Why AI Is Making Your Reps Sound Like Everyone Else with Matt Fermino

0:00John Kaplan: There was a transition from a new national account manager to the next national account manager. And this executive at Verizon asked an incredible question. So they were doing the handoff. And the executive looked at the new person and said, why don't we start this meeting by you telling me what you know about us? Holy smokes. Guys, it was a disaster. It was, I mean, it was a great teaching moment. It was a disaster. And forevermore in that company, they use that thinking of at any point in time, if a customer asked me, before we get started, why don't you just tell me what you know about me or what you know about my company?

0:46John Kaplan: 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.

1:14Today we're joined by Matt Firmino, who's the Chief Revenue Officer at Fable Security. It's an innovative cybersecurity company using AI and behavioral science to help organizations reduce human risk. Matt brings a wealth of experience in enterprise software sales leadership. He's held senior leadership positions at Astronomer, Starburst, and Cyber Reason. Throughout Matt's career, he's built and led high-performing sales organization. He's particularly passionate about recruiting, developing, and coaching great sales talent. So today we're going to dig into some of the most important challenges facing sales leaders.

1:59We'll discuss how AI, if used incorrectly, could actually make salespeople less effective. than more productive. We'll also explore why characteristics that make someone successful at a startup could be very different from those characteristics required at a large enterprise software company. We'll also talk about the importance of creating a development culture and why great managers coach rather than simply tell. So Matt has some strong perspective on these subjects. I'm looking forward to digging into them. Hey Matt, welcome to Revenue Builders. So, hey, Matt, good to see you again. Hope you're staying strong.

2:41You getting some workouts in? Yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying. Not the weight I used to throw around, not like Cap, but the glory muscles.

2:53John Kaplan: I can lift weight off my chest. Johnny just wants me to lift my own body weight with, you know, pull-ups and stuff like that. So he keeps talking. True test of strength. True test of strength, Matt. It is. It is all you need. Yeah. Hey, Matt, so what's on everybody's mind is AI, you know? And you've expressed some concerns to me when we spoke earlier that AI could actually probably hurt the development or the effectiveness of, you know, enterprise sellers. Can you talk a little bit about what you see and maybe what some of your concerns are? Yeah. I mean, look, I think AI can do a lot of great things for the go-to-market team.

3:35But in particular, I see very often, instead of it being an accelerant for the preparation, people are using it to sort of replace their understanding. And they're not going through the process of actually doing the research and figuring out what these companies do. So, you know, an example is I do a lot of, you know, we do PG Tuesdays here with the team and we come and I see these great prep docs. I see these great value pyramids. I see these great plans for who they're going to call and why. And I'll simply ask them, what does this company do? And a lot of times you'd be surprised. They haven't even gone through the process of just understanding how this company makes money, what products are growing the fastest, where's their you know big revenue driver what are they the crown jewels you know are they a profitability company or a growth company so they you know it it goes from people that are i think aes that are having insight when they come into these meetings versus people that just have information and you know this i think this whole podcast is about being audible ready and i think if you're going to go into a meeting at some point you're going to actually have to talk to someone not read you You know, you're a prep doc.

4:52Right. But if you don't know what you're doing and you get the wrong person, you're going to get relegated to who you sound like really quickly or you're going to get thrown out of the room. So you're really kind of talking a little bit about critical thinking, right? You know, it's more than just, you know, having AI print out what the customer does. But can you truly understand and gain insights from what the LLM tells you about the customer's business so you can walk into the customer and have a compelling point of view? That's what I hear you saying. Yeah, exactly. Like really internalizing the research.

5:27If you're using it to accelerate and get deeper insight, to really understand the business further, to get wider, higher, that stuff's great. But if you're just doing it to print out some information, once you get past that kind of opening statement in your meeting, you know, it's going to be pretty hard to stay, especially if you're with an executive. It's going to be pretty hard to stay relevant in that conversation. So, you know, I think it's just something. How do you as a sales leader, like you said, you go into these meetings and you can see these great documents that they produce. But how do you quickly assess whether or not they have a, you know, critical understanding of what the customer actually, what that business actually does?

6:05and where some of the potential pains are that your product solves. Yeah, I think it starts with, like I said, asking a bunch of basic questions to see if they even understand. Like, what will you ask? Tell me what you'll ask them. Yeah, I'll ask them, you know, tell me, you know, what part of the business drives the most revenue? What business unit, you know, drives the most revenue? What product line? What's the fastest growing part of the business, right? Because I want to see where are they investing in? How do they grow in general? Do they grow through M &A? Do they grow through new product introduction?

6:36Are they profitability focused? Are they revenue focused? Are they growth focused, I should say? Understanding that even can start to help you figure out, how do I want to frame some questions? And then I'll start going through, when they go through their hypothesis, they go through their people. I'll just start asking, so what? And it's really just, without being a jerk about it, you could pretty much, so what, who cares your way to, you know, poking a lot of holes in people's hypotheses pretty quickly. And then you just got to start to role play with people. You just got to start to put them in the position of, all right, hey, now I'm the, you know, for us, we sell to a lot of security leaders.

7:18I'm the CISO. I run, you know, the SOC. Here you go. Like we're on the phone. Now tell me what's going to happen. Because after that first statement, I'm going to start asking questions and you can't necessarily script where that goes, but your preparation can make you comfortable to kind of go in any direction and bring it back to the value prop that, you know, that we solve. So then the next time they show up with you, do you see, have you seen them take it further where they do have actual insights into the customer's business, where they think they can, you know, start to lead, start the conversation and then lead the conversation to, you know, where they want to take the conversation.

7:59Yeah, I think after a few of those sessions, they tend to know where I'm going to go ahead of time, which is really what I want. So they start to come in prepared. And you can definitely see them now, especially for what we do. We sell a very disruptive product in a market that's been sold historically one way. So if you come in and just let the buyer think of you the way the old processes have been done, you're cooked. So you really have to come in with a strong hypothesis. So we'll just go test that a bunch of times and they'll start to come in with better preparation. There's always there's never a perfect prep meeting.

8:38And, you know, like Tyson always says, you have you know, you can have a great plan till you get punched in the face. Right. So. But the more, you know, and the more you've internalized, then, you know, you're you can at least come back to what you need to really quickly. And I think what I've seen probably most is that there's a lot of subconscious discovery that happens where they, without this preparation, I don't think the reps realize it, but they're taking discovery just to a place that they're comfortable with. And they're missing actually bigger parts of more high impact pain because they're not comfortable.

9:13Even though we solve this problem, they don't really know it. They don't know the business problem. So they sort of unconsciously steer away from it. So I've seen that get a little bit better where they're comfortable going to maybe more depths, knowing they can kind of bring it back to where they need to go. That's interesting. And why were they scared of going to that place where you know you can really solve big problems? Why were they a little hesitant to go there? Yeah, I think it's, you know, some of it is probably enablement on our side to make sure that, you know, they're comfortable with the more complex problems that we solve.

9:47I see what you're touching on, right? If a rep is not developed, if they don't really understand the product and they don't understand the pain of the customer and the differentiators, so they're not comfortable talking about it, then they definitely shy away. That's whether it's AI or not AI. Yep, yep. Reps will shy away from stuff that they don't fully understand. They just won't talk about it because they don't want to get embarrassed. Exactly, exactly. I think one of the things that reps, we all do, we hesitate to tell somebody or ask somebody about

10:26John Kaplan: negative things. So in the industry, it's called negative consequences. And what we find a lot is that people aren't comfortable with telling somebody that they suck. And so it's a mindset that around discovery, and here's where I think AI is very powerful. because you can ask as a thought partner. I like to talk about AI as a thought partner, not as replacing my thoughts, but as a thought partner. You know, we started this with like, you know, what are you asking them to do? I like to ask about, you know, when you say, what do they do? I like to say, hey, explain it to me like I'm a sixth grader.

11:18John Kaplan: That's actually one of my prompts. Explain to me what this customer does as if I'm a sixth grader. What are the things that they do really, really well? What are the things they're struggling with? So what if they can't do this or can't do that in their industry? Why is that a bad thing? And you'll see that the thought partner is so comfortable in giving me these answers. It's almost like a good practice. because the thought partner says, well, the connection between that problem and that outcome for the customer is typically around this. I think that's the number one reason why people hesitate is they don't know how a customer is going to take it.

11:56Well, in the enablement piece that you guys are talking about, it's not about telling somebody they suck.

12:04John Kaplan: It's asking about where they struggle and feeling comfortable and confident to know that whether you ask the question or not, they're struggling. And the vast majority of people struggle in that area. And that's where I think AI is powerful. So where you got to get your sales managers to be comfortable is really what you're saying, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, but even though are your sales leaders comfortable, but even the reps like Johnny, I like what you're saying because we talked about two things. We talked about the impact of the reps, and then we talked about impact of the managers. The challenge I see is RevOps has to be really, really good at the cadence.

12:49John Kaplan: What is Matt going to expect? When I get with reps and I'm doing a deal review, I want to know the origin of the deal. I always ask internally here at force management, give me the origin of the deal. I want to know how we got involved in this with this customer experience. So they know that I'm going to be coming talking about that. I want to know the biggest business issue facing the customer. And I want to know how we're influencing their decision criteria with our differentiation. I want to know a lot more. But these three are the minimum expectation that we start a review with. And so, like Matt, I was going to ask you, with all these things, how do you precondition the sales organization with the minimum expectation of what you're going to be asking them?

13:40John Kaplan: And, you know, how is that helped or hindered by AI? Yeah, I think you make a great point, Cap. Yeah, that's, I think, the superpower of AI when it comes to go-to-market and to sellers. So we actually have a pretty mature go-to-market team that does a lot with AI. And so we have a lot of AI role plays, a lot of prompts, a lot of the same, what you talked about, let me go build out, what would I need to see from preparation? How would I go down, do a role play to really for this persona versus this persona tied to real high impact time-based pain, and then tie that to ideally a number of unique differentiators that we have.

14:30So we can set the traps to not just tell them, Hey, you need these features, but get them to come to their own conclusion. Oh yeah, actually, you know what we really need? We need this and this. Oh, it's interesting. You say that that's, you know, we solve this problem that way. So there's a lot that you can do there, I think to enable. And then I think John, to your point, you really got to make sure that the front lines know how to take that from preparation into the actual deal reviews, into the forecast calls, into the meetings with them, by the way, because they should be leading from the front and being in those meetings too and modeling a lot of this behavior.

15:08Yeah, but a lot of times those first line, second line leaders, they've never done this on their own. Yep, yep. Yeah, it's true. They might not have ever done research or they did a little bit of research, but now you're asking them to do research with AI. And now you should be able to gain really deep insights about that customer and where you want to take the conversation. Yeah. And I think the coaching, Johnny, that's got to take place at the frontline

15:33John Kaplan: level is that with access, with the information, we've never been in a situation in our lives with technology to have better access to information. It's just incredible. The use of that information, we often talk about on the podcast, Johnny, use that information to be interested versus interesting. What I find in this AI era that we're in, there are so much, we're accessed to so much information that we almost get people like in a court of law saying, I read this and this is what you said. And this, and so therefore I have this conclusion and they're trying to impress the customer about, they're trying to be interesting to the customer about what we know about your organization versus using that information to be audible ready to look for nuances to what's different about what this customer is saying than what I observed in my preparation.

16:37John Kaplan: It's really, really important. I see some reps that do such a great job in discovery, but they utilize that discovery to tell the customer what they've learned. Yeah. And I think it's really dangerous there because what's interesting is I, I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's, it's almost like it's creating a new seller deficit disorder where you sound like, you know, my business, but you actually don't, but you sound like it because, you know, you've got the research and then you sound like everyone else because everyone else has that same access to those same prompts. 50 reps have come in and said the same thing to me.

17:14So, you know, how do you differentiate there? If you were going to go back and be a sales rep yourself right now, let's use that. And you wanted to differentiate yourself from the average salesperson through the use of some of the AI tools, what would you do? I mean, I do a lot of what we talked about. I would use it really to get much deeper knowledge. And then I would try to test as many hypotheses to as many different people as possible to get a lot of different information. Because I think if you're just coming in, like talking like everyone else with the same research, you're basically going to fall into what we just talked about.

17:53So you have to be, to Cap's point, extremely curious. And, you know, I think you just really need to focus on why does this person need to do anything at all? Forget about, you know, my company or anything else. Why would they solve, spend any time or money to solve a problem that I think that we solve? And then how do we tie to that? And then how does my research, you know, support that? And then how can I go ask questions in a differentiated way that shows that we're sort of business equals and that I actually understand their business, not just I can read the clip notes. So I think - I think that's where it comes out.

18:34When you said the last piece is the piece for me that it comes out and you differentiate yourself. It's by asking, not telling them what you already know that all the other guys are telling them. It's by asking these deep, insightful questions where they think, wow, this person not only did the research that all the other reps did, but the questions they're asking are so deep and insightful, it's got me really thinking that I'm dealing with a differentiated salesperson. And then the other thing too is like what Cap always says is, hopefully I say this the right way, Cap, is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

19:14And just because you know a lot about the company doesn't mean that you actually care about their problem and how you're going to solve it. Because you haven't differentiated yourself. Yeah, I mean, I think that that part is key. I know, you know, Keith Butler, who I worked for a long time ago is big on intent. And he used to always say intent trumps technique 10 out of 10 times. And I think if if people believe that you care about the problem, and you have the right intent, really just to help them ideally solve a high impact problem, you know, how you get there and some of the questions like they'll give you a little leeway there.

19:50Now, ideally, you're good at that too. But if you are and they really truly believe you're trying to help them, then usually you're in a pretty good spot.

19:57John Kaplan: You said in the beginning, Matt, that I like is that like the seller deficit disorder, you know, the definition of that is a customer in the surveys, they found that buyers did not believe for the most part that sellers understood their business. and they didn't think that sellers listened very well. So let's talk about AI to overcome that seller deficit disorder is incredible. And you started the conversation with, and this one is horrifying to me. And sometimes it happens to me when I'm getting ready to make a call and I just ask myself, do I understand what this company actually does? Oh, I know I got medic.

20:47John Kaplan: I know I got attached to the biggest business issue. I can blow them away with what we've done in the marketplace. What I love, what you said is, if you can't answer before you get on a call with a customer, what that customer does in simple terms, and then get curious about, okay, so how do they make money? And what are their biggest challenges to making money right now? like simple things like that i think gets you into seller deficit disorder i remember one of my favorite stories happened with a customer that i was working with you know probably 20 years ago and i think it was at verizon and there was a transition from a new national account manager to the next national account manager and this executive at verizon asked an incredible question so they were doing the handoff and the executive looked at the new person and said why don't we start this meeting by you telling me what you know about us holy smokes guys it was a disaster it was i mean it was a great teaching moment it was a disaster and forevermore in that company They use that thinking of at any point in time, if a customer asks me, before we get started, why don't you just tell me what you know about me or what you know about my company?

22:20John Kaplan: That's a minimum requirement now. It's always been. I've always thought it's always been. But now there is no excuse. Yeah. Yeah, I've got a similar story I use a lot with the team. And I always go back to, you know, back in the in the PTC days, one of the first questions we would always ask is, you know, are you a growth company or a profitability company? Because at some point you have to make a decision on, you know, yeah, you want to do both. But at some point, a question will come, hey, we can do this and it'll hurt our profitability or we'll do this. It'll hurt our growth. And you have to figure out, like, they're going to make a choice.

22:52And I was working with a gaming company and we had. We had the chance to a competitor. they were spending tens of millions of dollars and we could have saved them for the similar performance, you know, probably 50 % of the cost. And the guy said, look, you got to realize we're a high growth company. We're in growth mode. No one's asking me to save money. I don't care about saving money and your competitor, all of our products that drive revenue are built on your competitor's product. So I don't care about saving money when maybe later on in four or five years when I do, great. But you have to align what you do to the pain and the way that the company is building.

23:32John Kaplan: Let me ask a question to you guys. We talk about AI and we're always talking about discovery and we're always talking about preparation. I'm finding great examples of how people are utilizing AI to capture information from the conversations themselves. What are you doing there, Matt? Like, for example, in this situation that you just said where somebody says, well, I'm not interested in, you know, your dialogue is about saving expenses. Yes, but I don't really need you to do that. We're a growth company. We need to do that. Well, I would want to capture that somehow in the moment, learn, develop from it.

24:19John Kaplan: What did we say next? What did they say? Like, we talk a lot about AI and discovery. How are you utilizing AI and actual call execution and customer engagement? How are you using it there? Yeah, I think we're doing a couple of different things. The first thing is just, we're a series A company, so we're looking for as much signal as possible. So every meeting, good, bad, and in the middle is valuable for us. So we take a lot of that information to go enrich and really hone in on our ICP and continue to refine that. So every good, bad conversation all goes into, all right, hey, is this a market?

25:03Is this a vertical? Is this a use case? Is this a persona? that is a good fit for us. Because it might be the right vertical and company, but wrong persona. It might be completely wrong vertical and we're going after something that doesn't really care about the problem we solve. So I think there's a lot that we do there to go continue refining that piece. And then I think a lot of it comes down to objection handling, messaging, positioning. How do we go? We've got a few of common objections that we're hearing, how are we going and how is that changing over time? How is our product development changing to meet?

25:44Are those things that are tied to the core principles of what the company wants to be or are those a bunch of science projects so we can start to figure out, all right, hey, we know we can address this. It's coming down the road. Here's how we're going to handle that for now. And here's how it's going to change in a quarter. So there's a lot of it that goes into how we position and message for sure. I think the, again, greatest time to be alive,

26:10John Kaplan: when I think about a frontline sales manager, I have the ability to listen and participate with a seller like never before in my lifetime. Not only that, I have the ability to understand intent. I have the ability to understand body language. I have the ability. It's just, it's so incredible. Yes, AI, I can get the signals. And I don't want to discount that. It's amazing what companies can get. I love that. And it's amazing the common objections. And it's amazing, you know, whether it's a fit for ICP, which is arguably, you know, we should know that before the discovery. I think we're able to do that before in the discovery stage.

27:04John Kaplan: But I've actually been giving feedback like, you're just not that likable. And, you know, so in an AI world, if I would be thinking that the feedback that I would be giving would be down to human behavior that I was able to observe and able to listen to, I could tell when somebody was uncomfortable because they changed their speech pattern. They started to go really surface level versus being curious. And I just think, I don't know about you, Matt. I don't know how you do it with your leaders. Do you have call recording? Do you have, you know, do you expect your leaders to listen to it? Do they coach and develop off of it?

27:51John Kaplan: What are you finding there? What is what is what what era are you in now with your with your team? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do a lot of that. And it actually I mean, that ties into what, you know, Fable does as a company. We're a behavior change platform. We do it on the on the customer side to change risky behavior. But we do the same thing. It's very, very similar and a lot of parallels to enablement for the sales teams. So, yeah, we listen to a lot of phone calls or a lot of we use Gong here. we've got a bunch of different tools that are getting signals. The, the reps and leaders, the leaders are doing, you know, at least 10 calls a week.

28:28We come back, we, we put together sort of a, a hit list every week to go and do enablement on. We do a couple of, we'll cut up some calls, get all the team together, you know, show people, Hey, here's how, you know, maybe I would have answered that. Here's a really good response to this. Here's where maybe we could do better, do that in individual one-on-ones, do that in team settings. We do a lot of enablement for a company our size. We, you know, we spend a lot of time on enablement actually heading to Denver tomorrow to do that. We do it a lot with, with the SDRs. We know it changes also a lot how we're going to market.

29:07So, you know, very, very, we're seeing tons of, tons of phone as like the number one way to get people on, you know, to get opportunities versus, you know, I think people were sort of shying away from the phones for a little bit. Now it's almost done a complete 180 where by far and away the highest number of meetings we book is direct phone calls. Then it's in-person meetings. I think a lot of companies aren't doing the in-person meetings as much. So, you know, all that data goes into, you know, how are we targeting these customers specifically like what modality is it phone call LinkedIn, you know, it's always all the above, but where we, you know, focus more time.

29:47But yeah, we do the, the, the team knows, you know, I'm on the East coast. I've got leaders and reps all over the, but, but, you know, I'm usually 5.00 AM. I'm starting my day, listening to some, some gong calls, either on a, doing a workout or something. And I'm, I'm starting to give the feedback and they start to see it. And then next thing, you You know, the leaders are doing it. Now we see the reps are really starting to do a lot of self-coaching too, which is, I think, the place you really want to be is where they want to do this, not because they know we're looking at it, but because they actually want to get better.

30:20John Kaplan: For me, the more access to technology that I have, the more I'm actually able to explain the art of selling. So we got the science down. We're using AI for the science. it's the art for me that really gets highlighted in the technology. What do you call an art, Johnny? Well, for me, I will see opportunities of basic things like listening versus telling. I will see things like just being likable. Somebody will say something that's a little awkward, and some people have the ability to say, hey man, I feel like I'm asking you about stuff that you don't want to answer. And the technology does not typically, it records it, but it doesn't know how to signal that.

31:16Empathy, curiosity.

31:20John Kaplan: These are, I think, the era that we're in with AI. It highlights the AI highlights where the art and the science come together. And the best leaders that I've seen are the ones that are using it like game film and bringing people back to that moment, you know why you hesitated. You know why you didn't handle that objection. I know you heard it because we all heard it, but why didn't you do it? And there is, well, I wasn't that confident. I wasn't that, and AI is just not going to be able, AI is going to be able to record it, but it's my ability now to utilize the AI to bring the science, excuse me, to bring the art and the science together.

32:02John Kaplan: That's what I meant by it, Tommy. Yeah, I've got an example. We have a rep here and really smart, doing really well. And he was in a meeting and he was trying to get his champion to understand, really to buy into our process. And I was listening to the call and he's like, I asked some of the right questions. And I think that a key cap, like you're saying, he asked the questions the right way as far as like the words were right. But he just sounded like a jerk. Like anyone that I would want to spend any time with. And I was likable, whether you're likable or not. Yes. His tone. I said, man, you're you're you're really great at what you do.

32:46But your tone just makes it seem like you don't, you know, give a crap about anybody. So you're not going to get a lot of champions. You're not going to get a lot of buy-in no matter what you're selling. And, you know, to his credit, he's taken a lot of that feedback or, you know, people that go in very, very stiff and robotic. Right. Again, like they might have they're saying the right words, but, you know, it's not you can tell they haven't really internalized it. Those are those are some things that I think are. Sometimes in those things, Matt, it could be that they're insecure, that they're not so confident.

33:19and I think overall what you guys are talking about is interpersonal skills, right? Yes. I mean, for me, I always thought that one of my greatest weapons was just my intuition, just going in a room and looking at people's eyes, right, and figuring out their body language and their facial tells, all that stuff. I was just so keen on that. And I kind of wonder these days about, you know, the younger generation because they're always on their phone, right? So whether you go to the gym, you go no matter where you go, they're always staring at their phone. They're not staring at people and the people's body language and the reaction that other people give to them.

33:59They'll even ask a question and look at their phone instead of looking at how this person's reacting and what their facial tells are. That's so key to me in selling. Yeah, I mean - I know it's really hard over Zoom, right? You can always do that if you're really keen on And you got a great intuition and understand body language and facial tells and all that stuff in person. But over Zoom, it's even more difficult. And over Zoom, it's even harder to understand the dynamics in the room, in the Zoom room, right? It's hard. Yeah, I've got one of the best sellers we have here. And you can see I go to a lot of networking events with him and we're doing a lot.

34:41and I can see just when he's talking to people in a room, I could see the other person just mirroring his body, moving the way he's moving. I'll be next to him. He's talking about, you know, his, uh, you know, church group on Sunday with one group, the next person he's talking about going to the casino here. Like he can just, you know, he's a chameleon and, and everybody loves him and he's, he's just super charismatic and great with people. And, you know, he's smarter than your average bear too. So he's, he's got the IQ, but the EQ is really off the charts. And he's, you know, he's been a top performer at multiple places with us now.

35:17John Kaplan: I love that. One, one caution I'll set out to like leaders out there listening, if you're coaching and developing people, there's a difference between style and content. And I always am careful. I have a pretty particular style. Let's say I'm just, I'm older, I'm more confident, I'm direct, I interject warmth with humor, whatever. That's my style. The content is being interested versus interesting. The content is outside-in thinking. make it make it all about the customer and earn the right to make it all about you like that's where those worlds come together and if you understand somebody's style i you know i remember being in athletics and i'd watch film and they couldn't say the guy that got drafted you know that played in front of me played for the atlanta falcons for 15 years they didn't the best coaches didn't say, do it like John Rady.

36:30John Kaplan: Do it like him. What they said was they were trying to figure out what I was working with, how to be me, and to be successful to get an outcome. And again, I'm so excited about where we are with technology. I can be so productive. And I'm not only saying that I have to be, you know, gong calls or what have you. I can put my phone down, and ask a customer, I'm going to, everybody's recording everything. I can be face to face with a customer and I can put, I'm going to say, I'm just to capture to make sure that I capture everything we say. You can tell me if you want me to turn it off or what have you, but I want to just capture everything so I can listen to you, Mr.

37:13John Kaplan: and Mrs. Customer. So I don't accept that we can't get this information that we're not on a gong call or Zoom or what have you, but I want to encourage leaders, don't analyze game film and say, this is how I would have done. I would have said this when they said that. Why did you say this when they said that? Because there's a story there on what somebody's comfort level was. And this is, again, the art and the science of leading. I think what technology can do, the bad side of what technology can do on a leadership perspective is start treating everybody the same. You guys are all, you're all handling the objections this way.

37:53John Kaplan: We're going to do development on this. We have all the data we need to know exactly who's doing what, when, and how. I think there's a layer lower than it. Everything you're saying is 100 % right on, but there's a layer that's lower than it that I've seen go wrong in sales is where people are not themselves. Yes. You know, you're hanging out with Matt and Cap outside the building and they're acting one way and talking one way and you love them for who they are and we're all different. And then we go into this room with other people and all of a sudden you're like, who is that guy? What happened to Matt and Cap?

38:31Why are they acting so different than who they really are? And people have the intuition that can pick up on when somebody's It's not real. So it doesn't matter. Just be yourself. And I've seen so many times in companies where there's one really good salesperson, one really good leader, and everybody else is trying to copy their style. Dude, that's not you. And it doesn't come off well. It's not authentic. It's not real. And it's okay to just be yourself. It's okay to have role models, but it's okay to take pieces of everybody of what they might say. Say it the way you want to say it. It may be great to take pieces of how someone does it, the skill that they have, but you can do it in your own way, right?

39:21Make it yours. Be yourself. I hate it when people are just not authentic. It just doesn't come off right, especially in sales. Yeah, that's a big one. I think it happens a lot to first-time, first-line leaders. That's probably one of the bigger traps where they tend to try to emulate the person either that promoted them or their CRO there. And they have this imposter syndrome for a while. I mean, I can certainly speak for myself where you try to be a little bit different. And people know, right? You're the same guy they were just with last week when you were a rep and peers. And now, you know, all of a sudden you get promoted and you're a totally different person and you've learned all these new things and you act this different way.

40:04It's just not reality. Yeah, I think it's also important to be coachable and adaptable.

40:11John Kaplan: We talk about this a lot on this podcast. A lot, yes. And I had to think about the hesitation of people. Like, why don't, if you have a choice, like in my company for a while, we said people could click the record or not record. And after that, I was like, why? Why are we doing that? Like, based upon how somebody was thinking about whether they'd be comfortable on this call or not. And I realized the reason why it was different for me was I just grew up in a background. I played a sport that everything was filmed, even practice. And so you want to talk about, you have to be comfortable. Some people like, oh, I don't like the sound of my own voice.

40:53John Kaplan: Well, what about, I don't like the way that I freaking stretch versus the way everybody else is stretching because they're videoing everything. And I think if you just get into that, and then it's how it's used. Then it's how that information is used. If you're using it to build me up and to help me win, to identify, meet me wherever I am. Don't try to tell me what I'm not doing versus what John Rady is doing. Hey, Cap, this is your superpower here. That's your move. You got to do it here. I think it's just very, very powerful. So in the day and age that we're in, if you're not coachable and if you're not adaptable and if you're not comfortable seeing yourself in action, I don't think sales is the game for you.

41:44because that's, I think that's... What you also said there, Johnny, is what? Is how the manager uses it. Does the manager use it to beat you up or does the manager use it to kind of support you? And how many times does the manager tell you? I mean, if there's 10 things that are you doing wrong, they can't tell you to do all 10 things now. Yeah. Pick one or two that are going to, that you can actually do and get good at and then start to lace in the other ones. I find that some managers telling reps like 10 different things that they do wrong and they got to do them all now. And if that's the case and I'm the rep, I'm thinking, well, this is the manager.

42:25They know. And if I'm supposed to do all 10 of these things right now, effortlessly and overnight, this might be the wrong place for me. It's because the manager coached them in the wrong way. Yeah, I had this conversation this morning and it's, I mean, you got to identify the big rocks. It's not that these things don't need to be fixed and they're not important, but you can only process so many things at a time. So focus on, hey, these two things get me the furthest, the fastest. Let's go focus on that. And I think back to your point about how you use it, too. Like, I think the easiest way guys that I've always found to do it is like, I talked about, you know, we, you know, we, we cut up a bunch of, uh, you know, sections of calls and we talk about, Hey, you know, we handled this one.

43:10Well, we didn't handle this one. Well, I always, always start with one that I screwed up or that, you know, my, one of my leaders screwed up because that just puts everybody at ease. Like, Hey, look, I think I'm pretty good at this. And this was terrible. Okay, great. Like everybody knows because everyone's going to have that. So it's fine. Once they see that everyone's guard kind of lets down. Because I think if you're going to create an environment, if you do a great job of recruiting, you know, a bunch of A player sellers, they're not always going to be like in a group of 20 of them going to be so willing to share all the losses like immediately or where things aren't going well.

43:51But that's where you always learn. So if you create the environment and you get those kinds of people to share where they're struggling together, you're going to have a great environment because you're going to learn so much so fast because they want to get better. And, you know, they're again, you can you can win deals a lot of times and not necessarily learn something. You very rarely lose a deal and don't learn something. So you take advantage of it. I'd rather that you fail quickly and I can help you, you know, fix that and go and move on. Right.

44:23John Kaplan: And I love what you said about, you know, the leader's responsibility is to also be vulnerable. I think everybody listening right now, if you do a call today with a rep and you have a part in the call, I would begin the feedback and that's something that gets missed. Like people pop off zoom calls or whatever. It's like the old days of checking your phone, coming out of a, going into a car and checking your phone when they're taking you to the airport and not doing a debrief. But I would do this immediately. Ask the people that you're on the call with, if you had a part in it, I would always ask, hey, give me some feedback.

45:03Three things you liked about what I did and three things that you would do differently.

45:08John Kaplan: And if you start getting that in place, because I'm going to do it with them. If you start getting that in place, it just sets the tone. If it's like, I don't want to say like, use it inappropriately, like a safe space or whatever, but like, we've created space for people to be able to give feedback. And I think when leaders do that, it's amazing. When they act like they don't, they didn't make any mistakes, it's just, it's a disaster. on the flip side when i'm you know if you listen into a rep like a in a call and you come out of the call i liked i i don't want to tell them anything yeah and in the beginning i say how do you think it went yes and and then follow up with where do you think you could have done better and where do you you know better right what i'm surprised i'm not surprised at it anymore but the best sales reps are so critical of themselves that after you ask that question, they spill out like 10 things that they think they did wrong.

46:11And you're like, wait a second, don't be so hard on yourself. Here's one thing I think we could improve on. And the other nine, I don't think they actually matter that much. And then to me, that comes across a lot better for the rep because they're like, they brought up what they did wrong themselves. I didn't bring it up because they're so critical of themselves. And now I get to help them with the one thing that I think I can. First of all, I could help them with, right? Because maybe I have that skill or I have that knowledge. And then it turns out to be really beneficial for both parties. Yeah.

46:49We talk a lot about coaching versus telling. And this is something I really had to learn early in my sales career is, or my sales leadership career is, you know, you could just tell someone the answer because you've seen it a million times. Nobody's getting a fastball by you, but they don't really, people, first of all, don't really love being told things, right? If you can ask a bunch of questions, people rarely argue with their own conclusions. So if they say, Hey, you know what? I really think I could have done this better. Or, Hey, you know what? I actually, I think I need a little bit more pipeline.

47:20I don't have enough coverage. Like they know that if I came in and just said, Hey, you have enough pipeline. Yeah, I know. But if it's, you ask a bunch of questions, you get them to realize, you know what, I actually, I need some more pipelines so I can have the right coverage so I can go have success this quarter and next. Yeah, it's interesting. I was looking at that too. Okay, let's, you know, let's kind of dig into that. That's a very different level of, you know, of engagement you're going to get from them versus, you know, just yelling at the scoreboard. Right.

47:47John Kaplan: And prioritizing some of this stuff that you guys are, that you guys are talking about. I mean, I think the technology, we started this conversation talking about AI and how it's impacting us in positive and challenging ways. What I've noticed is my ability to hone in on the priorities is way better than it used to be. So I can take coaching sessions that I'm doing with sellers and I can look for similarities. I can look for differences. I can look for top three things that I'm that I am seeing and utilize those and be and be prepared for those conversations. What's the I mean, my coaching sessions are completely different than they used to be.

48:34John Kaplan: I would scatter and scavenge for what do we talk about last time? And, you know, because you have so many people you're doing it with. and my ability to be prepared as a leader to serve that individual in that moment is so much greater now than it ever has been. And to be relevant and to be purposeful and to follow up. This is what we talked about last time and this is what we need to do now and we're still seeing these things. You're doing great on those things. We're still seeing these things. And again, as a thought partner, not to replace me, but to make me more available and present for the men and women that you coach and lead is, it's a really incredible time.

49:21Yeah, it adds a ton to the ability to build both personalized development plans, because again, everybody's not the same where they are, what they need, and what development can I do that's like the one to many that everybody needs that like is appropriate for that versus, hey, this person needs, you know, pipe progression, you know, development. This is really where they're struggling. This person needs kind of, you know, land in first meetings, upfront messaging. You can build both and you can do it a lot faster than, you know, the way that we used to do it, combing through, you know, a bunch of detail and, you know, it was.

49:57John Kaplan: And you can be prepared to, Matt. So like you'll have a day of like one-on-ones and we're rolling into these going, hey, how you doing? What'd you do this weekend? And we're, it takes us a while to get started and blah, blah, blah. Well, we got an agenda. I know the three things that I got to talk to Matt about. And it's all stuff that we used to, and honestly, it's all stuff that kind of fell by the wayside because we were rolling into these coaching sessions or these development sessions or whatever. And we were kind of getting grounded it in the moment versus being prepared. And there's no excuse today with the technology that's available to meet people where they are and to show up prepared.

50:40John Kaplan: If you sent me something, I've read it and digested it. You're not educating me on the calls. We're not going back and rehashing. Oh, what account was that? I mean, we just have the ability to just be the best versions of ourselves. I'm not saying it's utopia, but if you put in the effort, man, you can get some great productivity results. Yeah. I can't imagine trying to do the job that I have now, even, you know, a few years ago. I mean, I think my career is sort of coming at a time where like, if I had to do what I'm trying to do now and be as productive four or five years ago, I mean, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

51:24And I mean, there are barely enough hours in the day as it is today, but I can get more done. And it's definitely a step function ahead of where it used to be. It's funny.

51:36John Kaplan: I see the areas are my ability to connect with the individuals, customers, and with individuals that I work with far superior than any time in the past because I'm prepared. And I just think it's, you know, it's funny, the more technology you use, the more science you use, the more art gets solidified, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I think it's pretty powerful. I think that's why adaptability, like you mentioned before, is so critical. Like, you know, there's always these jumps in the way, you know, leaders lead and the way technology is sold. I always think of, you know, what we did at PTC versus, you know, then a bunch of the startups came in and, you know, were disrupting.

52:28And then there were, you know, the clouds changed the way people sold and consumption models. And then like there's always something changing and there's always something to adapt to. This is to me just the next thing to go adapt to. And if you don't, you're, you know, you're going to be you got to be toast. Talk a little bit more about developing people. Why do you think so many companies actually spend a lot of time trying to recruit top talent and then they don't really spend a lot of time developing their people? Why is that? Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it's, you know, recruiting is obviously the number one thing that we do and the people are the most important thing.

53:04I think, you know, people tend to, they tend to try to recruit these people and then just sort of leave them alone saying, hey, these are, we'll give them some initial enablement. Yeah, learn the product, but then, you know, let them go, which is the exact opposite of what every A player really wants, right? Like they want to go and continue to be developed and, you know, whether it's to get to a next role or just to get better at their craft. They just have that growth mindset in every aspect of life, right? Really not even just work. And I think if you don't do that, you know, that's the fastest way to lose them.

53:42But I think it comes down to a lot of companies I don't think are very intentional about development. Maybe like a little bit of first onboarding. But, you know, really after that, it becomes people being managed like they're bits and bytes. And, you know, it's just not the case. yeah it's awful and the thing that can keep people at a company is development i mean as times change and if you have a manager in a company that's constantly developing you so you're constantly learning i think most people are going to stay there even if the money's a little bit better someplace else because they're like well where am i going to get this type of development yeah where am i going to find a manager like this that really cares about my development because eventually you'll get developed to the point where you know you can do the leader's job and then you'll you'll go someplace else anyway but up until that point why just jump into a company where you're just making money but over the course of five ten years you never really developed any skills you just keep jumping from one one one shiny object company to the next shiny object company and lots of people do it and next thing you know they they don't really have any skills they were selling like lightning in a bottle for five different companies two years each and then they jump to the next one and 10 years later they have no real skills.

55:02I mean there's a lot of I mean there's always that happening but it seems to be maybe even more pronounced now but there's I don't see I really want to find people that are optimizing for development optimizing for those transferable skills you know that's the thing that that stays with you like you said I don't I've only stayed in the same industry once. I don't really care about being sort of a Rolodex seller in any way, shape, or form. If there's a big high impact outcome, there is value there. There's a differentiated product. Like, all right, I know we can go sell those things in a big market.

55:37And I think if you have all those skills, you can transfer that from data to cyber to DevOps to, you know, you name it. I think it just opens up a whole world of opportunity for you.

55:50John Kaplan: Great interviewing question too, Johnny, is like, when I look at somebody's career progression, I always ask, tell me, what did you learn at PTC? What did you learn there? What did you learn at Xerox? What did you learn at XYZ? And I like to understand if people can identify what they learned. And it also tells me why they moved. But what somebody learned, because we are programmed as humans, a rolling stone gathers no moss. So that is translated in every language around the world. It's been around for however long it's been around. It's historical. It's Egypt old. And people got to feel like they're moving forward no matter what.

56:40John Kaplan: And we're all built that way. So great interview question when you're going through somebody's career progression, ask them what they learned. And if they can't talk about what they learned, then they're probably not built that way. And if you're a company that offers a lot of development, a lot of coaching, you might have a mismatch there. If you're listening right now and you're interviewing for something and you can't talk about what you learned at each job, you're at risk. Yeah, I ask my leaders a lot to make sure that when they think about recruiting, where someone will be in a year matters a lot more to me than where they are today.

57:20If they have that right mindset, like someone that's going to be a lot better a year from now because they're so coachable, they're so adaptable, they want to get better, they're going to go implement. And I think coachability is an interesting one too, because there's a lot of people that I think mistake someone willing to take feedback versus someone who's coachable, because they're not the same things. Like there's a lot of people that are willing to, to take the coaching and the feedback. They just can't implement it. And if you can't implement it, like, and you keep making the same mistakes, it's just a, you know, unfortunately it's a person who's really willing to be coached, but just can't, can't implement those things.

57:57And maybe they could find that in, in something different. But yeah, I think that part is, is critical. That's where like drive or fear of failure or whatever it is that motivates you to, to get through to learn new skills. And that's the hard part for all of us, right? I mean, we have to step up and look in the mirror and say, hey, I'm going to have to adapt. Otherwise, they'll find somebody else that will adapt. I mean, that's what always drove me. I'd say like, especially when it was like really hard decisions or really hard things I had to do for the first time, I'd think, well, if I don't do it, they'll find somebody else that'll do it.

58:34So come on, man, step up, let's go. And then you do it and you realize it was never as bad as you thought it was in your mind. It's like the old Mark Twain saying where, you know, I died a thousand deaths in my life, you know, all in my mind. Right. We always make things so much worse than they really are. But, yeah, you have to be able to adapt, especially in this world. I can't believe how many startups I've been in where one year I'm looking at somebody thinking that dude is so good and he's got some skills that I just don't have right now. So I'm going to try to get those skills. Two years later, the company's a different company.

59:11I look at that person and go, he's a dinosaur. He hasn't changed. And those skills that he had, they were great at that time. They're no longer applicable. It's a different company. You need different skills, different knowledge to go off and pull this sale off. It's amazing what happens. yeah i don't know why some people just don't change just don't adapt they get comfortable and then they don't for many different reasons don't want to adapt yeah i i see it i mean you see a lot like you just mentioned right there's a lot of times that year one year two in an early company the top rep that can't get out of their own way by by year three and you know i think there's a lot that goes into but one thing that i i find pretty common is it just that changing just it just doesn't give them energy.

1:00:03Like they, they could do it. They're smart enough. They're capable. It just, it drains energy versus gives them energy. And that, you know, adaptability is the critical piece, right? Like we used to say at PTC that it stood for prepare to change, right? That was, you had to be ready at all times. And if you didn't love that, then, you know, it was probably going to be a difficult spot. I think if you really embrace that and you like, you know, you're a lifelong learner and like i said in in sort of all aspects of life i ask people all the time what's the last thing you learned you know just for fun or outside of work um because if they're not doing that then they're probably not going to do a lot of development and self-learning

1:00:42John Kaplan: in the company either man there's some golden nuggets in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the conversation that you guys are having on that anybody listening to this podcast, whether you're interviewing or whether you're, you're the interviewee or the interviewer being prepared and audible, ready to talk about your experiences with what you guys just talked about is really, really important. And I sit on a lot of interviews and a lot of this stuff isn't talked about. So you really, if we're saying that coachability and adaptability are really, really critical to being successful and you're interviewing somebody or you're going to be interviewed and those topics aren't coming up, you're going to be making some recruiting mistakes.

1:01:37John Kaplan: Guaranteed. Like Matt said, it all goes back to characteristics, right? You have to truly interview for the characteristics first because that truly kind of determines whether or not they're going to have the persistence, the heart, the desire, the fire, the fear of failure to go ahead and adapt. And then many other characteristics that you need to learn skills and gain knowledge over time also. Exactly. Anything else is a skill that we can develop you on. If you don't have the characteristics, it's going to be tough. Right. Right. And there's some of those interviews where you say, so what's the risk?

1:02:16Well, what do you mean the risk? Well, the guy didn't match the ideal candidate profile 100 percent, did they? No. OK, so what are they missing? And then they tell you what they're missing. And then they say, you know, but we could change him. I'm like, no, you can't. Their mom couldn't change it by the time they're 20. You're not going to change them.

1:02:37John Kaplan: Yeah. If you're trying to put in on what God left out, good luck. Yeah.

1:02:45Good session, Matt.

1:02:46John Kaplan: Well done, Matty. That's a quick hour. I know. Yeah, it was. It was. This was great. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. We can have you back again. That was a good discussion. Yeah. Anytime. No, I love like the podcast is, I think, changed a lot of sales leaders and sales reps lives, to be honest. I mean, back to talking about like, you know, this time and day and age with AI, it's also the exposure I think that we have as leaders to, you know, folks like yourselves and the people that you interview. And just this, there's so much information you could go suck in. But I think what you guys are second to none when it comes to that in this world.

1:03:24So appreciate everything you do. Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it. Matt Firmino, John Kaplan. Thanks a lot. Thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.

1:04:01Tell me.