winning_more_deals__how_a_global_sales_team_overcame_customer_indecision_at_scale

Speaker 1: [00:00:06] Hey, everyone. We will just give it a couple minutes here. Thank you for joining us. We'll get started here in just a few minutes. Let people come off of their previous calls and get into the new one. So thanks for joining us. Hey everyone. Thanks for joining. We'll get started here and maybe about. We'll give it 60s and get going here. Thank you for joining us on a bright, not so sunny Thursday morning here in Chicago. Anyway. It's, you know, April. And so it's gray and not not quite warm enough, but you know, that's what we've come to get used to.

Speaker 2: [00:02:16] It looks sunny in Boston.

Speaker 3: [00:02:17] Beautiful today. It makes me remember Australia fondly because this is not Boston's normal weather. So.

Speaker 2: [00:02:29] Well we are we're facing about three days of consecutive rain, which started this morning. So I guess the only good thing is it'll get rid of all the pollen. Entirely. Yeah, right.

Speaker 4: [00:02:45] Until the wind blows again.

Speaker 5: [00:02:47] All right.

Speaker 1: [00:02:48] Why don't we go ahead and get started? Thank you all for joining. We were really excited for today's discussion. We will get an intro here in a moment, so we'll have a chance to, for you all to, to learn a little bit more about us. For those of you that I haven't met or that we don't know my name is Ted McKenna, a co-author of the jolt effect and co-founder of this company we call selling innovation. So we're excited to be with you all. And really excited mostly to be able to share with you the story here from these, these these, these gentlemen, these leaders and the broader team at Veeam. Veeam, for those of you that don't know, is a leading software provider in backup and recovery highly progressive organization and have done really terrific job out there in the market. And we're honored to be able to, to work with them and share their, their story today. Let me just kind of take you through a quick run of the show, if you will, an agenda for today's discussion. And then I'll cover a little bit of housekeeping. And then we'll kind of get into some intros. So we will start with intros. We'll talk a little bit about why jolts and why sort of tackle indecision in general. And why is that? Why was that a priority for the team and what they saw as they kind of got into it? We'll talk about their approach to the rollout, which is pretty unique, I think, and really smart about how they approached it.

Speaker 1: [00:04:09] And then, of course, we'll tackle lessons learned from the program, things that they're taking away, changes in behavior that they're observing, outcomes that are, that are that they're tracking with the caveat that we're still a little early ish in terms of the rollout itself. The broad rollout was this past January. So we've got some, some early returns, but curious to, to hear their their answers on that front. And then of course, we should have plenty of time for Q&A towards the end of the, of the discussion. We will say just one note here. We're not going to provide any deep or really any basic overview of jolt itself. We're just going to assume that if you're on the call with us today, you sort of either read the book, you're familiar with the research, perhaps you've even been through or worked with us on adult training. If you do have any basic questions about the research or about the training, feel free to reach out to us separately. If you go to jolt.com or selling innovations.com, you'll see some detail there as well.

Speaker 1: [00:05:10] But again, we're not going to spend a lot of time there. We're going to focus more on the experience of bringing this into a global sales force and the lessons learned there. A couple other pieces of housekeeping. So we've muted you for the time being. And, but of course, we expect that there will be questions and time to answer questions later on. Just take note of those questions as we go through it, or feel free to throw them into the Q&A window there. And we'll try to get to as many as we can. If you want to just catalog them along the way, we'll just sort of got to get to those. Again, sort of one by one as best we can. Towards the end of today's session, we are recording this session and a replay will be made available after for any colleagues of yours that weren't able to join today. So without further ado and without with pass the wind up portion of today's discussion, we'll get into intros. Why don't I start Mike, with with you. And we'll go Mike Shiva I'll take it back. And then. And then Dave. So, Mike, if you don't mind, just maybe just a brief, you know, whatever you'd like to share just about your background and, and who you are.

Speaker 4: [00:06:17] Sure. Thanks, Ted. And thanks, Dave, and appreciate the opportunity to share our insights with the audience. My name is Mike Blanchett. I'm the vice president of sales acceleration at Veeam. I've been here for just over eight years. Prior to that, I spent about six at VMware and nine at SAP. And during all that time have been in a sales enablement or sales development role. And prior to that was a sales person and sales manager. And we've, we've spent the last year or so working with you guys on what, what? Shiv and I both felt was a pretty critical augmentation to our sales process and and, and yeah, it's been, it's been a great journey so far.

Speaker 1: [00:07:00] Great. Thank you. Mike. Shiva.

Speaker 3: [00:07:02] Awesome. Hey, Mike, you did an ad that your ex Broadway.

Speaker 5: [00:07:06]

Speaker 3: [00:07:07] Theater major and all of that good stuff. So I'll I'll leave that for you. Hey, everybody really excited to be here. My name is Shiva Pillay. My accent is Australian because that's where I was born. I now live in Boston. It is very coincidentally, a very sunny day today. I run sales for the Americas. The SVP and general manager, our career sales person have services background as well. So always been involved in trying to drive value creation for customers. And making sure our customers get receive the best from our products and help them with decision making in that process. So it's a little bit about me. That's all I guess.

Speaker 1: [00:07:46] Well, thanks. Both. They're they're both pretty humble people. We're really privileged to be able to work with them and to have learned from them. Mike, we've known for for a long time. Maybe we shouldn't share quite how long, but going back to our days at CB, even the pre Gardner days where you know, Mike's a long time progressive leader in the space and we've even had a chance to profile some of his work in a past life. Shout out to the pipeline health calculator. In the the sap days. And Shiva, we didn't know beforehand, but of course, we've gotten to know in great depth. As he mentioned, he's got deep experience in both APAC markets and Americas markets. You know, one of the strongest leaders that we've had a chance to, to work with and just a real student of the game. So we really appreciate in general, getting a chance to, to know Shiva and to work again with Mike, but also really privileged that they're willing to, to share some of their experiences here today. Again, Ted McKenna researcher by trade and spent spent portions of my career back at CB researching sales and marketing. And a couple of years ago, Matt Dixon, my co-author on the jolt effect we were did a big study in B2B sales using machine learning that turned into the jolt effect, which we documented, wrote that out. And then we also created this whole curriculum to help teams take action on these findings. And that is our business now. We try to help teams take action on what we're seeing that high performers are doing, and how they're responding to what buyers are doing differently. So excited to share, share more about about our approach and about how that works for teams. And Dave, I'll let you take it away.

Speaker 2: [00:09:23] Hey everybody. Dave Anderson started my career in sales, but spent about 11 years at CEB and then Gartner through that acquisition spent the last five years at Vista Equity Partners on the go to market team. And then Matt and Ted convinced me to come join them on this journey last year. So excited to be here. And why don't we get into the meat of it? Mike and Shiva, you know, you kind of teed it up a little bit. This has been an important part of augmenting what you do. Tell us, you know, how do you how do we end up at this point? Right? Where did it all start? Why? Why, Joel? Why specifically jolt in your business?

Speaker 5: [00:09:57] Yeah, I might lead.

Speaker 3: [00:09:58] Off on this one, Mike. And you can clean up the mess that I make with my response. I think for me, so it was, I'll give you a very visual sort of experience. I, I've worked in the Americas a few times. This was so I was running VAPJ and had just taken on the Americas for the first couple of months. I was doing opposite hours. So it was picture this 3 a.m. there's something about the stillness of of 3 a.m. working hours. Because when you flip your working hours, there's no interruptions and running a PJA lot of deals and, and, and transactions get done by partnership having more people in the region going out and working with customers. And I know the American market is very different. Relationships are really important, but there is a much higher degree paid or attention paid to all the details that come with convincing a customer that making a decision or making a switch you know, risk, what are the fomu all the types of things that you, we, we very classically call out in the book, they're just nascent things that customers demand from and competition is high. So I was sitting and reviewing deals and do nothing seemed to be quite an answer. And it was a competitor that featured a lot more than it did in APJ. So I was like googling around. I was like, and I'm pinging Mike a note. He's definitely asleep at this point. I was like, how do we find a way to, to help teach what comes to very few as a natural reaction that they can't actually crystallize on how they take a customer through a journey of going, you are about to make a decision and almost have their hand over the back of their shoulder and say, I've got you, and I'm going to help you get through this decision so that they can champion and translate it in the rest of the business.

Speaker 3: [00:11:45] And so luck would have it. I came onto a call with Ted and I was doing my pre work and then I went to Mike. I didn't know Mike had known Ted before. And I flicked it over to Mike, who runs Sales acceleration for us globally, and said, hey, Mike, before I get moved physically to the Americas, I want to see if we can implement something like this to help give our sellers the edge that they need and more importantly, help them realize value for our customers. I, my philosophy has always been you teach sellers, you don't teach sellers how to treat customers. You teach sellers how to create value for customers. When you start creating value for customer and everything's customer related you create a great paradigm where those sellers can definitely not only take these skills from this, this job, but wherever they travel. So it's good for the seller, it's good for the team and us as a company, but most importantly, it's really good for a customer.

Speaker 4: [00:12:42] Nicely put. Trevor. Mike, I, I think the, the only thing I would add is, is that it for us as a, as I was looking at what Shiva had shared, the, the compliments that this makes to sort of off the shelf sales processes was, was pretty stark for me and, and jumped off the page into Shiva's point about being an advocate for the customer and helping them through through the decision making process, it was really clear that it was an area that we hadn't focused on in the past. And it was something that was definitely a, a really solid augmentation to, to the, the sales methodology that we have in place.

Speaker 2: [00:13:27] Excellent. Give folks a little bit a sense, if you will, you know, what specifically does it add or, and maybe I'll ask it this way. We we talk about in the research customers struggle to make that decision. Sometimes it's they're just overwhelmed by information. Sometimes they're overwhelmed by options. Sometimes they're just worried that, you know, the value that we're promising, the outcomes we're promising for whatever reason, they're not going to be able to get those give give us a sense. How does that manifest in your in your world? And is there like 1 or 2 areas that like really was problematic for you and the sellers or for the customers?

Speaker 4: [00:14:05] Well, let me take that one.

Speaker 5: [00:14:06] Yeah. Mike, why don't you tee off?

Speaker 4: [00:14:07] Sure. So, so I think there's a lot of of, in concern in the market in the space that we serve. Right. And losing your data, losing your infrastructure isn't just a problem. It can be catastrophic. And so it's logical for the customers that we're serving to to, to be concerned that making this change could be a big risk to the organization. It's not as simple as just plugging one thing in and plugging another thing in. And and so it was, it feels, it felt like to me as I was looking at the, the material that it was particularly impactful to our space. And so the, the compliment that it provided that I mentioned earlier is that there's this, it's, as you mentioned in the book, right? It's a second playbook that is very complementary to the first one, and that you still absolutely have to help a customer understand the value of making a change from where they are to where they're looking to go. But even that isn't enough. You know, an ROI on a piece of paper is just an idea until it's implemented, it's not real proof. And so helping the customers get through those those additional areas of concern that aren't product related, that aren't value related, are are just as important as helping them understand the value of making the change. And I know Shiva's got a lot of, you know, great examples of, of where that's manifesting itself and, and the different types of, of concerns that we're seeing. But for me, that was the big thing is that how complementary these two things were. And, and it was effectively new to what we were teaching the sellers prior to this.

Speaker 5: [00:16:00] Yeah. I think on my.

Speaker 3: [00:16:01] Side, if you relate it to a human element in decision on any major purchase acquisition is just you know, I was looking at buying a car. How many times do you look at it? And, you know, I don't I'm not sure I do. Nothing is a pervasive human process. So when you start, what interests me and maybe I like to blend art and science, but when you can start codifying the art piece, which is what I think the second playbook does. You start codifying like, okay, I can systematically go through the process and the mental journey for a customer. Mike made a great point. Like, you know, if you have a well established system, even if you have multiple benefits with the new system, you're someone has to put their name behind one, the investment to the outcomes. And three you know, it could be career changing for certain people when faced with those types of decisions, all of us, including myself sometimes will go maybe I'll just stick to the status quo. So how, how you can get sellers on, I think great sellers know this and figure it out very naturally. They couldn't even explain how they do it. And then you know that great sellers are maybe 10% if that of your organization. So what was really good is this related to how I try and drive sales for customers or work with customers and was like, hey, this kind of explains a lot of the things that you didn't really know were the nascent things in your head. But indecision for a customer is such a crucial area. They're being bombarded with internal pressure, external pressure from five competitors telling you this is better. And the. And it's almost if you even put that deeper, you'll see that they're getting told that it's total doomsday if they pick one or the other and other. So they've got.

Speaker 5: [00:17:54] This.

Speaker 3: [00:17:55] Whole doomsday message across 15 different products and they're like, man, I'm very aware of all the downside risk. I'm not sure I believe all the upside risk. And so the person that gives them the most confidence through that process is where they go through. We just had a deal with one recently where we used the jolt effect customer in Canada and my VP went out and had dinner with them last night and I shared this feedback pretty candidly. We asked them why we want And I always tell our leaders, you should always ask the customer why they win for two reasons. The customer has to verbally acknowledge why you want and remind themselves. This is a great little nod there. And secondly, you get some insights to what worked. And he said, hey, the whole process, whether the executive alignment through to how you made the decision easier for us was what separated you. I know, and I asked probe on technology and he said, technology. You had some great features, but it really didn't come down to that. And so that's proof in the pudding around how you show up structured and methodically, and then how you take a customer through the decision makes such a big difference. So that was a big, big point of why this made sense to us to, to explore and invest heavily in.

Speaker 2: [00:19:10] Excellent. Well, why don't we transition to, you know, from why to a little bit of the how? Ted, you want to take us through some questions there.

Speaker 1: [00:19:18] Yeah. And I love those, those examples, you know, the, that you're talking. And this is a lot often a kind of light bulbs that there's a lot of light bulbs that go off course when we're working with teams. But I remember and this will, I think, speak a little bit to the approach because as part of your guys rollout, we kind of did what we call pre installations. We kind of had three specific cities that we, we went in across the world as a way to kind of pre install this before we had broader group. And I remember some of the discussion in a couple of those different sessions, you know, people feeling like, look, the it's almost like a double edged sword. The fact that the, the solution, the technical solution that you sell is of such value because the buyer, of course gets really excited, obviously. So. Right. And so, but it's easy for the seller to miss signs of indecision because they're sort of cloaked in very positive things. They want more demos, they want more information, they're trying to kind of weed through it. And so being able to tease apart what's hidden underneath, there are those signs of indecision. And a point about clarifying for that buyer about the way to think about that decision becomes a distinguishing characteristic for that seller. So let's get into the approach. So as I mentioned, you guys did take a pretty interesting approach. And maybe we could start with you because I know for you, it was really important to think through the role that your leaders played as you kind of got into the change management side of things. Can you share a little bit about your thinking there?

Speaker 5: [00:20:45] Yeah. So I've done a couple, you know.

Speaker 3: [00:20:47] Being a sales leader for as long as I have, you go through a couple of implementations every time with different processes and different technologies. So one thing I did is I sort of cast my mind back into when I was a leader, a field leader. How, how did adoption work for me? And one thing I noticed was, hey, if I'm part of the rollout to the bigger audience, I'm not sure as a leader because I don't have the authority on the subject and I'm learning At the same time, my sellers are. I kind of don't invest as much and and say, yeah, guys, keep doing this. It's great. But I don't talk in the language that requires you know, conversations I don't measure. And I'm learning how to do that on the fly. So challenge the team. And obviously, I challenged Mike pretty hard to help me spin up a quick install, but I took every one of my directs who are the frontline, you know, the vice presidents of America sales team and said, guys, we're going to do this 3 to 6 months before we get to kick off. And then we're going to implement this ourselves so that when we come to kick off, this is a, a learned behavior. You're already a marathon runner. If this was training for a marathon, so that when you see the rest of the team go through this process and they get to the ten mile mark and they fall a little short, you can share the experience of, hey, I did this, and this is where I struggle and this is where I go forward when you have that kind of connection.

Speaker 3: [00:22:18] You then have invested leaders that, that drive that. So we took them all out and rolled all our sleeves up and went through the process. And I think it also reminds a great tactic to help your leaders remind themselves of some of the skills because you have a lot of the, I've done this before, and I think Dave and Ted, you know, the challenger components came out. We had some passionate people. People go through their own process of, well, I like this and I like this. And then you give them that space to converge to, all right, I've had my say and now I can lock in on the process. So it was really critical for us. And I think it paid dividends because when we got to eventually the SKO, we had winds that were lined up because we were inspecting in a certain way. So that was the, the thought process on why I picked our leaders to go first.

Speaker 5: [00:23:06] Yeah.

Speaker 1: [00:23:07] I think the we'll get into the, the way this then translates into how they think about inspecting deals and sort of the lenses through which they view those those things, but totally agree in terms of the effect of that, they really did lean in and sort of roll up their sleeves. And you could then feel it when we were in the room or several rooms, I guess in, in Vegas, in terms of the experience that they've had and their ability to, to tell firsthand, here's how this works, here's how the work has worked for me. So a big value driver of that is, of course, the being able to point to the experience that teams have had with it out in the market. You know, it's not just bar charts and pie charts, but rather there's real effect with our buyer conversations. But Mike, also, you know, we, we essentially used some of those people in the, in that training for content coming out of that as a way to think about ways, ways to tailor the experience for the broader group. Can you talk us through a little bit of your thinking there? Because it was like a really some interesting and some very sort of forward leaning type work that you had us work through to make sure again, we were delivering great experience in that school.

Speaker 4: [00:24:17] Sure. Anytime we're taking on or anytime I've taken on something like this where you're introducing something that you think is going to have a material impact to the organization to approach it as a training exercise is probably the biggest disservice you can do to yourself and to the people that are participating. And so whether it's this or when we implemented our sales methodology eight years ago, the way I approach it is implementing a new business process. And what I mean by that is looking at where are the touch points beyond sales and sales leadership? How does this impact conversations with finance? How does this impact conversations with enablement and looking at all of those pieces and having those pre discussions and planning around having that all ready so that by the time to Shiva's point, the sellers are, are, are going through the workshop everyone else around them is, is it's like a warm bath, right? Like everything is comfortable and it's all there and ready and waiting. And, and to add to that, I think it's really important that you consider your audience when you're developing the content. And so a particular example for that was our channel sales team, right? Their sales motion very different than the motion for our direct sellers or the people that are dealing with, with, with customers directly.

Speaker 4: [00:25:33] And so even the nuanced tailoring of those messages so that when they're hearing. And in this case, it was Dave that was leading that session for the channel, his experience and how it works in the channel and being able to, to customize that message for them. The biggest compliment we get for things like that is, boy, that's exactly how my day is every day. Now, I know that they're aligned to that and that they're leaning in instead of sitting back going, yeah, but that's not really me. And so taking those kinds of, of objections off the table because they're in the midst of a, is this really right for me? Does this really make sense? Is this going to work for me? Making everything around the experience comfortable and relatable is is really critical. And so I know I leaned on you guys really hard around customization of content, particularly for channel, and you were all scratching your heads until we got the feedback and, and yes.

Speaker 1: [00:26:28] Yeah, no look, but it was yeah, a lot of work went into it, but I think part of that also was you guys were very thoughtful and intentional about thinking through the different teams across the globe, if you will, for, for Veeam, not just from a regional perspective, but also in terms of their roles. You know, you really thought holistically about the commercial organization. So for example, the CSA community, you know, which plays such an important role for you guys in conveying expertise and helping to, to demonstrate value for your buyers. We had a chance to, to sort of get on stage and share that story even before the broader audience. Actually, it just so happened. And I know for you, that's an important element in the partnership that you guys have in terms of the demos that we, we that you, you're providing and how they prepare for you just talk a little bit maybe about your thoughts on that application and sort of now how these teams are working together post.

Speaker 5: [00:27:26] Yeah. So, you know

Speaker 3: [00:27:29] You do a sales, I'll use the broad word, you do a sales training initiative and, you know, maybe there's 800 folks in the team. 50% of them will sit there and go, well, that doesn't apply to me. Because I'm not frontline sales carrying a bag. So to unpack that, you have to go back and say, no, we're going to ask you to train. There's two bonuses. We're going to definitely ask you to get upskilled on this skill set. So that's onus on you. I think people often miss the other part of the onus is we're going to make the training relevant to your day to day job. I think I was in a session, Dave, I think you were hosting the channel session and we came in and we had a live session with our channel team and I said, hey, you have an opportunity to jolt in the channel, which isn't a customer facing jolting exercise. This is taking the skills that you have here and applying them to the conversations, needs and drivers for the channel partners, which are indecision is a great area. Indecision, as I said, was a human element, but it surfaces in the channel. Hey, I've been selling a competing technology. I know it's easier. I always get good outcomes with customer. Or maybe I don't, but I know what I get. Because I wouldn't give out competition any, any edge in saying that they get good outcomes. But I would just say like, you then have to learn a skill of how do you jolt a channel partner? And that's different. The decisions might be somewhat economic channel economics. They might be serviceability or driving services revenue, having the ability to help them in, in, in support and premium support features.

Speaker 3: [00:29:02] So you have to take the application and apply it to each of the functions. In the SE version, there's a certain period where the SE is an architect's fit into the indecision component. They're delivering technical mastery, but then the conversation style has to be that this technical mastery makes your transition to this product easier. And sales have a different one itself. Maybe the emotional connection to indecision, if you notice, they're all different. I think when you implement, if you take the time to implement for each function one, the function feels, heard, feels seen, feels invested quickly. They don't tune out. And we got great feedback. Mike, I think you quoted that, you know, the channel team was like, hey, this is great. This really applies to us. But, but we as leaders have to make the investment on, on pivoting that training for each work. And Ted and Dave and the rest of the team were great at helping me facilitate that ask so that we landed those points. Now the teams work together and they might say, hey, we need to jolt this customer. And if you think of a football team, that's a formation for the sales team, a different formation or a route for the C team and a different route for your channel team. They all kind of know, okay, goal, goal line or the end zone is there, but we're all going to have to do something different and complementary and know where to lock in with each other. It becomes a beautiful thing. I would not set your hopes up to say that that happens day one. But but at least you've set a direction of what it looks like and start working. And work backwards.

Speaker 6: [00:30:31] Yeah. One of the.

Speaker 2: [00:30:32] Experiences that really resonated with me is, you know, if you think about back to customers being overwhelmed with options and information, right? One of the big tenets of jolt is to take that burden off of them. You know, use your discovery to have a perspective. Limit the options, make a firm recommendation, justify it right, and make that decision easier. And I'll never forget in the first session with your team, the feedback overwhelmingly was, this is great, but you need to talk to the the SAS and SAS because they are out there offering everything and talking about unlimited flexibility. And then we go and spend time with SAS, SAS and what was the feedback you need to get this in front of our sellers? Because our sellers come in and they're, you know, and then you get past, you know, SCO and now everybody's on operating on the same operating under the same premise, under the same playbook. Right. And, and they're taking that unified approach. They've got the same language. It was fun to see that in real time. So good work there.

Speaker 1: [00:31:30] And I was going to ask, just a point of clarification, when you say football, did you mean Australian rules, American football, global football?

Speaker 3: [00:31:37] Yeah, I used end zone. So I meant the non non real football version. For me, football is truly what you guys call soccer. But I'm been here long enough not to fight with Mike who's a massive Patriots and Boston sports fan.

Speaker 6: [00:31:51] Also an Arsenal.

Speaker 1: [00:31:52] And Arsenal an Arsenal.

Speaker 4: [00:31:54] Arsenal.

Speaker 6: [00:31:54] We can.

Speaker 4: [00:31:55] Win.

Speaker 6: [00:31:55] Yesterday.

Speaker 1: [00:31:58] How about renewals and post-sale? Mike, if you wouldn't mind kind of starting here again, similar to the sort of thought that went into the applying towards channel. This is a big point of emphasis about helping not just to guard against churn, but also think through upsell, cross-sell. Do you want to just talk a little bit about sort of the experience there and why that was so important to bring Joel to that team?

Speaker 4: [00:32:24] Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that buyer's remorse is very real, right? And so just because someone has made a decision to purchase something doesn't mean that they're, you've completely cracked the code and they're over all of their fear of messing up and, and all that. That's, that's not the case. And so making sure that our customer success team is aware of that and to help reinforce all the good reasons why they made that decision and help them with the adoption to make sure that they get the benefits and the, and the, the results that they're expecting from the implementation is critical so that when the renewals team is speaking to them, it's more than just, hey, it's time to renew your contract. It's, hey, I'm really glad to see you. What else have you got for us that worked so well because you were with us that it turns into, you know, another selling opportunity. And so it's it's about continuing the process, just like, you know, we tell our sellers, you know, when once the contracts signed, that's not the end of the journey. That's the beginning, right? Like you've got to get them to be excited about what's going on and be with them in that journey, particularly in a subscription subscription world. Like it's, it's really easy to decide to make changes. And so being with them all along the way is a very comforting experience for the customer. And is, is really critical to the ongoing conversations that you're having to make sure that it's not just your renewal, it's about your success and going forward. And what else can we bring to the table. And that doesn't happen if you don't help them, feel confident about the decision they made and help them get to the place that they're expecting to be.

Speaker 2: [00:33:59] Hey.

Speaker 6: [00:33:59] Yeah, go ahead please.

Speaker 2: [00:34:02] I was just going to say we got a question that came in, Adam. Thanks for that. Which I think is well timed for this. The question is, is there you know, difference in deal size, sales cycle length, right? We've talked about, you know, channel, we've talked about renewals. How do you think about jolt applying through, you know, enterprise, strategic, enterprise commercial, you know, down through inside sales SMB, give us your, your take on that.

Speaker 3: [00:34:30] I might jump on this one, but I'll say, hey, I think it's universal. I think the, you know, the difference might be I'm on the phone as an inside sales rep with an SMB customer, and I can take them through this journey in the process of a 45 minute call. Because the risk and impact to an SMB customer, the risk and indecision still exists for every person that buys or looks to buy or change the technology or anything, any buying decision. But as an SMB rep, I could say, hey, let me walk you through the process. This is why it's easy. And doing that creates a stronger connection with the customer. In enterprise, the only difference is there are multiple stakeholders. There's a you have to step back first, have a look at the influence sphere and make sure you work in a method that that you know, it might take weeks, months, sometimes a year for a large, really large transaction. But, but they, they kind of apply universally. What happens is being mindful of how you implement what artifacts you want to see from your sellers at each, each of these different stages.

Speaker 3: [00:35:32] I, you know, I wouldn't need an account plan from SMB seller, but I do need a very clear talk track of how we take them from state A to state B, make the decision, help them with their decision, and show them the value proposition. The other side on enterprise campaign, you know, we might be mind mapping how to even get into the organization, let alone figure the rest out. So but they apply universally. My advice is make sure you start thinking about what artifacts you need for each deal segment type so that so that the seller goes okay, I, SMB or lower level, I need to know these couple of things and these apply and you don't get lost in. That doesn't apply to me stuff. It's a good question because sometimes you sit there and go, well, I that doesn't apply to me. So we have to do the work to say, these are the parts that apply and how we like to see them as artifacts return to us.

Speaker 2: [00:36:22] Yeah. Mike, anything you'd add there?

Speaker 4: [00:36:23] Yeah, I very well said Trevor. I think the, the big thing is when we implemented our sales methodology, we built something that would expand and contract based on the complexity of the opportunity. And complexity isn't deal size. It's the number of people you're communicating with. That's what makes opportunities complex. And to Shiva's point that he made earlier, indecision is that's a human element that's not has nothing to do with how much money you're spending, whether it's a car or a candy bar. There's that moment of, should I really do this? And so I think it does apply very equally and very evenly, regardless of role. If I'm a hands on person that's responsible for the implementation, the stakes to me are just as big as the person who's signing the check, right? It's everything has a has a potential consequence if it doesn't go well. And so making sure everyone's comfortable with that is really important.

Speaker 2: [00:37:14] And to pull on one thing that thanks both of you. But Shiva, one thing you said is around, you know, in an enterprise space, you can be thoughtful about it, right? You've got a long time to get to know the customer. You've got time between calls to strategize. What did we hear? What how do we react to that? To your point around, you know, you, you may only have a 45 minute call. One of the things we talk about in the research is this idea of rebuttals and rebuttals. And what we mean by that is customers aren't always very open with their fears and, you know, maybe not comfortable sharing everything, but we know those are hidden. And so in an SMB world or high velocity, one of the things we recommend is say, hey, make sure your sellers are armed with what are the like two, three, four things that always sync deals and proactively get them on the table and bring that proactive solution to it so that you're not leaving it to chance because you might not get another phone call, you might want to get everything on the table in that 45 minutes.

Speaker 6: [00:38:15] Yeah, I would.

Speaker 3: [00:38:16] Phrase it this way. Some sellers know that that indecision exists. And and all of us are guilty at times of ignoring, leaning into the fire. Because it's like, hey, if I don't ask, I won't get bad news. And my encouragement always been is lean into the fire, actually lean in and show them that you have a fireman suit and you understand and you have been in this fire for a lot of, a lot of your selling life because two things happen. And customers like, well, you know what I'm thinking? One, I appreciate that. That's the psychology component. Second is, oh, I can explore my fears of this with you, which is an incredible piece of power that you can bring to a customer environment. And then lastly, you get to demonstrate some mastery. You'll be surprised if you do that even in enterprise, a 45 minute call goes a long longer than pretending to ignore five weeks of emails and stuff like that. So to me, you'll know very quick if they're going to move with you, but you're going to know through this, bringing this to the table and go, hey, if it's not you, we know other customers like this really struggle with these couple of couple of things. These are the things that you don't talk about. I think customers respect that you have integrity and authority on the subject when you start doing things like that. So short story, lean into the fire. Don't ignore it.

Speaker 6: [00:39:35] Love that. Yeah.

Speaker 1: [00:39:37] It's a sort of demonstrate mastery of the experience. I love your point on it is really a demonstration of power and the power that you get from that with them, I think is is so key. Why don't we transition? There's a, there's a question in my mind that I want to come back to if we have time around sort of multithreading, it relates a little bit to the persona question. And, and sort of how you guys think about it, but I think we'll have time for that later just to make sure we get to the lessons learned section of the story. Why don't we go there? And Dave, I'll kick it to you because I think, you know, this is of course, an important element here is and even though we're sort of still early days ish I think we've, we've, we've had enough time to sort of observe a few things. So why don't we get into that?

Speaker 6: [00:40:21] Yeah.

Speaker 2: [00:40:21] In fact, I'll read the question that just came in from anonymous. Attendee thank you, Mr. Attendee.

Speaker 6: [00:40:26] For.

Speaker 2: [00:40:28] Bringing it to you verbatim, and then we can unpack it. What proof points did you begin to witness at the seller level to know? Some of these concepts are beginning to stick. What about changes in close rates, deal sizes, things like that. So why don't we just start at the top? Like, how quickly did you start seeing, you know, sellers take to these concepts, apply them? How quickly did you start to see results and impact?

Speaker 3: [00:40:49] Yeah, pretty short impact. Like so we had two things in mind when I had the leadership group together, I said, cast your eyes forward and think about the power of standing on stage and celebrating one of our transactional deal that allowed this approach. Because I believe if I'm a seller sitting in an audience with five or a couple of thousand people, I'm like very doubtful until I see proof. And so we, we manufactured, you will have to manufacture a little bit, but picking deals that are in flight and picking a few, I picked a few in different stages, ones that were potentially, you know, completely lost in flight and large opportunities and asked my leaders to ensure that I'm competitive. So I pushed my team on with Mike to say, hey, ensure that we have the win case story that's showcased at the worldwide sales kick off. And fortunately enough, we started immediately taking tabling foam, foam, FOMO foam, and sort of the example of using three options and some advocacy on which option you wanted to a customer. We took a couple of big transactions and actually set we closed out a couple of deals that set records for the company using this methodology live so much so, and I didn't orchestrate this, but we give out eight Rolexes at the end of the year for the largest transaction, largest type of, of a various couple of metrics.

Speaker 3: [00:42:10] And two of those had used the, the jolt mythology mythology to help drive this transaction to closure. So it came out very, very nicely for us is that, you know, by tabling the options, surprisingly, the high end option was the one the customer picked not the middle option because we offered them the three options. So there was some really wonderful sound bites that I could use. When you stand up on stage and try and tell people this is something we need to do. And I would tie it back to Dave and Ted having your leaders trained early because the connection is when they're in implementing into their forecasting cadence, rhythm, deal, review rhythm, they're the ones that are going to spot the quickest action by the time it gets to me, it's probably too late. So it really worked well a couple of options to the customer and closure cycles, I think in the question said, do you see improvement in deal size and closure cycles? I said, you won't for a period of time. We're big enough business, so that will be masked. But what you will see is when you apply them very specifically and intently you'll see better things from those customers pretty quick.

Speaker 2: [00:43:21] Excellent. Mike. What anything you would add? And I guess there's another follow up question here from Mackenzie. Thank you. How much of this implementation and planning was driven by enablement? And how are you playing a key part in continuing to ensure continued success and to measure success?

Speaker 4: [00:43:41] Yeah. So I think the, the big, the big thing is that lots of sports analogies, but I think the last, the, what you don't want to do is practice your golf swing on the 18th hole of the masters, right? Like that's not the place to do it. And so in the, in the practices and in the exercises that we did, one of the things that jumped out in those pre-installs was there was a very clear willingness to want to apply this and breaking the, the paradigm of focusing on value and relitigating value and making that step to, yes, we still have to do that, but that's not what we're talking about. Right? Like value isn't in decision. And we saw a lot of that early on with some of the, the pre-installs of, you know, getting the language right, learning the learning, the new vernacular, learning, the difference between FOMO and FOMO and, and, and getting that clear. And so part of our, our team's job, as we, as we continue forward is being stewards of this to help the managers continue to adapt so that sellers can as well. And, and it will, it will be seamlessly integrated into our opportunity review process and coaching within our CRM and, and those kinds of things to make it readily available and, and, and applicable because I think one of the things that's different about jolt from a standard sales methodology is your methodology is pretty linear.

Speaker 4: [00:45:10] Like you, there's an opportunity and it works its way through the process. And you might move back and forth depending on the person that you're buying with, but indecision can pop up at any time. Things could be moving swimmingly and all of a sudden something changes. And with that change, oh, should we make this decision now or not? Can can surface. So always be on the lookout for it and helping our sellers understand that these two things are not the same. Is, is a big part of that. So we're standing up sort of a center of excellence within sales acceleration that will be the, the, the business partner to the sales leaders and the sellers and, and continue to carry that forward. So we see ourselves as a, as a continued enabler to this. And, and just driving this through all of the, the natural conversations that, that happen and not necessarily having it be a separate activity, but an integrated activity.

Speaker 2: [00:46:05] That's great. Thank you. So I got a question here. Well, I got a bunch of questions. I'm trying to figure out which one I want to dig into first. So here's a question. You sort of answered this, but would you add anything to this from from Martin? Thanks for the question. How do you feel about sales sellers or sales leaders who are still pushing the fear, uncertainty and doubt. You know, which they've been trained in, you know, for decades. Right. Is it ever appropriate to use that early or late in the sales cycle? You know, any, I guess I'd also maybe ask it a little bit differently, which is a lot of this is a cultural change as well as, you know, not just technique and, and language. There is a cultural component to this. How have you seen the teams take to this? How have you noticed that change?

Speaker 6: [00:46:57] Yeah.

Speaker 3: [00:46:58] I've been in security and data resilience for all my career. I would say there's still a place to use FUD. I think food's not bad, but if I go to a customer and say, hey, you're going to get a ransomware attack, chances are they already have. And so it's not scary anymore. Like, you know, ransomware attacked customer used to be a red letter, would wear a scarlet letter maybe 15 years ago. Right now, if I hired a CIO that hadn't gone through ransomware, I wouldn't hire them like. So you just got to step back and realize what is appropriate fear, uncertainty, doubt, and use it sparingly. I always say to my sellers, there's a difference between ambulance chasing. I I've never bought anything from anybody that's called me up when I've had a problem and said, are we there's no hey sucked in. You got compromised. I think you should buy stuff. I'm. Well, that's not where I spend my time buying. So I think you use it to say, hey, we commonly share an understanding of these bad outcomes. If no protection exists or no data resilience strategy exists, are we in agreeance? And then maybe just limit it to that and then say, well, let's talk about what benefits and things you get. But it definitely is relevant. I think over time it becomes less relevant on certain topics as they become more mainstream.

Speaker 4: [00:48:16] Yeah, I would say adding to that, knowing like it's important to listen and knowing when that makes sense versus is it going to cause more problems if they're staunchly in indecision mode? The last thing you want to do is add fuel to the fire about fear, right? So it's really important to be tactical and and clear about when when that makes sense. And, and just, just know that that relitigating the value or, or throwing more concern on the problem is not necessarily always the, the right way to go. It's really about listening to the customer and where are they and aligning to that.

Speaker 6: [00:48:59] Love it.

Speaker 2: [00:49:00] Thank you fellas. Hey, Sergio, I'm going to ask if you could retype your question with a little bit more information. I'm not quite sure how to interpret it. Are you talking about the customer risk or are you talking about internal with executives? So if you could do that, that would help. But let me throw one to to Mike and Shiva around the global landscape. You know, there's a lot going on right now with trade war, global economic really uncertainty.

Speaker 6: [00:49:27] I hadn't heard.

Speaker 2: [00:49:28] How do you see this, you know, affecting indecision, you know. And are you using strategies from the jolt effect to help customers navigate those challenges, make more confident purchase decisions?

Speaker 6: [00:49:41] Yeah, I would say.

Speaker 3: [00:49:43] I, I lived in an industry where as seller reads a newspaper and will tell me why 100 reasons why we can't do business. I think it's just not nature. There are definite impediments, but in any system of chaos, there's always opportunity. If you figure out how you can help serve a customer. So some deals accelerate based on tariff changes on a daily to weekly basis because, you know, positioned correctly, the future is uncertainty. And the reality of now is a great time to strike. So being able to master those conversations will be relevant, I think, with the methodology at jolt. It really ties into doubt and uncertainty in decision making. So if you take the conversation and explore the fear of, hey, what is your economic uncertainty? What is your company uncertainty? You know, if customers in Canada and Latam that are worried about FX rates or even buying off US companies and then you can explore like, what is the impact if you didn't? So I think it's again, leaning into that fire, using it as an opportunity. It's a very, you know, you want to talk to customers about things that matter to them in a timely manner, even if it's a bad subject. And to me, this is a great opportunity to debate. You know, my first questions to most customers, are you impacted by what's going on and how? And you almost see this like, oh, I'd love to tell you about my challenges and problems. So never let a good crisis go to waste. I think it was Churchill that said that I'm definitely not in the same league as him, but I would say tap into that as a conversation.

Speaker 1: [00:51:20] I might just add on that front, the we talk about, there's kind of three big ways to think about indecision. There's personal drivers of indecision, you know, is that person indecisive or not? There's indecision that hits in the context of the purchase. That's where we spend a lot of time talking about, because these are things we can influence, you know, the options overload, information overload, expectations overload, this sort of overall global uncertainty and perhaps the, the perception that might have or the potential impact that has on things like budgets. I would put in the third category, which is sort of conditional drivers of indecision. It can take what otherwise might be rather low levels of indecision and exacerbate it and really amplify it for them. You know, more eyeballs on this, more scrutiny because of it. It sort of just makes it feel a little bit more anxious in general. And so you certainly can imagine that being a real big effect right now.

Speaker 2: [00:52:11] And the one thing I hear a lot is, you know, if you're worried about fewer opportunities with customers being a little bit gun shy. It's a terrible analogy, but a little, you know, a little more tentative, a little bit afraid to maybe invest budget dollars. The thing we hear over and over again is, well, you have to then make every single one of those opportunities count. And, you know, using jolt to do that would, you know, helps you increase your chances, give them the confidence that even if they spend money in an uncertain time, it's actually going to get the outcomes that they want. So question here from Sergio, thanks for the follow up. So one of the things we talk about in the T right, take risk off the table is there are things we can do to reduce risk and there's perceived risk and then there's actual risk from customers. And so one of the things we talk about is safety nets, which is, hey, if there are actual or perceived risks, what can we bring to the table that helps have us give customers confidence? And the question here is around well, it just disappeared, but the follow up was if there are things like, you know, extended warranty or guarantees or things like that, like how do you guys think about that? Mike? You sort of touched it at this a little bit earlier, but maybe this is your chance to expand on it. Is, you know, getting finance or like contracting, getting other parts of the business on pay on, on the same page and supportive of this. Thoughts around how you guys navigated that?

Speaker 4: [00:53:43] Yeah. I think it is thinking through all of the, the potential scenario and being prepared to have those conversations. I think we've kind of touched on it a few different ways of kind of like speaking the unspoken and, and bringing those things to the, to the fore and having the conversation is, is a really important part of that. And, and I think as we're, as we're working our way through that just preplanning, whether that's the seller in the SW or the seller and the manager are all three together or with the partner and, and just kind of thinking through what are the different potential concerns that could be there. And, and being proactive with those conversations is, is really a big part of that.

Speaker 6: [00:54:27] I think part of.

Speaker 1: [00:54:28] This is, and a big part of the, the program, especially in the, in the T piece, is helping teams get creative around safety nets. I mean, there's, I think, an implied assumption with that question that safety nets and, and taking risk off the table must require big sort of company risk type things to do and money back guarantees and other things like that. I think there's a lot of other low hanging fruit with respect to safety nets that we want to work with teams there. But certainly, of course, there is a role to think about the organization and how they can help prove things or even with respect to things like recommendations, giving them a head start on things. So certainly a role for the organization to play.

Speaker 2: [00:55:06] And I've got a bunch of questions with very specific questions, very specific, like examples of safety nets, which I don't know that we'd be able to answer those on the call, but maybe I'll throw it to you, Shiva and Mike, and to ask it a little bit differently. You know, because the, the questions are, well, what do we do in this scenario? What do we do in that scenario? You guys did some things with how you designed the program that I think enabled this a little bit at scale, which is to say, when we did the training, it wasn't just lecture, it was learn a concept and apply it to deals. You're working in your pipeline. We also did some things around deal clinics, jolt clinics, where sellers brought actual deals to class and, and they or class or, you know, it was a virtual environment, right? And there was peer to peer and leader led coaching around, hey, what is the, what is the, you know, the obstacle and how do we, how do we strategize around the best way to, you know, to, to solve it? And not all of it has to be something that's some crazy contract, right? You know, some things are well within the control of sellers. Any thoughts on the importance of bringing deals to the classroom or doing deal reviews? You know, and, and any you know, any progress you've seen in terms of sellers increasing their ability to solve some of these problems on their own as they encounter them. You know, thoughts or reactions to that?

Speaker 6: [00:56:30] Yeah.

Speaker 3: [00:56:31] I think I've always had a, I like, I like personally call me mad, but every Friday we, my cadence is a full random deals picked out for a deal clinic. And what the methodology helped me do was shopping the pencil on having that conversation. And, and in that, you see the four teams plus all the leadership groups in there and they all stay on the list. And and it's a great impact moment where you can work through a methodology, watch it applied and other people sitting and listening can share and share experiences around that. So I found that as a leader, if you practice. Force yourself to have to practice, and then your teams know that that's where you're driving. A big part of setting the tone on what it looks like and making it very common vernacular. I think the comment I said to you, Ted and Dave, was, we'll know this is working when people start using some acronyms in their deal reviews by themselves and say, hey, I'm jolting the customer here. I'm in the indecision. I've given them three options. So that's like the nascent thing.

Speaker 3: [00:57:34] You look for that, that later you go, okay, this is starting to be pervasive, not someone reading your script saying, okay, I did this. Like it's, it's, you got to get past those stages. So I think having more activity, having your sales acceleration teams, mock mock deals and review deals in a structured way that relates to methodology, speaking to your leaders and how you do forecasts with them, using the methodology and asking a couple of spot questions. Over time, they start to become, you know, second nature for everyone. I just, I did see in the chat indecision around not only the technology but the services component. I'll just quickly answer that one is. Yeah, I think people, product people, process and technology, the kind of way I look at it. So the people is how you show up and take a customer through the process. The process is the services component. So how will they implement? So you have to cover that as much as defining why your technology is better. So all three of them fit into that process.

Speaker 6: [00:58:36] Mike that's great. Maybe.

Speaker 1: [00:58:38] Oh go ahead. Yeah. Mike. Anything to add.

Speaker 6: [00:58:41] There?

Speaker 4: [00:58:41] No, I think well, okay. So the one thing I would say is that, you know, it's, it's starting to resonate to Shiva's point when the sellers are starting the conversation about it, right? When it's not being the, when it's not the sales manager or Shiva or someone leading with those questions, but them anticipating it and saying, I'm doing this or I'm trying this and I need help with this. That's when you know that there's, you're, you're kind of past that initial hurdle of this doesn't apply to me to help me make this work for me. And, and that adoption curve continues.

Speaker 1: [00:59:13] And to that point, I mean, part of the, this is a behavior change too, right? So you're looking towards things like, how do they spend their time? How do they think about the lenses they apply to deal success? Even Pre-call prep, you know, that was one thing I, I, when I saw coming out of the session with the SEA community them, you know, making it almost required for the pre-call prep to happen before they book that demo with the E. That's a really good sign that they're recognizing that we need to collaborate here as we think about limiting expiration, what have you we are, we are at time. So let me let me put a pin in that. I know there were a number of questions we didn't yet get a chance to answer. So we will follow up with you all directly and so appreciate the questions there. Let me just say a huge, huge, huge thank you to Mike and Shiva for taking time out of their very busy schedules to be with us and for the willingness to share their journey. Thank you all for joining us here today. Check us out@innovations.com. We are planning to run a couple more of these across the course of this year. We'll likely have topics to include things around manager development a discussion around AI. That's a pretty relevant topic these days and how that may be affecting indecision and decision making in general, and likely also a window into our latest research, which you can also see some detail on our website at innovations.com will likely be aiming for June for that next session, so be on the lookout for details and information there. And just a reminder, there will be a replay that will be sent out in follow up. And if we can answer any questions at all, of course, don't hesitate to reach out to Dave or myself or just contact us through the website again. Thank you Mike. Thank you Shiva. So appreciate the time and thank you all. Have a great day.

Speaker 6: [01:00:56] Thanks, guys.