How to Hire Better Salespeople Than Yourself and Lead Them to Win

0:00We all have that phone call that when it comes in, you go, I don't want to answer this, right? Don't be that person. How do you not be that person? Be a human. These are just people like our clients. My clients are my genuine friends. I want to talk to them. I want to hang out with them throughout the years. We are friends because we've gotten to know each other on a personal level. And same with my team, right? If you don't have that human connection and that ability to do that, your ceiling is only going to be this high. in many ways.

0:31Michelle Bove: Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and force management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.

0:59Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast. I'm John Kaplan with my co-host, John McMahon. I met today's guest, Michelle Bovee, in my force management office in Charlotte, and it didn't take long to understand why the people who've worked for her and worked with her talk about her the way they do. Michelle is AVP of the East at WIZ, running strategics, majors, and enterprise. Before Wiz, she built her game at PTC, AppDynamics, and Zscaler, some of the sharpest sales cultures in all of enterprise software history. She's closed the deals nobody else could get into. She's mentored some of the best sellers in the business and become one of the best leaders in all of cybersecurity.

1:50In this episode, Michelle takes us inside what it actually felt like to win in the toughest patches, what separates the best sellers and the best leaders she's ever worked with, where she sees AI heading in sales, and the work she's doing personally to bring more women into cybersecurity leadership. This is Michelle Bovey, AVP, whiz. So Michelle, it's great to see again. I think the last time we saw each other was in my Charlotte office with Steve. Was it Steve Mullet? It was. Yeah. And it was the first time that I met you. And it was, I was really, really, really impressed. So I'm thankful that you're on the podcast.

2:40Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Both of you are idols to me growing up. So very cool to be here. Thank you. Awesome. Hey, so one thing. You're all grown up now? I'm all grown up. That's a little joke. That's right. All grown up. My older years. One thing we didn't really talk about, we were just kind of rapid firing in the Charlotte office. It was awesome having that conversation with you, but I didn't really understand like your origin story, like how you got into sales. So do you mind starting there and then we'll kind of kick it off? Sure. Yeah, that's great. So, I mean, growing up, I was extremely competitive, played every sport, little bit of a tomboy.

3:21My family would say a lot of a tomboy. And, you know, I just loved competition. And my parents really said hard work is earned. So in seventh grade, they made me get a job. I was a soccer referee making 30 bucks an hour. And I understood that that was a lot. It's Still incredible job, by the way, just saying great pay, especially for young kids. But I really liked it. And my dad was actually the ref coordinator for where I grew up in the hometown. And he would say to me, hey, a ref just canceled. Can you ref this game last minute? And I'd say, yeah, sure, dad, but for an extra$10. And he'd be like, what?

3:59And he knew just at a young age, I'm hustling. I would hustle people on the basketball court pretending I didn't play. So I was like very into competition, but also earning money and learned that if I wanted to go to movies with my friends or if I wanted a new soccer outfit head to toe, I had to go earn that money and do that. So I started to learn about hard work and making money myself. And then secondly, while I was in high school and college and even coming home, I actually did a job at a three person company and I was sales and there was a CEO and there was an accounting person. Crazy business.

4:33And I just learned rejection really quickly, how to go do sales by myself door to door. And it was honestly very cool, but also humbling at the same time. And I started to love this, but I realized, wow, each win led to more cash in my pocket. And I love that feeling. And then lastly, I think this is really what did it for me. Like, OK, so, you know, you like sales, you know, you're competitive, you know, you want to work hard to earn money. But how does that go into software sales? Well, my dad's friend told me that, oh, you know, I'm in tech sales. And what that means for me is I get to go to expensive dinners and I get to travel the world on work.

5:11And I came from a place where we didn't really go on vacations growing up and we had spaghetti and meatballs five to seven days a week at home, never really going out to dinner. So I heard that and I said, wow, that's what I want. That sounds incredible. I haven't traveled anywhere. And when I interviewed at PTC, where you guys both know very well, you know, I was 21 years old. I interviewed their biomedical sales, pharma sales, and then PTC for software sales. And they said to me, I'll never forget, Dave Koh, that hiring manager, said, yeah, you'll get to come to something called sales kickoff on your first day of work in Las Vegas at the Wynn Hotel on Monday if you come here.

5:48And I said, what? I get to go to Vegas? And I went home, told my parents. They're like, they're lying to you. This doesn't sound real. and I signed and on Monday I was flying to Vegas and it was the most fun week. I couldn't believe it. I just came from college, which was amazing and fun to now this job. And it was competitive. It was, you know, all friends and people of similar competitive, um, feeling. And yeah, I started to go to restaurants. I had my first bite of sushi at 23. I spit it up on the plate, uh, cause I couldn't take the consistency, but now it's my favorite thing to eat. My teams know if Bovee's coming in town, we got to do sushi.

6:26So I've come a long way. I've learned some etiquette and yeah, it's been incredible. I love sales because it is how hard you want to work, how disciplined you are. That's what you're going to get rewarded. And if I could tell like any young kid out there, I'm like, get into sales. It is the best career. It is incredible what you can do and how you can provide for your family with it. And it's so much fun. And you're never really sitting at your desk all day, you're doing a million different things. So I love it. I love that. I love that story. Give me your impression of like, go a little bit deeper on some of these things that you would tell people, especially like sales today.

7:04What would you tell people that they have to have or other leaders what to look for as it relates to sales? So obviously the the personality traits that you're that you talked about of being, you know, very energetic, very willing to learn and willing to work. What else did you kind of pick up in some of your early career? Sure. So I always say to be really good at this job, you have to be an organized, obsessed, psycho passionate person in the nicest way. My husband knows I tell him I'm a psycho in sales, but in a very calm psycho who's absolutely obsessed with what I do. It is my passion. So first is, you know, and there's actually questions and ways I can dig into this with reps about their passion and stuff like that.

7:51But I look for a ton of different things. I look for likability. A lot of people think, oh, it doesn't matter if you're likable. It does. People buy from people they like. People want to work with people that they like. And it's the biggest thing in deals is building champions and executive relationships. And you can't do that if you're not likable. So I always say likability is a lot higher up on that list than people might think. And then we talk about intelligence being not just the IQ, but the also the EQ, the empathy that you can have in your job because you're dealing with so many different relationships, so many fast moving parts.

8:24And then there's many other things like discipline over motivation. Everyone can be motivated. I can go motivate someone for a day or two or bring them to sales kickoff. They get motivated coming out of it for a week. But can that person, when they come home from sales kickoff, go actually self-assess their business every day from there on after, right? I have a rep, Jake Alshurt, on my team who I don't ever have to check in with Jake. I just know he's being harder on himself and critiquing himself more than I could ever check in on him because he is disciplined, right? He's not only disciplined on every day, making sure deals are going well, but he's also disciplined with his customers and customer obsession, right?

9:05He covers an account where he's selling to them. And I already know he's sending me stuff from their annual report the other day where he's already sold to these guys. He's very healthy with them, but he's for fun at 9.30 at night, reading their annual report about their business, understanding how they make money and tying that back to Wiz's technology. Like that, when you find people that are really like that, it's unbelievable. And then the third thing is really human connection. I talked about likability, but human connection with clients. I really look for that. And what I mean by that is, and just talking about Jake continuing this example, right?

9:39He covers a few accounts where he brings them together. He will do dinners with both of them so that they can network together. He helps them get promoted. He is one guy that really wants to get promoted because the CISO is leaving and he's trying to help him get that promotion, right? He's caring about the people. He realizes that they're people and it's not just a software selling to a company. It's like, no, we're in this together. We're trying to do this together. and understanding that human connection is such a big part of it. So you always hear the coachability and all those types of terms, and those are important too.

10:12But for me, I'm just looking for someone who's so passionate, who's customer obsessed, and who is disciplined enough to go do this by themselves. I'm going to be there to help. Our teams are going to be there to help. But really, can they go self-assess their business and criticize themselves as well? I want to pick up on the likability part that you said, because it's really powerful. I just had a conversation this morning with somebody and I thought the way you articulated it was so good. I was struggling a little bit to give the person the feedback on likability. They weren't a bad person, but how they showed up in front of the customer was it wasn't warm.

10:49It wasn't open. It didn't have like capacity in the conversation. And I found myself struggling like I am now to really describe what that likability means. How do you find it? Like, well, how do you describe it? Because you know it when you see it. But how would you describe it to like a second level leader who is recruiting on somebody that's likable? Yeah. And I'll even just say on your piece right there, that person might be likable in real life, like talking you and him or her. but the second you put them in front of a client, they stiffen up, they become a different person. It's almost like, where have you gone?

11:31We have some reps like that where we've kind of shooken them and said, Hey, I need you who's fun and loves to do this sport and do this with their family. I need that to come through in the meetings because in the meetings you go from fun person to instantly like so business that it's almost a turnoff. And a lot of people do that because they're afraid in the meeting and they don't know how to do it. So I always say for reps and to teach them how to do that is in the first one to two minutes of every meeting. We don't just jump into business. We don't do this for eight minutes and waste a ton of time.

12:06But the first minute, we're humans. We're asking people, of course, how their weekend was. Or if you saw something on their LinkedIn that they played soccer in high school or college or whatever and connecting, or, hey, I saw you came from this company. I work with them every day. Do you know, you know, John Smith from this company? Oh, yeah, I do. Like you connect, you drop the walls. And once you do that, people start to open up a lot more. So there's a way to coach on it with reps, too. It's I've seen it very much happen. But then also, you know, how to train our leaders to go higher talent of likability and people like that.

12:38it's very hard but you have to do two things number one you have to ask interview questions that really gear towards that and that's for me I always ask like hey who's your best executive relationship or who's your favorite champion and why tell me how you built them into a champion hey if I need to call someone right now from your customers and say you know go who can I call to be your reference it has to be a customer not a not a co-worker who are they going to tell who are going to tell me and why walk me through that is, you know, and there's certain questions that RDs or directors can go ask in an interview.

13:13And then secondly, I always say the beer test or whatever it is, the lunch test, whatever it is, you might interview somebody and they are flawless over zoom, or they are great on the telephone. But seeing someone how they interact at a lunch is very different or how they interact, bring a third person to that lunch, see how they interact with somebody else, you will know in that hour, if that person can hang and be likable, and other people want to speak to them, see how they treat the waiter, see how they treat the other co-worker, whatever it may be. And you can learn a lot from being in person with someone.

13:47Yeah, you're asking them to be themselves, just asking them to be authentic. And like you said, sometimes people are really great people. And then they go in a sales call, and you do sit there and think what happened to him he was great 10 minutes ago in the car correct I have a CIO yeah I have a CIO that will tell me stop sending me these boring reps like we joke about it because I've worked at different companies and he's like put somebody on my account that's fun and that I can hang out with and want to go to dinner with I always say you don't want to be we all have that phone call that when it comes in you go I don't want to answer this right don't be that person?

14:26How do you not be that person? Be a human. These are just people like our clients. My clients are my genuine friends. I want to talk to them. I want to hang out with them throughout the years. We are friends because we've gotten to know each other on a personal level. And same with my team, right? There's plenty of people on my team that we are all such good friends and we want what's best for each other. If you don't have that human connection and that ability to do that, your ceiling is only going to be this high in many ways. You're never going to get that huge deal. You're never going to get that deal on the timeline you want.

14:58And you're not going to get the career progression you want either because you don't have those internal champions. Captain, I have to pick up the phone when I was calling, but I was calling about the forecast and he was like, oh my God, I got to take this call. This is awful. Exactly. Now those are different. I feel bad when my - That's a whole nother podcast. That's a whole nother podcast. That's a different call. You know, I'm going to change this. I'm going to change my, I called it the robo test. First of all, all joking aside, I really love how you're talking about this topic because there's some people that will say, oh, relationship selling or, oh, you know, you got to be more business-like and you got to be mature.

15:37You got to, all those are true and correct, but it's almost like, you know, relationship selling has gotten like a, have you ever heard feedback when somebody says, oh, that person's a relationship seller? And I'm like, yeah, what does that mean? Like, so I love, I love how we're talking about this. Mine was the rowboat test and you just helped me make it like, I think the lunch or the beer test, the rowboat test for me. And I'd always write it down on a piece of paper. If I got stuck in the middle of a lake with this person in a rowboat without any oars. Great question. Would I stay there or would I freaking, and I'm not a great swimmer, would I jump in anyways just to get the hell away from this person?

16:21But you've brought in something that's my likability, but it's not the interaction that they have with others so you could see how they can modulate it. So bringing another person in or going to lunch or going to that environment, I think that's really wise. I like that a lot. Thank you. And I will say we do the same thing on retainment, right? You're always looking at your people, who's the best, who do we want to keep? Who's not doing well? Should we move them out? What not, right? You want to be surrounded with a talent everywhere. I always ask my RDs there, if they're on the fence about a rep, I say, if they quit tomorrow, what would your call be to me?

16:59Would it be, I'm so excited they're gone. Or would it be shit? We just lost this person. I'm devastated. Or is it somewhere in the middle? That tells you a lot. So I ask people on the spot, if this person quit tomorrow, what are you going to feel? And if it's, oh my gosh, my world is over. Okay. Then you need to go sit down with that person and have a conversation, dig into their why again, make sure they're happy, figure out how to retain them, figure out, you know, recognition is so important. Um, you know, we talk about money is everything for reps, but I was talking to one of my VPs, TJ O'Shea about this.

17:30He says, recognition is just right after money for a lot of these people, sometimes recognition, even more than money. So retaining the best is not just about them making money, but also, and that's a whole different topic, but giving them the recognition that they deserve. What about the feedback that you just gave to that manager? How do you help managers understand how to be intimate enough with their reps to be able to answer that question? I'm sure that question puts a lot of people off. They're like, well, the number, they think about the number, the gap, they're either helping me or they're hurting me.

18:07How do you get them to think about that? Yeah. You know, that that connection of what that person means to the team, what they mean to customers, because that's not always intuitive. Right. It's not just if someone's hitting their numbers, right? I've been, I put myself in rep shoes a lot just because I was a rep. And I remember those days like yesterday. And I remember watching peers of mine have, you know, maybe an easy path to their number, easy to 200%, no problem. And that's okay. That's what it is based on timing, territory, talent. And then myself working day in and day night still at 0%.

18:42And I'm like, how is this happening? And I say that because I remember working harder and knowing I worked harder than some reps that hit way more percentage than me because maybe the timing of the territory just hit different. And I try to put myself in those shoes. So when I talk to the RDs and if I have a rep that's underperforming, maybe they're underperforming because the timing is off in their territory. And let's go dig into their accounts. So we'll set up. I've done a ton of skip levels where I myself will get on with the rep and I say, hey, walk me through your patch. What are your top prospects and what are your top existing accounts?

19:14Let's bring up org charts. Let's talk through it. Who are you talking to? Who are you trying to? And usually, and an RD can join this session with me. We do these a lot, just internal deal strategy or account strategy sessions with the reps. And we can usually determine if this rep is really trying hard and just not having luck and maybe coach them on how to go alter their route so that they can get back on track. Or we figure out, wow, they are not doing the job. They are not prospering like they should be. They are not going to meet with clients, which is something we demand, especially in existing accounts.

19:45They're not doing QBRs. They're not doing whatever it may be. We coach them. We help them and document it. And then if they come back a month later and they haven't done anything that we just gave them a whole list of coaching to do, we know that person probably needs to move out. If we give them that list of things to do when they come back a month later and show that great progress, we know, hey, it's not a work ethic with them. They just need to be coached. And now we're going to help them and get them back on track. So there's different ways to coach around it. And then I also say to people, you've got to build trust with them, right?

20:16Being an RD is one of the hardest jobs. And I think people look at the RD job and say, I'm just going to go hire people that I can coach, People that I'm really much, really better than so that when they start, I can coach them and help them every day. Mistake. I say, go hire people. Your goal is to hire people that are better at sales as a sales rep than you. When I was an RD at Zscaler, I took over this team of legends. Okay. And these are guys I had, it was all guys in the team at the time. And I took them over and these were reps that have sold more software than me times 10. and that's intimidating for an RD because you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna help them sell, I'm better at being a rep than them, that's why I got promoted.

21:02No, you get promoted for other reasons and you have to humble yourself when you become an RD but secondly, I could have said, oh, I'm intimidated by this and back away. Instead, I leaned in, I sat down with them one-on-one each of them, I said, I hear you're really good at this, what do you need out of a manager? This is what I'm really good at when I was a rep, I'm a brand new leader, this is where I think I can help you but where do you think I can help you? We talked about it. I said, my goal is to help you win more. These are my strengths. And they would put me in here and there. One of them was like, I'm terrible at prospecting, but I'm amazing once in the door, I'll go close a massive deal the 90 % of the way, but I need help on the first 10%.

21:38So I said, perfect, I'll prospect for you. So like each person needs to be managed differently. I had another person that said, I'm not good in the executive suite. I can't get there as easy. I'm more comfortable with the technical champions feature function. I said, great. I'm going to help you get to executives. So you have to, as an RD, really understand your team, really understand their individual strengths and weaknesses, and be open and transparent about yours as well. Don't pretend you know it all. Listen, learn from everyone. You can learn a lot from the people underneath you, just as well as people above you and your peers.

22:10So if you're humble about it and you learn from them and kind of just realize we're all in the same boat, rowing the same direction, trying to win as a team, it's going to help you a lot, but go try to hire that a talent and have the best of the best people that you can then, by the way, when you get promoted, you promote one of them. Now you start to create your tree of really good people that always work for you or with you, whatever it may be. And you're always winning together. And it's great. You made a couple of really good points there. One is that most managers actually treat all their people cookie cutter.

22:41Exactly. They think they can motivate them all the same way that they are developing them all the same way, even though they learn differently. have different strengths and weaknesses. And what you did is you, what you need to do is look at each individual completely different and understand their strengths and weaknesses. And that assessment for people is really difficult at the RD level, because sometimes they're a first-time manager and they've never done that before. They know what they're good at and they think everybody else is good at the same thing that they're good at, but they don't understand that everybody's completely different with completely different strengths and weaknesses and needs and securities or insecurities.

23:24But what you did is you went and opened them up by asking them, I'm here to help you. Where can I help you? What are you strong at? And what are you weak at? That's an art right there because not a lot of people really want to open up to a manager and say, well, I'm weak at the economic buyer. I'm weak at prospecting. right that's really hard so you did a great job there you know yeah I tell them a great job of not looking at them as like cookie cutter exactly thank you I will always say I usually go first I say this is what I'm not good at this is what I'm really strong at now and then that usually helps you know lower that wall and let people in it's the same thing with clients I tell them all the time here's what I need what do you need but first let me explain my point of view if you're just open with people and transparent, like it is not fake.

24:13We talked about authenticity a little bit. It is real. Like if you are real and just realizing we're all people trying to do our jobs the best we can and bring that to these people and like actually get to know them and understand their why it'll be so much better. But yeah, I, I even hired when I was at Zscaler, a guy that I know if we took IQ tests, he would absolutely blow me out of the water, James Marshall. And I remember watching him in with the CISO, the top fortune five, and he blew me away. And I knew in that moment, I'm like, he is smarter than me. And I'm a smart person, but he is for sure smarter than me.

24:48And that is someone that I want to keep taking, getting promoted. And now he's doing unbelievable. I think he's number one RD there. And yeah, it's, it's incredible to watch people to grow and get what they deserve in their careers. but I always say to RDs, go hire better people than you. That is your goal. That's the old saying, you know, A's hire A's and B's hire C's. It's so true. It's so true. On that authenticity piece, how do you, let's take a little use case of the early frontline manager that struggles to show authentic self. like they got promoted there they are a workhorse they've done their job they've paid their dues kind of like you we we didn't really talk about it but in the beginning of your career I know you talk about winning ugly and you know you didn't you didn't expect the best patch you didn't have the best patch and then when you get to that role you get to that role of the frontline manager you You kind of forget that people are on their own journey and you just have these expectations.

25:56How do you coach authenticity for another frontline leader? Yeah, a few scenarios come to mind with me. And we've had these and they have actually done a 180 in this sense. So the first thing is, is you have to be direct. You have to give direct feedback to this leader and saying, hey, I know this might sound tough, but I'm going to let you know. people around you think that or you're not authentic or that you're in it for yourself or they're having issues. You're stiff. Whatever it is, you're not a likable person right now. The good news is we can possibly change this, but here's some examples of what they're seeing and who's saying this and why.

26:40And we kind of go over those and you do it super direct and authentic. But you say the good news is we're ahead of it. We're going to try to fix it. here's how I think but I want to hear from them like what do you think of this feedback do you think it's accurate and once people start to hear feedback it's like myself I ask every day to good mark and earnest that I'm like give me feedback what am I not doing right I ask my VPs it too that report to me I'm like what can I do better what do people say about me that what where's my blind spots what are people saying behind the scenes that I'm not good at like I ask for it probably too much.

27:11But once you get feedback and hear it, you instantly are just, it hits you in a very good way. And then you go let them reflect on that for a few days and come back. And usually when they come back, they'll say, wow, you're right. This is missing. I could be better on this. And then we talk about solutions. So you don't do all of it in one day. You really give people time to soak it in and hear from, you know, hear their thoughts over a few days. And then once you do that. Then you go put together a plan on how do we help you become more likable? Maybe it's as simple as going on camera more or doing a team dinner with your team, doing something outside of work that has nothing to do with the forecast.

27:50Maybe it's on a one-on-one, right? RDs sometimes get on a one-on-one saying, what's the forecast? What's this deal? No, that's not what a one-on-one is for. And what a one is for asking them how they're doing, how is their life at home? What did they do over the weekend that they're passionate about? Whatever it may be. Then it's digging into how's the job going? What help do you need? How are you feeling about your year? How do we help you get to 200 %? It's more of a human conversation than it's a forecast. And I find a lot of leaders that struggle with authenticity are really just talking about the business and revenue, and they're not actually taking a step back and learning about this person and their personal life and their personal goals and their why and how they're going to go do it this year, but then next year and really having that whole everything tied into one.

28:36So there's ways to coach it. If you dig in, you'll see it. And then you document with this RD and then you check in weekly, you have the ecosystem help you, and then you can see a 180. And we've seen it happen with RDs actually many times it was, and now they're doing great and they were able to be coached. When you're not around and we open up the book on you, what does everybody say when you read the book. And they're like, well, okay, we'll take a guess, you know? And what's interesting is, as humans, we all have flaws, but we think that some of them are hidden from other people, and some of them are obvious to other people.

29:14What a lot of people don't realize is a lot of those hidden ones they think are hidden are actually obvious to people. And that's where they go wrong. They think they're hiding this flaw from people, and everybody knows all about it, but they don't think everybody knows about it. And when you tell them everybody knows about that, it kind of, it really helps them, you know, say it comes to terms with it, like deal with it, change it. I think there's a, I think there's a connection there between like vulnerability attracts vulnerability. Meaning if you're trying to help somebody be authentic or to be more likable or to be more, you have to demonstrate it yourself because it has to be like, it becomes more obvious that way.

30:00So when I, when I struggle with people that are, you know, either not being self-aware or not being honest with themselves, I think instead of just calling that out for me, I try to give them the example for myself and vulnerability and just open the door a little bit. Because I know my history and my presence or whatever. I've got enough feedback in my life of my voice. I'm a smaller person now. Johnny doesn't say that I am, but I'm a smaller person than I used to be. That's all part of the way that you approach people. What I found is, if you're not vulnerable, if you're not authentic, you won't see it back.

30:45But also, they have to believe if you're the manager, it can't be like you're just asking, as Michelle said, just about the forecast and about other things. And it's all like business, business, business. But they have to believe that you have their best interests at heart. That's how you get to resonate with them and get to get them to open up. If they don't believe that you have their best interests in heart at heart they're not going to open up exactly they're going to be looking for evidence that's a great that's a great discussion uh johnny i'm about to throw you over oh no no i got one more for her okay she brought up and well she touched on it because a lot of times you do a skip level and you go down to the first line manager and you're wondering why one of the reps aren't making it or two of the reps aren't making it and you start asking questions and dissecting things and all of a sudden you realize I got a problem with the first line manager then this this territories are not divided evenly because they have one rainmaker or two rainmakers and when they say we're going to divide the territory the rainmakers go in the office and say if you do that I'm going to quit so then they never divide the territory equally and there's two reps that are just suffering because they I found when you have to uncover, like, why is a rep not making it?

32:05Is it really the rep or do I need to look at the manager also? Because it's too easy in sales and you hear it all the time to say, oh, it's just a bad hire. Get rid of them and toss them out the door. But what did you learn? Did you did you hire the wrong person? Were you unable to develop that person? It's one of those two. Right. It can't be that you don't take any accountability for that. You have to take accountability. Yeah. I'll even give you an example. When I took over a team and I was a first line leader, my first day, they said, you got to go fire that rep. And I said, okay, give me some data.

32:46First, I need data, then context. And I got the data. The data looked good. The context was, okay, let me go do some digging myself. Because this person was doing well, but not great. and I said, I'm going to go have lunch with this guy. But before I have lunch with this guy, I'm going to go call his SE. I'm going to call the ecosystem. I'm going to learn about him. And I went and then I had lunch with him. And after this lunch, I realized, oh, this guy does not need to be fired. He just needs help with one thing. And we're going to help him with this one thing. And guess what? He went to president's club, I think, you know, year after year after year and has absolutely crushed it.

33:24But it's sometimes just getting a different leader in number one but like you said john also looking at the territory and making sure they're set up for success and then third is have you actually tried to coach this rep and find their gaps and help them get better because we all need it and if you do those things you know you could keep them and then have an a player on your team and he was an a player for me i had the same thing i walked into a company and the chairman of the board and the ceo told me i had to fire two reps yeah i said and I said, well, why didn't you fire them? You have to fire them, blah, blah, blah.

33:58And I said, I'm not firing them. Yes, exactly. They got their resumes. I made them take the profession profiles in your national test against everybody else. And they turned out both to be super smart, right? Right. And then I started doing more homework and I came to the realization after I interviewed them, talked to them. I had a problem with the manager. I got rid of the manager and they both made President's Club. Exactly. They changed their careers and they went on to be chief revenue officers. I would have killed their careers if I was lazy and just thought, yeah, okay, you said so. So that means I should just get rid of this person.

34:30I can't stand that. I hate that. Yep. I've had the opposite too, like similar to you of where I've come in and I've actually realized the RD is the problem. And I said, I'm going to go fire the RD instead of the reps. And then I dug into that and that is what we did instead. So guess what? All the reps on that team are so happy that you did that. Exactly. Hey, you guys started this conversation on skip level. And I want to, it just reminded me of a scenario that I heard about a couple of months ago that really bothered me. So this one third line manager, let's say, likes to do these skip levels.

35:06And it's a great concept of Michelle, I'll have you talk about it. But I think this person was doing it very poorly. So they were doing skip levels in a secretive way. In a way that what came out of those conversations was utilized in poor context back with the manager. And what that person actually did when they gave me that example, I was like, you just alienated two people in your organization with your skip level. You didn't let the person know what you were doing and why you were doing it, which is fine. But if you're going to go in and use information and then come back and tell them, hey, I was talking to this person.

35:52So I think you guys are getting the drift of what I'm talking about. Give the audience some advice on how to be intimate with your entire organization, but not alienate people with your position. I can jump into just examples that I have. So I'll say I do skip levels all the time. So I'm a third line leader, right? So I have VPs, directors, and then reps under that. I'll do skip level with the RDs, of course, but with reps is a whole different thing. Number one, I do it because maybe these reps are so good that I want to talk to them, see how they're doing it. So I can take, you know, nuggets from what they're doing and then go apply it to other teams that might need help because that rep is so good.

36:30Or I might do it to a new hire that's two months in and I want to check in on how they're progressing and see how things are doing. Or to someone that's not doing well, and I need to come check in and possibly give them direct feedback coaching so that we either move them out of the business or coach them to get better, right? There's all different scenarios of why you do skip levels or sometimes just to catch up to some, uh, with somebody, right? All different reasons. The biggest thing you have to do, and I tell my VPs, so I'll call the VP and I'll call the RD and I say, or I'll text them and say, Hey, I'm doing a one-on-one with this rep tomorrow, anything that I should know or whatever.

37:07How are they doing? I get feedback from the RD and the VP and usually the SE leader every single time I go do these, just so that when I go into this, I kind of know what to aim for, what to ask, and if they're doing great maybe, or hey, they need some help here. So the first thing is you have to prep. It's almost like prepping for any type of meeting you go into with a CIO. You prep for that meeting. Same with skip levels, you should prep. So there's always prep. Then once you do these meetings, it's very important to kind of talk about why you're doing it and what I see, how these help. Like I will tell them, listen, I'm trying to get you to get into this prospect, or I'm trying to help you go expand this deal because these banks are doing it.

37:49And this is the only bank that isn't. So I want to understand why they're not help me understand. And it's usually good intention. and then once you figure out like these are my goals and then you hear their goals and you talk to them openly then it's important to document and once you document then after that you say hey great session let's do another one in two months or two weeks whatever the time frame is but it's so important to then send that back to the RD and the VP to say hey I'm circling back this is what we did this is how it went these are the things I need you to coach this rep on what I'm seeing and you fill them in it's just constant communication it's the same thing as running a deal with a CISO and a CIO.

38:26We're always sending FYI emails. Hey, FYI, I just met with your team. This is where we are in the POC. This is where we are in the process with procurement. We expect things to wrap up by the end of next week. The same way you keep executives informed at the C-suite relationship, I'm keeping my leaders informed as well. And it's very important to do these. And I know my boss and boss's boss do skip levels with me. And I know they're probably doing the same thing and it's great. It works. And the other big thing about like culture and this whole org about skip levels is we kind of have this flat org where we do all want to help each other, right?

39:01Mike Ernest will jump on a hundred thousand dollar deal call. He's our worldwide head of sales. Dave Goodmark is on client calls all day ranging from 50 K to 50 million. It doesn't matter. We are all here to help each other, but you have to just realize that these skip levels are so important, but you have to document so that you can come back to something. And a lot of people just have a call, forget and never come back to it. You have to come back to it, document and realize where you left off as well for the next time you talk. I think the communication and everything is so important. Like you said, Michelle, I just think about it like it's supposed to happen almost now, like I'm not skipping levels.

39:39Like I'm making sales calls with sales reps and if a manager is going along at the same time, I'm learning a lot as a third or fourth line manager as a CRO. I'm learning about what issues are they truly facing on the street on every day? Who's the real competition? What are those issues? And I'm starting to learn what my reps can do really well and things that they need help with. So then when you're talking about, okay, how are we going to train and what are we going to develop them on? It's not some cookie cutter stuff that you come up with three or four levels up in the organization. You know exactly why, you know, you're training and developing those reps on certain issues because you know, because you've been on those sales calls that these are the issues that they're facing, you know?

40:28So I think it's more than just trying to help them out. It's also, you have to know what's going on at the street level. Otherwise, just some desk. Absolutely. Undercover boss. They made a whole show about it. And I will just say, I think goes in my mind every day. And I actually have sent myself an email since I was a rep to my Gmail with the subject line CRO. And it just would say, like when I was 23, I was sending, you know, make sure new logo bonuses are a thing or, you know, or make sure it sales kickoff. You get to hear from the best people of your peers. And I tell myself this stuff so that someday when you know possibly a cro i can go back and look at all of my advice from when i was a tiny little sales rep down to anrd to a vp to an avp and see all of that advice throughout the years because you're so right people forget what it was like to be a rep and that's why i'm close with a ton of my reps because every day i call them and i'm like hey am i missing this is this what it's really like tell me and i hear from them and it's so important You don't want to sit in your ivory tower.

41:33Just because you're a leader does not mean you're actually leading people. You might be a manager sitting behind an Excel sheet. Be a leader. Be out in front. Set an example. Get to know your people. Talk to people in every role. Doesn't matter what they are. You can learn from everyone. And yeah, big, big believer in that. Hey, one last thing I want to say on this skip level. I love this conversation. The thing that's important to me is when you are doing the skip level, let's say, or you're going to another level to speak with somebody. It's not like I don't hold people accountable for what they say to me.

42:08Meaning somebody says, well, if I had a better territory, it's not my responsibility to take that information and then go to the other person and say, hey, this person doesn't think they have a good territory. I'm now in a position to be able to ask them, why do you say that? Talk to me about your territory. And there's a saying that I always like to think about. If I go to somebody and say, hey, Johnny or Michelle, somebody said this about you. I always think about that person saying to me, why did they feel so comfortable telling you that? And what that means to me is if somebody is going to talk crap about me to somebody who's supposed to be with me.

42:53Right. Why was it so easy for them to do that? Does that make sense? And I think leaders sometimes get that wrong. They're like, let me be the people's choice. Let me be the woman of the hour and let me go down in here and be the savior and then come back and hold people accountable. You're not really doing what we said we should be doing from a leadership perspective. I think sometimes people get it wrong. That's not your job. Right. Your job is to connect. Your job is also to help all through the ecosystem. Does that make sense? Yep, absolutely. The reason I liked also going down to the street level all the time was, you know, if you're growing a company 100 % a year, you're constantly looking for people that can step up into the first line with your job.

43:42And it's funny how you'll ask a lot of managers, like, do you have anybody that could be promoted right now? We have like 10 more opportunities coming up in the next six months. And they're like, no, no, we don't have anybody that can get promoted because they don't want to lose their top people. Then all of a sudden you make a sales call with the person and you talk to them and you have lunch and dinner with them. And you're like, this person absolutely could be promoted right now. They're holding on to them, you know. So you have to go down to that level to figure out what's going on in your organization.

44:15You have to. So true. that's such a good point Johnny like Michelle even all the like most like all three of us the the organizations we've been involved with have been so fast growing and so explosive that if you're not out in the organization which I want to ask you about Michelle you know if you're not out in the organization you're just going to miss people being great you're going to miss people doing great stuff, but that takes time. And I know you got a lot of energy. It's clear on this podcast that you got a crap ton of energy, but the things that we've talked about thus far are take a lot of time.

44:57How do you manage that? Oh, well, I love to do a lot of things in one day. I myself am very disciplined. So I think some of it is, you know, how do you manage your time? Is it being effective versus busy? Very different things that people, you can be busy and have meetings all day, but are you being effective? So I like to do a lot of things in one day. I'm a psycho about it. I wake up early. I go work out. I do my job. I pass my job. I go do prospecting for fun, which sounds crazy on LinkedIn. And I like, it doesn't matter what it is. Then other hobbies as well. I try to fit a lot into a day every day.

45:36I am not lazy. So first it comes with the person being able to do a lot throughout the day. But also it just comes to like what I talked about earlier. Do you have that discipline and that almost self-assessment of your business that you're doing everything, right? Are you, we always talk about the three R's, are you recruiting? Are you retaining? And how's your revenue doing, right? You can self-assess and measure yourself every morning on those three things and then hold yourself accountable, but also asking for feedback, seeing how your numbers are, seeing how you're doing against your peers.

46:06There's so many ways to measure your success. But time management is extremely important at my level, but also even at the rep level. How are they going to go spend their day? Which is a perfect question too, by the way, in interviews or on one-on-ones. How are you spending your time on a weekly basis? And there's so many ways to dig into time management. Well, do you prescribe an operating rhythm or do you help people get an operating rhythm? How do you do it? Sure. I've seen some CROs, they're third line leaders that are like, this is the operating rhythm. We're doing prospecting on Tuesdays.

46:38We're doing executive calls, blah, blah, blah. How do you, what's your philosophy on that? Yeah, so definitely there's science and there's art to every single thing that you do for work. And I have some leaders, for example, TJ O'Shea, he reports to me, who is very much process driven. And what I mean by that is the forecast calls, the deal reviews, the operating rhythm, whatever it may be. And then I have Mr. Big Deal, Billy Mosterzo, who is Mr. Art, right? This guy, if you tell him there's a big deal out there, trust me, it's going to close and he's going to do it. They are very opposite, but extremely high level talent on both of them, A plus players.

47:18And they both do what they do so well. Well, we've tried to combine that. I mean, that's the Dolly way, the Ernest way, the Goodmark way. We've all done this company after company, science and art. And science is what I talked about, that operating rhythm. We say PG Mondays, but you're supposed to prospect every single day. And you shouldn't be like Mondays come and sure, you're getting prospecting out, you're getting your follow-up notes, you're getting your plan for the week. But just because Tuesday comes, if you go have a meeting with a company, the second you leave that meeting, you should say, who else can I now prospect to within that company?

47:50Because we're selling a platform. You're not selling a niche solution to one person at a company. There's tens of thousands of employees. you need to know more person than one VP of cloud security. You need to know who runs the SOC. You need to know who runs development or engineering or AI or who the CISO is, the CTO, the chief architect. There's so many people to meet. So when you get out of a meeting on a Tuesday that you just had that was really good with a VP of engineering or a VP of cloud security, your next thing coming out of that meeting is not only to send a beautiful follow-up, but it's also to go prospect to more people within that organization.

48:26and that's where science, you can't get stuck in it. Sure, PG Monday, but PG Tuesday as well. Or when you're sitting at home and you're watching a show that you're not really into at nine o 'clock at night, guess what? My husband and I both have our laptops open. We've got LinkedIn going. We're looking up people. He's like, I need to get to this person. I'm like, oh, I need to get to this. It's pretty sad, but we get a little ADHD watching TV sometimes. So we need to be doing something else. And we're just looking through people and we're prospecting on a Wednesday night at nine o 'clock at night.

48:56So it's gotta be that psycho passion I talk about, number one, but you also have to take a scientific process that you have that you're really good at, forecast calls every week, of course. You have to do those deal reviews, very important. So I have my leaders go look at their deals for current quarter, but then also a quarter out, top deals, and they should do deal reviews. And there's a deal review spreadsheet we have that asks 15 questions. It saves time. So a deal review is in an hour, an hour and a half, but it's actually only 30 minutes. And it's simple questions like, what's the close date of this deal?

49:28And why that close date? If you have a rep fill that out and they go, huh, I don't know why it's that close date. It's that instant self-assessment of their deal on their own. It's questions like, who's the EB? Have we talked to the EB? When is the last time we met with the EB? Who's your champions? When were you in person with them, right? When was the POV started? When does it end? People are a lot of the time start a POV without an end date. So it's simple 15 questions that they ask and allows you to do deal reviews really quickly. It's a scientific process that works. And we implement stuff like this at the company, right?

49:59And you have that scientific process. So I believe in both, but the art, the art is so much of it too. And that is where if you want a sales team to be world-class, you not only do the science, but you also know how to do the art. And the art is all the things we talked about and being able to connect with people or going the extra mile so that when you walk into a room with six executives that you've never met before, you know what companies they all worked at before, what their LinkedIn says, what posts they've made, what articles maybe some of them have written, you know everything about them personally, but then you know everything about them professionally.

50:34You know what their, you know, internal org looks like, you know, who reports to who, you know what things they're working on. And then third is, you know, the actual meetings that are happening between my team and their team. So if you walk into a meeting, you can be able to not only know them personally, professionally, but you actually know what our teams are doing in order to go do a deal. So there's so much to it. But at a high level, I would say that's kind of what I would say. Talk to me about what's going on in AI. What do you what do you what do you see in the way in which AI is affecting your sales process or your salespeople or your interface with customers, your research on customers?

51:13Sure. What are you seeing so far? Yeah. So, I mean, AI is only helping. It's not hurting. It's also creating an advantage, I think, for people that want to be more in person and do more of the art. Because a lot of people say, oh, I can get a lot more done just being on five Zooms in a day than going traveling three hours to a meeting or taking a flight and going to that in person. So a lot of people think I'm just going to do the Zoom meetings. I'm going to have AI take my notes and write me an email. That works. That works really maybe well in smaller deals that you're trying to bang out, you know, 10 transactions a month for that rep.

51:48But if you're a rep that has strategic accounts or bigger deals that you're trying to work, that is going to get you a little bit of the way, but not at all. Not at all, all the way there at all. Like if you have a rep that says, you know, I have a rep right now that I think Jamie Dara spends in retreat. They spend all their time in person with customers on site all day, all day. That is all they're doing. Almost more so than, you know, the internal emails and all that. It's like, no, no, no. They're just in front of customers every day. I think they're on a plane every day. They're flying to go meet with executives and champions and procurement people.

52:25It doesn't matter. They're doing the deal in person and they're closing massive deals quarter after quarter, year after year, never missing. And their customers love them, right? So I think AI is going to help especially do those smaller deals and companies that are trying to land and expand tons of transactions in a month. But if you're doing more strategic selling, you have to be in person. And that's going to be your competitive edge because your competitors might think, oh, I'm just going to do everything over Zoom or over remote, whatever it may be. But instead, if you go in person, you're going to have an advantage.

52:56You're going to build real human connections and people are going to buy from people they like when they actually understand your win, right? At dinners that we do, we make jokes about this. There was a Nobu dinner that, sorry, Mike Ernest, I went to approval for it, cost$7 ,000 and we laugh about it. I know, I'm sorry. Him and Dave did approve of it. So thank you guys. But what happened was, is that dinner was very expensive. But the ROI on that dinner, this company did six deals with us in a year and a half after that and did so much revenue, one of the most highest revenue generating accounts for our company.

53:33And it was worth all of it, of course, times 100. And we look back and we say it was one of the best meals of our life, of course, and we all remember it together with the customer. And we still talk about to this day, but also at the same time, that's priceless, right? That is not what you're going to get from a remote meeting. You're going to learn about these people. I know everything about their lives. They know everything about my life. And we're friends and we're good people because that dinner was breaking bread, essentially. So it's extremely important and it's priceless. And And yeah, my finance department probably loves my expense reports, but the revenue is fine.

54:06We're doing just great. We had a rep on here called Dan Simon. He just wound up going. He was like the number one rep at Glean. He just went over to Cursor. I just saw on LinkedIn. But he asked him, what's your competitive advantage? Well, I'm using AI to do research on my individual customers and the companies that I call on. But my second biggest advantage over anybody else is I show up in person every day. Exactly. It's powerful. This is such a huge point that you guys are making because when we really look at AI today, AI today is based on transcripts and technology that is created because you're not in person.

54:53Mostly. I'm sure that it's going to take off and be able to do mobile things. And I know. But when you really think about it, most people, when they're talking about AI efficiency, they're talking about a non-in-person conversation. And so I really like what you guys are saying because there is a balance. And I'm sure the technology is going to catch up. But there is an absolute balance for me is that what you are describing, Michelle, is the art of the job is not going to be replaced by AI. Correct. There will be suggestions. There will be thought leadership on how to do that art. But I don't see that art going away.

55:42Now, I also see a lot of companies that don't really understand sales that are saying, why the hell would I spend$7 ,000? Why would I look at the travel? If we could just get people to do all this over Zoom, if we could, you know, and I think, Johnny, what do you call it? Being on the right or the wrong side of history? Being on the right side or the wrong side of this AI thing. I've got the wrong side of history, basically. Yeah. So it's the art and science, the way you said it, Michelle, I think is it's always going to be around. I'd be remiss. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Just on that point, I'll say two quick things.

56:18Number one, AI is wonderful for building decks, helping us articulate feature function of value for the company, putting all your notes in, asking to do that, right? But when you're sitting across from somebody at a dinner, a C-suite of this account, and you're trying to dig in to saying, like, why would you even buy something like Wiz? Can you help me understand the pain that you're going through? Walk me through an example. And then you're being audible ready for their answer. And then going, you're knowing when to ask certain questions. You're knowing how to read a room, which is something that we as humans can do.

56:53And when to ask questions and when to ask hard questions. because asking hard questions is absolutely something a great rep does and you have to do it. But a lot of people are afraid to do it. AI is not going to go do that for you. You have to read the room of when the right time is to ask a hard question and dig in a second and third level question on that. And then the second thing is AI is going to be great. Sure, it's going to help you go sell deals. But there's been many times even just at our current company where there was a deal forecasted for, let's just say, a million dollars, right?

57:24We ended up closing it for 4x that, 5x that. And true story, we closed it on a shorter timeline and we closed it for 4 to 5x. And there's many deals like this that happened. And it's because we were humans about it. We found out what was wrong. We were missing those executive champions. We were missing the why they were doing this and their ideal future state and how to map that back to future function. Like we actually went in and did almost like we always say salesman is a tough title for us because I always feel like we're consultants. And we went in, mapped their current state to future state, understood it, met with a ton more people.

57:59We weren't single-threaded anymore. And we went and did a much more massive deal and we did it on a shorter timeline. So that is important too. And that's also the human element that's going to bring in Veris AI. Hey, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about this because we've talked about it privately, but I want to set the question up. The hardest part of your job or career, and I know you have an interesting answer. Yes. Okay. The hardest part. So I will say this before I say that. I'm a very stress-free person. Things don't really stress me out. I love my job. I don't find things hard. I find it exciting.

58:35If something's new, I'm like, let's go tackle it. There's always a solution, right? So the job itself, easy as could be. Not too easy, Dave. Don't increase my quota to my boss, wink, wink. But what the hard part, and it is a great technology. That's the other thing. Sell a great technology and your job is a lot better. So pick the right company with the right technology. I'll just side note on that. I had a customer say to me, your job must be so easy. You get to sell whiz. And I said, yeah, but you don't understand what a quota is. So the client didn't understand that I had a massive quota. But yes, it's a privilege to sell incredible technology.

59:14But anyways, that's all the easy stuff. The hardest part of my job is being a female in this space. And what I mean by that, and I've kind of told you that before, is, you know, I'm young. In my mind, I wish I was 22, but I'm 38 years old, female, in this role. And two things usually happen. Number one, when you go take over a new company like Wiz, right? I come in. I'm a third line leader. I have people where I'm their first female boss. Number two, I'm their first female boss. That's 15, 20 years younger than them. And I'm their first female boss's boss's boss, right? So I have to walk into a room and instantly build credibility, build trust and say, hey, I'm in this role for a reason.

1:00:00And here's why. But I don't over rotate on that. It takes time. We talked about this earlier on things taking time. This takes time. And you have to let people get to know you and get to see how you work and that I care about people a lot. I do probably too much. But then I'm also hard on people as well. As Dolly says, I'm black and white, no gray area. But I definitely think for me, the hardest part is walking into a new org and I have to go prove myself to everyone of why I'm in my role. As a female who manages, right now I manage three VPs, 10 directors, all male, and have to prove to them why I'm in my role.

1:00:37And then secondly, just being a female on part of that young female, we walk into most rooms. Most of my customers, I'd say 95 % are male and being able to walk into a room of a brand new group of people and make it known that I'm actually the leader, not the marketing person or the EA or the sales rep. I've had crazy things said to me in my time that are the funniest stories ever, but people just instantly are like, oh, who's that? What's, and they instantly make a judgment. So you have to just prove yourself every room that you walk into, I think. And it's hard, but it's also a challenge and it's fun.

1:01:15And then once you do, you really have the trust from your team and they know that you're your true intentions and your authentic self. And they know that I'm here to help them. So it's actually great when we're done. But it is probably the hardest part of my job. And you co-hosted, you have like an executive dinner thing that you've done in the Boston area, because I'm sure that a lot of people are perking their ears up here on this conversation. And again, I said this to you, and I really feel compelled to say it again. When I first met you, you didn't impress me for being a woman. You impressed me through the person that you brought to my office, that brought you to my office, who I know really, really well, and how that person was speaking about you, whether you were male or female.

1:02:05You were an incredible boss. and I told you, I think I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago and I played golf with those two birds that still talk about you and one person doesn't work for you anymore. I really think that your perspective is incredible. Are you doing anything more on those dinners or anything? You started something in the Boston area with 17 other kind of women leaders in technology. Is there anything more to that? Yeah, so there's a few things. So we definitely run CISO circles now as part of WIZ and we're going to do a women's only one where it's just women CISOs where we're going to get a bunch of women together for a day or two.

1:02:46There are some really badass women CISOs in the state of Massachusetts and New York that can all come down. And it's we actually did one in West Palm Beach before we all flew down there. And it was incredible to not only just kind of hear what everyone else is hearing and going through in their careers. But we're, it's also nice to know that there's other people like me, because for me, if I'm being honest, I know I've used this word before. I know I'm a psycho about sales and passionate about this job. And I don't know many females of my friend group that growing up are like this, right? They look at me and say, I'm crazy.

1:03:23And they know that, right? I'm supposed to be maybe doing something else and whatever in my career. And maybe this is too demanding and I'm always on a plane and I'm always traveling and I'm never home and all this stuff, but I love what I do. And for me, it was so nice to be in a room with 20 other women. These are top CIOs and CISOs of Fortune 100 companies. And I'm learning, wow, it's okay to be how I am. And we're talking about how long did it take you to email after you gave birth? And they're like, oh, we put bets on it. And like my guys have bets on it for me. Like how long will it take Michelle?

1:03:56Right. So it's good to know that other people are like us out there, number one. And number two, it's also great because, you know, there's plenty of guys that have my back that I've worked for and that have worked for me. And they don't look at me as a female like that. They just have my back and, you know, we'll do whatever it takes for each other. And we're a team and it's great. I'm maybe a little bit more empathetic than they are. And it works great because I have some, you know, really harsh guys that are intense personalities. And I kind of say, hey, let's take a step back. Let's be a little calm.

1:04:30Cool. So it's good to have a mix as well. And we all know that it actually fits together well. And it's, yeah, it's been wonderful. Michelle, you are such an incredible, passionate, talented person. Your reputation preceded you before I met you. I'm so glad that you came on today. I can't imagine, Johnny, how many companies are going to listen to this interview. You better get that email section with what to do when I'm a CRO. I have a feeling it's coming pretty quick. Well done. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'll tell Ernest and Dolly to lock you up before offers start coming. Perfect. More options.

1:05:14Send Dolly and Ernest a text on that. No, I'm just kidding. We won't have to, Michelle. I'm sure they'll get a lot of texts. Great job, Michelle. Really, it's good to meet you. Yeah, great to meet you too. Thanks for having me. And I mean, this is great. Like I, I just love to honestly be here with the two of you since it's so funny to me, like I'm a sports person. So there's the Tom Brady's, there's the Andrew Luck, the Peyton Manning's, the people that I admire on the quarterback level. And you guys are that in the software side. So thank you. It's crazy if I told my 22 year old self that this was going to happen someday.

1:05:51But it's really cool that it is. So thank you very much. And yeah, I appreciate the time. You're amazing. Keep it going. You're amazing. Michelle and thanks Johnny Cap. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.

1:06:08Michelle Bove: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.