the call, I can go through 20 pitches in about 30 minutes, which has never been possible in our history. And the ability for me to sit, and this isn't my role, but to encourage the rest of my team to do this, I can go sit by a rep, and I can take 30 minutes, and I can pull up every single conversation they had over the last day, and it's, it's just prints out on paper, and they see it, and they're like, you know, when you see it in writing, it's just different. I still believe in listening to calls, there's still a spot for that, but if you're a business out there that's doing this at any sort of scale, you need to find a way to be able to get the transcripts of your calls immediately. You

Unknown: 37:57

know, an important part of that is some calling, call recording software only records calls that are longer than a minute, so few leaders realize how many of their reps are struggling with the first 30 seconds of the call. So I think those are important to look at. You know, one thing I like to look at is the call, the connected Conversation rate. How many people are they keeping on the phone for a full minute, and some folks can keep folks on the phone, but not lock them down. They need coaching on those long calls, kind of like the six minute one, right? But the other half, they're not even making it to a minute, and they need help on their energy, their tonality, their permission based opener, so astute. Call out to you know, and kudos to you for being so hands on and getting, you know, getting into those transcripts and recordings, it's awesome to hear. It's it's

Eric Watkins: 38:44

a game changer, this game changer. Jason thoughts, you're the brainchild behind this. Why'd you guys do it? Yeah,

Unknown: 38:50

I mean, it's interesting because I was an SDR in 2010 and we didn't have call recordings. People forget that. Like, that's a relatively new, new thing, at least, like in the sales development world, it seems obvious now. And I mentioned you earlier, I met the founders of Chorus when they were, like, in the very, very early days, and I was looking at their products like, wow, this is really interesting. And I brought it to some of the leadership of my company. I said, Hey, we should buy this. And they said, why would you want to have recordings of the calls? Seems kind of like a vitamin, not a painkiller, right? Right? And so even then, this is maybe 2014 2015 timeframe. It's really these types of technologies. Have you know, they've become table table stakes. They've really crossed the chasm. Now leadership is like, why don't you have recordings of all the calls? Like, don't you want to review the game tape, right? And so it's, it's been interesting to watch that evolution. Now we're sort of in this next leg of it, where it's like, What do you mean? Do you mean? You don't have aI running on top of your recordings to understand what the objections are, and all these mass reporting kind of details. So yeah, I mean, if you look at any other activity, I mean sports is the obvious example. If you can review the recordings of your calls, you can improve. So it's a huge thing, and not just for managers to listen to reps calls, but for reps to listen to their own calls. When I first got access to recordings with another tool I was using, it wasn't in the web. It's like you had to download it, and then you have download the VLC player, and then you would play the recording, and then it would disappear after. And I remember listening to my own calls and going because when you're talking on the phone, you can't see the other person's mouth moving, and so you don't know when they're done talking. And I found out that if I was interrupting people, and then if I had just paused, they would have continued to speak more. I would have done more needs discovery. And that was only apparent to me when I listened to the recording of myself, and that was after I already had many years of experience in sales. So yeah, I mean, call recordings are absolute no brainer.

Jeff Winters: 40:47

Really interesting. I think back to how we used to do it. I'm like, racking my brain to how we used to do it, and it was just role plays, right? We just role play, and we'd assume that the role play was the same as the live call, which is, like, insane, when you think about it, it's like, we're gonna do an interview and we're gonna assume the person that we're interviewing is the same person that's gonna show up at the job. And often they're they're two different they're two different people. I think getting to what you said, putting a finer point on good reps, to great reps, like hungry reps will listen to calls like, I think that is such a great leading indicator of the want. Going back to what you said, are your reps? SDRs, AE, salespeople, whatever spending time listening to other great reps calls.

Eric Watkins: 41:34

Funny story. I this. This to me, everything that applies to sales really applies to success as well. On the customer, partner success side. I was in an interview SDR, who had been here for probably nine months, straight out of college, and I asked the question of, you know, how can I feel comfortable that you'll be prepared to move into this partner success role without having little to no business acumen. And you know, your only experience being here for nine months. She's like, well, over the past month, I've listened to 97 monthly results meetings, which are hour long meetings. And I'm like, Okay, done. Hired.

Jeff Winters: 42:12

Yeah, immediately hired. What? What else do you need to know about somebody, right? Like, okay, let's say they meet the table stakes. What else do you need to know, other than I've listened to 100 hours of calls on my own with no prompt, and it wasn't

Eric Watkins: 42:24

a round number either. It was like 97 it was like, I've listened 97 calls. That's

Unknown: 42:28

such an important thing about giving a stat, even if your stat and it's real, yeah, but if it ends in two zeros, you have to lie and say it's 97 instead, because people don't believe a super number. So nice job by her. That might be

Jeff Winters: 42:41

the big takeaway from this show. She might have just lied to me so much gold on this show, and people are going to be like, sending that around. Yeah, yep,

Unknown: 42:48

I'm nervous about this. Next kudos to her.

Eric Watkins: 42:50

That's you're nervous.

Jeff Winters: 42:51

Well, I just, I'm anxious. You know, this is my thing. This

Eric Watkins: 42:54

is your thing. And Aaron's, I'm

Jeff Winters: 42:55

not nervous that he's going to do a great job. I know he's going to do a great job. He

Eric Watkins: 42:59

might replace you, is what you're worried about. Correct. Okay? Tails from sales, Aaron, take

Unknown: 43:05

it away. All right. So, you know, I just wanted to kind of share a tip. We'll talk about it broadly. I'll tell a quick, funny story that's making fun of myself, and then we'll talk about how you can actually use this. And you guys are bright. I think you're gonna like this a lot. So people will agree with anything. People will believe anything like your prospects. They will believe anything you say. They will agree with anything you say. It just has to be a compliment. And so a quick example to help visualize what this looks like. A former VP of sales, I worked for, we disagreed. He wanted to focus on the hardware. And I said, No, we and I said, No, we got to demo the software. And he gave me 10 different reasons over the course of months of us talking about this of why we shouldn't demo the software. He's like, Oh, it's going to lengthen the sales cycle. It's going to get them distracted. They're going to see less value on the hardware. And whatever he said. I was like, no, it's actually speeding up the sales cycles. It gives us a reason to have follow up calls. Like, I just, I had a I had and I was right. We needed to demo the software. But like, every reason he gave me, I had some reason to push back, right? Well, finally, one day, he's like, Well, Aaron, you can demo the software, but not everyone's as smart as you. I was like, up, yep, that makes sense. Everyone showed up. He's on something that makes sense. You're right. We shouldn't even be trying to demo the software. The only way he got me to shut up was by, you know, giving me a compliment, right? So the way you can have this work in your favor with your prospects is just very subtle. I did it just 30 seconds ago. You say, Ah, you're bright, you're going to get this and then you give them your pitch, and they want to, they want to like it, because if they don't, then you're you think they're not bright. I often thought about that back in the day. I was like, if I ever wrote a movie or a book, I would just market it and tell people, if you're not a genius, you're not going to like this. Only geniuses should watch this or read this, and then everyone in the world will say they love it. That's a great idea.

Jeff Winters: 44:59

Yeah. The compliment? Yeah, I love that.

Eric Watkins: 45:02

I've never disagreed with somebody complimenting me. I gotta add to that,

Unknown: 45:06

you're the best at that. Yeah,

Jeff Winters: 45:08

you believed it. See, look what I did.

Eric Watkins: 45:10

Oh, I get it, yeah. So you don't even realize it's happening. Yeah?

Jeff Winters: 45:14

You know, where else I like the compliment? We all have long winded process. Are

Eric Watkins: 45:18

you trying to turn this into your section? Are you trying to steal his Go ahead, Eric,

Jeff Winters: 45:22

you're the best at being quiet while I'm talking. So think about a long winded prospect. Who we love? We love prospects. We're excited about our stuff, but if it's an hour call, we have prospects that are gonna talk for 45 minutes. I like the compliment interrupt. The compliment interrupt like they're right in the middle. So you got, I got a pleasure right there. That is such a beautiful point. I love what you said. I really like how you said that. Let me just pause that that's my I like his compliment too. But the compliment interrupt is sometimes your only parachute out of a prospect. Will talk for two hours.

Unknown: 46:01

Does that work with significant others? I want, I want to find out

Jeff Winters: 46:04

why these immune to

Eric Watkins: 46:06

all of my tricks. Yeah, I'll get to the laundry. But the way you said, that was incredible, how what if I didn't do the laundry? I don't think it's gonna work. The

Unknown: 46:18

only one way to find out, yeah, that's good, though, no, but in all seriousness, like, because we don't want to manipulate prospects, right? But, yeah, you can let them know, like, hey, not every group is ready for something like this, but you guys, you're doing things the right way. Like, you're set up for success. You're set up to take that next level. Like, that's real, you know? And and they're gonna hear, they're gonna hear what you have to say. Did

Eric Watkins: 46:39

you do this naturally? And then it just you realize the impact of it, or is this something you consciously try to do? Because now that I'm thinking back, is how you sold me, man, you just told me how good I was for one year. And then

Unknown: 46:53

I'm rethinking the motion. Now I'm kind of thinking back conversations. These good looking gentlemen are onto something here, but I'm out. I'm honestly trying to remember how I started doing it in the first place. I'm racking my brain. I can't recall. So I think it was a mixture of both products, and then maybe somebody commented on it and it was a compliment, so I believed them, and was like, Ooh, I'm gonna steal that. Okay,

Eric Watkins: 47:19

final section, we're here all the rest of the show. Nobody really cares about they come for to do or not to do. Jason's getting

Jeff Winters: 47:27

this. Jason took, he stepped on my comment, yeah, with that long sound, I think Jay, I'm excited for Jason's take on this, because he took kind of the last section off, because he knows he needs my time here. Yeah.

Eric Watkins: 47:42

He needs mic time. Yeah, okay, it's 2024, we got credit cards, Venmo, PayPal cash app. You can Apple Pay. There's a million ways that you can pay outside of having the old fashioned cash. But should you still carry cash in this day and age to do or not to do? Should you still carry a little bit of cash? Jason, you want to start us off?

Unknown: 48:14

Yeah, you should always carry cash.

Eric Watkins: 48:16

Always give us your reasons why.

Unknown: 48:21

I think you have to be prepared, you know, what if the what if the grid goes down? What if a credit card doesn't work? You got to get yourself out of a situation. Also, if you want to get a good deal on something, you flash those Benjamins in front of them, and they're like, oh,

Eric Watkins: 48:35

so he's not just carrying a couple 20s. He's got a couple hundreds. How much

Jeff Winters: 48:39

cash you carry? How much cash should people carry? Let's get in the wallet.

Unknown: 48:42

I don't think I have too much on me today. I might be a little low, but I got $21

Jeff Winters: 48:48

Oh, so if the grid goes down,

Eric Watkins: 48:54

he can get a bagel and a coffee from Starbucks. You

Jeff Winters: 48:57

got $21.20

Unknown: 49:00

$21 gets you a long, a long ways in an apocalypse.

Eric Watkins: 49:03

That's true. That's true. But, yeah, I

Unknown: 49:05

think, I think I in on a broader note, it's like, we shouldn't give up cash. You know, it's the one kind of anonymous way that we have to transact with each other. So I'm down to, like, hold on to it for a little bit longer, until everyone can just see everything that you're doing at all times I find Venmo creepy. It's like, Yeah, somebody went to high school with that's still in your phone. And it's like, they just paid their house cleaner. It's like, great. I need to know that. Why do

Eric Watkins: 49:26

they, why do people put all their profiles on public it is amazing. Then most

Unknown: 49:30

specifically, they think, yeah, like a social media Yeah, it's because it was probably created in the time of, like, when social media was coming up. And they're like, and some product managers, like, we have to make this social and mobile. And then they're like,

Eric Watkins: 49:40

Okay, people, it gets used a lot. I'll tell you that it does get used. I use Venmo,

Unknown: 49:44

but yeah, definitely hold on to your cash. You know,

Eric Watkins: 49:48

Aaron, how about you? You seem like a cash guy.

Unknown: 49:50

I'm a cash guy. You can't play you can't play craps with Venmo. How much cash do you have on you? Aaron, well, more than I would if we played craps. I brought some with the idea. Potentially playing some dice. So I've got more on me than normal, but I always try to have a little bit I like to tip, tip the live musician last to pay taxes on the tip. That's true, right? That's true. Yeah. I like to tip housekeeping when I stay at a hotel or something. So I'm a tipper,

Eric Watkins: 50:16

tipper cash, two for two right now. Jeff,

Jeff Winters: 50:19

cash and lots of it, cash and lots of it. Absolutely you don't.

Eric Watkins: 50:23

I feel like you don't carry cash very often. Oh, I

Jeff Winters: 50:26

100% do I carry cash? How much? All the time? At least, I don't. I don't know what I want to say now, but I always, always, always carry cash. I mean, one for the apocalypse. I totally agree, in the event of apocalypse, $21 probably then you're gonna want to hang out with me as far as, like, getting yourself out of the apocalypse. But you know what? We've carried cash for so long. It just makes me feel secure. It makes me feel like, hey, I can withstand so much, and also, my wife won't let me have a Venmo. She tracks all my spending on the app, like everything I go to quick trip for a for a muscle milk. What'd you get? A quick trip? I have no ATM card. I have no access to anonymously buy things that I want without cash. That's fair, and I'm probably in an unusual spot there, and she has her reasons, but that's really why I carry it. The

Unknown: 51:29

producer with these sound effects is killing it,

Eric Watkins: 51:32

crushing it. It's taking him a couple weeks to get back in the saddle, but he is getting better.

Unknown: 51:36

That was too quiet of a whip for that story. A louder whip would have been necessary for that story

Jeff Winters: 51:43

like that. That's a good reason. Yeah, that,

Eric Watkins: 51:45

Oh, that's a great reason. Like that is the number one reason. Like, after getting married, yeah, last July, I think I'm now team cash. I don't I'm bad about I want to be the guy that has cash on him. Like, you want to be that guy that pulls out. Like, does anybody have cash? I got cash. I got some Yeah, I got some cash. But I'm not like, I forget. I don't, you know I but I have it somewhere, like I have it in a drawer at home or in my car or in my backpack or something. I just am bad about keeping it on me. Do

Jeff Winters: 52:14

you think you need to have a stash? Oh, yeah, in case of emergency, you

Eric Watkins: 52:19

need to have. Yes, you need to have. I mean, the number varies for everybody, but I think you gotta have 5% of your net worth in cash somewhere, buried in your backyard. 5%

Jeff Winters: 52:35

buried in your backyard. You're gonna have people at your house. They're

Eric Watkins: 52:39

gonna be disappointed. I haven't done don't, yeah, do what I say, not not as I do, but I team cash. Gotta have cash.

Jeff Winters: 52:47

We're in the minority, and we're gonna be increasingly in the minority. Yeah,

Eric Watkins: 52:51

there's gonna be chips in our hands, and that's

Unknown: 52:54

Venmo doesn't have that gross, amazing smell that I

Eric Watkins: 52:58

know that gets your hands all dirty. That's how you know

Jeff Winters: 53:01

you can't spread disease through Venmo, but cash, though I could get a virus, that's how

Unknown: 53:06

I want to go out kid. Yeah, give me so much that I catch that, so

Eric Watkins: 53:09

much cash. Yeah, all right. Well, that's what it is. If you don't have cash right now, you never know you might be in an apocalypse. You might need$21 to get out of it.

Jeff Winters: 53:19

That's what I learned by now. Give people, give people compliments, and $21 will go a long way in the apocalypse. Going

Unknown: 53:25

to the ATM after this, by the way, yeah,

Eric Watkins: 53:28

gotta re up. Re up. All right. Well, incredible show. Jason, Aaron, thank you for joining Jeff pleasure as always. Appreciate the time, appreciate the insights. I think we dropped a lot of good knowledge for our listeners out there until next time. Let's grow. Let's grow. The grow show is sponsored by abstract cloud solutions certified Salesforce consulting services. You.

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