Building a Sales Leadership Legacy with Jonathan Pollack

In this episode, Rick Smolen chats with Jonathan Pollack about his journey from an individual contributor to a leader in sales at companies like Intralinks, Shibumi, and Augury. They discuss the nuances of building a strong sales team, fostering a positive work culture, and maintaining team motivation in remote settings.

Key Points:

1. Career Growth: Jonathan's progression from hands-on sales roles to senior leadership positions, emphasizing the lessons learned and strategies implemented along the way.
2. Leadership and Culture: Insights into creating a team culture that motivates and excels, even under minimal supervision or in overlooked business areas.
3. Remote Team Dynamics: Challenges and strategies for leading a dispersed team effectively, ensuring high engagement and performance.
4. Martial Arts and Leadership: How principles from martial arts help Jonathan manage business challenges and team dynamics.

Jonathan shares valuable lessons on transparency, integrity, and the importance of setting clear expectations for team members and clients alike.

Subscribe to Pillar Talk on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for more insightful discussions on sales leadership.

Technical Podcast Support by Jon Keur at Wayfare Recording Co.

Music by Ben Cina & Ayler Young

Transcript

Rick Smolen: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Pillar Talk. This is the podcast where we build the foundations of sales leadership success. We create clarity in terms of what good looks like for current and aspiring sales leaders. Today, I'm fortunate to be joined by Jonathan Pollock. Jonathan and I were former colleagues.

Rick Smolen: We worked together for many years. Jonathan has gone on though, uh, to take on some really, uh, impressive leadership opportunities beyond that time that we were together, and we'll have a lot of great lessons to learn. When Jonathan and I worked together, he started as an individual contributor at Intralinks and then grew to lead an entire business, you know, both first on a regional basis and then globally.

Rick Smolen: And it was a super interesting, you know, thing to observe because. This was an area of the business that I would say it's fair to say wasn't getting a lot of seating. It wasn't getting a [00:01:00] lot of attention. It wasn't getting a lot of investment from the business, and it was easy to probably just go through the motions within that and just handle the day to day.

Rick Smolen: But I think Jonathan, as a leader, viewed that opportunity to not have a lot of attention on the business. As a rallying cry for his team and the things that I observed within there was high motivation, high engagement, a little bit of like a rebel mindset, a little bit of a chip on the shoulder because it didn't get attention and that translated into significant success for the business.

Rick Smolen: After interlinks, Jonathan went on to join and lead sales at a series a business. So has been through the earlier stage startup world at Shibumi and now leads revenue at Augury, which is a high profile, um, impressive growth story, a company that he joined maybe at a series C at a 10 to 15 million ARR, uh, level now is like well over 50 million in revenue took a team that was probably under 10 individuals and now is at.

Rick Smolen: You know, at or around 100 and growing faster than ever. So [00:02:00] Jonathan has been through many of the phases of high growth environments from a leadership perspective. Jonathan, I'll tell a quick story here that I one of my favorite stories of working together. It's so many years ago. I, you know, maybe it's 10 years ago, we were working in the debt capital markets business at intra links.

Rick Smolen: We had the biggest contract of the year that we had to go negotiate at a global bank. So you and I are in our full power suits and we go from our office in our power suits. We're walking. You know, to this really important meeting were prepared. There's gonna be important people in this meeting like this is not a have fun moment.

Rick Smolen: This is a serious moment. We walked through Grand Central together in our power suits in our briefcases like this is big. We go do the meeting. I, you know, I don't remember any details of the meeting other than we felt really good afterwards. Like we achieved what we came to do in that meeting context.

Rick Smolen: And we were walking back through Grand Central with feeling [00:03:00] like we're the beginning of power brokers in New York City, like having made some impact on what I think was like a three and a half, 4 million contract that was going to come to fruition On the back of the meeting that we just attended. And so you were like, Hey, that was a good meeting.

Rick Smolen: What are you up to now? Like, what are you going to do this weekend? And I'm like, Oh, actually, interesting. I'm heading to the train station from here. I'm going to go back to my hometown and my mom's going to pick me up in her minivan. And I remember having the, like, context of, like, feeling like a power broker one minute.

Rick Smolen: To feeling like a teenager whose mom's picking him up from soccer practice literally one second later because I hadn't like, you know, pre meditatively thought about what I was doing this weekend. And the first thing came to my mind was realizing that, yep, my mom was going to pick me up in her minivan after my power deal meeting with you, Jonathan Pollock.

Rick Smolen: So it's a really funny moment. Um, but anyway, that's a, that's a different story. Thank you for joining us today on pillow Talk. 

Jonathan Pollack: Thanks Frank. It's a pleasure to be here. I always appreciated your, [00:04:00] uh, Your curiosity and dedication to mastering the, uh, the craft of being a sales leader. Um, I've always had a deep respect for your introspection and pursuit of knowledge.

Jonathan Pollack: So the fact that you've parlayed that into something that will help the rest of the community on that journey is really commendable. So for having me. And it's always good to see you personally. 

Rick Smolen: Awesome. Yeah, I'm still seeking, man. I'm still, I don't think I found the, uh, the gold pot at the end of the rainbow yet.

Rick Smolen: So Jonathan. The reason I do this podcast is I've tried to define areas that I would view as keys to success in sales leadership. The easiest metric to determine whether somebody's successful is the revenue performance of the business. But as you know, the revenue performance of the business is a, it's a total team effort.

Rick Smolen: It's not just what the sales team did or what the sales leader did. It's the product, it's the market, it's so many factors. And it's, hey, who doesn't love to ride the wave of a successful business? [00:05:00] But if you want to objectively just look at the success of a leader, especially within the sales function, I've created these Pillars that I'm trying to explore at a more deeper level.

Rick Smolen: So one is around hiring. One is around business planning. Another is around the coaching aspects, communication and ownership. But, you know, I told that story before about I've observed you in real life create impactful culture and create people working harder than they probably would independently by themselves, feeling like they were on a mission.

Rick Smolen: and then really achieving something beyond what anybody would have given them credit for and really breaking through targets. And there was something I've always admired about a leader's ability to get more out of the team than just going through the motions and dotting the I's and crossing the T's.

Rick Smolen: And so I observed that with you individually. And I want to take you back to when you first became a leader. And what is your reflection on maybe lessons learned or best practices [00:06:00] that fostered instead of going through the motions, taking the fact that there wasn't a lot of attention on the business and turning that into a rallying cry for the team?

Jonathan Pollack: It's a good question. You know, interlinks like that experience for me, um, was pretty transformative. I would say one, we had the benefit of having a lot of great leaders. In the business, guys like Mark Williams, Todd Albright, Ronald Sepien, Leif O'Leary. There's like plenty of good examples that we had coming up in among those ranks.

Jonathan Pollack: And it's a testament also to all the people in the DCM business that I was responsible for, have gone on to become VPs and CROs and leaders in their own right. And I think if you look across like just general, you know, Leadership from insurance like they've done quite well in their careers, and I think it's a testament to just the people that were around us.

Jonathan Pollack: I had some very specific experiences when I first got hired by Mark Williams that [00:07:00] instilled a bunch of things in me that I tried to put forward to the team that I ended up leading and also like just some experiences through my martial arts practices and watching. How an old, you know, Japanese master.

Jonathan Pollack: Um, from Japan who comes to the U. S. And then tries to inject that type of environment into Americans, like how you run a dojo. Um, and there's a lot of similarities between the two. Like I could remember to your point about like hiring, hiring the right people, honesty, hard work, being smart and not being an asshole is like top of the list for like, that's the first lens you look through for hiring.

Jonathan Pollack: And I remember I went on a meeting similar to you were in our power suits. Me and Mark Williams are late. We're jogging to the meeting. Probably got there sweaty, but at least they know we cared. Um, we go out, they had bad news for us. It was right after the credit crisis of like 08, 09. And they were gonna downsell their contract.

Jonathan Pollack: I don't think the bank doesn't even exist anymore. It was [00:08:00] we West El and um, you know, I'm there with Mark, and Mark is saying to me and saying to the customer like, look, we understand it's hard business times. We're not gonna renew this contract at its current level. We'll, we'll let you bring it down.

Jonathan Pollack: We'll work with you. We're a partner. Great. We end the meeting. We felt like we made the best of a crap situation. We're walking back to the office, uh, in Midtown and Mark turns to me and says, Why don't we just let the contract auto renew and I'm like three months on the job. I'm like super uncomfortable.

Jonathan Pollack: I was like, Mark, you just told those people not more than 10 minutes ago that we weren't going to do that. And we're going to negotiate a downsell for their volume. I was like, yeah, but FM like, let's do it. I'm like, dude, you're, you're going to have to, uh, Like, take that off with legal. Um, like that, it's, I can't be a part of that.

Jonathan Pollack: And then like, an awkward silence went by and Mark turns to me and goes, that was the right answer. [00:09:00] Well done. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I was testing you. And he's like, had you agreed to that? Like we would be having a very different conversation right now. And then like all of a sudden, like all this just like stress just dropped.

Jonathan Pollack: I was like, Holy cow. That was freaking intense. But it was like a real world situation where basically Mark was testing, like my morals, like, was I going to do the right thing or not do the right thing? He looked at me and said, right after that, we never F our customers. So, you know, when I went on to build a team and look for personality traits, like that was of some of the utmost important, like making sure that in the interview process, you're testing.

Jonathan Pollack: to see if people typically are like sleazy salespeople that will put their own pocketbook ahead of the customer success or people that won't. So, I mean, you mentioned leadership. Um, you mentioned the interlinks days, um, things that were important and how you build the team, like first and foremost, there's [00:10:00] no honor among thieves.

Jonathan Pollack: So like, If you don't have people that will do the right thing, it's really hard to build the right camaraderie and trust and, uh, an environment that you need to be successful as a team. 

Rick Smolen: And then when you think about, all right, so now you've built the team, you're operating together. Do you have recollection of like some of the ways in which you would try to foster motivation or you'd keep sort of morale at an elevated level, or you would set an environment that was sort of focused on this continuation of the success you were achieving?

Rick Smolen: Um, 

Jonathan Pollack: I think there's a handful of things you could do that you actually have to do and it's become more relevant to some of the work that I'm doing now in being responsible for other functions outside of just sales execution, like account management and and revenue operations, and it was a tactic that I used when managing interlinks.

Jonathan Pollack: And, you know, you mentioned before I wasn't getting a lot of resources. No, it was well known [00:11:00] that interlinks a strategy at that time was to break into the enterprise and it wasn't going to invest in DCM, which makes it actually really hard to like recruit and motivate people. If you know you're in a part of the business that operates that way.

Jonathan Pollack: So I did two things. I said one that we, we always shot straight with people, meaning look, we are the cash cow. So you have to be on board with the strategy of interlinks because we're going to be providing the fuel for that part of the business, which is not much different than some of the supporting roles that we have today at Augury.

Jonathan Pollack: Like not everybody is closing business at Augury. Not everybody can be the tip of the spear. But everybody has a role to play and making sure that they understand how what they're doing day to day feeds into the overall strategy of the business. Super impactful, super important for somebody to be behind that.

Jonathan Pollack: And specifically in the DCM world, back in intralinks, I said, look, there's, there's You come into the front door and I'd level with you. I'd say I got good news and bad news, and it's the same [00:12:00] news. The bad news is nobody's gonna care. Nobody's gonna care. The good news is you get to do whatever you want.

Jonathan Pollack: Now, it was my responsibility to make sure we were staying true to all the tenets that sales leaders have to stay true to, making sure you're doing the right hygiene, the right business planning, the right account planning, making sure you're keeping your, your skills sharp, because just because you can do whatever you want doesn't mean you should do whatever you want.

Rick Smolen: And so as you, you know, evolved, you know, I, I ended up, you know, leaving there, uh, before you and you, you took that learning that lesson about X, about hiring profiles, about expectation setting, like when people joined your team, they knew what they were walking into and I can't, you know, I got to tell you, like, that's an underestimated attribute when I interview candidates today, if I got a nickel for every time I hear a story of somebody joined a company, They were told about all the great things in the business and then they showed up and start [00:13:00] working there and a lot of that was real fragile like it wasn't quite what they expected or they had been, you know, sold on one thing and it turned out to be another.

Rick Smolen: I still kind of can't get over how frequently that occurs. So, whereas to me, I'm like, of course you need to be transparent. Like who wants to deal with the consequences of bringing somebody in under like inauthentic circumstances. And yet maybe it's just unintentional. It seems to happen all the time.

Rick Smolen: But you Talk about clear expectation setting and maybe as a leader, it's a little bit about actually knowing what's going on and making sure that you're signed up. For the strategy. So if there is an investment in the business that you're running, that's okay. It's the cash cow. We're going to maximize within the context of the world that we're in.

Rick Smolen: So maybe that's just like the leader. It's the importance for the leader to know what expectations to actually set because I can't believe how often folks feel like they got duped when they join a company. Like, I literally [00:14:00] can't believe how often that happens. And then I think the framing of the good news, bad news, every situation in life can be positioned that way, right?

Rick Smolen: You hit a home run, like good news. That's amazing. You can celebrate bad news. You're gonna have to be up again. And now like, you can only go down from here or the opposite, right? You just struck out bad news that feels really bad, but like, Hey, just getting contact is going to be an improvement then, you know, from, from the last time.

Rick Smolen: And I think That blend of expectation setting and then positioning it in the right light is a great way to just kind of get people operating on the right baseline. 

Jonathan Pollack: It's a great point, Rick. I would say it's not only for how you manage a team, but also how you manage customers expectation and sales in general.

Jonathan Pollack: We did a deal with PepsiCo about 18 months ago. It was a really, it was a big deal for us, a multi year, multi million dollar deal. And it's a rollout across. Well, the North American bottling plants for Pepsi really just spectacular work by the team. And I remember right before we signed the [00:15:00] contract, I was sitting with their SVP of engineering.

Jonathan Pollack: And I said, Hey, Tyrone, just so you know, like something's going to go wrong on this deployment. Like, I promise you something will go wrong. Don't judge us on whether things go wrong or they go right. Just judge us on how we respond to when we hit challenges together. And I've also had other experiences on the recruiting side, where if you would Talk to one of our sales engineers solution architects, you know, he comes from industry comes from manufacturing, and he's told us on numerous occasions.

Jonathan Pollack: This is the first time I've joined the company. And what I was doing day to day wasn't just a blatant lie from what I was being recruited. So I think it's really important that when you build partnerships in general, like setting the right expectations. And I think as, as you get more experience and you get into more senior roles like you, you've seen things go wrong in the other direction.

Jonathan Pollack: And if you're selling to people who either had jobs in the past, that this is not their first rodeo or customers that bought technology before, like they know, like things don't always [00:16:00] work out. And it's important for. It's important for you to set those expectations that nothing's gonna be perfect. And, you know, we're signing up for the partnership, not the specifics of these steps that take us forward.

Rick Smolen: Well, I think there's some magic in the maturity that it takes to kind of have that type of conversation, whether it be with a candidate or a new person on the team or with a customer. You know, when I think of the stereotypical situation in an internal conversation about our performance as a service provider to an important customer, the stereotypical like expectation is that anything that goes wrong is a crisis and like we have to, you know, kind of like catching daggers from the sky, like tap dance around and try to figure out how to solve everything and when you can actually have the maturity to have a relationship with a partner, yeah.

Rick Smolen: In a way where you set the proper expectations around it and know that, Hey, like let's forget about every [00:17:00] tactical detail of, you know, that needs to happen. Let's think about the bigger goal that we're trying to achieve. And like, if it was easy, you wouldn't have your job and I wouldn't have mine. So we're going to have to go through some adversity together versus the like, Freak out all the time.

Rick Smolen: Any little tiny thing that goes wrong is like all hands on deck alarms going off. Like it's hard to scale a business. When you haven't set that right, that right expectation, you know, with a customer and I can see the exact same corollary to, you know, a candidate. 

Jonathan Pollack: Yeah, look, I think it's, it's, it reminds me of marriage, meaning the, you know, the basis of a really strong relationship with your team is trust that, like, I trust that they're doing their best and they're trying to grow and they trust that I've got their best interests and, but yet I'm going to be responsible and.

Jonathan Pollack: You meet at that level where there's this mutual trust. And what that does is it's basically like a vow for marriage. The reason [00:18:00] why marriage works in my opinion is because Not everything is going to be the sky is falling and we're going to get a divorce, right? It's important to have that vow that we are going to stick through this together.

Jonathan Pollack: And when that becomes the basis of the relationship, then you have no choice but to figure it out together. 

Rick Smolen: Yeah, I mean, that's how it should be. These are contractual relationships, you know, between organizations, but often aren't aren't kind of managed that way. So, Jonathan, I want to explore this a bit with you.

Rick Smolen: I've always found to me. The hardest thing for leadership is those cultural elements, those fostering, like getting more out of a team member than they would be able to get out of themselves, creating high levels of accountability, but still a motivating work environment, you know, having a team that, you know, everybody's got challenges in their personal life and distractions and yet keeping a team engaged.

Rick Smolen: I've seen leaders that are just phenomenal at doing that. When we think about that, we think about great [00:19:00] coaches and, you know, sports and all of that as well. Maybe in martial arts, when you left interlinks and now you are running your first sort of sales team, I'd love to hear some of like the tactics, uh, or stories of how you attempted to sustain that strength, that cohesion that you had in the culture.

Rick Smolen: You know, in your first go around in sales leadership. 

Jonathan Pollack: Sure. I mean, I think it was, it's actually quite, it's a challenge to this day that I am constantly thinking about how we can do better. Um, cause honestly, I don't want to lose good people. I want the business to be impactful, not only to our customers, to our employees and being that we're a remote, fully remote company when it comes to our U S operations, it's a real challenge.

Jonathan Pollack: I think interlinks and Shibumi in my past lives. Like there was physical locations that makes a big difference. Uh, like I remember going to work out with some of my, my teammates and, you know, deciding to practice jujitsu [00:20:00] together. And like, Oh, before you know it, you're like rolling around on a mat, trying to choke each other, which that's a bonding.

Jonathan Pollack: I don't know how you bond better than that. I mean, it gets, get your coworkers sweat on you. And all of a sudden like the relationship changes and bonds get, get, uh, built. And in augury, it's been a challenge. Because I've got people on the West Coast, people in the Midwest, East Coast, Boston. I've got an entire team in Israel.

Jonathan Pollack: Um, and there's something real about the fact that there's an ocean between those two operations and it's two different cultures. And we constantly think about, like, how do we bring these teams together to work better, to have more empathy? Because when you're going through hyper growth and you're adding 10, 20 people to your team a quarter, that's stressing the business, that's stressing relationships, and you tend to lose empathy in those moments.

Jonathan Pollack: Um, we also have a pretty complicated solution. We have both a hardware piece of our team. Technology stack as well as a software piece [00:21:00] of our technology stack, which massively complicates the business and creates a lot of collaboration and a lot of friction points that we have to manage. I think it's really important.

Jonathan Pollack: Like, if you want to just get tactical, there's nothing like belly button time. Like, if you're not going to have an office, you need to find time to get the team together face to face. I don't care if you're Talking about QBRs and account plans or doing objection handling enablement sessions or just doing trust falls or flag football.

Jonathan Pollack: Just figure out a way to get people together. And I've sat down with our CFO with my CAEO and being like, we were going into budget planning. We need to carve like we have to make it work where we've got budget to get people together. A couple of things we're doing in June, where, uh, I look at that in June, where, um, bringing everybody to a sleepaway camp and we're going to have a couple of days with the team, just, you know, doing enablement, helping each other, putting together the agenda now, but we're doing that.

Jonathan Pollack: I've got, uh, a [00:22:00] colleague who's in New York tonight, sent me a Slack saying, Hey, yo, yo, for a beer. I said, What are you doing for Shabbat? He's like, nothing. I'm like, take a train up. I'll pick you up at the train station. You can have Shabbat dinner with me. I jumped into Slack. I said, anybody who's, who's local who wants to come on over, Shabbat dinner at Jonathan's house.

Jonathan Pollack: And I think those things, like going out of your way, it's real easy to like, Get to the end of your day after eight, nine hours of zoom meetings and just saying like, I just want to sit on my couch and not Talk to anybody. But if you're going to be a leader, then like, you don't get to like have me time.

Jonathan Pollack: Whenever you want me time, you don't own your smile at the end of the day. You know, if you're going to have, a senior level role at a hyper growth company or a company with large ambitions, then you just have to be willing to make some sacrifices for the better of the team. And if people see you do that, if people see you welcome them into your house.

Jonathan Pollack: And invite them out when they don't have a place to be in the middle of New [00:23:00] York City. Like that's the stuff that transcends what the logo is on your business card and makes lasting relationships that you could lean on for your entire life. And that's why I think a lot of my professional relationships, you included have blossomed into friendships because if you don't connect on that level, then everything else is kind of transactional or artificial.

Rick Smolen: Yeah, that reminds me of a story. We had a We had everybody come together in Jacksonville, uh, just a couple of months ago. Same reason as you described, like we don't work together in an office. It's difficult to forge strong bonds over Zoom with folks. It's doable, right? There's a lot of collaboration and a lot of problem solving and there's still opportunities to celebrate success and to, you know, frankly learn from, from setbacks.

Rick Smolen: But we, you know, the value of course getting everybody together and just like on a human level. In addition to Talking business was really valuable. Uh, we had somebody come in from Australia and somebody come in from the UK now to come into [00:24:00] Florida and not necessarily Miami. I'm Talking like, you know, Florida and then some more travel.

Rick Smolen: That's hard. You're coming from like a far away place. That's like multiple flights. multiple hours sitting in an uncomfortable position, and it would have been very easy to just like do the meeting, like make sure everybody had a good time at it, and then just like have them dropped off back at the airport and good luck getting back to the other side of the world.

Rick Smolen: And one of the leaders on our team, Just has such great instincts into what you're describing and wasn't gonna let that happen. So he said hey guys I'm taking you back to Orlando and I'll make sure you guys get on your flights But planned it so that he took them to and I don't remember which amusement parks it was but like spent a day with them Taking them to the things you do in Orlando, you know, I don't I don't think it was Disney World It's probably some of the other ones That are there and the pictures that I saw from like taking these folks from again They're not from the other side of the world Like they don't spend a lot of time in the u.

Rick Smolen: s That's just for any reason they came over for a work [00:25:00] event and then to be able to get some real, you know Fun experience out of it that they had didn't have to plan for at all was planned for them by you know Who they report to I just, that's, I observed the strength of that bond grows significantly and it wasn't a big sacrifice for the leader on our team.

Rick Smolen: It was just some like care and thinking about others. That I gotta admit in a business context doesn't come naturally for everyone. It's the easier path. There's to just be all business all the time. And like you see somebody from work. Let's Talk about deals. Let's Talk about the pipeline. Um, so I just have so much admiration for that ability to sort of put that to the side or bifurcate that a little bit.

Rick Smolen: And, you know, connect on that human level like it seems so easy and yet when you're in the fog of day to day might be a bit tougher. 

Jonathan Pollack: I also think like you don't have to spend a ton of money to do it. Like we, we had an offsite in Orlando and we went to some dump hotel and [00:26:00] literally we're holding QBRs and the bathroom right outside the bathroom right outside of the, uh, banquet hall where we're doing this.

Jonathan Pollack: Had like a sewage backup and like just stunk to high heaven. I got a guy like literally sitting there with a vacuum cleaner, like cleaning up. You know what? And like my team is walking through that, that lobby going into, but you know what, like at the end of the day, I've got probably a dozen pictures of like the team by the pool having fun.

Jonathan Pollack: We bribed the front desk lady so we can stay past 10. And I think it really helped the overall business, even though I can't put an ROI on it. 

Rick Smolen: Yeah, I'm saying that story reminds me that it's not just the fun that bonds people together, but the suffering together that bonds people together as well. You know, you brought up a concept that I'd love to explore with you a little bit, which is in that physical office, I saw you thrive when everybody was together, but we now we live in an environment where, [00:27:00] of course, that still happens to some degree.

Rick Smolen: Yeah. But we're hybrid or remote at this point, and we still, as leaders, have a responsibility to create. The, you know, the spirit, the morale, the engagement, all the things that we've been Talking about. In the absence of getting folks together every quarter, or, you know, at some level of frequency, what have you tried, what's working and what isn't around trying to create that environment of a winning sales culture in this remote environment?

Jonathan Pollack: Love, I'm still figuring it out. I, I wish I could tell you that we have it cracked and that I was an expert on that, but by no means do I feel that way. I feel like every day I am searching for answers. On how to connect with people remotely both, you know customer perspective as well as employees I'd say the best you could do is like you know, try to be respectful of people's like personal time.

Jonathan Pollack: Like I don't want to light up everybody's calendar with like, um, you know, some, uh, trivia game on Wednesdays that we all get together because at the end of the day, after [00:28:00] nine hours of zoom, people do need to disconnect and be with their families and do stuff that, uh, that they enjoy outside of work. But for me, I try to do skip level meetings a bunch.

Jonathan Pollack: And, you know, when you get a call on your cell phone from the VP of sales, I make it a point to try to not ask about like a deal, but ask about like, Hey, how's things going? How are you enjoying it? Like, how's your onboarding coming? Just let them know. I appreciate what they're doing that I'm a fan and connect with people on that level.

Jonathan Pollack: I'd say the other tactics we could use is like, ask the team, like how do you feel we're doing? Like, do you feel we have a cultural problem? Do you feel connected to the business? And if you get answers like, you know, You know, well, you know, I do most days, but some days it's really hard. Like, all right.

Jonathan Pollack: Well, like, what could we do and put the solution in the hands of the people that feel the pain and feel the problem? Um, so on regular occasions, we'll have team meetings where the whole discussion is like, Hey, You know, we think people are losing faith or getting burnt out or [00:29:00] whatever the case may be.

Jonathan Pollack: Like, what do you guys think about that? What's the underlying issues? What are the things that we could do to galvanize the team together and include them in the ideation for what you need to do? I'd say one of the things I've always hated is when, you know, some executive sat down with HR without a survey and just decided like, Hey, we're gonna put this program in place to try to drive.

Jonathan Pollack: You know a mentor program or whatever the case may be and you're like did anybody ask me like what I think I need Um, it's the equivalent of like the salesperson who's like just you know This is how great my, my, my product is. You should buy it instead of understanding, you know, what's the underlying pain and what you're trying to accomplish.

Rick Smolen: Do you have any specific, uh, like agenda that you use for skip levels? Do you keep it a little bit more open ended just to kind of make connect more at a human level? Or do you have like a methodology that you use in order to extract the sort of. The real like what's going on. I mean, you're now in a senior leadership position.

Rick Smolen: And one of the things that I've observed [00:30:00] in a senior leadership position is people are much more careful what they say they're not as open, you know, if they don't work super closely with you, they want to make sure they don't say anything. It'll get them in trouble, for example. And so how have you done that successfully in collecting like good, authentic feedback from folks?

Rick Smolen: You don't work day to day closely with? 

Jonathan Pollack: I don't really have a specific agenda or method, but like, I think there's like specific like moments where it's like, okay, we're going to have on the suit in this moment. And then we're not going to have the suit on in this moment and creating those types of divisions in point.

Jonathan Pollack: Like if I were to bring it back to my dojo days, like, When you were sitting there at a seminar and sensei was up there, like wanting to show what good looks like, like there was no slack, like razor's edge on every interaction and you get your head bashed in, uh, if you made a wrong move, right? That was game time.

Jonathan Pollack: It was a very different when you were sitting on his back porch, [00:31:00] right? And you were helping him garden and he was having a cigarette and you just finished lunch together. Right. And I think it's important for people to understand like. We need to create these types of environments like when you're sitting in a QB are presenting your account plan.

Jonathan Pollack: It needs to be buttoned up needs to be sharp. It needs to be tight. You can't have slack in those moments. And it sets an example for the rest of the team that you need to live by. It's very different than I give you a call on a Sunday. Just to see how you're doing and onboarding and being like, Hey, you know what?

Jonathan Pollack: I'm hearing this from the team. If you were me, what would you be doing differently? And I asked that question a lot to everybody. I tend to like all of my one on ones. I asked two things. If you were me, what would you be doing that I'm not doing? And two, if you could change one thing in the business, like what would it be?

Jonathan Pollack: Because I want to make sure that like, Most of the friction I see is around like, Oh, I'm doing this, but this part of the business is not doing that. I'm doing this, but this part of the [00:32:00] business is not doing that. So trying to bring other leaders to the table to help breed empathy. I'm always curious, like, At least for Audrey, one of our biggest pictures point is that like this cross functional empathy that the drive.

Jonathan Pollack: So I make sure like I get that every time I Talk with somebody in general. I think if you if you bring to each conversation the idea that how can I help you? People really enjoy that. Whether you're Talking to a direct report or Another V. P. One of your peers or another senior leader. 

Rick Smolen: There is something disarming about like if the head of sales of a company is meeting with somebody that's like maybe 123 layers down in the org chart, so to speak.

Rick Smolen: And then you ask that person like, Hey, what should I be doing? Like, give me some feedback. If you were me, what would you focus on? I think that's a very empowering and bonding type of thing. It's showing that, like, as a leader, we don't have all the answers all the time. It's not us in the ivory tower. Like knowing exactly what everybody needs to do and, you know, conducting some type of symphony, it's, [00:33:00] you know, facilitating the pursuit of the best answers, uh, to, to the questions and not feeling this pressure to have to have them, but to be seeking them and the best place to seek them anytime to the folks closest to the customer or closest to the product or the business we're in.

Jonathan Pollack: There's a concept in martial arts. Um, specifically in like the traditional martial arts that you don't start to innovate until you, uh, master like the basics. And I always think like, okay, so once you've been doing sales and leadership for a while, we could all go online, listen to podcasts and figure out what the best practices are.

Jonathan Pollack: But you have to ask yourself, like, how did we ever get to the best practices? Like we got to the best practices because somebody asked, like, what should I be doing different? How do I innovate on this? Um, so we absolutely have the responsibility as responsible sales leaders to learn and study these things.

Jonathan Pollack: But at a certain point in time, like you are the leadership [00:34:00] of sales, you have to be the one to innovate the next step of whatever the next best practice is going to be or the next innovation is going to be. It's not enough. To just say, Hey, I read a book and I implemented it. 

Rick Smolen: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work like that.

Rick Smolen: How do you apply your martial arts background to sales leadership? 

Jonathan Pollack: Oh man. I mean, I think you'd have to probably go back to like the fundamental, like tenants of Aikido. Um, like the, the fundamental, Well, I mean, we're going to have, we're going to head into like Zen territory as well. 

Rick Smolen: That's okay. I, you know what, it's been a long week.

Rick Smolen: There's nothing wrong with ending with a little Zen. 

Jonathan Pollack: Well, look, I think first and foremost, like the fundamental tenant of let's say Zen or Aikido is that like, we're all one, we're all this energy. It's all the difference between me and you good and bad, light and dark is all like artificial, uh, things that we segment.

Jonathan Pollack: In our own mind to like [00:35:00] make sense of the logical world. It's a necessary thing we do. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to cross the street or decide whether the food we eat is good or bad, but at a very core level, everything is one, this one energy and Aikido specifically, there's this idea that if you are being attacked, right, and you need to defend yourself, and there's no separation between you and the attacker on this philosophical level, then you should be able to blend.

Jonathan Pollack: With this attack and neutralize it to the point where violence isn't really needed anymore. Easier said than done in practice. Um, but in general, that's the fundamental tenant of Aikido is if you're being attacked, like how do you take that attack and redirect the energy in concert with the universe? To reach an amicable situation at the end of it.

Jonathan Pollack: So you take that like that is far reaching implications in life, let alone sales or sales leadership. Many [00:36:00] times when you see problems coming and many times problems are coming as personal attacks. Why didn't you hit quota? Why didn't you do this? How come that delivery went south? Why don't we have enough budget for this?

Jonathan Pollack: Like all of those statements. The underlying issue is like, why are you effing up? And that becomes an attack. So instead of approaching those situations like, all right, now I'm going to put up my fists. I'm going to block the attack and hit back. And you think, you think like, where is that coming from? How do I take that?

Jonathan Pollack: How do I blend with that question? And then bring that attack to a neutral place where we can solve problems. philosophically is important skill to have. 

Rick Smolen: So I mean, I can just picture like that email that any of us get that puts us on the defensive, gets our blood, you know, our heart pumping a little more like the emotions start to come out.

Rick Smolen: I don't know. Maybe it's an internal dig that was on a public email. Maybe it's a Ford of a important deal that you just found out you're not gonna win or Or [00:37:00] a candidate that you didn't get, like, there's definitely moments where that emotion rises. And what I'm hearing you say is instead of, like, fighting back, which is our sort of instinct.

Rick Smolen: It's just diffusing. It's, you know, having a posture of, okay, this is a reality. What, what are we going to adjust in order to keep harmony, you know, and kind of keep moving forward? And that's sort of a foundational basis for you. Is that, is that the right way to interpret that? 

Jonathan Pollack: Yeah. I mean, it comes down to, you know, quick finger pointing and placing blame one direction or the other.

Jonathan Pollack: And ultimately, If you've got a high functioning CEO that's got the right perspective. I always thought of a CEO, a good CEO is like a father. All the father really wants is for their kids to get along and like work together. So in operating in a company, if you think of yourself as. What are the sons or daughters of the CEO and your cross [00:38:00] functional peers and the people you work with as your siblings, then when issues come up, they go like, well, what does dad want?

Jonathan Pollack: Dad really wants nobody to point fingers to sit down and look at the problem and figure out a solution and work together to do it. So like, that's the high level, like inter politics dynamics of how people operate. And if you go back to like, what were you Talking about earlier? That idea of like, stop fighting.

Jonathan Pollack: Look at where it's coming from and see how you blend with it again. Philosophically. And when you Talk about it, it's easy to say harder to do in practice, but that's at least the approach I try to take. 

Rick Smolen: I love that. I mean, honestly, it's true. Like, you know, the, at first the kind of idea of a parental dynamic and work is a little bit, um, you know, uncomfortable, but it's true the idea that us as leaders have a responsibility to get along with and achieve harmony and work well.

Rick Smolen: Yeah. With some folks that there's always going to be friction with it's [00:39:00] so much easier to finger point to silo do all that. But leadership is about rising above that and, you know, anchoring to the point that you made, which is around achieving harmony, achieving positive relationships, even if it doesn't feel good and working together successfully to some common goal, which is never easy, always hard.

Rick Smolen: Jonathan. Um, before we go here, you're really fortunate to be in a situation right now that has immense, you know, ambition. You've already had a ton of success within here. What's one or two things that you're focused on right now for the year for to be successful? Like, what is a leader like you that has a ton of ambition in a business that's succeeding?

Rick Smolen: Like, what are you focused on right now? 

Jonathan Pollack: I'd say two things. One is I'm focused on, I mean, they're specific to auguries business right now. Um, I'd say we have a couple of things we need to focus on. We want to see increased quality in our onsite deployments in the field. Uh, that's a strategic initiative for us this year.

Jonathan Pollack: And then separately in my own [00:40:00] like area of direct influence, like I want to see better. Bigger, faster deals, right? Um, so I'm focused on two main things. One is how do I leverage Augury's vast network within manufacturing to make sure we're Talking to the right people? Um, I'll always say like sales leadership, at least what I tell my sales leaders, If you forget about like frameworks and methodologies and discovery questions and all that, if you just boil it down to like two things, I think a sales leader should be accountable for is are you Talking to the right people and are your AEs, your sales people saying the right things and making sure they're focused on that.

Jonathan Pollack: And then building like the right support mechanisms to make sure we're Talking to the right people. So I'm spending a ton of time operationalizing auguries network so that when somebody says I need to Talk to the CEO of Pepsi or the CEO of GE or Procter and Gamble, We're leveraging our full network to do that properly.

Jonathan Pollack: And [00:41:00] it's a combination of personal touch ownership of certain lists and packaging things the right way for our board of directors and our extended network to action. And then secondarily, I'm trying to help the other areas of the business that are focused on deployment and literally by just giving them resources.

Jonathan Pollack: Like we, we came to an agreement lately where I said, Hey, I think I have some subject matter expertise in my solution architecture group that typically does pre sales work, but they can be helpful in deployments, like take them. And I don't even want headcount. Like I understand the pressures on the business.

Jonathan Pollack: Like we only win as a team. Here is one of my people that's highly skilled. They know what needs to be done, put them in the right place and help the business. I think in general, if you find that you're In a executive team and the executives in that team are not willing to share resources freely. And it's always like, Oh, I have 30 head count.

Jonathan Pollack: And if I give you one, I want a backfill for that. It's like, no, like that's not the way the CEO or the board [00:42:00] directors or investors think. They would think about, we have a bucket of resources. How do we optimize it? And it's our job to make sure we're not playing like I got 27 people and I need to maintain 27 people.

Jonathan Pollack: It's about what's best for us. 

Rick Smolen: Yeah, higher flexibility, higher agility, higher collaboration to all emphasize the points that you made. Jonathan, just want to thank you again for, it's great to see you. Congratulations on your continued success. Thanks for joining me on Pillar Talk, and I look forward to continuing the conversation offline.

Jonathan Pollack: This was great, Rick. Thanks for the opportunity, man. It was a pleasure.

Rick Smolen: That was a terrific conversation with Jonathan Pollock. Jonathan, thanks for joining us. Three reflections and takeaways that I've been considering on the back of that conversation. First, when we Talked about Expectation setting. Jonathan demonstrated a maturity and a level of candor, not only with the folks that he's hired and providing a clear picture of what they'd be walking [00:43:00] into, but also in engagement with a customer and embarking on a complicated partnership, a journey together.

Rick Smolen: Um, being able to set the right expectations, earning trust and partnership through candor, high levels of maturity. I think it demonstrates great leadership, as I indicated too many times missed expectation setting, whether at the customer level or at the candidate level that sets the stage for a downhill trajectory of performance.

Rick Smolen: And so, uh, that really stood out to me is ensuring that we as leaders create the right clarity of expectation in a mature way that fosters confidence in our leadership. The second area that stood out for me is when he Talked about this focus on innovation, he started with getting the basics right, doing the basic blocking and tackling so well that you can innovate slowly on top of it.

Rick Smolen: Then that becomes the new normal. And then you innovate a little bit more on top of that. And that fosters continuous improvement. Certainly for me. I don't want to get things over complicated. I'm not looking for shortcuts. Let's [00:44:00] just do the basic things really well and we can build on it over time. That really was reinforced by some of the stories that Jonathan was sharing in his last part when he Talked about his martial arts background and how that drives a patient.

Rick Smolen: disciplined mindset. It kept low on emotional ism. Difficult circumstances are going to surface on a regular basis. And when you're cool calculated, you can remove the layers, figure out what's going on, provide calmness to those around you and then make the right decisions on how to move forward. That demonstrates great leadership.

Rick Smolen: And I think Jonathan through his background is a key part of his overall success. So thank you for joining us today on Pillar Talk. Thank you to Wayfair Production for producing Sons of Summer. My man, Isla Young for the tunes. Thank all of you for listening. We'll see you next time on Pillar Talk. Have a great one, y'all.[00:45:00]

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