20Sales: 12-Week Step-by-Step Framework to Crush Every Sales Quarter | Moving from SMB to Enterprise: How and When | Verticalised Sales Teams: Why They are a Gamechanger and How to Build Them with Ben Fiechtner, CRO @ Clari

21:27Do I have enough pipe coverage? All the things we talked about, but like the last piece of it is, what's my pipe coverage? What's my historical pipe coverage? What's my historical pipe by stage? same time last quarter, same time last quarter last year. Those types of things where you're just really trying to understand the help of your business. I think Convert Week 6, I'm looking at Stalled Pipe, I'm looking at Pipe that's been in a certain stage for a certain amount of dates. I'm looking at all those things of like wearing the med pick questions who I have holes. Close, right of course is the last three weeks of like just making sure what deals are in commit that haven't talked about budget.

21:58Don't have MSA sign, have an exchange files, aren't at the right level from the key stakeholders or shareholders, whatever it may be. and then churn is the dreaded C where you're looking at throughout the time. In software, you can't do unnatural acts typically to get you to renew, unless then call it three to six months. So you're always looking Q plus one plus two and looking further out depending on the week. And when you have more time to be really, really smart about seeing around corners. So we will create, convert, close, and churn. What's cool to do in Convert Wow. So one, you have all the stats to say where deals stalled and some of that can be CRM hygiene, hopefully that's what it is and it's not lack of operational rigor.

22:36I think where we see a lot of this is one we use MedPick internally and making sure we're asking the right questions on a forecast call. And the interesting thing we deployed is actually all my leaders now record their forecast calls. I listen to the smart summary Sunday night. So instead of going to the forecast call to say, hey, we still good on that deal. It's I know my enterprise sales leader has risk on three of her five top deals. I know her number. I'm going to dig in specifically on the three areas that those deals are stalled. Maybe it's legal, maybe it's security, maybe it's we haven't built the right champions.

23:04Whatever it is, but I think what you're aggregating those pieces, in the convert part of the bulk of the quarter and the heavy middle, you are absolutely focused on where the holes of these deals and not to beat the people up. But more specifically, like how do we get the weight of the company behind whatever they need to help close that deal? What tools and processes do you use in the convert phase to move deals down pipe? It's clear for me as a forecasting platform is as a CRO you have a gun to your head every day. You don't have enough hours in the time and as a founder you feel the same way.

23:34So all I need is give me the signal to where the gap in my businesses and a lot of times it's on the career are on the convert side to your point. So if I then go into the convert I can look at call recordings I can look at sales engagement I can look at med pick questions I can dig into the deal review to say hey these ones are stalled or at risk because hopefully kill it. Clare is saying, look, these are the five that are not going to close. And then I know where to go. And then your job as a sales leader is pretty natural, I think, for most people to help understand where that deal is at, how you can help and then move on from there.

24:03So that's one, the tooling to the process to just make sure stuff doesn't fall through the gaps, but ultimately just to try to focus your time for the signal to noise. How do you advise founders on leveraging the team to work more together to close the deal? What do you do in those cases? Is it ever like Ben you went to you know Wisconsin this guy's a Wisconsin guy like coming on this cool talk about Scani and Just build that rapport so it's a little bit more natural. Is that it? So I think it's really hard to get a team to work together well in a deal that isn't a good team to begin with and this may be To a theory all but I think about it more of like hopefully you've built great cross -functional Relationships and my job is a CRO to be tight with product tight with marketing tight with the CEO and have those open and honest relationships so it isn't, hey, this is what I need specifically for this deal for Harry.

24:50It is more a natural thing that always happens of, hey, this one might need a product roadmap. This one might need some marketing love. This one might need whatever. Like, if you don't have that trust in that foundation set up up front, it's really hard, and it's really obvious, and there's the jokes we've all made of when certain sales teams show up with 16 people in the room. It's because they don't work as a fricking teaching, right? And those that do can show up with three and say, yeah, we got each other's backs and we can and interchange roles. So I think I take it back a step further of like I think my job as a CRO is to kind of be the glue for the company for the customer -facing efforts to make sure we are one unified front.

25:23Convert, I have so many where I'm on the board of and they're like yeah, you know, honestly, they just said it slipped to next quarter. They love us, they love us, man. But it just slipped to next quarter. How do you respond when someone in your team says that? I hopefully at that point you've gone through like who's the decision maker? What is their decision criteria? What was the compelling event? Is this budget in funded? the traditional med pick questions and you'll know pretty quick digging into one quick one on one with a seller like if they actually did their homework or if they just trusted their champion and they do have a great relationship but they didn't actually help them sell internally.

25:55I think there's a reason all these sales methodologies exist. It's because if you do the homework nine times at a time it does work and I think a lot of it is just doing the right research and asking the right questions. What are the biggest reasons deals don't close? candidly is you don't understand the client's buying process. And why I say that is usually the deals that don't close are the deals that are commit that are the ones that are most painful, where hey we're 75 % likely to be chosen, where the vendor of choice, whatever it may be, like then it really is just a process problem that you didn't truly understand with that person had to do internally, but I think specifically for me the most painful ones are the commit, which is I think coming back to not understanding the buyer's internal processes to get things talk to me about churn.

26:36When you look at this, the hardest thing is also the relationship between CS and sales. We do the close three and then we think about four churn. And often it's because I close band and then I throw you over to, you know, whatever on CS. And it's like a terrible handoff. How do we think about creating great interplay between sales and CS to make sure implementation adoption is great? Back to your earlier question. A lot of it has has to do with selling the right way. So if you're selling the right way and looking at the ideal construction, looking at when someone wants to be live, truly understanding the process, rather than just saying, here's a sexy widget by it, but you've mapped out their journey based on business impact and complexity of the implement.

27:14You understand upfront in pre -sales, what they're going to do and what they need to do. It's a hell of a lot easier to hand that blueprint over to customer success and have them pick it up like they've been along for the ride the whole time. Then if it is, hey, Harry, I have this great product that's going to solve all these issues, but we don't actually do a thorough sale. That's never going to work in general regardless of how great your CS team is like you have to have a very thorough and Outcome -based sale I guess from the beginning to make sure that your customer success team is set up for success So we have these but the speed of which you go through them is going to determine a lot and that is often determined by the size of the contract All the size of the deal.

27:52Yep I would love to discuss the kind of transition from say smaller commercial agreements to enterprise agreements much larger deal Yes, what are your biggest lessons in terms of what it takes to grow from smaller commercial to large enterprise accounts? So and I think I was fortunate enough, like I started my career actually at Salesforce as a commercial AE and then I got fortunate enough to move to the enterprise team and become a global account manager. Honestly I looked at actually the move from commercial to enterprise and it was funny, I sat down with my AVP at the time and he said Ben you got to treat this account like 80 little accounts.

28:25It's a big global conglomerate, they have multiple different PNLs, they have multiple different regions and if you just treat them all like little commercial accounts and do the homework for each and solve each of their problems, it'll bubble up one day and eventually you'll drive a big enterprise license agreement. So long way to wait if thing for me is like it's the same game, it is just different stakes in terms of the number of internal stakeholders and folks that you have to have your back and help you to get things done and then obviously external stakeholders, it's a lot more complex to sell to a 300 ,000 person company than a 300 person company.

28:54But I think that the process and the motion should be the same for the best companies of the world. Can the process and motion be the same? You're a CRO. Resource allocation is one of your core roles. You cannot allocate the same resources to a 5K ACV as you can a 500K ACV. How do you think about mapping that out? And does that get more challenging in a world of PLG? Well, the country is probably smaller. That's totally fair. And I think what I meant is more the motion. So I think hopefully I'm doing a solution selling motion. and I'm understanding the clients problems and providing my point of view, I'm showing them how I uniquely solve it.

29:28I'm doing creative deal construction, that's a win -win. If I'm in enterprise or commercial, of course there's the complete long tailed that hopefully you can set up some type of self -serve because costs of sale and all those fun things, but 100%, like given the complexity of the internal stakeholders, the external stakeholders, you're going to need more people and more capacity and more yield on the biggest companies in the world, which I think is pretty common for most places. I was gonna say, how do you think about it? like it is trial and error. I've seen so many times like your favorite salesperson or the loudest squeaky wheel, right or whatever, is going to ask for the most amount of resources and sometimes you trust it, sometimes you don't.

30:02I think there's a million different thoughts about how we actually resource these things correctly and it's a lot of it is trial and error and never bringing too scared to be iterative of we got to change especially the company our size of like we make decisions based on where we think there is the most propensity to buy and there is the biggest opportunity. But stuff changes and things happen and you've got to be willing to iterate and move folks around like without causing too much disruption How do you think about when's the right time to invest in sales enablement? It's a little bit of like an insider's game and for product that found it's like sales enablement When should they start investing in it?

30:35I think if you hire the right sales team sales enablement not that becomes an afterthought But I think a lot of folks think about and I get asked this question a lot of sales enablement I'm like I read something the other day that was physician start listening after 18 seconds and that's not a knock on doctors. It's just like, if you talk for more than 18 seconds, people are likely turning out. So when you do these enablement webinars and you're saying, hey, it's a medatory two hour session every Friday, we're gonna talk about product sales process. You fall asleep. If I am a good FLN, and if I am empowered and accountable to drive all of the micromoments, and we say, Harry, we just got off this call.

31:10Here's the three things you could do better. Help me understand what I could have done better. Like, and actually create more of a culture of accountability and feedback. Back, I have found that drives a hell of a lot more enablement in those micromo moments, then like the big overall SKOs, the weekly webinars. You have to do some of that, but I think it's really, really, really be measured about it, and specifically for a startup. You're probably all in the same office, you probably all talk a thousand times a day, you probably go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. I don't think you need formal sales enablement at that point, you just need really, really, strong sales leaders that think about accountability and enablement as part of their job.

31:43What do you think startups get most wrong as they try and scale from smaller to larger enterprise accounts? I think it's a big bet, right? And at Clary, we looked at enterprise versus commercial, and I think we said, hey, we've the most sophisticated forecasting tool, so we should move more capacity into the enterprise. But it was a big strategic decision at the board level. I think a lot of folks go to enterprise because they say, hey, there's more money there. And that's always true, but I think you have to find your product niche, and the unique problems your customers have and how your product solves it, is where I would spend and put my chips.

32:15And I've found her friends that are saying like, we want to be Jenny I for very small startups. We don't want to deal with the biggest companies in the world because we can't build the capacity that they have. And I think that's a very intelligent decision. So Stevie, the CRO Vanta is also in 20 ,000. So I work with her closely. And she always says that actually you can stress test moving into enterprise more reasonably or without such investment than people think. Can you dip your toe into an enterprise motion without having it be a big company wide bet? Yes, I think you can. What I meant is if you're shifting your capacity to enterprise, you'd better be very, very sure of it.

32:50Even the biggest tech companies in the world, when they're calling on the other biggest tech companies in the world, you're going to have different requirements. They are a special snowflake. You're going to have to invest R &D dollars, which most startups and most earlier stage companies don't have the capacity to do on the development inside. So I think to her point, it's a great one. If you test it with, hey, I'm going to go after name big company X, Y, or Z. And if it requires a huge shift in my roadmap, you're going to have to give up stuff that you were planning on developing, which I think is the hardest part for earlier stage companies.

33:20One thing I've noticed that really increases speed is much tighter product marketing and verticalization. You're able to build a brand in a much tighter community. Can you help me out? What are some of your biggest lessons in terms of building vertical teams? When it comes to product marketing and messaging and I think Salesforce is the absolute master at this, if I talk about bits and bytes and features and functions that are relative to your individual problem, like you're going to lose. I think for us, when we talk to MedDevice companies, we show up and talk about forecasting the way of creating Word, Closed, and churn and they're like, we're a consumable company.

33:56So we had to relearn how to actually talk to MedDevice companies and really understand like, oh, okay, like you're not forecasting in the way that we are in terms of true B2B opportunities, you're actually forecasting in how many syringes or how many whatever they're going to go through on a daily basis. How do you reframe this and help you track that in a more accurate way? So, extremely long way of saying, talk the language of your client, understand their unique problems and how you can uniquely solve them. And sometimes you can't. Right? And I think for earlier stage companies a little bit is, yeah, it's always fun to go after the JPMC's, the bank, the more ingredients, the biggest banks of the world, but sometimes you're not a good fit.

34:29So play where you fit well. And that's been, I think, a big thing I've learned through the last three steps. How early can you verticalize? Is it only when you're huge or what's the lesson on timing? This is a great debate that I've had many, many times as I've verticalized teams. I think unless you have a verticalized product, it does cost money, right? And I remember a Salesforce exec had a sales telling me when we started healthcare, he's like, I'm expecting you guys to actually shrink this year and then grow exponentially, but it costs money and it is an investment because it is harder to scale across a bigger geography.

35:04So I think you have to be willing to take that if you're a certain size company. I don't understand why it's harder. Like product marketing is easier. What of mouth is quicker? Product resonance is better. You're understanding of the customers better. Why is it slower? I wouldn't say it's slower. And I'm a violent proponent of verticals. I think folks would just say it's more expensive because I can't take a banking expert and put them into healthcare. And there's not as much abilities that are designated hitters or can play every position on the field like your CSM team S to understand it your SC team S to understand your a team S to say so there is an added investment there plus you're specializing your messaging versus if you have a broad base message that applies to everybody it's a little bit easier from a product marketing perspective but I violently agree with you I think when I look at the CROs I talk to those that have sound vertical strategies are the ones that are feeling the least amount of pain throughout this macro climate because I think they have it nailed and and I think those with vertical approaches are actually winning right now.

36:01Who do you think has the best vertical sales strategy today? I'd ask you that first. I think you talked to a lot of folks. I would actually say a company that we just invested in actually, this is German business called ALO. And it basically takes on light speed and toast for payments providers for restaurants. And they have a vertical sales strategy for ethnic restaurants. Ethnic restaurants are basically anything that's not your domestic restaurant. They have a vertical sales strategy where they send in a Chinese person into Chinese restaurants, Taiwanese person into Taiwanese. Why? Because people want to buy from people who are like them.

36:33And when you're in a neutral slash foreign country like Germany or Italy or France or Spain, a Chinese person or an Italian person will instantly have so much more engagement when that person comes in speaking their language. Instantly you are 9 out of 10. That's fascinating business concept, by the way, and good investment on you. So I think a lot of folks that have the dedicated vertical strategies and specifically vertical solutions are the ones that are persevering the best I should say with the macroeconomic conditions. I actually think you should do it as soon as possible. I think people if they could can learn verticals pretty quickly.

37:06You learn by speaking to people by doing that, that's my qualification and actually you can dip your toe in the water too in the couple of core verticals and so I think do it as early as possible. We've spoken a lot about the process and everything that's involved. We've kind of jumped the step of you actually you need good people to make all of that happen. Just in terms of hiring, I want this to be like a coffee way you're advising me. How do I hire great sales people? I think for me how I think about sales people and another cheesy alliteration, I think about it to three lenses, attitude, aptitude and authenticity.

37:41And they all kind of mean a little bit of different thing, but I think those are the three things that I care the most about. I care less about experience, I care less about the role at X, I care attitude in any sales organization, you're going to have problems and you look at them as opportunities. How do you test that attitude? I think two things. My favorite interview question is somewhat testing for growth mindset and what we should ask this for the podcast. Harry, you've been wildly successful. What's the number one reason you haven't had more success? So most salespeople will say, I didn't have the right territory.

38:08My quota was too big. I didn't have a product that customers resonated with. You're immediately not hired. If you say I honestly have it struggled with X, Y, or Z, or I'm really working on X, Y, or Z, I then know you probably have a growth mindset that you're self -aware enough to know that you're not perfect. What percent of the time do people say something that's self -aware about themselves versus it was actually the segment, it was the price, it was the error. Surprisingly enough, it's probably 60 to 70 % of the time. Sales people will say something that was outside of their control. Wow, okay, so that's a quick discolification.

38:42Yeah. Okay, so we have attitude there with that. Any other questions that has for attitude? You can tell on folks like, yes, you're boasting about yourself a little bit on an interview, but I think the other piece on that attitude is how curious are they about the company? And nine times a 10 with like, I'm brutally honest and not a sales pitch, but I'm saying, hey, here's all of our awards. And you'll tell really quickly of like, they scared and they want to have a perfect quota and a perfect territory to jump into. Or are they looking at it as an opportunity and things I can actually change and I can stand out with whatever problems I may have.

39:10It's similar for me when investing. I, to test Astute, I always want to see an entrepreneurial mindset super early, because it's the biggest correlation with YouTube. So I always say, how did you first make money? And there's two answers. One is I started selling T -shirts when I was at university and no, Joe said, and it happened and I learned this. And the other is, oh, I came out of Cambridge and then I went to McKinsey. Yeah. Big difference in terms of the attitude early. Okay. So we have that in terms of Astute aptitude. What are we looking for here? Yeah, aptitude I think is, are you being too actually curious?

39:40This you can figure out really quickly to interview two, one, it's amazing to me how many candidates don't ask questions or they ask, hey, what are the nepses in the process and they don't come like, this is your one time to interview me too, right? And interview our company and make sure you're pushing there. What questions should candidates ask? Are there any generally speaking that you should ask? I did this the other day. I went on chat GBT and I said, what are the most popular questions? And it's amazing to me how many people do the same thing and they ask those questions. So I'm not gonna answer that.

40:06I think the thing is is like you should ask genuinely what you're concerned about and what you authentically care about. Sales people need to be authentic to connect with the person on the other end of the line. If they're not sharing what they really care about in that interview and they're asking like, what do you think the biggest growth lover is for Clary? Like shut up, no one cares at that point, right? Like, let's be honest, if you say, hey, my favorite interview question, I asked all the time, like, Harry, what's the one thing you change about your company? Nine to 10 to 10, you'll catch people flat footed and they'll share the real opinion about what they care.

40:35I think to me on the intellectual career aspect, you have to have it on your product, you have to have it on your space, you have to have it on your customer, and you have to be authentic about it as the last eight. And if you're not sure up in an interview process saying like, hey, I really need this amount of, I don't care what the question is, ask what's authentically you. Is it challenging when you have a candidate who's just purely money most of the cases? If you work up and I'm like, badness and I'm not that insatiable, I don't really give a shit about forecasting. I will close dollars and I'm a machine closing.

41:01I love the sales game. No, you can start with something. I can start with nothing. If they check all the other boxes, I have no problem. If money is your number one motivation. And I think most sellers try to hide it, and there's nothing wrong with that. And as long as you're authentic about what your reasons are, it helps me understand how you're going to potentially fit in the culture and be how I can help you stay motivated. The lucky thing is venture capitalists aren't money -motivated, so I don't have that often. Or that about you all. What's the best question you've been asked by a candidate?

41:32My favorite question, and almost every conversation I have, is, is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should have? And that's a good catch -all for the end of an interview. I think that a lot of times we'll get me to say, yeah, or no, right? Like it's kind of a soft close before the close. So that's a question. I think I ask a lot of clients at the almost the end of every client conversation, and I think the same thing for interviews too. What skill that you're slightly cautious to admit has been the biggest contributor to your success. Two things that I think a lot about. I think one earlier on my career was the fear of failure.

42:03For sure, like I was very much motivated to say, I can't lose it anything and I'm gonna outwork, out hustle, do everything within my power to make sure I don't lose. Let's talk to someone actually our CEO the other day about this of like, on a bike, if you try to pass me on a bike when I was 30, 10 years ago, I would throw up trying to pass you. I couldn't let it happen. I was that competitive and everything I did or ping pong or silly things. And I think that was a big thing for a while. And there's a motivation there that's like a competitive drive. And then second piece I think is like, I don't wanna let people down.

42:33I think one that's hopefully make me be a great or decent people leader I should say. But also like the impact you're gonna hopefully have with clients if you think that lens of like, I wanna make sure they walk away from this in a healthy spot. Is another thing that I'm somewhat embarrassed to make because that don't wanna be like a people pleaser. I don't wanna be that person and say that I'm like, so insecure that I'm always worried about how people think about me, but I think a lot of times it is, I really, really don't want to let people down. I don't want them leaving with a great taste in their mouth, regardless of any conversation, interaction, purchase, whatever it may be.

43:05Listen, I can do feedback review. I think from all the conversations I had before, your biggest triumph is your biggest weakness, which is like your authenticity and kindness. It's easy to build very real relationships, but actually it means you delay some hard decisions and struggle with doing those discussions because of the authenticity and kind of kindness. It's like kindness is good and it's challenging as well. I don't know who you interviewed and who said that, but I will make sure I call them later and just size them as a way to make sure that I'm just kidding and lay into that. No, I think it's totally fair feedback.

43:36And I think it's probably the biggest development area that I have is as a sales leader, clear as kind, and I think I've gotten that, and I think I now know that, like, if I'm direct with you Harry, and I tell you exactly what you need to work on, That's actually the best thing for you. Then if I try to sugarcoat it and be nice and not be intimidated to let you down. Um, and that's a huge thing that I've worked on. I'd say over the last three to four years. Do we do take homes in the interview process? I've struggled with the role playing because I think people then overplay the acting part. And a lot of times my own team and myself don't read the prep well enough to be like, the person's actually really asking you a good enough question.

44:12We're just being jerks and not playing the role of the CFO. So I got rid of the role playing. I think the thing that we do is and that we've somewhat perfected is hopefully you come in, you're going to present an account plan or an executive point of view. So we'll pick an account that's in your patch. We'll say come in with us, you're going to act like you're prepping your boss or your boss's boss for an executive meeting. So we're playing ourselves and you're going to help understand a what the executive point of view is, what their biggest challenges are, how we can uniquely solve them and how we'd approach the meeting, which I think you learn a lot about how one sells people prep, but be back to the original first question you asked me, can they develop a strong, executive point of view that is actually unique and is pointed enough that is gonna A, get them the meeting, and B, help drive value for that client ultimately.

44:55And then what's the most common reason that wraps fuck up in the interview process? I think they're just unprepared. Wow. And if you're unprepared for an interview, like how are you gonna be for a customer call? The only thing I'm probably say is maybe that ensuing with 10 different people. And so if they're in the role, than it may be different, but I totally agree with you. You know this, and you probably, I don't know how many times you've interviewed, I've interviewed for jobs I blamely, it didn't always have interest in going after, but that's your brand. Even if I didn't want the job, I better show up really, really well so that when they think about me the next time, like I'm there, the same way with recruiters I call, I will show up prepared and have a unique point of view.

45:32I think that's just table stakes. So like the one thing you can control is your attitude and your preparation. That isn't so much to ask. Okay, so going back, we have attitude, we have aptitude and anything else. Authenticity, which I think we've talked a little bit about. I think what I've found over the time is like, I've seen a lot of performative sales people who think this is what a salesperson should act like and be like. That rarely works. To your point, there's money driven sales people. There's sales people you've met that are complete assholes, but they own it. As long as you're authentically yourself, people are going to connect with you more.

46:02And if you're vulnerable and open and are who you are, I think it's way easier to connect with others. And I think people want to buy from people like that. Final element, we get to the comp plan. We want to put ban in the team. What are the biggest lessons on creating a comp package that's compelling for sales reps? I think where we've looked at this in an example from Clary, we had Hunter Farmer sellers, and then we moved to a hybrid for the enterprise team, meaning they had both install base and that new logos. I think so often, comp plans are designed after the fact. I think the only big lesson that I'd have is, you need to decide your go -to -market strategy, And yes, that's going to have inputs from finance on margin targets, profit targets, growth targets, all of those things.

46:43Design your sales alignment, design your sales motion, and then the comp plan should come after that to reinforce those things. I think too often it's back into like, well, this is what we did last year. Let's make a small tweak versus holistically taking a step back and looking at the overall go -to -market strategy, alignment, motion, talent, and what you're trying to drive and use those design principles to design the comp plan. You said before there about the Hunter farmer. I'm just intrigued. I have Dave Kellogg, who I love as a Gaston before. And he's like, you never wanna have your farmer against someone else's hunter.

47:16How do you prevent that? By the way, I love him too. And he had a blog recently that like six bolts, I said it with my, I like the greatest career advice and like holy shit, is he good, share it with all my leadership team. The question, how do you make sure your hunter doesn't go up against your farmer or I'll get someone's farmer? I think you have to choose your segments really, really intelligently. Back to your earlier question about where do you put your pocket pass to, where it's going to drive the biggest yield for us. That was a move to enterprise. We got very, very specific of our enterprise.

47:42They ease out 100 accounts of their territory. That's never going to work. Let's be super smart about the ones we have to win and let's overstaff those. Hopefully, if you know your ICP, you know your unique solid that you have for that client base, you're going to put people in the right space and then you're not going to run into that. but it's gonna happen probably in longer -tailed businesses all the time. I want to move into a quick fire. So I say short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? This is a lightning round. I love it. What sales tactic has died of death?

48:13The pricing expires at the end of this month or end of this quarter. Use car salesmen of like this deal turns into a pumpkin on October 31st. I think people will call bullshit every time on that. What about, hey, we take our big customers to a box at Taylor Swift. We do big golf days. Does that still have things? Not always for my beer budget and champagne taste, but I mean Salesforce still responds to there's Formula One and I buy all the looks of it. There's lots of people were near you last week and having a great time. What's the biggest lesson from Uipath? Be extremely intelligent and design your sales team base on product market fit.

48:48I'm proud of that. When I joined Uipath, we were designed in geographies and I had the pleasure of running their key accounts program which called their top 100 accounts. I had banking and healthcare clients So the JPMC's, the HCA's, the signals of the world, we saw an absolute disproportionate of opportunity and we hadn't planned our capacity for that. We had peanut butter spread everything geographically wise and we said holy cow, even though healthcare and banking are our biggest baselines, it's also our biggest potential opportunity because of how our technology of the time fit in with the problems that they add.

49:19And I think as a second line leader at the time, I've made the call to help push all the chips in from my perspective, but build a coalition around me and I certainly wasn't my own doing. But it was one of those things of like holy cow, we have a unique product market fit. To your point, don't be scared of articles. Don't not dip your toe in. And we made the bet in a big, big way and it paid off. That was one where there's been plenty of times in my career where I've seen something work, but it's like, oh, that might have been an anomaly. That might have been an exception. And in that case, it was holy shit.

49:48This is really working. And we got to push all our chips in and the company rallied around it and did it. What are the biggest reasons CRS and heads of sales fallout? I think too often they come in with design playbooks or this worked at this company in blah, blah, blah, and I'm going to copy and paste it here. Instead of coming in with design principles about these are the things that I know and the frameworks that I can apply, but I'm really going to listen to the needs of this individual company or this individual sales team and what they need and design a playbook that works for them. I think a lot of times I talk to CEOs that are saying, well, I did it at this company.

50:23Why doesn't it work here? And every company is different challenges. Everybody has different unique parts of their maturity journey. And like, you got to be really, really smart about solving the problems that that company has versus bringing your old playbook to the new company. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you entered sales? Way, way back with Salesforce. It was funny. There was an exact at Salesforce that I think I thought I had to be something I wasn't because the Salesforce model was very, very uniform at the time. And he pulled me aside and just said, dude, be yourself.

50:54Like, don't get in your thoughts. Don't try to replicate what this person does. Don't be that personality. Like just be yourself, be authentically you. And that was the biggest unlock, I think, for my career of not everybody's the big performer, not everybody's the gurgarius relationship person, not everyone's the really data driven ROI specific detail oriented seller. And I think you have to play to your strengths rather than trying to be something you're not. Ben, what question did I not ask you that I should have asked? Well played, Eric. Well played. I've done 3000. You get relatively good at this.

51:27You've done 3000 by guess? Holy cow. I'm not that young anymore. I think you're pretty young, Miss, and the mile I've read. You look great. Thanks, Steve. You get Zoom filters work well. What is the secret to a happy marriage? Aptitude, attitude, and authenticity. Same. The biggest thing I would say at marriage is be authentically you and share exactly what your feelings are at? I think as I've gotten older, I've spent a lot more time investing in the marriage as much as I have in my career. How do you invest more in a marriage? Does I date night? What does that mean? Yeah, no, I think it, look, how many CROs I talk to, if they're CEO called, they immediately would be like, Harry, hang on one second, I gotta take this.

52:05If your wife calls, how many people do I know that do that? Very few. It's certain high -powered positions. So I think it's one thing of like, be honest with yourself of where your priorities are at and actually put the parameters in place to make sure your prioritizing your spouse, your kids, your partner, whatever it may be. And I think put the same effort into it. The same way where a lot of times, like, you know, you're on the road for two straight weeks, you get home Friday night. The first thing you want to do is have a glass of wine and just sink into the couch. You got to show up the same way you did for the client at 8 AM as you did for your kids at 6 PM.

52:33And I think that's probably a lesson that I've had in the last five years. It took me a long time to make sure that I was putting as much effort into my personal life as I was my professional life. That's hot. That's pretty hot. What's funny is I served my career in general electric and I remember we had a round table and it was the same thing back to the interview questions of like people asking questions like what's the biggest growth level for G .E. Capital and email there's 12 lists in the room stopping is like why is it one of you asked me like how often do I see my kids and he Goes candidly and this was kind of ways into your point He's like if you want my job I schedule time on outlook with my kids.

53:04I'm on a private jet. Yeah, it's awesome But I'm on a jet 272 days a year so you all want my job like that is the reality of what you had a face now That was circa early 2000s, like 90s. So I hope it's changed a little bit with the world of Zoom. And I do think like, look, the nice thing by being in sales is you do own more of your calendar. I am at home taking this call. I can hang out with my kids for 30 minutes at five to six o 'clock and jump back on later. So you have more flexibility in this day and age. But listen, I've loved doing this. Thank you so much for putting up with me and my wayward questions.

53:36But seriously, you've been fantastic. Harry, it was a pleasure. And I'm super happy that we had the time to do this. I just loved doing that show with Ben. I started these vertical shows because I wanted to give the most granular tactical advice to founders to really implement in your business. I think we did that with the framework illustrated today and you can watch the full episode on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 2 -0 VC. But before we leave you today, we need to talk about our sponsor for the day. Clary, Clary is an industry leading AI -powered revenue platform that is purpose -built to help companies optimize their end -to -end revenue process.

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54:47As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible 20VC episode coming this Monday with David Khan, partner at Sequoia.