Lessons from a first-time sales manager

0:00When pulled 58 to 60 % of first time frontline managers received zero formal training before stepping into their role. Zero formal training. So I think most of us would think that was pretty crazy as a rep. If you were a first time rep, whether that was an SDR, maybe for many of you listening to this, or you become an account executive, like the onboarding is such a big experience, right? You watch tons of videos on product and company stuff. Hopefully, you get some hands-on training on how to actually do the job, but this is rarely the case still for most frontline managers. We're starting to see a trend at Outbound Squad with many of our clients where they will create or have us help them create a frontline manager program, a formal onboarding.

0:52This is a real problem because we're doing a big engagement right now with a bunch of managers. And there are very tactical things that you need to do very well as a manager that you just don't have to learn as a rep. Some of it says straightforward is how to run a one-on-one. So how to get a rep excited to come to your one-on-one, what they should prep, how to get them to take more ownership, how to run solid team meetings that don't put your reps to sleep, how to manage your week, prioritize your time. I mean, one of the common problems we see is that managers will spend a lot of time in what we call player mode.

1:27they will do a lot of things for the rep. They'll step in and close the deal if they need to. They'll step in and if the rep is having trouble putting together a complex proposal, they'll just do it for them versus spending time in what we call owner mode, right? Where they're not working their week like a customer support rep working inbound ticket requests, right? They are proactively figuring out where to spend their time and prioritizing the reps that they'll have the most impact on. So today in our interview, I'm going to talk to someone that's a current client that I actually started working with many, many years ago when he was an account executive, but he's a first time frontline manager at the time of recording this about six months into the role.

2:11So we're going to talk about that in a second. I'm really excited for you to listen to the episode. If you're coming to outbound squad for the first time, my name's Jason Bay. I'm CEO at outbound squad. We're all about helping you turn complete strangers into paying customers. So we focus on a couple of things, but really everything is focused on outbound pipeline generation. So that's working with a full cycle sellers and account executives and making sure that there's a standardized language or methodology that the entire org uses to pipe gen. It's helping them with their self-sourcing. It's training the managers on how to reinforce it.

2:46We've done this for some great companies like Shopify, I heart media, you know, AMX all the way down to your startups rolling out their first SDR motion and everywhere in between. But that's the number one thing we help with is generating quality pipeline, training your team, working with your enablement team to make sure that your SDRs can do that, your AEs, your AMs if they're in charge of upsells and cross-sell conversations and all of that good stuff. So today we're talking to Matt Rogers, who, like I said, was an account executive when we first met and he moved to a company called Neo4j. So he works with Brian Evans, who we had on the podcast before.

3:22That's his VP of sales. Matt this year became an RVP. And this is his first foray into sales leadership. I mean, we talk in the first half about how he thinks about pipe gen and the buying environment and how he connects really like great point of view statements and how he's enabled his reps around that. And then we talk a lot about being a first time frontline leader. I mean, I'm always curious, honestly, like why people decide to do this because he was crushing it as a rep. And oftentimes, at least initially, it's oftentimes a pay cut. Um, it's certainly much harder. There are way more demands on your time.

4:06Um, he talks about having less free time, right? Less mental space for, for deep work. Um, we talked about the difference between coaching versus doing. So that was the player versus owner mode thing I was talking about earlier. We talked about accountability conversations, taking care of your mental health. I mean, this is a really fun episode. I got to do this in person with Matt when I was in Austin, Texas, uh, a few months ago. So this is, this is a really fun one before you get to the episode. There's two things that we at outbound squad can do to help you. If you've listened to this episode or other episodes, you're like, we would really love, you know, some help implementing some of these, you know, pipe gen motions and getting our team to generate more pipeline.

4:45Reach out to me at Jason at outbound squad.com. I would love to show you how we've helped some really great organizations increase qualified pipeline by 20 % or more. We create the playbooks and the plays and standardize them for your team. Everything we do is a hundred percent custom tailored for you. we coach the managers on how to reinforce it and then of course we do a lot of hands-on work with the reps to make sure they can do that as well and that's bdr teams that we'll work with we'll work with account executive teams that need help with self-sourcing and then if you have ams that you want to self-source more opportunities within your customer base we do that too if you're just looking for free stuff for now this podcast of course is a great resource for that and we also have a free outbound master class course as well so it's about three hours long of our very best content.

5:32I went in a studio to record it. It's all of our tactics, methodologies, all of that great stuff. So go make sure to check that out. OutboundSquad.com slash masterclass. Feel free to check it out. Send it to your team. All that good stuff. Let's get to the interview.

5:53So I'm super excited to be not only in person because we've gotten to see each other a couple times now. I think the last time I was in Austin last year, we got to meet up for a little bit. Yeah, that's cool. But it's going to be really good to sit down and kind of talk through your career and especially some of the things that you're learning now as a first-time frontline leader. So I want to take us back a bit, though. Dude, I saw that you were in, like, videography or something like that. So, like, prior to 2015 when you got into tech sales, I have to ask because hardly anyone I know gets into sales on purpose.

6:28Yes. Totally. So how did you get into sales? I mean, you're absolutely right. I don't think anybody, there's one person I know that actually picked sales as a career and he's actually not a sales guy anymore. He went to the dark side in engineering. So, um, yeah, I went to school for film. I had a dream and aspiration of being a director. Um, and the beauty and translation of film is that one is like rents due at the first every month and film is not a career that is, you know, very consistent like i'll have like a bunch of shoots uh one month no shoots the next month and like as a kid fresh out of college like i needed the consistency to pay my bills yeah right and to make it in austin like this is not a cheap city to live in and it's definitely not a cheap city to live in there's a lot of competition for videography and stuff like that here too there is and you kind of have to grit it out for like you know five or ten years to kind of get to the point where your like jobs are coming to you or you have to start your own firm which i tried to do and I honestly had no idea what I was doing.

7:28So failed business number one. I started out my sales career as a door-to-door sales guy selling gym memberships at LA Fitness. And like I've put on a little bit of poundage since I was like in my early 20s. But in my early 20s, if you go back and look at pictures of me. Shred City or what? No, man. I was like, I was a cross-country runner. So I was like very, very skinny, had the LA fitness shirt on that was like probably three sizes too big trying to tell somebody to come in, like join the gym because you're going to get shredded. So you're going door to door, like business to consumer BTC. Yeah.

8:06Or, or to like a business to try to get them to like do a corporate membership, which there was no training. I had no idea what I was doing with that. So it was more just like, Hey, here's my free pass. Say my name at the front desk so that I get credit for your membership when you come in. What did you learn through that? I mean, I hated door to door. That's one thing. I think, I think, uh, I think I enjoy, like when I, when I was able to like talk to people and like get them into the gym, like there was a lot of stories that I heard about like why they were coming in. I hated that time in my life just to be really clear.

8:39Like it was really effing hard. Uh, but, uh, that was kind of like the little hook where I was like, Hey, like I really like capturing or telling stories over here on the film side. maybe there's some translation over here on like the sales side and then fast forward like started leasing apartments fast forward from there there was a bunch of people like in the apartment building that you know were affording this awesome downtown high-rise and i was like you guys are like the same age as me we're probably the same people i've kind of maybe like no egos aside like i might be a little smarter than you like what are you doing differently did you say that to them i might be a little smarter than you no i didn't say but like i'm thinking like man like definitely how are you living here and like i'm living like on the outskirts of town yeah uh anyway so uh found out like most of them worked at indeed i kind of got my way into indeed there was a leader there that took a chance on me that you know i had no business i had no experience but there's a leader there that took a chance on me um and kind of the rest is history from there as far as like sales go so like got into to b2b sales wanted to get into the enterprise level that was the next career jump wanted to get into sass that was the next career jump and and um and then now leadership right so i think the the theme across all of those is really two things one um sales is really storytelling i mean at the end of the day you're trying to take a problem or like an aspiration from from a customer and and um bottle that up and and convey that message or through somebody right like help them tell their story of why they want to do something or why they want to make a change yeah uh and the second part like in all real humility, like I wouldn't be anywhere if I didn't have people like there's specific people throughout my career that took chances on me that put me in positions to, to probably fail.

10:24And it kind of helped me through those, those spots to, to propel me to the next level in each of the phases of my career. So that's the, that's the lesson there, I guess. Yeah. So the storytelling piece is something, because I've always, during the time I've known you, which I think we met probably when we started like a group coaching program, I think is how we probably met through that. So this would have been maybe 2022, something like that, yeah. Somewhere around there. Yeah. The thing that I've always known you for is like the strategic AE and the storytelling piece is interesting because I think it's one of the biggest misconceptions as a rep moves up and starts to sell larger deals is that they think they need to be much more and you do need to be a little bit more data-driven and have a tighter business case and stuff, but really a lot of the business case is around like the narrative and the story that we were telling around the transformation.

11:20What was that learning curve like for you in learning how to become an enterprise and strategic rep from the stuff you were doing at Indeed, I would assume at first was probably pretty transactional, like SMB type of stuff. Yeah. What was that learning curve like? I mean, I was making$150 a day to then having a book of like 10 customers. So like that, that's a big difference, right. And in what your day to day looks like and, um, how thoughtful you can be and specific in a conversation. Um, I think everyone should cut their teeth on, on the hard stuff of sales on, on doing the, the volume and kind of getting the repetition.

12:04Cause I think there's some, some value there. I don't know that I would ever go back, right? Like to that level. I think the storytelling aspect of what you can do with strategic sales is really, really fun.

12:20I think you're onto something on the business cases though. This is like kind of your thing. When I've observed you in deals and especially at Neo4j, when we did that whole sales process rollout, I was like, dude, this guy fucking gets the, you know, Nate Nisrella, all of his stuff that he talks about around the one page business plan. I've learned a lot from him. I've learned a lot from just observing how you guys sell because I didn't, you know, honestly, before we worked together, I didn't know anything about graph databases or any of that kind of stuff. And that is often the case when we're working with a client that tells a very technical solution for the first time.

12:59You know, we have to learn about that solution. And one of the things that just stuck out to me is like, it's one of the first things we ask for is like, let's see some example business cases. And it's like, that's the part that you seem to really light up by. And it's the part that you're like really good at. So, yeah, I'm just curious what that was like learning how to. Well, simplicity sells. Yeah, it really does. So like on both sides of the equation, right? Like it's really difficult for me to learn something if I don't understand it. If it's too complex, like there's there's a dumbing down aspect for a state school bachelor of arts grad that, you know, got a degree in communication.

13:36Like I don't have a degree in mathematics or science or like any of the things that the people I sell to. You're talking to a college dropout here. I mean, we're basically I'll spare you my GPA for the sake of this being recorded here. But like the GPA was not high. Right. Like and there was not a lot of class attended. Yeah. You know, my time in San Marcos. But the idea of simplicity selling was something that I got plugged in with Nate around the same time that you and I met. And it was like a chance meeting, but he had this idea of kind of selling through your buyer and making a message travel.

14:18This is before AI like had really taken off. So we're writing these things out manually. And in order to write things manually at scale, like you've got to be simple, like you've got to be brevity is key and you've got to have a really simple, clear, concise message. And to your point, like, obviously it has to be backed by data. So like you've got to back up whatever the narrative of the story is with data, you know, to say like, this is the reason, like, here's the metric you have today. Here's how we're going to influence it. Here's what we expect to see as an outcome. right but that like idea of a problem statement of despite whatever it is that they're doing today it's still hard to get the outcome that they're going after right like that idea of being able to say that in like one or two sentences and distill down the problem to that level um i think is like critical if you want to be successful in enterprise sales yeah it's like your ability to distill down a multiple six or seven figure deal into two or three sentences it's pretty wild like the skill set that is required to do that and like really the understanding of what they're trying to accomplish and being able to articulate it in their words um so we're going to come back to this probably i want to talk to you about like kind of the first big topic just because we talk about outbound pipe gen a lot is and that's how we started working together was you know we had that group coaching program and it was all about pipe gen yeah that's how we kind of came up with the name Outbound Squad too.

15:41So yeah, one of the things that's really helped you in your career has been your ability to like build pipeline, right? And to self-source deals and to get your foot in the door and all of that kind of stuff. So if we start with PipeGen, walk me through a little bit more about like your approach and especially around how you develop your point of view because this is essentially the hypothesis for the business case before you have all of the information that you're going to get through the discovery process so you're doing like a super light version of a business case almost yeah um but that's like really where it starts for you so if we were to get tactical here how do you think about the point of view and developing that and like how does someone get started with that man i'll like if If you go back to like, again, before AI, like this was a multiple hour, really time consuming.

16:37Like I got to read some earnings call transcripts, some 10 Ks, like listen to a podcast that an executive was on or like wherever I can find information about the company. It's wild, like how much you can do with things like Claude or Gemini or like even in the last five months, the folks like transitioning to this role, right? The folks that are in the field today are taking AI to like the next level in a way that I couldn't even do. Right. So it's I mean, it's banana land. What information is available at your fingertips? But to like get really tactical. I mean, I learned this from you, man.

17:15I don't know that I can take credit here, but I've definitely definitely taken it and run with it. This idea of like there's not there's no such thing as a cold call or like a cold outreach. I don't believe in that because if you're doing cold outreach, yeah, it's going to suck. Not only for you, but also for the buyer because you're coming to them with like a limp noodle. Like you're coming to them with no like context or why should we talk or what's our reason to meet or any of that stuff, right? When you do your research and you come up with a point of view on here's the specific problems that I see that you have in your business, right?

17:49And there's a ton of information online that you can find both public and private businesses. I don't think like we can use private businesses as an excuse or a crutch anymore. Like people put so much out there. Yep. So here's my point of view about the things that you're trying to solve. Your headwinds, your tailwinds, right? Like where are you guys at as a business and what are you trying to be? And here's where I think we can plug in and here's where we've done it before. Yeah. It's that simple. And if you think of you make it more complicated than that, then it becomes this big like burden that you're never going to get done.

18:21but if you come up with like one or two bullets on like here's where we could plug in here and here's where I think where we can influence you know whatever the goal is that you guys are trying to achieve or you know the the compliance issue that you might be having whatever it is right doesn't matter across industries or across companies that you're selling for then you're taking that to that customer and you're saying like hey like I have an idea like here's your problem here's how I think we can help like does it make sense like am I off base here and it's human nature to correct other people.

18:49Right. And so like that human nature, you're going to get a response right, wrong, or indifferent. And I would actually prefer to be wrong. I think I learned this from you as well, but like, I prefer to be wrong where they correct me on what it is that they're actually trying to solve for and how they're thinking about it. Cause then I now have a refined point of view and not only can we like work together from like a one-to-one, but now I can take that refined point of view and say like, Hey, I was just talking to Jason. Uh, we were talking about this problem that you guys are trying to solve and now like with his input i think we could actually solve it with you know abc or xyz right so now i can like multi-thread that so anyways i'm kind of bird walking on your on your question there the the point of view makes your outreach warm and i think that point of view is just that initial baseline problem statement of like here's the thing as i'm seeing you know either in the industry in the space whatever yeah to whatever granularity that you can get the more granular the better but work with what you got there.

19:45And then that theme is going to follow through all the way through the deal cycle and it's going to get refined. It's going to get refined. It's going to get refined. And when you have somebody that's in the boat refining that with you, that's like a really powerful and like almost magical thing where you guys are solving a problem together now versus like I'm selling to you and trying to get you to do this thing that maybe you don't want to do. So one thing you said while we were prepping for this is you said you're not interrupting their day if you bring value to their day. Oh, totally. And this is the value that you're talking about.

20:16This is the thing that really warms it up. I love the way that you've kind of set that up and thought about it is I think what can make coming up with that point of view really hard for outbound is if you just think about it as a way to get the meeting. If you think about this in the context, and this is why I think that as an account executive, It's so much more powerful if you have that self-sourcing muscle. No knock on the SDRs in saying that. It's just you have context through the full sales cycle. You've done the hard work to get to that idea, and so now you've internalized that information.

20:53Exactly. So if you were thinking about how would I prep for a first sales call with this account, and you were thinking about my first draft of the business case that I put together, what would be the missing pieces that I would put in? If you're able to think ahead just a little bit there, the point of view when you're going outbound is basically I'm just starting at the very beginning of the conversations here through a closed one deal. Like I need to bring, you know, the car through the manufacturing plant and like bolt on all of these things. But it's kind of interesting to think about it in advance of when you might need that kind of stuff.

21:29Because, again, you're essentially everyone knows that to close a deal, you need a strong champion or several of those champions. And that's really what you're trying to do with Outbound is like, am I guessing correctly what they might care about and the people that might care about that the most? Yeah. So with the point of view, what specifically are you looking for? And I don't know if you're able to share any examples or even they could be a little, you know, you could kind of make them a little fictitious if you want to remove the company names and stuff. But what are you looking for in terms of like the trigger event or the problem that's going on?

22:05like if we were to get a little more specific i mean i'll use an easy one um for this you know just for the sake of of this conversation and and like for like any young rep listening i'm i'm purposely giving an easy example like it doesn't always come this easy right um and so like it does does take some research but like the tariff issue um with shipping and logistics right it's like a super hot topic there's a lot of changes and one of the things that we do when we sell is like we're able to map the relationship between changing data points really really fast in real time yeah and so like it's just a very natural easy like very quick to click uh use case for us yeah um and so like just like having a baseline understanding of you know hey this is how your business is going to be impacted by this um and this is how like this uncertainty is going to impact your business like what if we could provide some certainty there um is a very easy way to start a conversation right like i'm using this example because it's it's simple it's easy to digest it's not always this easy right but like you're looking for like you're looking for like events you're looking for uh ideas you're looking for job changes um as folks are coming in or or leaving right as you know there's there's kind of the impetus for change um you're looking for like what would drive this organization to stop doing the thing because like yeah i used to sell utilities utilities and the challenge with utilities is is um you know it's the infrastructure that keeps your lights on like all the lights in this room just you flip a switch you forget that like there's a whole bunch of stuff behind that that has to make that happen right and so there's not a lot of desire to change in that that industry because if it's working if the you know electrons are flowing through the wires and getting to the buildings that they need to get to why would we mess with that right like why would we do anything to to change that um it's kind of like if you if you had a thorn in your foot right and you've had that thorn in your foot for you know 20 years you forget that it hurts yeah so you've got to like find a reason to remind them of like why that thorn is like actually really bad maybe it's infected or you know maybe your foot's gonna need i'm you know going down a bad example here but like uh maybe you need to you know uh do something about that.

24:25You've got to make them aware that they've got an issue if you don't have that trigger, you know, that a blind spot that they might not be seeing in their business. Yeah. So if we're using like our outbound squad, like that RTM framework, the reason to meet, you have like these kind of tension buckets maybe where there's like two or three major problems that customers experience, let's say in this vertical that you've aligned to a common use case tariffs, for example. And then just a visual for people watching, if you imagine like the triggers that flow into those tension buckets, there are tariffs would be a trigger, the hiring, et cetera.

25:03You're purposely aligning the triggers to those tension buckets that match to your use cases. And then the third part is the trust. That's the social proof and the customer stories and all of that kind of stuff. So you're putting a lot of thought and intention into that. But is there anything else around, because you have so few accounts oftentimes with Stratton, the one thing that I always think about is disqualification. And disqualification prior to sending out an email or phone call, not like on a call or during a discovery conversation, just deciding who you're not going to spend time on.

25:38How does that kind of factor in this around like account selection and choosing like where you're going to spend time? How have you approached that in your career? Man, there's so many different ways that you can slice the apple on that one. I think when I started here, I picked this up from somewhere. This wasn't an original thought, but the things that I ranked into three buckets of ABCs are, one, if I knew they had budget and they had a use case, that ranked as an A. How did you know that they had budget? usually by talking to them um or like hey there's a signal that they're hiring for somebody that has xyz experience that is like directly related related to the product i sell yeah right so like i know that they're a build shop in that you know we're a database so like it has to be a a company that's willing to take on like a build motion versus a buy motion and not every company is willing to do that yeah so like that could be one probably more so nowadays i would assume with all of the ai has definitely been a an accelerant it's been a happy um uh accident i didn't i didn't get into this space knowing that yeah i think you guys are freaking you guys are crushing right now i think you guys are gonna freaking blow up dude in the next year or two it's it's there's a lot of tailwinds for sure yeah it's definitely a good place to be um but yeah so there's there's budget uh and use case b would be like i know there's budget but i don't know what the use case is right or vice versa i know there's a use case but i don't know if they're build versus buy shop like i can't find the signals that i'm looking for there um and then c would be i just don't know about either of them and so what i think about on the account ranking kind of what i've been coaching the team on is like um it's okay to change that ranking but i want you to do it on like a less frequent like i don't want you to do it every week um we should do that like on a maybe a quarterly basis where we relook at you know what's our a b and c tier based on what we know and what we've learned about our accounts.

27:33And then let's swap and reprioritize, you know, where we're spending our time. There's a rep on my team that does this really, really well. And she actually has taught me a ton, you know, in the short time that we've worked together. But she has like an even more in-depth, like scoring matrix. So she takes the art out of it and puts like a really heavy science to it, where it's like, you know, executive triggers, use case, like she she ranks it like from one to five and so then you get like a number a numerical score at the end of it of like what's this account score and so then she's ranking that on a quarterly basis so there's a lot of different ways to think about this but i think as long as you have a method and you stick to that and you you do it uh less frequently than like you can't change this thing every week or every month right like you need to stick with it because outbound does take time right regardless of whether it's warm or cold or whatever the methodology is right like Like, you've got to get somebody in that idea of like that buying state if they're not already there.

28:35And so that's going to take some time, too. So you need to kind of sit with your list for a little while. Love it. So once we've determined the account that we're going to go after, we have a clear point of view on why they should have a conversation with us, a reason to meet. What are some of the things that you're seeing working from a pipe gen standpoint? We talked about, you know, getting the referrals. We've talked about some of the thought leadership events in person that you guys do. You guys are really big on in-person, which I love. I mean, that's why I'm in Texas this week, right? It's doing in-person stuff, getting in-person with folks.

29:08What are you seeing working to like really break in to the accounts? That's a good question. I started in this role as a leader in January. So prior to that, I was like frontline rep. And when I started at NEO, I started in a territory that hadn't hit the number in three years. So like it was a pretty cold. That's what you're walking into. Yeah, I knew that coming in, right? Like my leader. How are you feeling about that, by the way? Were you like challenge accepted or were you feeling a little nervous? It's game on. I had run my course at my previous company and I was looking for like a good challenge with good people, with good culture.

29:45And so I was ready to take that on knowing that, you know, I was going to go learn something. And I think that's something that I've looked for my whole career is like, where can I go and grow and learn? um and that was like the big thing here with brian evans and getting to see him come up in his career i worked with him um very briefly when he was rep and watched his career kind of take off uh into leadership and so had never worked for him but like had heard the the pedigree that he had and i was like dude that's a guy i want to work for for sure like i will run through walls for that guy dude yeah absolutely so uh so came into that territory knowing that it was a cold territory I'd never worked the East Coast.

30:21I've always covered the West Coast. I actually prefer the East Coast now. Sorry to my West Coast friends, but the East Coast just tells it like it is. The communication style. I've been talking about it all week, man. It's incredible. The West Coast will smile and then kind of like shank you in the back. Yeah. The East Coast will say, here's my knife. I'm about to shank you. So either we need to work together or not. They're very just blunt. And I love that. I love to know where I stand in any conversation. So it's been refreshing from that perspective. So yeah, like coming into a cold territory, you've got to kind of get creative and gritty on what you do to get into accounts outside of just the basics of picking up the phone, sending an email, or getting on LinkedIn.

31:05So one of the things that worked really well, and I think still works really well today, is getting involved in like the local networking groups in each of the cities. So I live in Austin. Yeah. I covered companies that were headquartered in Atlanta and Florida primarily. Right. I never covered, I don't have a network. I don't have a Rolodex of people I can just call up and say like, Hey, I'm the new rep. It's X, Y, Z. Like, can you introduce me to some of your friends? Right. Or like some of your colleagues, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. These were cold accounts that you guys had no relationships in.

31:35That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So like numbers wise, I started off, I think with maybe one or two logos that were like existing customers. I left that territory with, I think we left nine. So like we, in the two years, we landed nine Fortune 100 logos, like very long MSA cycles. And I say that to say like, it is possible, like there's nothing special that I did as a rep. Like I got in person, I got in front of these networking groups. Well, let's talk about the networking groups. Because when you brought this up, I was like, that sounds like a lot of work. a networking group in a city that you don't live in.

32:15So how did you, like, walk us through that approach because I think for you, it might just be, like, really obvious. Like, yeah, of course, that's what I would do and, like, all of this other kind of stuff. I think for some of the folks listening, that might not be so obvious in terms of, like, hey, there's something I can do besides, you know, calling cold into this account and trying to email a bunch of people. Like, so how did you think about what groups you were going to go to? Like, what was the intention behind it? How did you know if it was going to work or not? Like all of that stuff. Well, there's a lot of like, there was no certain, like I knew it was going to work.

32:55It was like, Hey, here's my educated guess. And man, I hope this pays off because I got a young kid at home and I don't really want to be on the road if I don't have to be. Right. Yeah. Um, so, uh, there was a guy that was, uh, my peer, my counterpart, um, who covered some of the other accounts in, in Atlanta. And I had just point blank out, like, what are the, what, where, where do our buyers hang out? And so one of the, uh, things was like in the data analytics community, there's, um, it's a very small community. Um, you're looking at like, you know, kind of this like micro group within it, um, that handles data.

33:32and so they all kind of run the same circle where yeah they absolutely compete with each other but they also like you know share best practices and ideas and so there's this group called TAG Technology Association of Georgia within TAG there's a data analytics segment and there's a gal named Beverly who who basically has like put this group on her back and like kind of built this thing up into this this networking cohort and so we started off by just like attending an event just to see who is going to be there. And it was like all of my accounts were there. Wow. So it wasn't necessarily like the C-suite person that I wanted to get to, but there was like a foot in the door where I could go, just like you would do it at like a trade show.

34:14Like I could go have 15 conversations, 20 conversations, test my hypothesis on all of those, get real-time feedback, and then iterate that as I went through the room. Yeah. And for a new rep ramping up and trying to break into a hard territory, right? Like, yeah, that was the critical mass for me to be able to say like, okay, cool. I just spent an hour, hour and a half, you know, doing some, some networking. It's awkward. I'm an introvert. I'm an extroverted introvert. So like sitting out there and like putting myself out there and walking up to a group and introduce myself is not like the most comfortable I prefer to do.

34:48Like, Hey Jason, we know each other. Like let's talk kind of thing. So, um, that's not like the fun part for me, but, uh, but getting in there and, and, and just like saying like, Hey, like I actually know your company. I did some research. This is kind of what I think you guys are doing. Like, is that accurate? Like, skip the pitch for a second. And then, yeah, like we have a conversation about it. We get some intel. Like, oh, cool, man. Like, I actually think we might be like, are you the right person to talk to? Is there somebody on your team? Like, how do we take this? Like, we don't have to talk about this right now.

35:16But like, how do we take this from here? Maybe like, in a, you know, virtual conversation, I can come to your office. Like, let's figure out a way to like, have the conversation where, you know, you're going to get bombarded by salespeople in this thing, right? because there's other salespeople here, but like, how do we have that conversation? So how did you reach out to Beverly? Or did you just show up? No, I just, we just showed up. We paid for a, like a, like you can pay to like, as a non-member to show up to a lot of those technology associations or like associations in general. It's a lot more expensive, but before we committed and then how that evolved, which is really cool, Jason, is we had that first one.

35:54I was like, dude, this is literally where all my people are. um and they they keep coming back right they're all buddies they all want to hang out with each other and so they all like do this on a regular some sort of regular cadence um we ended up doing a dinner where uh we partnered with one of the hyperskillers um because we don't have like we're small we're now at the at the time i think we're like 150 million dollar company so we're like the leader in our space but we're not a big household name either yeah so we don't have the pull to say like yeah if i host my own dinner if i do my own roundtable if i do my own event like people are going to show up because it's not like aws doing something correct so to use that name of a hyperscaler and then the association to fill the room for a dinner hey we'll pay for that it was like three thousand dollars it was yeah relatively inexpensive you know for what a 25 person dinner would cost were you able to get more senior folks into those dinners we had 25 executives in the room and like i'm sitting across proven play i'm sitting across from like the gal that i wanted to meet for a deal that we were trying to to like basically accelerate yeah like you can't you can't manufacture this stuff like that was like yeah and by that point i'd already had my reason to meet we'd had the tension the trigger like here's the here's the thing that we want to talk about you know uh miss customer right or miss prospect yeah um you know here's here's where we want to go with this so like taking from that like first you know uh event i would bring brian sometimes to like tag team with me like hey this is like the tall like all-american like lights up the room kind of kind of dude you know if you're gonna go in person bring brian with you 100 no 100 well so we would look at like who's the panel speaking right and like can we catch that panel after they're done speaking and is that like we'll try to stack some other meetings so it's not just flying out for one meeting, right?

37:43But like, that's worth the time to get in front of those folks. Like, hey, I'm a human. So when I reach out, you know that like, it's me reaching out. We had this conversation. And then, you know, to the point earlier on a warm outbound, like it's warm outreach because I've shooken your hand. I saw your talk or whatever. We had a quick dialogue afterwards. I did a fast follow. And now we're rolling from there. And there's so much that once you start to talk to some people at that account, the multi-threading is hey i just talked to matt he shared this i was curious about your it's like you just need that in totally so at neo4j then as an account executive i'm assuming your first 90 days is probably like a lot of pg you're probably doing a lot of stuff like this yeah uh yeah i mean it was longer than that for me but yeah yeah it's like we didn't have like these are big complicated deals that you guys work and what you sell is it's not like something you just buy off the shelf and pay for a hundred seats of you don't get you don't get value like it's a bill it's a database right so it's a blank slate you don't get value from neo4j until a year plus down the line because you've got to like once we provision you a license like that's just the beginning now you've got to go build something on it and that's going to take time and you're going to run into roadblocks and you're going to run into like changing expectations from your business like so there's two sales there's two sales cycles on the front end and then there's a sales cycle on the back end to get it to stick you're selling to tech and it right like to get them to say yes this is the right technology that we want to use here but you've also got to have a message that travels to the business to say this is why this is going to solve your business problem even though you can't see anything right now so like your message has to be really effing strong yeah and really really clear and concise so that it travels through it and the business yeah right and that's where new reps typically go to diet neo4j is they forget about like that parallel business side of things and that's why the business case is so important for us and the reason to meet and all that and like tackling that multi-threading of both sides of of your deal here and then once you close the deal you've got to keep the business engaged on like you know everyone has a short attention span like here's the reason why we're building this thing it's going to be worth the wait because you're going to get xyz return or whatever right um and then you've got to keep it dialed on like here's the project plan we've got to deliver on this thing yep so it's yeah it's it's it's probably the most complicated thing i've i've sold um and i like in hindsight i mean man i could have stuck in the application world and had a much easier time yeah but it's been fun so yeah the the complexity of the solution is the two-sided you know kind of buyer is interesting so you find these networking events you go attend the thing i don't want to gloss over with this dinner was, was there an intention there with a partner of Neo4j?

40:33So I'm just thinking for someone else that wants to apply this, you have a partner ecosystem or a channel ecosystem. And then you just reached out to them and said, Hey, we want to host a dinner. Like, here's what we're thinking. Here's who we're going to invite, who can you invite? We'll pay for the dinner, et cetera. Like, how did that part work? That was a part that like, I couldn't believe it was happening as it was happening. Cause it's like hard, it is hard to manufacture these things i don't want to gloss over that either yeah um so beverly who runs the tag group for for data analytics was uh had this idea where she wanted to host like a dinner series and she wanted like it's a it's a i don't know if it's a non-profit but it's like not a it's not a um like they don't just have money to throw at these things they need people to sponsor them and so that's where she comes to folks like us to like say hey like you know blah blah From a hyperscaler perspective, they naturally have the relationships in a way that we don't because you've got these large organizations that are spending massive amounts of money with these hyperscalers to power all of their back end stuff.

41:35And so we found a gal within that hyperscaler who was able to kind of like move through all of the different teams. um she was like she her job was to help partners kind of succeed and like connect the dots for folks yeah so figuring out who that person was um was an unlock and then connecting the dots on like hey we want to have a dinner these are the types of people that we want to see in the dinner this is the you know these are our target accounts like if we can get you know these five here this would be a win we can get these 10 it would be really badass and then if we get these like 20 or 25 like yeah oh my gosh this would be incredible and what was the incentive for her to help uh to get because she primarily got the butts in the seats it sounds like yeah yeah how did you set this up and the reason i ask is that a lot of people try to do the dinner thing and it's not successful i've actually tried to do a decent amount of dinners too and it's it's very hard to get like the people that you want into the room but yeah what was the incentive for her to do that her incentive is to um like it's an it's in the hyperscaler space it's called isv um like an isv rep or coverage or i don't know what their official title is but like their whole job basically is connect the dots on um like co-sell motions and so for her like uh it goes back to like the comp plan her comp plan incentivizes her to connect those dots um and so finding that person i mean everyone like you could apply this to like your direct seller you could apply this to your channel you could apply this to whatever like everyone has a okr incentive that they're getting measured on yep and so finding the people that have the okr or incentive that aligns with whatever you're trying to accomplish like that's the key there and so finding her was because i was beating my head against the wall for for partners um for that because candidly, if I'm a rep at a big, you know, Google, AWS or Azure, like, I don't care about a hundred million dollar company that's trying to sell their product.

43:38There's 1500 of those banging down my door every day, trying to like get me to sell their thing to my customer. And so I'm going to say, F off, I'm not going to talk to you. Right. Like, so you have to figure out like, how do I come in the same way that I come with my customer with a reason to meet? How do I come to this ISV with a reason to meet? Um, and I think that's a piece that I didn't understand coming into to neo that i understand now is like um if you want to get somebody to to work with you you've got to like help them understand kind of the what's in it for them and and that's across the board internal with your own teams external with partners external with customer right like that's where i see really really strong reps succeed and coming going full circle back to that that point of view there's a rep on the on the team uh that's leading the pack here she she comes up with these one page points of view um where it's like here's where i think we can help this organization and she uses that both internally and externally yeah so she's not creating a bunch of work for herself or anybody else but in all of her prep both with her partners with her internal cross-functional overlays with everyone like everyone's on the same page and she does a really good job of getting everyone to beat to the same drum um so we're all saying the same message in all of our conversations um and then that's how she's been able to like in her first what five months she's leading a leading board leaderboard right now on on both pipeline meetings evaluations like she's just blowing it out like better than i ever did just to be clear uh but like she she's doing really well because i think of that yeah love it man um let's shift gears sure so we've talked pipe gen we've talked a little bit about your career big career moment for you six ish months ago i think january frontline leader so you've decided to uh you're gonna have your hair's gonna look like mine dude in a couple years if you're not careful i don't know about a couple years might be like end of the year if we check in we need to like do a measurement point because it's already it's already gone back from my first gray the other day.

45:39Yeah, it's going to happen. So let's talk about what you're learning. I think it'd be fun for you to share why you decided to become a frontline leader, because you're crushing it as a rep and you can get to a situation as an enterprise rep where things are, you're working hard still, of course, but things are more comfortable, right? Like you have a good customer base, you've figured out how to sell the thing and you're making really good money, all of that kind of good stuff. You have a lot of autonomy in your schedule. Like it's the dream job, dude. And sales for a lot of reps. So why frontline leadership?

46:13And then let's dig into some of the, some of the lessons that you're learning. Someone has a lesson on how to keep your hair. I'd love to love to hear that one. No, not on all serious. It's funny. My wife, my wife asks me pretty regularly, like, are you sure you still like, like, is this, was this the right decision uh because it's it is a change man um and it's uh it's something that i've wanted for a long time um so like the the reason for leadership just to be really clear there like and kind of tying back to the beginning comments around like the people that invest in me um i didn't get here by like uh skill i got here by um somebody saw something in me and they were like, hey, like I want to take a chance on that guy and I want to like give him a shot.

46:59Right. And I mean, for whatever reason, I was able to maybe not all on my own. Right. Definitely not all on my own, but I was able to figure it out based on these folks like investing their time, energy and effort in me. Yeah. And so the goal would be to turn around and pay that forward to the next group of sellers. Right. Whether it's folks that are, you know, I manage folks all the way from like the a little bit younger than me all the way up to, you know, in their 50s right so like it's a wide range of where you know I don't know how much knowledge or wisdom I can impart on on the whole crew but I'm going to do my best to yeah to try to um help them get to a level that they're trying to get to because that's what people did for me and so like that to me is like the most rewarding thing that you could possibly do um and it's it's been very rewarding so far to see some of the like breakthroughs um even small ones uh with the team um like there's no better feeling than that so i think if you're if you're thinking about leadership this job's really freaking hard um and it's definitely way harder than being a rep in my opinion um yeah dude i have worked more hours for less money in the last six months than i've ever worked in my entire career i think um yeah so uh if you're doing it for like the prestige like that's not this is not the root job for you if you're doing it for like the uh the goal of helping others improve their careers like this is a very rewarding yes it's gonna be when when you have a one-on-one with someone and you're talking about something they're struggling with and they do the thing and it works and you're just like well then you see there's like unlocking their brain yes yeah yeah that is what's gonna give you the energy to sustain through that and get through the learning curve and all of that stuff so yeah you're like at this point in your career where you've gotten really good at the skill and this is like a natural inflection point that people hit like a decade into doing something is that like, oh, I want to pass these lessons on.

48:55Right. So there's like one question before we dig in, what have you noticed that you've gotten better at by having to learn how to teach it and coach it and other people? Does anything stick out to you? Man, like the biggest thing is like I, in the first, you can even ask my team, my team's giving me this feedback, but in the first few months, like I've done the job, Like I've been successful here. I've hit the number. So I know like my way of doing things and I know that it works. There's now six people on the team. There's six different ways of doing things. And every deal has multiple paths to a close, right?

49:32Like there's not one way of doing things that's going to like be the, or we would just all standardize on that one way. Right. um so in the first three months it was like so i was talking to rep yesterday and he's like man yeah you used to tell me like you've got to ask these specific questions right like and it's got like and i knew you were going to listen to my gong call and if i didn't ask him i was going to be in trouble i was like oh man that's kind of crappy like that's not the kind of leader i want to be um like and then he he you know said like hey like you you had like i've seen the change in you where like we were doing a deal review for like a prep for another negotiation and you were like, Hey, like, have you thought about it this way?

50:09Or like, kind of let me come up with my, come to my own conclusion, even if we got to the same spot. So it's, it's less about like, it's less about doing the job for the rep. And it's more about like, kind of helping enable the rep in the same way that I would enable a buyer. So like, that's kind of been the unlock for me is like, as a salesperson, where I became successful was enabling my buyers to have conversations when I'm not in the room. And so as a leader, I've got to now do the same thing where like, yes, I know there's a path to do that, but it doesn't always have to be my path. And if I can enable them to have that conversation when I'm not in the room, then I can scale.

50:46I don't have to be the superhero leader. I can get some sleep. I might keep some of my hair. We'll see. But that's been the biggest, like, I guess, learning, unlock, whatever you want to call it, in the first few months of like both where I've kind of screwed it up, but also like kind of where I'm starting to see some progress. One thing that really sticks out to me is I love the candor that it sounds like you have with at least this particular rep where you two are able to talk about that. That relationship is so important. Well, we were peers. We were peers. It's one of those things where when you start to lead your peers, that's the thing that kind of scared me the most coming into this role is like, this guy's older than me.

51:26He has a little bit more experience than me. And now I'm going to be his boss. Yeah, that's, I mean, what are we doing here, right? Like, this is, that's the thing that, like, how's this guy going to react, right? Or how's this, you know, this, these folks going to react where, you know, they've, they've seen a successful rep and coming up and, you know, everyone's had that, that rep come into a leader role. I think that's like a natural progression in sales. And some people do it really well. And some people do it pretty poorly. And so you're kind of like testing the, are we buying in here? um yeah but that's been like the the the kind of the unlock with with the team for the folks that have been here for a little while that i didn't directly hire um it's just being like hey like let's be open i'm not going to get this right yeah i need to have as much feedback from you on what is helpful or i'm going to help you move forward uh in in your career as much as like i'm going to give you feedback on where we see gaps and deals and kind of having that open openness there yeah um we can talk about this in a second too i think brian talked about this with you as well in the accountability one-on-ones, but that's been like one of the tools or methods to kind of have that frank conversation on both sides.

52:33Let's talk about that. How do you think about accountability and maybe talk about that system that you guys have that Brian has rolled out as well? Yeah, man. I mean, that was like, so what it is just like for folks who aren't doing this or don't know what it is, accountability can be a scary word, especially in sales, because you've got to be up front about where you're not doing well. And so accountability here is super binary. You're either on plan or you're off plan in a couple different categories. So top of funnel, like new meetings, how many new folks are you talking to, you know, weekly or monthly or rolling 90 basis?

53:08How many of those convert into something that you want to do, you know, discovery on, so we call it SAO. So how many of those convert into stage three or tech eval? Like how many of those are you doing an evaluation on? And then of those evals, like how much of that is making it through the funnel? How much of that is converting into like what we can forecast or commit, you know, to the business and then close? Yep. And so we have, you know, coverage metrics for all of those things. You're either on plan or you're off plan. And most of the time, like in my first six months of being at Neo4j, I was off plan on everything.

53:41But being off plan didn't mean that I wasn't doing the job. Being off plan meant that, hey, I've got a gap in this area. yeah i'm going to be realistic about what that gap is and where i'm running into roadblocks also what i think i'm you know either what i'm doing or what i'm thinking about doing you know to go fill that gap um or solve for it um and that allowed me and brian at the time to have like a really open and honest dialogue and conversation on like here's what we needed to do and as a result the number was hit you know the ramp number was hit or blown out of the water the next year like i brian was promoted up to vp and then i had a new leader we kept running the accountability one-on-ones and that's I think what got us to the number you know the next year you get 12 of those a year yeah um so it's the goal is to be really intentional with that uh that time um to to just be up front and open about your gaps and and where you have them um and I think that level of of openness um and that culture of openness is like hey you're not gonna get fired because you have a gap but you are we are gonna have a hard conversation if we don't fill the gap but like let's talk about where it is and what we can do to solve and come up with a plan together and then we go execute on the plan and then we a month later we check and see like have we made any progress or do we not make any progress we learned that like hey this tag event in Atlanta like was a bust and we don't want to invest any more time or money there yeah so the accountability what do you call it again just accountability 101 the accountability 101 this is a rhythm that's been instituted into the sales work where once a month there is a very intentional almost qbr like meeting where there are qbr light yeah light qbr where we're going to look at the numbers i'm curious compared to what you've experienced in the past as a rep before you were doing accountability one-on-ones like this did you guys talk about pipeline in this way or was it just like we do a qbr and i either hit my quarterly quota or i didn't like what what has happened in other roles i mean qbrs were like uh because you would get up in qbrs i mean just at different companies i would get up in qbrs and i'd have like my last company we were very small like my ceo was in the room and so like i wasn't gonna tell my ceo i didn't have a you know i had gaps and i wasn't gonna hit the number like i was gonna project like i had this thing totally figured out so it kind of takes the fluff out of these conversations correct like it makes the conversations real where this is not a sales presentation you're giving to like well that's what most qbrs i think turn into where you're projecting on a deal you're saying like here's the you know here's my med pic or here's my whatever right like here's my plan here's my plan to hit the number you know i'm gonna do all these things like i don't need any help or like maybe you know if you have a culture where you're open like you you know you maybe have a little bit in the org i've worked in prior to neo4j and prior to rolling through these accountability one-on-ones it's like the qbr was a plan a chance for me to flex once a quarter to say like yeah i got my business dialed then don't worry about me.

56:35Like I'm going to hit the number. And to try to get people off my back more than it was of like, hey, this is actually where I need help. And there's no course correction with a QBR. You're reporting on something that happened versus this once a month meeting. There's course correction that can happen a couple of times throughout the quarter. Yeah, that's right. And to that end, right, like that's where you can like be real, like it's binary. You're on plan or you're off plan. And there's no like, if you're on plan by a percent or, you know, 2x of whatever the plan is, like you're on plan or you're off plan, right?

57:10If we're on plan, like what are we going to double down on? If you're off plan, like what are we going to change or potentially double down on to course correct? so it makes it very like there's no emotion in these things and it ideally right like there's no emotion in the numbers so it makes it a lot more productive for both parties so how do you prepare or think about like when you have to have a tough conversation with someone around performance and let's say that they're just not putting in the activity maybe that they need to which may or may not be the case with some of the people on your team but how do you How do you think about those tough conversations and how do you approach them?

57:51I'm learning on that one. I don't know that I have a dialed in answer for you on that, Jason. But I think my team would probably say the same. You know, Matt's probably done some good ones and maybe some really crappy ones. Yeah. So one of the things that like I like as a new leader I wasn't doing is we'd have these accountability one-on-ones and reps would be off plan. And then I'd say like, okay, what are we going to do to fix it? And then a month would pass and then we'd get to the next one and nothing had changed. Yeah. And there's got to be a like, not a consequence in like that something like deathly is going to happen to you.

58:27But like, I have a three year old, she's not going to do what I asked her to do if there's no conflict, she's not going to eat her vegetables or like do you know, put her toys away if there's not a consequence of not putting your toys away. Yeah, like, so there has to be like, just as much as there's accountability, there's got to be an accountability trigger. Like, hey, if this thing doesn't happen, for example, if we're not hitting our pipeline, metrics then what we need to do now is on a weekly basis review like who are we actually reaching out to are they responding and do we need to tweak our messaging right like what's the thing that's stopping us from hitting you know these these numbers or these goals that we're after here and it's not meant to be like a micro thing because I don't want to micro anybody and we're to a point like this isn't entry-level sales this is like you're you've had 10-15 years of experience to get into this role um so like it's not meant to like just be you know metric checking it's meant to like dig into like okay on a weekly basis you're going to report up to me and to brian on like what we're doing yeah what's working what's not working so there's more accountability there and we can help you along the way versus like just waiting for another month to yeah to course correct so like that was a i i'd run these accountability ones for the first three months and some reps were questioning it and some reps weren't um and the kind of the unlock over the last like two months has been you know we've got to have a trigger if if the uh if we're still off plan like what are we actually going to do and how am I going to help you more frequently yeah um so there's got to be a little bit of pain there doesn't need to be like the worst day of your life but yeah there needs to be something right um and then I think you asked It's like, how do you have those conversations?

1:00:03I think it's, I mean, it's wild what you can do with AI now, like to back your conversation with data to say like, Hey, like this is what I'm hearing. This is what I'm seeing. This is like where it is in the, you know, in the transcript. Like there's no, there's no making it up. Like, uh, and it allows me to scale in a way that I couldn't before to say like, you know, for example, one of the things we struggle with at Neo4j is we talk to the technical buyer a lot, but we don't get to the business buyer as much. probably every company struggles with that yeah um but when we're asking questions you know in our discovery and it's only technical based questions and we forget to ask about the business value or why do anything why do it now and why do it with us right like kind of in those three categories yeah it's pretty binary like you either ask the questions to get to those answers or you didn't yeah and if you didn't ask it like that's where it's very easy to have the conversation say like hey like watch the game tape you did really good in these areas but like these are the areas where we want to lean in on.

1:00:59And in the next call, like, let's go set up a follow-up call. So in the next call, we can ask like the questions that we probably should have asked and, and, and figure out like, you know, is this something that's worth spending time on? So how are you leveraging AI throughout this role? Cause it's probably very different from what you were doing as a rep, where it was probably mostly account research and, you know, digging through stuff and, you know, using fluent to, you know, pick apart your business case and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. How are you using it now as a frontline leader?

1:01:27man if you ask me in a week or you asked me a week ago it's going to be a different answer yeah um it's wild how fast this stuff is is evolving i mean so like at the off the jump like where i started was just crafting a business case with fluent yeah so like i had written those things manually as a rep now fluent can get me aided this 80 of the way there which is awesome like pulling from my transcripts yeah um as a leader then taking like all the calls i don't like my team's running on average like 27 to 28 calls a week um and that's across six people and these are not like short calls either like these are like a two-hour workshop or something yeah so like i don't i don't have like the bandwidth to like i would never do any coaching if i just sat through all of those calls yeah but what i can do is i can use ai to pick out themes in those calls um and i can use fluent does a good job of this um i've used um some skills on claude now which has been a cool thing um that i just started doing over the last week yeah to like say like hey the these are the themes i'm looking for with med pic or whatever right like these are the coaching themes i'm looking for um i have it crowned on like the qualified sales leader yeah um so anyway the point being is like i can pick out themes with ai where i don't necessarily have to watch all the calls but it can direct me to the calls where the themes or like the coaching moments are yeah then i can go watch those sections and be like oh yeah validated that's that's accurate um And then we, you know, makes the one-on-ones or the coaching times a lot more effective there.

1:02:58So you're using it primarily, it sounds like, to scale your coaching efforts. I mean, that's really the beauty of AI is that, I was having this debate with sales leaders at the dinner last night in Dallas, and we were talking about AI coaches, and I'm like, I really don't like where that's going. I don't think that that's going to take off. You are using AI to surface the insight for you to deliver the coaching. You are not saying go talk to this AI solution to get coaching on your deals. Well, yeah, that's the delineator there, Jason, is like AI is going to give you the median. Like it's not going to give you the best.

1:03:32It's not going to give you the worst. It's going to give you the median of whatever the conversation is. Yeah. I don't think that even though we sell a solution that, you know, gives more context for AI and blah, blah, blah, right? Even if you had a graph underneath, like I don't think we're to a point where you can take the human element out of like human intuition of like why something is not. You won't have a job when that happens. I won't, but I also don't think that's going to exist because there's still like, what I'm starting to see now is with my reps, for example, everyone's starting to use AI now for research.

1:04:06I was in a meeting on the flip side of the table. I was in a meeting on site with a customer. The rep and the engineer were running a workshop. We had like 20 people in the room. So we're just kind of canvassing. We spread ourselves out in the room, right? Like intentionally. I'm sitting next to a guy and he's asking questions to the engineer and he's fact checking the guy in like real time. Yeah. On chat. Like I was looking at the screen and I'm like, Holy shit. This guy's like literally asking him the question and asking chat to BT the question. Yeah. Reading it, checking to see if the guy, the answers are the same.

1:04:35And then he's like coming up with his followup questions based on. Yeah. Like everyone's using it. So everyone's getting more or less the same like median response. Right. And so if you want to stand out both as a rep to your customers and a leader to your reps, sure, I could use AI to come up with all my responses, automate it all, and walk away. But you can kind of tell now. I feel like it's getting almost easier to tell what's AI and what's human by what's an original thought versus what's the median of all the thoughts. And I think that's going to be the differentiator for reps moving forward is you can't not embrace these tools.

1:05:14Right. Like my reps are taking, which is crazy now, like with Claude, they're taking their reasons to meet or point of views or whatever. And they're sending it to Claude and Claude's putting it in our branding, our format, in a slide deck. They're converting it into all these different materials. Right. Like that's going to continue. Yeah. But that original thought or idea, both in like rep leadership and then, you know, coaching leadership, like that stuff doesn't. AI is not going to come up with that. So anyway. 100 percent my ceo coach calls it 1080 10 you do the first 10 that's the strategic thinking the 80 percent of comb through 28 hours of transcripts and find this thing and then the 10 you take it to the finish line and deliver the thing 100 man well how often have you put a prompt into like one of the tools right and you just give it like it's a wet noodle you know prompt where you just say okay come up with this email to respond to whatever it's gonna come up with crap right But if you give it a first draft, here's my tone, I want you to write like Jason Bay because he has this really great style, blah, blah, blah.

1:06:17You get something that, to your point, you give the 10, then you do the 80, and then you get to refine the 10. It's not going to come up. It's not generative. It's just AI. It's summarizing or kind of consolidating ideas. Yeah, and especially at the enterprise and strat level, it's that high-level thinking. That's what you're getting paid the big bucks to do, you know. Okay, one last thing I want to ask you about before we do a couple surprise rapid fire questions. Is how are you thinking about and taking care of your mental health as a frontline leader? Because that's been a different game for you than being a rep.

1:06:56So I think time is like the hardest thing. So I'm a young kid in the house. My time, my calendar is not my own anymore. Or like for context, I, and I say this not to brag, but like I did an Ironman last year. Yeah. So like the amount of time that I had as a rep to go do a six hour workout on a Saturday, like two hour workouts a day, like just the ability to do that and have a family and have a normal family life. Yeah. My wife might disagree with that one a little bit, but like, but like the ability to do that, like that doesn't exist today. Like there's no world that I'd be able to manage the, that plus, you know, like all the other extracurriculars that I want to do, like real estate and, you know, I have a real estate portfolio, like all these other things that are going on.

1:07:41I want to maintain my relationship with my friends and my neighbors and all that kind of stuff. Right. And do some serving around the city and all that. So like that stuff doesn't exist anymore. And so I think, I think kind of, kind of twofold. One, I think there's a really direct correlation to physical activity with, with mental health. And so I can tell, my wife can tell, like on the days that I've gotten a workout in in the morning, it doesn't have to do anything crazy. Like I'm not doing, I'm not competing or, you know, training for the Olympics or anything, but like just getting just some like even some basic cardio or a basic lift in.

1:08:15Those days versus the days that I don't get a workout in where like my mood or my patience tolerance is. So that's one area. the second is um if you're trying to be everything to everyone like you're going to be nothing right at the end of the day however that saying goes right but i think that's really true there's some truth there um i have to at least take some time to think yeah whether that's like in the morning whether that's going to sit in a sauna whether that's going to go like do i walk my dogs in the middle of the day whatever it is right like there's some there's got to be a break for your brain to like reset because Muay Thai for me.

1:08:53Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you've got like the time to think and like intentionally blocking that on your calendar and like protecting that time. Yeah. Um, I don't know that I have that dialed in yet, but like, that's, that's the aspiration for me where I've seen the days that I've blocked out an hour or two to, to like, just think, to work through a deal. You're talking like high level, like thinking not stuff that's not something like so muay thai for me takes my mind off of work but time on your calendar as a frontline leader because as a frontline leader it's like you can get in this mode where it's people are just dude i've never had a calendar like literally it's from like 7 7 30 in the morning till like 5 36 in the evening it can be just completely blocked no breaks no lunch no bio whatever yeah like dude this is not sustainable yeah like this is not going to work.

1:09:40So you've instituted now, you've put some blocks on your calendar where people are not allowed to schedule meetings unless it's an emergency, I would assume, or something. I mean, I'd like to say that it's been working really well. Like that, the time that has really worked well, and I'm going to sound like a freak for saying this, but like when I get on an airplane, I like will just go no AirPods, no podcast, no music, nothing. And I just have like the white noise of the airplane for two, three, four hours. Oh, wow. That's the most productive time that I get in a week because nobody can, you know, I get on the Wi-Fi or whatever, but like nobody can call me.

1:10:14Nobody can put a time on my calendar at the drain that time. Like I can actually sit and work through whatever the thing is that we need to get done to progress the team. So like my, my long-term goal is to get that without having to do that on an airplane, right? Like just to have that protection, protected block. Or you can have a couple hours spread out throughout the day where you're in, as a business owner, we call it working on the business instead of in the business where you're working on the pipeline and all of that kind of stuff versus in it all the time. Well, that's like, I think the definition of a good leader, like does my team really need me to be in the call or to run the call?

1:10:49Because if they do, then I'm not leading effectively. If I have to be in every meeting to get a deal done, then maybe we need to have a hard conversation about my leadership style or the rep's ability to do the job and it's probably more on my leadership style because I don't trust the team right so like the for the new folks that are just starting right like on the team certainly like I'll be there for them right and I need to be in those calls to help them because they just don't know right they're a week in or two weeks in or whatever but for the reps that have been doing this for a long time like the goal would be more of like a let's course correct um yeah like similar in my marriage right Like we've been, we've been married for, uh, six years now coming on seven and like in, in our marriage, like we are going to naturally drift.

1:11:37Like that's a natural human thing that happens. And that's the same thing that happens in sales, right? Like you're naturally going to drift, you know, here or there. Right. And so like we course correct, like through normal, like once every few months we go to like a submarital counseling. Right. Yeah. And so we just, it's, it's a big fan of couples therapy. It's just, it's just meant to like, here's the bumper. Let me bump you back. Right. Or like correct your rudder, like on a boat so that you're not drifting, you know, like I think if you're like on an airplane, I don't, this is a bad analogy because I don't understand this very well.

1:12:05But like, if you're like a degree off and you go for like 10 minutes, you could like be like 30 miles off course. It's the same idea, right? Like you just want to make sure you kind of bring them back. But I don't, to that end, I don't have to be in every meeting to do that, right? Like we can do that through intentional coaching, through intentional time with our one-on-one cadence or accountability one-on-one cadence. And that's like where you can start to ideally put the system together where the first six months in this job that have been really freaking hard turn into something that's like sustainable for the long run.

1:12:34Yeah. Love it, dude. All right. We got a couple of minutes left. Let's do some rapid fire questions. We've kind of talked about a couple of these. So I'd be curious first, how do you like to decompress after a long day or a long work week? You like to work out in the morning, but is there anything that you like to do to decompress or prevent or relieve stress or anxiety or anything like that? I got a three-year-old little girl. It's a blast to go, like, play make-believe with her Paw Patrol toys or whatever she wants to go do. You know, like kind of just spark her imagination or push her on the swing or whatever, man.

1:13:09Like, go to the park. There's a community pool down the road that we go to. Just go have some fun with her. And that's like, it kind of resets your perspective on like what matters in the world. Cause she doesn't know that like, she doesn't know that dad had a bad day at work or like that, you know, these things are going on. She just knows that she's going to get three meals a day and she's got a nice bed to sleep in and doesn't know where all these things come from, but all she cares about is like time. And so I want to give her that time as much as I can. And to me, that's the, that's the rewarding thing at the end of the day to say like, yeah, let me spend some time and then just being intentional with my wife and spending time with her.

1:13:44We we this is going to sound really bad to the any girl that's on the listening to this. But like I scheduled my date nights like they're on the calendar. Yeah, that's the way that they happen now. But I think that, OK, it might not be like organically happening like off the cuff or whatever. But the intentionality, I think your wife probably loves that. Yeah. The fact that it's like it's super intentional. You're taking time to do it. Like, I love that, man. If you were a first time frontline leader all over again, knowing what you know now. and I would love to ask you this question. Yeah, you're going to ask me in a little while.

1:14:15But knowing what you know now, six months into it, what advice would you give yourself? Man, don't be a hero. Like that's, I mean, the biggest thing that I think I've, I'm still working through. I mean, if you ask my team, I'm still probably over-rotating this area, but like, just don't be a hero. Don't try to own the deal or the problem or the whatever. Like my goal, my job now is not to be the person that is running the deal. My job is to help enable the deal to run smoothly and help my rep break through whatever roadblock or barrier that they're dealing with, internal, external, or otherwise.

1:14:53So simple answer, just don't be a hero. That's not the rule anymore. Dude, love it. So before we take off, where can people go to connect with you? And where can people go to learn more about Neo4j? And are you guys hiring? All of that good stuff. Yeah, so LinkedIn is probably the best way to connect with me. as most it's the only social media i have left uh so it's not the place you'll find me yeah um i think it's uh like rogers mad or i don't know what it is just look at my name on linkedin and it's the most common name that you'll find so throw neo4j and austin in there and you'll probably find me um the picture looks the same because i did one over the holidays so it's recent enough um neo4j.com or google like whatever your idea is in neo4j that the marketing team has done a really good job of like making the site searchable not only for humans but also for agents which is a that's a whole different world of like how do we optimize for for the the eugenic space I am hiring so we started the team with four we have headcount for for six total so if you're in the southeast or I'm going to probably change our team name to the SEC because we basically are the SEC as far as like region coverage but if you're in the southeast East or Mid-Atlantic and looking for a role where you can kind of take it to the next level.

1:16:10Database experience is not like my crux here. It's I'm looking for culture. I'm looking for folks that can own their business. I'm looking for folks that want to sell through their buyers, not like to them. It's a different, it's a mindset shift there. And then folks that just know their process. I mean, it's, it's been incredible to go through the interview process on how many folks can't articulate why they want to deal. So like, if you're a rep and thinking about like going through the next level, like advice to you would be like, dig into like, why did a deal close? Like, what were the specific things that you influenced or did, right?

1:16:49You're not going to do everything, but like, how did that deal mechanic actually work? And if you don't know, like go ask your buyer, like they're going to be more than happy to walk you through because they've personally invested in like you know this tool or whatever um but like that's the one thing i think that's missing in a lot of folks today is so anyways now i'm bird walking on you on a short question love it man it's good to have you on the show dude dude thanks for having me and thanks for coming to austin this is awesome