Sales Management Podcast
68. Navigating the First 90 Days in Sales Leadership with Eric Reavey
Are you starting a new sales management job soon? Or are you onboarding sales managers? Either way, this isn't the most well documented path and sales enablement often gets pulled in other directions, leaving new managers to fend for themselves.
Are you starting a new sales management job soon? Or are you onboarding sales managers? Either way, this isn't the most well documented path and sales enablement often gets pulled in other directions, leaving new managers to fend for themselves.
Welcome to the sales management podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm co-founder, corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads. Let's go Today, fun episode, topical, something that some of you might be going through right now or a lot of you might be going through in the future. I've got Eric Rivi here. He's the director of sales development over at Rentable. He's in a new leadership position at a new company going through his first 90 days. We're going to talk a little bit about what's going through his mind, how he prepped for it, what he's doing now, any non-confidential roadblocks that he's running into, and see what he's doing to set himself up for success. Eric, good to see you, great to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Corey.
Speaker 1:I think the other interesting thing about you is you're at your last company for over five years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, zoom info. That's where I made my bones. I didn't really know what sales of it. I'm surprised they hired me at Zoom info. I didn't really know what sales development was when I started, but you know, thankfully Was it like that.
Speaker 1:Have you seen the show suits? I have not. So the guy was doing a drug deal and he was running from the cops, but he happened to be dressed nice and he ended up in a law firm interview and they hired him, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:Because his side hustle, besides being a drug dealer, was. This is not how I thought this episode was going to start, but we're going to roll with it. Here we are. He also took the LSAT the Law School Entrance Exam for other people for money, and so he shows up in this law firm interview and he just crushes it.
Speaker 2:Great Wish it went that way for me. Now I had. I had actually come from commercial real estate property management assistant for a company called Workspace Property and wanted to get into sales. My wife had worked in tech sales before doing more of a channel sales role and she had found it was Discover Org at the time down in Contra Hocken and you know the Gloucester reviews were great. It was a fast growing company and basically she was like hey, this is more up your alley, but if you're not going to apply for it, I'm going to, and so then I apply for it. And then, and then you know, lucky, lucky me, I got it, but that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like I learned. I learned everything there. That you know it was a was a huge experience for me.
Speaker 1:Well, let's let's think about the five years that you were there. What was that learning curve like? Did you learn most of everything in the first year? Did you continue to learn at the same rate, or did you have some aha moment at the end of your wow. Now I'm packaging everything together and I've got it. Now I'm going to go run out into the world and show them what I've got.
Speaker 2:So definitely, definitely an aha moment. So my first year I didn't learn as much as I should have, but that was a me problem. You know, I think like having never done tech sales before. I think I had a. I think I had a poor I'm going to call it a poor perspective on you know how that job should be done, what it's like and what the upside looks like if you really invest in it.
Speaker 1:So consequently I mean what does that mean?
Speaker 2:It's just a long way to say a bad attitude. You know, I complained a lot. A new process comes through and I'm like, oh, what do we have to do it that way? And I'd also I'd always had this perspective that the way Discoverorg was running their entire sales org at that time was just how everyone did it. And you can go anywhere, it's going to be the exact same thing. So you know, why is it got to be so intense here, that type of thing?
Speaker 2:And then, you know, in 2019, after we had, right after we acquired Zoom Info, I was shipped out to to Waltham to just kind of like help. Just it was really just I was still an SDR at the time. I was just kind of help with coverage. I'd been experienced like to, you know, help, help align the Discoverorg and Zoom Info sales development motion and getting that sudden perspective of how different it could be and also what the difference looked like after changing those processes and just changing how you go to market with the same product.
Speaker 2:Because at the time we had two separate CRMs. We were selling Discoverorg and Zoom Info separately, even though the the acquisition was public knowledge. You know, we just we hadn't merged the two into unified platform and I don't like speaking of confidential stuff. I don't think I can say what the numbers were, but the difference of just maximizing your go to market you know I learned a lot from getting to be near are now, I believe, present company, or Zoom Info is present company. Chris Hayes I got to, I got to work with him, I was really way closer than I ever deserved at the time and I learned a ton and that was a huge, huge aha moment for me of like oh wow, it is different here and if you really want to do this, this is a great place to learn, a great team to learn from.
Speaker 1:I love that. So in your role today, are you managing managers or individual contributors?
Speaker 2:right now I'm just managing individual contributors. I'm hoping to. You know we have pretty lofty goals to scale this team up, so I'm hoping to be managing managers in the near future.
Speaker 1:I've got two questions for you then. So the first question is if you've got an individual contributor on your team because I imagine lots of people out there in this situation right now and they've got that attitude that you used to have complain about the process why does it have to be this way? I don't get it. The difficult child yeah, how do you manage that as a manager?
Speaker 2:So this is going to be a corny answer. My first answer to this always is the same answer I give when someone asked me how do you counter an objection. First thing is to ask yourself why did that happen in the first place? Right, like my experience is nine times out of nine when you do great call review, people want it to be blood sport. It would should feel like, you know, gladiator combat. Here's an objection and incredible counter and that was amazing. But really your best reps it wasn't a 20, their calls. It gets boring and it's just, you know it ends up being alarmingly smooth and it's because they're frequently great at getting ahead of these objections and providing a ton of value up front.
Speaker 2:I would say in the same, in the same way, like, first thing I'm thinking about in the, in the, in these first 90 days, is you know more? So, like more than hey, what do I do about a problem rep? My first thought is how do I make sure that doesn't happen? And that first thing is not charging in like hey, you know, this is the way we're going to do it, this is my way. Like that, first thing is to learn and that's, I think, step one of selling them on the vision in the future and what you want it to look like and why, as far as if they're still that way. Number one thing for me first is transparency. If I roll out something new, I'm going to be as candid as possible with my team. I'm going to say here's why we're doing it for the business. Here's my thought process, based on my experience, as to why. Here's what the here's what the upside to you is, and at a bare minimum that should you know I'm at a bare minimum it should look like hey, this helps the company grow, which leads to greater opportunity for you. I'm sure you have a lot of folks that are that listen to this, that are working in the start up world. You got to sell that dream all the time, because that's why we're all here.
Speaker 2:From my experience in the startup world, you know you want to. You know you want to be the person who worked at Salesforce when it was 100 people. You know what I mean. You want to be in that position and then you know if you're really lucky, you can pin it to hey, this should also help you make more money. The first thing is that sell after that like if transparency hasn't fixed it. You know, the more authoritarian you feel you have to be, probably the less upside there is down the road to, you know, to working, to continue to work with this person, and I experienced that. You know. Back at, you know I mentioned in my 22 year at Discover work I had a guy that I commiserated with all the time. You know like still love that dude, great guy.
Speaker 2:But you know it was a small team in a small office and you know word doesn't travel fast, sound travels fast, because I'm a shout out when you know when, when me and this other guy would complain, 25 people on the floor, not even everyone hears it. Yeah, and when you have a team that small, it is really easy to poison the well, like it's really easy to poison the well in that way. So you know the goal shouldn't be to to terminate everyone, anyone. I think that's a. I think that's always a last resort and should almost always be performance based, unless you really can avoid it.
Speaker 2:But in terms of, in terms of a difficult str, first thing is can you sell them on this? Can you be really transparent about why these changes are important, why what you're doing is going to help them. Can you be, you know, open to feedback. You have to be prepared to say, hey, this worked out my last job, maybe it's not going to work here, maybe it doesn't work here. You have to be ready to hear feedback, earnestly, be told you're wrong, find out. I'm going to admit, when you know if you, if you have done something wrong, but or or you know if you were and any given initiative is failed. But now, if, ultimately, transparency and all that hasn't worked, then you may very well have to have a different conversation with that person down the road.
Speaker 1:So these are some of the things going through your mind as you're prepping, or going through these first 90 days. Let's talk about the 90 days as a timeline, when you got the job offer and you realized you were gonna take the position. How long was it gonna be until you started day one?
Speaker 2:A little under a month. I was able to give my two weeks notice, and then I had a week off, and then I started.
Speaker 1:Fun week off.
Speaker 2:Ah, so that was actually the week that we had the big. There was the week the fires started up in Canada and then we had a bunch of crazy, bunch of crazy smoke and air quality stuff, so it was a week indoors.
Speaker 1:All right, so you show up week one what's in your mind.
Speaker 2:So first thing truly speaks to kind of what we just talked about is like part of my interview process was actually like I had to for this role. I had to discuss hey, here's what I would do, like step by step. Here's, you know, here are my goals, here's how I want the team to be judged, things like that. First thing is like all right, let's put that, let's kind of fold that up for a minute, because my job is to learn what the deal is, as Renable currently does it right. So you know as much as I wanna roll up and say this is gonna be a new process. You know, this is how we're gonna go to market and this is what we're gonna do on calls like that's easy to do. If you're getting new trainees, you can tell them what reality is and how this job is supposed to be done. But you can't walk into a team that's already existing and tell them how the job they've already been doing for months or years has to be done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can't pause on the business. The business still has to operate every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So really the first month was that wasn't a month, it was like two weeks. But you know that first two weeks was me. Just I wanna sit here and absorb and learn and just like see how things are run as they are. The other thing that I think is really important is, before you fully take over a team is make sure you have met with everyone, for I would say, you know, depending on your timeline, minimum 30 minutes. Like I only had two weeks to kind of like learn the thing and get going here, but you wanna meet with every one of your reports director and direct and just get an understanding of you know who they are.
Speaker 2:It's a report building exercise. Like you don't have to jump into what are your numbers, you know what, you know all that good stuff. You can just ask like tell me about yourself, like what are your goals here? And always frame that around. Just like you know, I would bet all the money in my pockets that anyone who's listening here that has recently been hired in a leadership role is probably there to fuel growth, like you're probably hiring leaders because the company needs to grow or that department needs to grow.
Speaker 1:Dave's assumption.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then to that end, right, like, if the people under you are not moving into higher positions, higher pay, you know, moving from SDR to AE, you name it right Well then that's probably a fail point by you as a leader. And so one of the first things I'm looking for is I wanna align to the goals of my, like, the life goals of my reps, like I wanna know, like, why are you here, is it? I wanna retire early? Cool, we can talk about that. We can talk about what that trajectory might look like. I mean, closers can make a ton of money. You know I wanna get into leadership. Is a VP title at a certain age important to you? I talked to one guy a long time ago way better son than I ever was. I wanted to buy his mama house Nice Because you take care of him. I was like such a better person than I am. But yeah, let's talk about what that looks like the next five years.
Speaker 2:But, being able to have that conversation and build that rapport. You should never be a shadowy figure by the time you're coming to take over a team.
Speaker 1:You've gotta know who these people are and where they're going, because you can use that to coach them, because if they wanna buy their mama house and they're not doing the activity, there's a way to coach around that, and so you can tie those two things together. And the other thing that works really well is understanding where they've been in the past, how they've been coached. One thing that we always talk about at Coach CRM is understanding how they've been coached in the past, how they reacted to that type of coaching. So, did their football coach yell at them? Cool. How did they react? Did their chess coach nurture them? Cool, how did they react? What coaching have they had? How did they react to this coaching?
Speaker 1:And that can help inform you whether or not to take a more direct or indirect approach. If folks out there are interested in this, shoot me a note at freestuffatcoachcrmcom freestuffatcoachcrmcom and I'll flip you over the coaching salespeople course where we dig in deeper. Yeah, getting to know the people, that's a great. So that's the first two weeks spending a lot of time on that. Coming out of that, what's the big next step?
Speaker 2:For me. I came in with a lot of lofty operation-based goals in terms of just like. I think this may have less to do with the first 90 days and more to do with just my view on sales development, so feel free to cut it if it comes down to it.
Speaker 1:We don't cut any. I don't think I've ever cut. I cut one thing because I ask a dumb question and the person gave an answer that wasn't good because my question was phrased bad. That's the only thing I've ever cut in 60 episodes.
Speaker 2:Well, let's see if we can do one more, but I'm a big believer in like, especially when you're scaling a sales development team. Like simple is the goal, right. The magic I'm trying to create is I'm trying to get them to what happens when the prospect picks up the phone or applies to your email, and then that's where SDRs are here to provide that human element, right, that thing that I know there's a lot going on with AI right now. That's that one piece that I don't expect to be replaced anytime soon is what happens when they pick up the phone, and so I believe my job is to get them, to get them as far. I'm phrasing this badly. My goal is to operationalize everything up to that point to get them to that pickup as easily as possible, and so that means like building account lists, building cadences, writing good copy, probably using some AI to punch up some of that copy that you're writing, things like that and build them a really simple process to run with. And so that was immediately my next thing, and the other big thing that I've already learned in these first 90 days is you gotta be a good prospect in those moments, especially if you're lucky enough to have a dedicated RevOps person for your team or your company, like you, have to be an ideal prospect, meaning you don't prescribe the answer.
Speaker 2:You describe your pain right. Hey, here's what hurts, here's what I wanna solve for. Because often you will find there is a different system in place or different Legos already available to easily create a workable solution there. And so I think a mistake I made in the first week was I would say to a RevOps person like hey, here's what I want. It's like well, we don't. Like hey, man, I wanna help you, but that's not how it's built right now. Do you want us to rebuild the CRM just so it's your way? Like no, and so that was a big learning curve for me is just coming in, ask, bring up your pain, bring up what hurts, let them. There may already be a bottled solution to get you the process you need in place. And then that other thing for me is visibility in place that you need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. So working with your teammates in a way that doesn't give them too much just forced prescriptive guidance, let them do their jobs and know that that's the case and tee it up for them in that way, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was ready to walk in and say like, all right, this is like, this is how we're gonna do, this is how demos are gonna be logged and this will be how we handle demo dispos, and on and on and on. This is how we measure the SDR team and the fields we use, and it's like well, we can measure on the same things. We can do all the things that you wanna do, eric, but we have different ways of going about it and we can still get that built.
Speaker 1:Do you have a chance to meet with the person that was managing the team before you?
Speaker 2:I did. I did. He's still with the company. He's in different role now, but I kind of got an understanding of how the team operates. The big thing that I gathered from him, though, was actually kind of the other end of that rapport building exercise, which is just like hey, it's a small team. Like tell me everything about everything that you know about the team I'm taking over. Like how do they like to be coached from your experience? Like where do they excel? Like where could I have them help coach other folks that may be struggling, whether it's on the phone? How do they prospect things like that? Where should I be giving them guidance and helping them out? Things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great luxury. Not everybody has the opportunity to talk to the person that was there before, so that's a good spot to be in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Renable has spoiled me in a lot of ways, and I think that was a big one.
Speaker 1:You touched on this idea of systems a little bit beyond how you've got the CRM setup. What else did you do from a technology perspective? Because I think that's an obvious and easy thing to dig into, but it can become a hair ball and a distraction if you spend too much time on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the magic of if you're nice to your RevOps person, they can do most of it. That's the again, I'm a little spoiled in that way. Right now, processes on our end are, I don't want to say, simple, but we're still doing a lot of growing, and so I grew up in the world of Zoom Info, where there's this massive RevOps engine and 50 different tools, things like that, and now we've pivoted to largely using Salesforce into sales loft for outreach. I got a couple of little fun things for myself. I got Jasper to help me write and copy things like that, and then there's a couple of data sources that I wasn't familiar with using. Let me not get too in the weeds on data sources, just to make sure that I'm not entirely sure what is all confidential and what's not.
Speaker 1:Who knows Multiple data sources?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, some data sources that are you know, that are that I was not familiar with, that are that are great and really valuable for working in this industry, compared to the, compared to the world I came from.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how many industry specific solutions there are. They're just amazing. So, like an aviation industry, there's JetNet, yep, and it's the one that you use. You can go buy all the other ones, but the other ones don't have the stuff that they have, and so if you work in aviation, you just use them.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep and the other, the other. The other big thing there was, like you know, essentially putting not so much a a technical process in place but a workflow in place and making that nice and simple for the SDR team. And so, like I try to judge the team on just how do you prospect and how do you complete your tasks, and try to keep it that simple. So we will build more. But, like, first thing I did was kind of a general agnostic, a mixed call email, linkedin cadence within sales loft for for my SDRs, the goal being hey, like, this is the best copy I could write. This is a nice mixed cadence for you to, for you to truly exhaust these prospects. You know, at least for now, as we believe they can be exhausted. Here's an account list. Go into it, go, look at each account, do it in an account based prospecting play. Hey, is it a fit? Are there any duplicates? And a reason why I couldn't work this? Great, this is mine. Let's go after it. Let's find who we're going after. Can you, within that account, find me?
Speaker 2:Ideally, five great fit prospects. You know, if we have them in our CRM, great, we still want to validate it Like we have access to, to, to zoom info, which was a you know selling point for me coming here as well. We use that to verify hey, do we have the best possible contacts we could be going after? Do we have the best possible contact information on those, on those prospects? Right, and just doing that search for every account, can you get me ideally five. I think that's the sweet spot. If you can do a few more for a big account, great Small account, you got to do a little less. Also, that's totally cool. Every account should get you know every account. If it's a fit, let's give it a, let's give it a shot. But then can you do that process five times a day? Right, just five accounts, roughly five prospects each per account by the end of by the end of 10 days. If you're running on a 10 day cadence, you're touching 250 people a day.
Speaker 1:Were they doing that level of effort when you got there?
Speaker 2:It was different. It was very, it was very email heavy. It wasn't. It wasn't targeted in the way that this was targeted it was. It was much more. It's a rich statement, because what is an SDR if not the elbow between sales and marketing? But it was much more of like a one person marketing department doing a lot of like very heavy email work and stuff like that, like a lot of email blasting, you know sourcing contacts and bulk things like that.
Speaker 1:Got it so less other activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. It's like essentially my idea, like the idea behind it for me, is get your get your prospecting done right, and you can do this in whatever order you want. Get your prospecting done, clear out your, your cadence tasks as best as you're able so that you know you are continuing to touch all the prospects that you need to touch that you've been working through, and then after that, like if you're lucky, you got that done in great time and you have, you know, the leeway to do more kind of targeted work. You can jump on LinkedIn sales navigator, you can do kind of some custom searches. That way you can do targeted LinkedIn outreach. You know, at that point it's it's choose your own adventure and I'm just there to coach rather than to prescribe the team remote, or are they on the opposite together?
Speaker 1:Holy remote. Okay, so, as it's, choose your own adventure and they're all doing kind of their own thing, how did they work together to motivate each other in a remote world?
Speaker 2:I think, I think I think accountability within a small team goes a long way and I like to I like to call it like collaborative competition, so like what a one of the one big thing for me is like, hey, you're remote, do you have slack? That should be super lively, like it's not. Like I want every win posted in there. Like you, you book a call, throw if you can grab the recording even better, but throw that call in there. Throw in how you got it. I, you know if you're on outbound, I imagine you're probably not booking 10 demos a day. So you know those, those wins are worth being celebrated and so not only do you, are you putting that out in front of everybody, I do my best to listen to those, look at those and and, just like you know, shout something great out about that call. But either way, like your coworker, you know, throw something in there, depth them up, like that puts your attention on and that, I think, pretty naturally fosters a little bit of collaboration and learning on its own, just keeping that energy up and keeping people focused day to day In terms of how they learn from each other.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm a little I'm a little bit spoiled there. But you know, I've got several folks that are, I would say, the opposite of the problem rep that we, that we the hypothetical problem rep that we talked about before. I've got folks who are hungry to share what has been working with them Right, and, you know, especially in a growing startup, I think that should be the goal, right, like it shouldn't be a matter of, hey, I want to keep this thing that works to myself, so, you know, I can reap all the benefits. It should be. I want to be that guy. I want to be the guy who came up with this winning talk track. I want to be the guy who ran, who came up with this play that now everyone's doing and it's called the the Corey play because Corey came up with it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like that's your plan internally, that's mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, like, and, and, every time you know, every time you use it, pay a little bit of fealty to Corey, like you know, like not literally, but you know it's, it's like getting a burger named after you at the restaurant. Yeah, yeah, it's like you're you're a rock star internally. I think that's really important and you know I can't force collaboration but like what I, what I, what I can do, is foster a culture that you know, that nurtures it.
Speaker 1:So you've talked a lot about what you're doing with the team. What are you doing with your leadership to help communicate what you're working on and pulling in support from them as you're ramping up over the first 90 days?
Speaker 2:So my VP core of my VP, who is also named Corey, has a sweet dude.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know some of it, some of it, corey's in sales. He's got to stick together, I don't know Um, he, um he's been, he's been very, um, he's been very generous with his time with me. So right now we're meeting three times a week in the mornings just to kind of get a quick catch up. Sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's a full hour, sometimes it's been 20 minutes, right, just depending on what we need in the day. But having a super open line of communication there. But another thing that I do that I think is is really helpful is, um, I do um, it's technically another, another uh process that, um, I used to do with my director, uh, zoom info is uh, end of every week, every Friday. I'm going to do it today.
Speaker 2:Um, I do a, a report like a breakdown of you know, essentially a retrospective on on my week, right, and so, of course, that's going to be, yeah, it's going to be numbers, um, but it's also going to be um, hey, what am I working on? How's it going? Just a general high level overview. And then it's also going to be, hey, where do I need help, right, and so it's like it might be as simple as hey, here's topics I'm going to cover next week. It might be as robust or as as direct, as like.
Speaker 2:Hey, here's a problem that I like, really need fixed right now. Can you please, like you know, talk to the powers that be about it Right and just that constant, that constant communication, having something in writing that he can take, you know, not take home, but like he can take it anywhere he wants he can. You know, he can bring it to the CEO if he wants. He can just put it in front of other AE leaders If he wants. He has his. Anything you can do with that. But that's the full retrospective on the department, week over week.
Speaker 1:I think that's awesome because it's really nerve wracking to hire a manager. It's a big rest, yeah, bringing in someone from the outside, giving them responsibility, giving them autonomy over a team, and if it goes wrong, you're going to get set back substantially.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I forgot it was beneficial to him. I mostly do it for me. It's also like it's an important exercise on my head, just because, like you know, like I mean I don't want to say the thing that everyone's heard a million times, but like you have to be deep in the data you have to be looking at. You know, leading indicators all the time, and um, leading and lagging indicators, and you will find, if you are willing to look at that, week in, week out, yeah, you, you know you want to look at it. You know during the day, right, you want to, you want to have a constant beat on what's happening with the team.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the week you can really find a lot of pain points, not just at the team level but at the rep level. Right, like if, if demos are getting booked but they're not completing, right, you can turn around and you can say, hey, how are we confirming these? Right, what are we doing to get them to show up? But the other thing you can do often you can look and like, do a deeper look. Maybe it's two reps, maybe it's one rep. That's bringing the average down. That's great at booking meetings. The way you address that problem. Just changed completely based on that information.
Speaker 1:Love it. So, then, this goes back to the metrics that you got available to you, so you're relying on things that you've learned in the past. You've got things that they do here, that they've used here historically, and then the new things that you want to be able to build into the future, and just working with what you've got and having an vision towards what you're going to be able to access in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, working with our RevOps person and getting the Legos together for the dashboards that I wanted to have by July, week one was was massive, like that's. That's really when the job started for me, where I could finally turn around and say, all right, cool, here's exactly what's going on. Great, let's go for it.
Speaker 1:So what week are you in now?
Speaker 2:I am now in. Well, let me count. I started June 12. So let's count them out One, two, three, four, eight. That was fast. Yes, yeah, someone. Month two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're in your month and ending month two right now. Yeah, the thing I'm curious about is are you hiring folks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're, we're getting ready to ramp that up as we go as well. You know it wasn't. It wasn't as fast in that first month as I expected, but that was. That had a lot to do with my own bandwidth trying to get things spun up. And you know, you think about the consequences of like you can't, you can't fully do one thing before you do the next. Like, as you said before, like the business has to keep moving right, the business has goals, that's it. But you know, in that first month, just thinking about the difference between bringing someone on board when we don't have some of this new workflow and process in place and like you essentially would have to train them twice and be like, hey, learn this whole thing, now, forget about it, do it this way. Like that's kind of a, you know, potentially poor use of resources, especially if we're bringing on multiple reps. But yes, we are, we are hiring SDRs right now.
Speaker 1:So a couple questions about that one what's the onboarding process look like in terms of maturity? Do you guys have that figured out, or is that something else that you've got to rebuild once you start bringing folks on?
Speaker 2:So I would. I would actually argue our onboarding process punches way above its weight class. I got to do a big shout out to our our head of enablement, shea Buckway. She does. She has a like fantastic handle on oh, I forget the name of the tool. I think it's 360 learning. But like I've you know, I've you know, been through using these, you know learning modules and stuff like that, but she is fantastic at building those out and really creating an awesome step by step process. Like I usually historically do not love a learning module, like you know one of those independent learning modules there's, so many bad ones out there.
Speaker 1:Oh man, no, not even. It's not even the tech, it's the implementation of the tech. Because if you put a bunch of emojis in there and graphics and gifts and be like, oh look, it's fun, I need to know my target market. My persona is the pain that we saw for these folks, the objections. I need to know how to demo the product or whatever it is. I just need to know that stuff and transfer to my brain via API learning modules. Yeah, and you?
Speaker 2:need to learn it. Like you need to learn it in in. I mean, you have to learn in a way that you're going to retain it right. So like you can't just tell me once, like you got to tell me twice, but you got to frame it right. You got to talk to me about, you know, here's what we do and here's you know, and here's generally like how we, you know how we provide value and then break that down into here specifically who we provide value to and why it's valuable to them. And like you know, so Shay's done a, she's done a great job.
Speaker 2:I can say this because I've done. These are like I tried yeah, I didn't fully complete the program just because I had stuff to do, but I largely onboarded the way SDR is onboard here and it was really helpful and like I actually like I walked out of you know, I walked out of product training and I was like, wow, I actually get this and can speak to this and understand how this works and like that's a. I think that's a. It's often a rarity and running, running a one person enabled on department. I think. I think Shay's absolutely knocked that out of, knocked that out of the park in that way, so imagine that didn't exist.
Speaker 1:How nervous would you be about hiring?
Speaker 2:Oh, I would weep every day Um, um, um, um, it's, it's, it's a whole different animal, because then who's going to do all the onboarding? Me, and if we're, if we're scaling that up, that's taken away from my ability to you know, keep the, keep the core team running and in a perfect world, like you know, in a perfect world like mentorship is your next best way, I mean it's, I think it's still, even even with a great enablement team, like mentorship is is massive and like one-to-one pairings and need all onboarding buddies and things like that, but like setting up a situation where the team is able to really effectively learn from each other and learn a lot from each other Like that's massive. But if you're not growing, nurturing and leveling up the existing core team, well then that's never going to happen. If you're all you're focused, if all you're focusing on is onboarding, you're just going to have a bunch of freshly onboarded SDRs and that's kind of where the ball ends or where the where the, not the ball, ends, I clearly not an athlete.
Speaker 2:But where the buck stops, I don't know, man, I'm buck stops, it's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't stop in the 20 yard line. It's almost football season.
Speaker 2:Oh, excellent.
Speaker 1:You didn't even know.
Speaker 2:It doesn't know idea. I had literally no idea.
Speaker 1:I think by the time this comes out, we'll be well into football season. There we go. My friends and I do a fantasy football draft every year, and this year we're going to hot springs, arkansas.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:Which is are you? Doing an onsite draft oh yeah, yeah, we did Phoenix last year, we did Vegas year before that. Yeah, we. We fly somewhere for the draft every year. Tons of fun.
Speaker 2:That is a league right there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it's a real. We rented this house last year that has a lazy river at the house. That's amazing. Yeah, these guys are rolling to it. I'm rolling to it too. I'm just not rolling to football, but you know, yeah, I mean, I'm into fun vacations.
Speaker 2:Like you know that that that'll hook me. I'm just like all right, I got to do this administrative thing in the middle of it. Like all right, yeah, I'll, I'll pick some people. I'll pick some folks. I'm into gambling.
Speaker 1:So gambling, so that's good.
Speaker 2:Fun, fun story On my 21st birthday was the first and, I believe, only time I gambled, because I, you know, I'm just turning 21. I'm generally broke at that time. I'm in college and I go to Atlantic City with some friends and we had a whole night ahead of us and I just walked in and put everything on black and roulette, lost my entire budget for the event immediately and it was just kind of like all right, that's the night and I'm like all right, I can't gamble like that it's just it for me, it's soured the whole experience.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, I went to Atlantic City. The first time I ever went to Atlantic City was during fraternity rush, I was 18. And the guys told us they said look where's suit and as soon as you get the Cassiana, order a drink, because if they serve you a drink and you take a sip of it, they can't kick you out because they're admitting that they just served in minor underage and that's a way bigger issue for them than it is for you to be underage gambling. So we all went in there. We were, we kind of hung around the table until the cocktail waitress was coming over, ordered a bunch of drinks, took a sip. They couldn't kick us out. It was great you heard it here first folks Play this for your kids Once Now.
Speaker 2:This was in 2002.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I don't know that that's still the way to do it or not. I don't know if that stuff works though.
Speaker 2:I'm too old to I'm too visibly old to test it out now, unfortunately, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:People look at me and people card me on this. Like did you think that this gray hair grew in 21 years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I got a few of those. I'm, I'm, I'm plucking out as a, as a nice exercise in denial once a week.
Speaker 1:All right. So we talked about leadership being nervous about new managers coming into their business. They're also nervous about culture changing. So you come in, you're hiring people. What are your thoughts about the hiring process and how you can get everybody comfortable with the decisions that are being made around who you're bringing into the business?
Speaker 2:So I think, like in my position managing individual contributors at the SDR level, like you know, I mean I don't want to jinx it but like I, across my career, I haven't experienced a lot of pushback at that level. I say, are you talking about from leadership or or the other way around.
Speaker 1:Or you're asking me for five and a half years. They knew you, they knew your decision, they knew the type of folks that you would attract and how you work with them, and all of these types of things. New folks don't know you as well, yeah, so I think that the hard part for leaders coming into new organizations there's only that little person on your shoulder that's saying, oh, is this going to be a good decision? Is it going to make me look good? Is it going to make me look bad? What's the risk with this individual? Do I need to play it safe and go with someone else, or can I take this person I think might have more potential and take a risk on them? That's the type of thing that I'm looking for here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think again spoiled right now for two reasons. One, like talking about how I think about the hiring process and how I think about what makes a good SDR, was actually a big part of my interview process. So my VP and I were already aligned you know before, before I joined, in terms of you know what I'm looking for, why and and also what like culture should look like for those SDRs once they joined. So the good news for me is that was already thoroughly aligned.
Speaker 2:I think the other benefit that I have is you know the company being the size that it is, like I can loop in my VP on on certain candidates and you know if it's something where I'm like, hey, I think this is someone who you should get final approval on. Or or you know if, if, like you know if, if you know in general, you feel better with that. Like, the bandwidth is there where we can, we can do a final round there. The other thing I do um, uh, I, especially for me where I can help it, I like to do two person interviews Like um, are you, are you a Chris Voss fan?
Speaker 1:Um, never split the difference, he's great, I did a session with him. I think that was the last person that I've actually done a small group coaching session with. Yeah, I spent. I spent six hours with him in a conference room at the four seasons in San Francisco, which was also hilarious Cause that was the same day I got in the elevator with the Oklahoma city thunder. What a day hang out to me. I'll spot the hours and then hang out James Harden for 20 seconds.
Speaker 2:That is. That is, that is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, I can't imagine, but but he's, he's very intimidating in person Really. Yeah, it's, he's intense, it was super intense, it was so intense.
Speaker 2:Huh, I mean I guess you know you work for the FBI for that long. I mean, yeah, it has to be a little dense.
Speaker 1:So when we talked about how you've been coached in the past. I'm the kind of guy that, yeah, rip me apart, that's how I get better and his intensity style around the negotiation exercises that we did were just awesome. So, yeah, huge, chris, boss, man, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, uh, yeah, absolutely Like I read, never spent the difference. I was like this is crazy, um, like it was just like on top of um, on top of being super informative, it was a great read, but, um, but you know he, um, he talks about, you know when he would do these negotiations. What was one big part of that deal? You had one person who was there to talk, one person who's there to listen, right, in any given time, right, and I think that's really important when you're trying to vet a, when you're trying to vet a candidate, where, like, especially an entry level role like this, like it's, you know, I hate to say it, but like it is pretty easy potentially to you know, hire the wrong person just because you know the data, you know the numbers might have been fudged a little bit, like things may have been intentionally vague, um, you know, or you just miss a detail in an answer, and so, like I don't, I don't literally bring someone on to be like you sit here and listen, that I'm going to do the talking.
Speaker 2:That's not how it is at all, but like, if I'm talking there, they're helping with listening. If they are talking, I am also there to listen, Um, and so I bring my team lead on for those, um, you know, both for that purpose and also because, hey, he's been, he's been involved here for a while. He, you know like, he's seen other other reps be successful here, and so I also always want his gut check there. So we, we get a. We get a lot knocked out in that first round.
Speaker 1:Um, for you Love that. Why combinator does that? They have a partner that watches the founders response and that's their only job in the interview.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, I I'll tell you what it pays man. It really does. Um, the amount of the sheer tonnage of things that I I mean this is not a great ad for me the sheer tonnage of things that I have, that I have missed, that I would have entirely not seen had I not had a second person on the interview with me could stop a herd of buffalo in its tracks. I mean it is. It is wild sometimes.
Speaker 1:Ben's, and the great thing about being a human is you can recognize where your gaps are and you can leverage other folks or technology to fill the gaps for you. Yeah, absolutely, take away, so have someone else in the interview to help diagnose potential issues that might be coming up. Past notes between each other yeah, nose hand signals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I've had candidates I was like super hot on. And then you know, uh, someone points out like hey, you know, they said they're experienced with this software on their resume and then you asked them about them, they said I've never used that before in my life. Yeah, Whoops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, I've done that before. You ask people questions that are like I'm an expert in accounting, like cool, it's certainly FASB and IFRS. I don't know what that is. Huh, okay, cool, got it.
Speaker 2:And I. I also don't, but I'm not no one's accusing me of being an expert in accounting, is that?
Speaker 1:expert in accounting, so that's I love. It All right, so you've got 30 days left in your first 90 days. What are you hoping to accomplish?
Speaker 2:Um, so, right now, the focus for the next week for me is going to be, like, how do I align and really like fill out the process between SDRs and AEs? Right, so, like in, you know, in an org that's largely on like a, like a lot of younger startups are frequently, uh, on like a kind of a named account, kind of basis or like territory based, right, that's that's something I've seen. A lot. That's something we're doing now is like we have to figure out how the SDRs and AEs play nice with each other in terms of, like, how do we work accounts? Like, how do we figure out, you know, when, um, when an SDR is just running something on their own, when, if there's already an op, does an AE need air support? How do they call for that? How do they, how do they get it and how is the SDR compensated?
Speaker 2:Um, like kind of starting to build a lot of that out is a big focus for me right now. Um, uh, hiring is about to, is about to ramp up, so that's definitely going to be a big focus for me. Um, and then and then you know the other the other big thing for me is like all right, we've got general plays right, but like, what about? What about all, the, all the different targeted plays we can do based on, you know, um, like real time pain points that we know a prospect may be having, or or you know specific data points about them that we can, that we can speak to? Um, you know, I hear a lot about, uh, I hear a lot on LinkedIn right now, especially with the conversation about personalization. Um, I would, I would not challenge that, but like, I think, uh, I think another layer that can be added to that is like I don't really believe in personalization, I believe in urgency, right, like you mean you're not going to buy from me because I know where you went to college?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I like the amount, the. I've gotten a ton of messages from folks who are like, hey, you just started in this new role, like you want to buy a new tool. And I'm like not really, because, like I just got here, I'm still. I'm still trying to maximize what we have before I go and displace anything.
Speaker 1:You'd ask him do you specialize in selling stuff to people that just got here?
Speaker 2:I mean I don't want to be a jerk about it, I'm a. I mean I have to be a great prospect. I'm in sales development.
Speaker 1:The only, the only person that can be a jerk is my dad. When the telemarketers call him because a he's been retired for 20 years, so nobody actually sells B to B, here's what he does. It's hilarious. So they always call and they want to sell him an auto warranty. So he answers the phone and he goes hotel security. I need your name, room number and the nature of your emergency.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I was like I have a first time. I heard him say it. I was like I hope that's not somebody that's a professional sales person. And he's like no, it's these robocallers. He's like they interrupt my show. I'm like okay, well, you have a landline, so it's kind of your problem. But anyways, I thought that was a layer better than me I am.
Speaker 2:I am such a prospect now because that's just like I had a guy call me a few weeks ago after I'd started here at Renna bowl and he opens with hey Eric, you got time for a cold call on a Friday and I'm just like what kind of SDR leader would I be if I said no to this, like I have?
Speaker 1:that's that's. I've used that one personally. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like you know what? Yeah, Since you're asking, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If they're open, like that you got to talk to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love, I love calls that lead with intention and you know they're just like hey, I'm calling from XYZ, got time for me? I'm like you know what.
Speaker 1:I do these things for these people. Do you want to talk more? Boom, done, that's it. Yeah, I agree with you on the personalization thing. It's just a complete. It was funny I was talking to a founder the other day and he was saying hey, so we're thinking about building personalization software.
Speaker 1:We want to get your take on this, this, this, the other. I was like well, why do you think personalization helps? And he couldn't answer that question. I was like, bro, you guys are literally writing code. Right now. I say I see that dude back there, is he writing code? He's like yeah, is there a he's writing code to build personalization software? But you cannot answer me the question why is personalization important? Stop writing code. It's a pain, dude Cause.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing like, if, if you know what pain points you solve for a specific person is in specific market segments, just be like hey, here's the pain that we solve for these people. Like you, do you want to talk? And you can do it in a lot of different ways. You can add words before it or words after it. You could change the words that I said and you can put it in an email or in a video or in a text, it doesn't matter. You have a trade show, but you can put it on the fricking banner behind you at the trade show. You can do all these things, but none of that has anything to do with. Hey, I see that we're in a white shirt today. I'm wearing black. I was thinking about a way in a white shirt today, but I really like yours. Do you want to buy my stuff? Just silly, and I know that's not what people are doing, but it's how it comes across.
Speaker 2:But I was like, like speak to, speak to urgency, like speak to either a need you know they have or a need that they ought to have, like that's. That's, that's really all it is Like. But you know, back at back at zoom info, like it was, it was pretty like. You know, I had a. I was pretty lucky to have a pretty straightforward product to sell. Right, I'm selling leads to sales people. I mean, what could be better than that? And you know, you see someone surge on intent for, for lead generation. Yeah, right, you go call them up and you're like, hey, listen, I could put you in front of a. You know a couple of accounts that are in market for information security support right now. Is there any reason why you wouldn't want to take a look at that? I mean, like you're, I don't care that you went to that, you went to temple university. Like I don't care that, you know it doesn't matter, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:They used to be pretty good at basketball.
Speaker 2:Um, I wouldn't know, don't like sports.
Speaker 1:You live in Philly, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, outside in Philly, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice. I used to live in Philly.
Speaker 2:It's a. It's a great city 30.
Speaker 1:30.
Speaker 2:30. 30. 30.
Speaker 1:30. 30., 30., 30.
Speaker 2:30., 30., 30., 30., 30., 30. It's not a big geography guy. If you couldn't tell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go. Well, you know what we all lean into, what we need to do, and you're rocking it. New company, five years of Zoom info Roll in there. You got a plan. I like your plan. I also love your communication style downward to your team, upward to your boss, across to sales ops. Lots of great takeaways today, eric. Anything that you want to plug or leave us with.
Speaker 2:Um, just listen. If, uh, if you're listening to this, you're an experienced SDR, you're looking to get into a fully remote role at a fast growing company, let's talk. Find me on LinkedIn. I'm looking for great talent right now.
Speaker 1:Love it. Eric Ravey, director of sales development at Renable. I'm Corey Bray. Sales management podcast. Speaking of pain points, let me throw a couple out here. If your team is struggling to hit their number and you feel like they're just not doing it, they're not hitting it, they're skill gaps, there's mindset gaps across the organization. Those are some of the things that we're solving with coach CRM. Or if you're an executive and you're worried about your manager's ability to get the most out of their team, hit us up coachcrmcom. Or you don't want to buy software or enter a sales process? Just keep listening to this. This is the sales management podcast. Comes out at least twice a week on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe, Check us out. We'll see you next time.