RSS 72: Revenue Systems That Scale: Doug Davidoff on Building Predictable Growth

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0:35Sell a product once and you're lucky. Sell a product twice and you might be just getting good at this. But sell a product consistently, month after month, year after year, quarter after quarter, call after call, meeting after meeting, and you have a system. My next guest, Doug Davidoff, has helped some of the biggest brands in the world install revenue systems that generate billions of dollars combined. I am so excited for anybody who is listening to learn more about how they can build a revenue system that not only scales, but also impacts the bottom line in their business. I'm looking forward to this conversation with Doug Davidoff, and I'm excited for you to be plugged directly into it.

1:15If you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show.

1:33Doug, thanks so much for coming on. Super excited to have you here today. You call sounds good advice that is kind of the biggest threat to real growth. What does that mean? Yeah, you know, I talk about it actually lead off the book with a story about a company that I started. We started on a lot of sounds good advice and we thought we were going to get off to a super hot start. And then we found out once we asked people to to make real decisions and take actions on what sounded good. Suddenly it wasn't quite there. So one of the things I've learned about sounds good is it's it's kind of what I refer to as teenage advice.

2:11Right. Right. It's filled with energy, but it's got no real backing behind it. Right. And oftentimes it means that there's a lot more thinking or work that has to be done. So when you hear someone who says, sounds good, gives advice like sounds good, do you have an approach that you propose listeners take instead? Yeah. So, you know, one of the things I love about entrepreneurship is is we get to be out in the market where people are making real decisions. And so one of the things that I always like to do is I like to test in the market. I had a coach early in my career who told me, you know, there's nothing that proves the point so much as when someone is willing to write a check for something.

2:54Right. So so the way that I go to market with things, the way that we introduce things is we try to make sure that that we're looking at it through the lens of really not being in a laboratory. Yeah. Putting something out there in the market, making sure that we've got the wherewithal to learn what the market is saying. How can we adjust to that so that we're getting real world feedback as opposed to the intellectual feedback that that leads to so much of that sounds good advice. Right. When you started down the journey of the revenue acceleration framework and crafting the book, the framework and the concept, et cetera, was there a pain that you felt in your career that led you down the path to say, this is something that I believe the world wants?

3:37Like what led you down the path to say, this is something that I need to really bring to life via the book? So, Ross, I've always been a big strategy guy and big, big idea guy. I thought that, hey, whoever's got the best idea, that was my first thought ever as the best idea wins. Then I thought it was who has the best strategy and it became that. And what I found was, you know, companies have had great ideas. Companies have good strategy, but that doesn't always translate to success. Right. And so just having been in the market, having been involved with some companies that have had just unbelievable success.

4:15Matter of fact, some of the most successful companies I've worked with. Right. You know, candidly had less of their act together. Right. Than some companies that I worked with that were struggling. And so I was just, you know, what led to the framework was just a never dying curiosity of why are some organizations able to have what appears to be effortless success? Right. I learned, by the way, it takes a lot of hard work to be effortless. Yeah, 100%. I like that. Why were some companies having what looked to be effortless success and other companies that seem to have, you know, again, equal parts together why they weren't?

4:52And what I found was, you know, purposefully or accidentally, whether they called it the revenue acceleration framework or they called it something else, there was this feedback loop between the strategy that a company brought to market and the execution that they experienced to feed back into the strategy that put them on a, you know, just kind of never ending pattern of driving better success. and to really understand what was that difference between the companies that had radical success and the companies that never quite break through. Right, I love it. I strongly recommend folks to check out the book.

5:32We've been reading it as a SLT to better understand how can we get that type of a flywheel rolling. What stands out to you as being the, it talks a lot about acceleration cycles, et cetera, as kind of a core mechanic. What to you is the most important thing that you think a reader should take from the book and execute if they're trying to really be one of these most successful companies that you've described? Well, that's a big question. It is. It is. I go big every time. You do, Ross. You do. I noticed that about your show. You know, the biggest takeaway is have a take. Don't be afraid to be wrong.

6:08Right. The company that learns the fastest is the company that more often than not wins. Right. Or at least wins for them. Yeah. I talk about hypothesis-driven growth in the book. And the whole idea of hypothesis-driven growth is I've got an idea. I think this is what's going to happen. I'm not certain. Right. I'm never certain about anything. Right. Let me take it out there. Let me test it. Let me experiment. Let me take an action. Right. Let me learn from that action. So I take an action. I get a result. Yeah. That result is what I expected or it's not what I expected. What can I learn from that?

6:48How can I apply that to the next action that I take? Right. And if you think about an acceleration cycles, hypothesis-driven growth, the nature of how a company goes to market, that feedback loop that I talked about is always built on that aspect of take an action with an expectation, see the results, learn from the result, apply it to the next action. And I think if you apply that approach, you can't not improve. You might not get what you expected. There's lots of things that are going to impact the ultimate results that you've seen. But if you maintain that openness to what the market is telling you, you're going to learn a lot and you're going to learn a lot faster.

7:32Is there any examples that you've seen or been a part of where the hypothesis was there? It ended up being wrong, but the group, the team, the org, maybe yourself was better off because of finding out that it was wrong and you were able to come out better because of it. Like, is there any examples that you could share around that in action? Yeah. You know, the thing that's interesting is when you have a hypothesis, going into the approach simply by calling something a hypothesis, one of the things that it does is it takes takes away that illusion of certainty, right? By definition, a hypothesis is something that, you know, I think may be true, but I don't know.

8:11And so I'm open to it. So I think, I talk about Franklin Logistics. Yeah. And they were a company that really had their act together. They had basically doubled in size and they saw their growth stall. They had really hit a ceiling of complexity. And one of the challenges that they had was they really were approaching the market with certainty. They were trying to find that formula, quote unquote, that they could take to market, they could stick to it and make it happen. And the challenge was, I talk about three zones of execution as well. They never really built that operational zone, that enablement zone, what I refer to as zone two.

8:51And so as they were trying to continue their growth rate, they were coming up against the challenges of just managing the business on a day-to-day basis. and they weren't able to experience that transformation, that ultimately when they re-look at it, kind of shortened their windows, started looking at it as, here's what we're going to do over the next 90 days. Right. And every 90 days, we're going to ask that question, what worked, what didn't work, what did we learn, how do we apply that? Those adjustment cycles really re-triggered their growth. So a clear vision about where you want to be. Right.

9:27Like, you know, when I work with a company, I kind of care about two things only. I want to know where are you going in the long term? What's the vision? What's that North Star that we're going to? Right. Then I care about where are we going to be in the next 90 days? Right. Everything else pales in comparison to those two pieces. Right. And what's nice is as you take those 90-day segments, you can have a clearer vision because if you're wrong, that vision can change. That vision is, you know, typically it's a three to five year. What's the company we need to become? You know, what's the company that we are?

10:05What are the things that we need to do so that we can become the company that we want to be? Right, right. And that type of approach really takes the pressure off, frankly, and opens up to create that learning organization that allows you to accelerate growth and deal with the trials and tribulations of, you know, growing a business is just tough. Right. Doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how smart you are. Right. It's just tough work to do. Yeah. And making those decisions is a challenge. Right. When you are thinking about a lot of these concepts, some listeners are probably thinking this is like a cultural shift.

10:45This is a massive change in the way that our entire organization operates. What advice would you give them for like the first 30 days of figuring this out and how to get to kind of this type of a framework model running throughout their culture? You know, it's funny you asked that question and I just talked about Franklin Logistics because there was very much of that initial response. So we started off, we did a full assessment of their go-to-market strategy and we talked about the fact there's a transformation that's needed. I've since learned any more careful how I talk about transformation Right.

11:19Because transformations are huge in their outcomes, but they don't have to be like what you're doing. Yeah. It's not the difference between night and day. Right. It's really small differences applied. And you talk about this in your show all the time, Ross. Right. Small differences applied consistently. Right. Little things done time and time and time again. Right. It's about that adjustment. Yeah. I love telling the story of Joe Madden in the book who coached the Chicago Cubs. That first World Series win in like 100 years. Right. Right. And his mantra was try not to suck today. Yeah. Keep it simple.

12:02So simple. It wasn't go out and and and, you know, set the world on fire. I talk about, you know, and I think about it from myself and my company. Hey, let's try to suck just a little bit less today. Let's be a little bit less wrong, but let's find those small improvements. And so what I would say is over the next 30 days, you're embarking on a journey. You're going to spend the next five or 10 years doing this one way or the other. Would you rather do it on a learning path that puts you on a faster scale or just being afraid to be wrong? Right. Yeah. The reality is we're going to be wrong. That's the one thing I can promise you.

12:43Yeah, 100%. Is something better prediction is going to be wrong? Are we going to be open to that and drive that? So just make those small differences one day at a time, apply consistently. And I think you'll see the huge results change. I love it. Doug, I want to go back to something that you mentioned, but you've been talking about for years is the three zones of execution. Can you break down what that is for folks so they can get a glimpse into like the performance zone, enablement zone? Like what's this all mean to them? So the performance zone is the next 90 days. The next 90, and that's zone one.

13:14Yeah. Zone one is all about the now. It's all about getting the job done. It's all about results, right? Zone one is about managing the status quo. And one of the things that you'll learn is when you try to bring change to there, if you don't have a structure to manage it, the now, the day job, if you will, takes over everything. Right. I sometimes refer to that as the whirlwind. Right. Right. Right. That zone one is all about managing the whirlwind. Zone three is what I call the transformation zone. Okay. That's 12, 18 months or longer. Again, going back to what I said earlier, that's what do we want to be?

13:52Where do we want to be? The interesting thing about growth is you start off like this and transformation is going from this to this. You have to be what you're not on the path to becoming what you're going to be. If you don't know what you're going to be, then you're really not going to be able to control your destiny the way that you want to. So zone three is about the future. Zone two is what I call the enablement zone. And that's the zone that I see missing in most companies, especially in small and mid-market companies. it's the difference between those companies that get the traction that they're pursuing and those that don't.

14:38And that's the question of, okay, how are we going to prepare, operationalize, strategize, enable all of those changes that need to happen so that we're never trying to do too much at one time? That zone too is the missing zone. It's called the enablement zone because that's what enables that change that's critical. Right. And if you think about the world today. Yeah. I mean, things are moving so fast. It's true. Yeah. You know what the next 90 days, we can't even imagine what the world is going to look like 90 days from now. Yeah. Right. It's changing so quickly and across every department, every category, like so much shifts are happening.

15:22And if we're not prepared, if we don't have the agility and the resiliency to be able to adapt to that, then we're going to fall behind. I think it was Jack Welch who said, if the rate of change outside your organization is greater than the rate of change inside your organization, your organization is going to be in trouble. Maintaining that rate of change without creating so much change turbulence that your people can't keep up, that's what the three zones of execution is all about it. It creates in your prioritization matrix, it creates the third dimension of time. So you're able to give yourself that time that you need.

16:07And again, the question becomes, where do we have to be in the next 90 days so that we can be in position for what's happening in the future? Right, right. When you think of all of the change that's happening today. You think of all of the companies that you've seen within and inside of them today. You've seen success. You've probably seen some failures. You've seen the spectrum, so to speak. What differentiates the teams that are in zone two and succeed to get all the way through to zone three and they're there and they're popping the bubbly because they've achieved that vision and those who aren't able to even get close there?

16:44Like what's the difference between those types of boards that you've seen. You know, and the thing that's interesting here is the most frustrating part are the companies that get close to it, but aren't able to pop that bubbly. Right. One of the things that is interesting for me is I've been involved in organizations that have just been outright failures. Right. You learn that pretty quick. Hey, we're wrong. We were wrong about this. There's no market for it. You know, we got good people. We got smart people. We're going to move on from that. The challenge is when you're getting that feedback that says there might be something here or there is something here, but you're not generating the juice worth the squeeze.

17:27Right. You know, having been involved as an entrepreneur myself, being involved in entrepreneurial markets, you know, there are times, and I'll joke around, I'm not sure if I've got the tiger by its tail or if it's got me. Do I have the business? Do I own the business or does the business own me? Right. I think, I think that's the place where, where the frustration occurs. Fair. And the biggest difference, you know, when I started doing the research that I did for the book, I thought I was going to see this massive difference between the companies that get it and the companies that don't. Yeah.

18:00And there really isn't. Oh, interesting. The difference is consistency and adjustment. Are you applying those, like, Like, are you making adjustments? Are you listening to the market? Are you looking at what's happening? Are we implementing our review cycles on a regular basis? Yeah. And the difference is how do you behave when things start going well? It's so easy to let go of the disciplines that got things working right. You get on a roll. Yeah. Things start feeling like, hey, I can't go wrong. Right, right. Right. And and underneath it, you know, all of those things that are going on that weaken the foundation.

18:42Yeah. That that that kill those changes, you begin to follow up. You're like, hey, you know what? We don't need to do a meeting this week. Right. We don't need to. Right. One of the one of the disciplines we've implemented at Lyft is we have that meeting. And sometimes that meeting is there's nothing for us to review. Right. Right. But it's a proactive or saying there is nothing rather than let's just cancel the meaning, fall into the pattern of canceling, and then all of a sudden things are, you know, and again, the out of alignment and the out of whack starts off really small. Yeah. A little, you know, a gear that just starts vibrating off, if you will.

19:23True. And ignoring that view. The companies that try to do everything through big shifts and steps. I talked about coaching college baseball. When I coached youth baseball, one of the things I used to teach my kids was the great players make the routine plays routinely. Right. On occasion, they'll make a great play. Right. And everybody on occasion makes a great play. But let's strive to make the routine plays routinely rather than make the routine plays look like a great play or have to come in and make that great play for something that should be routine. Right. Those companies that really get it dialed in have the routines dialed in, have their process dialed in.

20:03And they focus on the inputs more than they focus on the output. What do you mean by that? So it's easy to fall into results are the only thing that matters. and and in a lot of cases that's that is true right if we don't get the results but but the question is you know what are you doing to contribute to the results how are you contributing the results what adjustments are you making what are you learning yeah because the only thing you actually control is the input that you put into something true true the output you know the result of your decision is going to come down to two parts, the quality of the decision and luck.

20:45And luck is usually half or more of the equation. We don't control luck. True. Right. The only thing we control about luck is, are we there when the good luck comes? Right. That's the whole concept of the difference between the finite gain and the infinite gain. Right. And one of the things that I learned from working with top performers is the top of the top, I don't care if you're talking about athletes, musicians, actors, business people, is they really focus on their process. Did I do the things that I intended to do? Right. And then from the result, they use the result to learn from it. True.

21:26To apply it to the next input that they bring to it. Right. So those companies that really succeed spend a lot of time focusing on how are their efforts translating to outcomes that lead to results rather than over-focusing on the result. So some people will have a massive to-do list. A lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of listeners are probably saying, I have a massive to-do list. Outputs versus inputs. I'm bought in, Doug, like I believe. But I have so many different options. Like, how do I filter through all of these optionalities and choices to say, this is going to drive revenue, hopefully? Like, how do you make that decision when the infinite options are in front of you?

22:10Well, the first thing I would say is I feel your pain. Right. I deal with it every day. It's the frustration that I have. Right. Leading my company, the question that I've asked many a coach of mine is, how do I portray certainty so that my team can have the confidence to invest themselves in something when there's so much uncertainty? How can I say this is the right thing when there's 1 ,700 other things that could be done? Yeah, right. This is where acceleration cycles really come in, right? Right. The thing that you have to do more than anything else is you have to make a decision. Right. I finished the book giving a tribute to the people in leadership positions that make the decision.

23:00Right. And right decision, wrong decision. God bless you because nothing starts without a decision. Yeah. I talk about the fact in the book that the word decide is a really interesting word because the word decide and the word homicide, both had the same suffix. They both mean to kill. So we're kind of actually biologically programmed to avoid making decisions. What the acceleration cycle reminds you is no decision is permanent. Right. I forget who said this, but it's advice that's helped me. When I'm making decisions, the amount of time I spend on the downside of the decision is driven by how reversible is the decision.

23:50So if I'm about to commit a$10 million investment to something, I'm going to spend some time thinking about that because once I spend that money, I'm not going to be able to undo it. But most of the decisions that I make, I can revisit them 30, 60, 90 days from now. Right. Right. So, so what I would say is where do we want to be? Yeah. Where, where are we trying to go? Yeah. Right. Start off and just paint that picture. And then based upon the choices that you have right now, what's, what's the optionality that you feel best about? Right. Why do you feel good about it? Yeah. Take that approach and then keep your eyes open and learn.

24:33Right. Right. Right. Learn from that. Then, then you get to make that decision again. then you get to make that decision again. So the key is make decisions. Don't let indecision rule you. Right. I like that. Lyft creates plans and works with organizations to kind of build and offer these revenue systems. Is there a key thing that is necessary to build a revenue system that drives meaningful impact and results? Is there signals that you all look for that say, yes, this is a great fit for Lyft, and this is why? Because of a perspective, a mindset, an approach to data, approach to a culture? What stands out as being the right type of system for you all to be involved with?

25:19So for us, we look very much at the type of approach a company is taking. Are they in it for the long haul? We kind of refer to it as, do they have an investment mindset? Are they thinking about where are we going to be over the next 12 to 18 months? So we work primarily with companies that are doing well before they started to work with us, but they understand that the road that they're on, the road that got them there, isn't going to keep them going where they want to go. So they tend to think about it from a systems perspective. I think that's the first thing to apply. It's really easy to fall into a behavioral approach to growth.

26:01on looking for top producers. I think it was Peter Drucker who said you can't scale genius. Right, right. The question is, how do we build predictability into our business? That's the key. And I would say, going back to your question of the ones that have it together and the ones that aren't quite there, the biggest difference is the level of predictability they have in their business. Right.

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27:33Do you think the service offering, like the product offering itself and the complexity of it matters to scale or can, is it always, is there always a system that can be injected within no matter what type of org, no matter how complex. Like some people are saying, oh, we need brilliant genius sales teams and we need the genius because we're selling this sophisticated widget. Do you believe that? Or do you think you can just create a system and bring in good talent and it can be okay? There's sometimes expertise that's needed. Okay. You know, if I'm selling chemical management systems to operations, executives who are managing mission critical.

28:19I need to understand that world. I need to understand some of the key elements around the chemistry. I mean, I don't even know what I would need to know because I'm not a 100%. But the reality is from a sales genius perspective, I mean, one of the problems that you have is the very best salespeople in the world. Everybody wants those people. So they're naturally looking for what's the easy thing to sell. True, true. So what you're selling, if you haven't made what you're selling easy to sell, easy to buy, then you're not really going to be able to get the best salespeople because they're going to the stuff that's easy to sell.

29:01I think the challenge is we get lost in our solution. We get lost into the complexity of our solution and we feel the need to explain and we overemphasize that. I think, and I've seen very successful, very large organization scale where the sales process is handled systemically with some subject matter experts who, and again, that becomes part of the system. Right. But I would say that the number one job of a salesperson is to be the eyes and ears of your customer. Right. Right. That makes sense. And your customers don't have your expertise. Yep. And they're not going to, especially today, they don't have the patience to have that level of expertise.

29:51So how are you translating this to their world, to what matters, to what are the key outcomes, and what are the fundamental problems that they're trying to solve? So I don't want to say that every organization, and certainly there are organizations that are not built to scale. Right. They're meant to be small, highly custom, and that's fine. If you're looking for growth, if you're looking to build that predictability, I think there's a place where you can find what is that path to scale. I think the service offering certainly impacts it and how you have to think about it. But I also think, you know, how are we looking at the service offering?

30:33Are we looking at through the lens of the solution or through the lens of the customer who more than a solution is looking to eliminate a problem? Right. How does AI show up in this new world? How do you think of AI and its impact on the revenue systems that are being installed and the way that people are working and selling? Is it a simple bolt-on? Is it a transformational shift in how we sell, how we run these systems? What's your perspective on it? So, candidly, I'm still putting my perspective together. Yeah. I think we're in the pregame. So, you know, I got asked a question a couple weeks ago, what inning of the game are we in?

31:15And my response is, I don't think the game has started yet, actually. I think we're still, there's still far more learning to happen. And I've seen more people spin their wheels applying AI. Yeah. Or I've seen many a company and many a salesperson spend 40 hours playing with AI to save 20 hours at work. Right. I think the thing about AI is AI right now, at least more than anything, is super automation. We are automating, in some cases, the unautomatable. The thing about automation, though, is your process and the data that you're using better be reliable. There's been a lot of talk about the need to get your data layer clear.

32:04Right. But I've only begun to see the conversation about the process layer. And most companies that I see, and what I would talk about to say what to know, are you AI ready? Right, right. Is how clear is your process? Yep. How clear is your methodology? Right, right. Do you have a diagrammed approach? And I mean a document, a diagrammed approach. Right. For how you generate interest, how you generate, how you translate interest into activity and activity into customers. What does that process look like? Right. How well articulated is your pipeline process? Right. How clear are your exit criteria?

32:44How do you know where somebody is? What are the enablers to a sale? What are the barriers to a sale? Right. I think when those things aren't clear. Yeah. And I've seen some conversation about this. There are some school systems that are beginning to bar AI. Oh, yeah. And one of the things that they're discovering is even when AI is right, it gives you the answer. Right. Right. Right. But you don't learn anything. You don't learn the process. You don't learn that element. There's so much obsession today about friction that we forget all value is friction. And so if all we're trying to do is eliminate friction, the challenge is we're eliminating traction at the same time.

33:31And it's seeing salespeople get increasingly passive in the sales process and increasingly disconnected in the sales process. and one of the things that's enabling that is AI is doing all of the thinking for them. Right, right. And I think that's something you have to be careful about. It's true. I think AI, as with all great inventions of data, when it is used to assist your thinking and the way I love, so I used AI to prepare. Right, cool. Yeah. So I've got a whole project in my cloud built around the book, built around what's being said here. Yeah. I did some research on your show. That's awesome.

34:09I've been asked, okay, hey, I'm going to be a guest on. You were kind enough to share some questions. Here's the prep questions. They were shared. What can I do? How can I stand out to be a standout dynamic guest? I love it. That's awesome. Very cool. Now, I use that to aid my thinking. Right, right. Here's this. It would have been easy for me to use that to replace my thinking. Right, right. And that's where data gets into trouble. When we use the data to prompt what are better questions that I can ask, how can I think about this differently? Right. I think that's where it becomes super powerful.

34:49Right. When we use it for the answer, that's where we commoditize ourselves and we get ourselves into trouble. I love that. Talking about not trying to commoditize ourselves, one of the unique things about you is that you coach college baseball. You are in the game. And what's something from sports that you think could be applied deeply to the world of revenue and business that those who don't play can take a lot from? Or those who did play, maybe, could even take a lot from? Is there anything that you would say that you can take from the dugout and just bring it into the boardroom that stands out today?

35:25There are two things that I want to share on that one. The first one I talked about a little bit earlier about the inputs. A couple of years ago, I forget the player's name, but he had been struggling. He had been a rookie of the year, then was struggling, then had a breakout game again. And he said, this is, you know, baseball is a profession that focus on the results. You're going to get yourself into trouble. Right. And I thought to myself, that was a fascinating thing to say, because if you talk to the lay person, they say there is, you know, the thing about sports is sports is the ultimate results game.

36:02If you won or you lost. But there's nothing that will get you into more trouble if you judge you're at that by, did I get a hit or did I not get a hit? The second element was I was responsible for, I was the hitting coach on the team. And so I worked with our players and two of the three years that I coached, we were a top 20 offense in the country. One of the things that I discovered was that everybody's got a different approach to their swing. We talk about their stances, their different at bats, how they're approaching it. And every pitch is different. No two pitches are the same, but there is a science to hit it.

36:40There's something called the swing path. There are three points in the swing where you want your hands in the bat to be relative to the ball to maximize the probability of hitting the ball for me. And so even with all that deviation, even with all that style, there is that path to maximizing the probability of a successful outcome. Right. As I was coaching hitters on that, it was like, this is like the sales process. Right. Because every seller is different. True. Every buyer is different. Every situation is different. Right. But there is a path. Right. That maximizes the probability. The other thing about hitting a baseball is you could do everything right and hit it right to somebody and you're out.

37:27Right. You could have a horrible swing, hits off the end of your bat, flares off, and you've got to double. You can do the wrong things and get the right outcome. Yeah. Same thing true in business, right? You can do all the right things and not get the outcome that you want and all the wrong things and get lucky. Yeah. What's that swing path? Right. And so that's one of the things that like when I'm working with a company, it's one of the first things I'm looking for is what's our swing path here? Right. In the sale, from a business standpoint, from a macro standpoint, what's that path that we're looking through that says we're on the right course that can then guide our approach?

38:05I love that. I talk about that all the time. Very cool. That's great. Right. When you're thinking through that hypothesis driven growth and that concept, has there been a hypothesis that you were very adamant was going to lead to a positive outcome, but it might have went the wrong way? Is there any examples that you have around that? So, you know, one of the things that's nice about a hypothesis approach is is you're never certain. So you're you're acknowledging the lack of certainty in in the prediction that you're making. But yeah, I can tell, this probably would have been about 10, 11 years ago.

38:42I was convinced with a company now was the time to hire salespeople. Turn on the gas and hire salespeople. And about 180 days in, so two acceleration cycles in, we were seeing that the numbers weren't being driven. The numbers weren't turning. It actually led to a lesson. One of the big things that has changed in the world of sales. So if you go back 15, 20 years ago, I think you hired salespeople to generate new sales, to increase your sales velocity. Right. I think today you've got to build that demand engine ahead of hiring salespeople. I think, you know, finding that element. And so that was a hypothesis.

39:23Right. And again, because it was a hypothesis, we had certain objectives and metrics to put in. Yeah. How are we judging it? We didn't go out. We were still in the ramp up phase of what we were doing. And we learned pretty quickly that, you know what, we weren't ready for that. Right, right. We were able to reapply the dollar somewhere else, reposition the salespeople that we hired. Right. And then generated, got back on track. I love that. Is there ever a time where someone gets through the cycle and they're like, we just need a little bit more time? We could do it. We might be able to, like, even though the metrics are not there.

39:58And then what happens then? And what would be your advice? Is it you set the agreement, the metrics are associated with the hypothesis, you got to the completion. It is what it is, or do you run another experiment? I think you run another experiment. I think, you know, the nature of the acceleration cycle, you know, I wish things were black and white. Right, right. And, you know, especially as a business gets bigger and gets more complex. I know this is one of the challenges that I've had to deal with as a CEO. Yeah. The easy decisions never reach your desk. Mm, true. There are certain things, yep, this is the right thing to do.

40:34No, this is the wrong thing to do. Right. Those things rarely get to the board. Right. By definition, when you're dealing with the organizational questions, they're wicked problems. They're questions and problems that don't have solutions to them. They have trade-offs to them. Right. And so one of the things that I, and I know one of the pushbacks I get when I talk to companies about acceleration cycles is we barely have time to do the annual planning that we're doing right now. You want us to do this four times per year. Right. And what you discover is when you do it four times per year, it takes less time than when you do it once per year because you're not making the big decision.

41:16You're making small adjustments. So again, the question to me isn't so much were you right or wrong? As it is, what did we learn? Right. How do we apply that? Yeah, I like that. So we're running that next experiment. And the beauty of 90 days, and there are certain companies, there are some companies on, you know, hyperscaling, fast growth. I would tell you 90 days is too long. Right. They're on one week or 30 day cycle. Right. Right. But for most businesses, that 90-day cycle, 90 days is not so long that if you're wrong, you're going down the alley to the dead end. You've got the time to adjust.

41:58Right. So I would say, okay, so what did we learn? What's there? How do we apply that? Right. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again and expect a different result. Yeah. So what's the adjustment that we're making? How do we apply that to the next experiment? Right. Doug, for an early sales leader, like someone's listening to this, this might be their first role. They're at a high growth company and they're like, I don't even know where to start. I've been inside a few orgs, but like as a full leader, everyone's looking to me for the guidance on what our system should be, how we should leverage this technology.

42:31I'm getting all of these requests for approvals. What's your advice to a early sales leader? They've been given this privilege of leading a group of people to achieve some massive success, but they don't know what to do. Like, what's your advice to them? I think the way you frame the question is the first right step. Right. Understand I've been somewhere where we had success. Right. But just because it works where I was doesn't mean it's going to work here. Right. So so be open to that. Absolutely. Start with the playbook that, you know. Mm-hmm. Document that playbook. The most powerful exercise we do with companies is we map out their customer acquisition process.

43:15Right. From how do they generate interest all the way to signature to renewal. Map that out. By mapping it out, A, you're going to find out, well, a lot of things could happen here. Okay, this is an area of ambiguity. This is something that we need more learning on. Right. Right. As you begin to do that, you'll begin to see what are the patterns. But I would say that the most successful leaders are better at recognizing patterns than those that aren't as successful. So pay attention to the patterns. Establish that hypothesis. That's the other thing that a hypothesis does is it brings a level of humility.

43:56more businesses fail because the owner was so convinced their idea was the right idea. Right. That they fail to listen to the market giving them feedback saying, you're close, but new bit over here today, right? And we'd be really interested. Right, right. So take that learning posture, establish what, even if you do it just yourself, even if you're not ready to share it with your team because, hey, they don't have the right mindset. Right. Where do we want to be in 90 days? You know, establish your own acceleration cycle. Where are you going to be in 90 days? Why do you expect to be there? What are the two or three most important things that you're doing that are going to get you there?

44:37I think that's another place where we get ourselves into trouble is we try to do 10 or 15 things. Right, right. Rather than let's get two or three things going. Yeah. Then add one thing to that. Yeah. Then add one thing to that. Right. And take that approach. I like that. That's awesome. Do more with less. And I don't mean have less of what you're doing, but focus on less and do more with that less. Focus is your superpower. And the thing that kills you is if you lack focus, if you fragment your focus too much, that's what kills velocity more than anything else. Let's go there for a little bit.

45:15So velocity and speed, those are two things you talk about often. When an organization is thinking about their growth and their trajectory, or even a sales leader, and they're thinking about the org that they're creating, where should they be leaning? Speed, velocity, both, velocity more? Like what's your take on both of those concepts and how sales leaders should be thinking about them? So real quickly, let's talk about what the difference between speed and velocity is. Okay. They're very similar concepts. But speed is movement without direction. Speed is a question of how fast am I moving? How fast am I going?

45:51Right. Velocity brings a direction to it, brings a vector to it. So I'm now going towards something. It's as simple as the difference between how fast am I going and how long does it take me to get there? Right, right. Stephen Covey talked about it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as if I'm on a super bullet train from Boston to Miami, I'm going really fast. Right. But if my destination was Missouri, my velocity is right. Right. So to me, the game is all about velocity. Okay. Yeah. The game is all about how long does it take us to get there? And that's why I talk about doing fewer things and focusing on and running fewer experiments, not more experiments to be able to see what's happening.

46:39One of the traps that gets us into place, you know, the whole we talk about AI, you know, it's easy to get lost and to have fear of missing out. And if you go on LinkedIn or something like that, everyone's got it figured out except you. So you jump in and you throw this application on and that application and you connect your MCP to a cloud and you go headless. And it's like, okay, now, what are your, and this is why key metrics are so important. What are the metrics that matter? How are we moving those metrics? Right. I had a conversation with a client who said, we need to generate some key metrics to assess whether AI is driving return.

47:24Right. So what are some AI key metrics that we can start tracking? Right. And my question to him is, why would the metrics be different than what drives the business? Right. It's true. Right. So if we're looking at deal velocity, how fast do deals move through? Is AI helping us move things through faster? Right. That's it. If we're looking at deal capacity, how many deals are being generated? How many deals are being managed? Right. All those things that drive our business right now, the more we can understand that, the more we can look at, are we moving those metrics? Right. Rather than, are we just throwing more things at our team to do?

48:03True. You know, all we're doing is cranking up the miles per hour on the treadmill. Right. And we're running faster and faster just to keep pace. I love it. That's awesome. Doug, if folks want to hear more from you, learn more from you, where should they go? Best place is check out liftenablement.com. It's got our blog. It's got a couple different podcasts that we have. I host the RevOps show where we talk about RevOps ideas. Love it. LinkedIn is another place. You can find me, Doug Davidoff, on LinkedIn. But those are probably the two best places. I like it. And I'll include some links all throughout the show notes so folks can check it out as well as the book.

48:38Doug, thank you so much for coming on. I'm really appreciate it. And thanks for sharing your take on RevOps, revenue acceleration and more. It's really been great to read the book, but also a great chance to connect with you one-to-one and have this conversation. So thank you. Thank you, Ross. It's been great. All right.