Toby Carrington [00:00:00]:
You know, in terms of who garners my attention, and who I help, and so forth, you always help the people that have helped themselves, that have done the research, that have done the homework to map things out, that have made it easier, that really, clearly articulate why they need executive engagement. So, for sure, it should be part of people’s playbooks to engage executives early, often in deal cycles and so forth, but I just don’t believe that that’s for throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Heather Cole [00:00:30]:
This is Go-to-Market Magic.
Steve Watt [00:00:32]:
The show where we talk to go-to-market leaders and visionaries about the “aha!” moments they’ve experienced.
Heather Cole [00:00:39]:
And the pivotal decisions they’ve made.
Steve Watt [00:00:41]:
All in the name of growth.
[INTERVIEW]
Heather Cole [00:00:44]:
So Steve, who are we talking to today?
Steve Watt [00:00:47]:
Seismic’s Toby Carrington, Chief Business Officer. Now, Toby is not just in a very senior role here at Seismic, but he’s also an investor and an advisor to a wide range of companies. I can’t think of anybody better positioned for today’s conversation about how we leverage our executives in the sales cycle.
Heather Cole [00:01:11]:
Great. Let’s jump in.
Steve Watt [00:01:14]:
Our guest today is Seismic’s own Toby Carrington. We’ve come close to home today for a really good reason. I think when you hear why, I think you’re going to agree that this is going to be a high-impact episode and tell you a brief little story.
We have a tradition at seismic called “push pins.” They’re basically the stories of acquiring every new customer. This started years ago, with a literal push pin on a bulletin board, where salespeople would write up the story of how this deal came to be and post it for everyone to see. Now, we’ve got offices and people around the world. Now, it all happens digitally. It’s actually an email that goes out to the entire company, but it’s the story of how this deal came to be. It’s calling out, and thanking, and appreciating many participants for their specific contribution. I read these things religiously, and nobody, nobody is named more often than Toby.
Toby has his fingers in an incredible number of Seismic’s deals, large and small, and all around the world. This got Heather and I thinking that this is probably a really valuable topic about how to best leverage your senior executives in closing deals, in building relationships, and more, I think it’s something that a lot of companies do not have a proper approach to how to do it, when to do it, when not to do it. We’re going to dig into all of that. Forgive me for that long intro, folks. But Toby, thanks for being here, and you really are in a ton of our deals. Tell us how that kind of comes to be.
Toby Carrington [00:03:04]:
Steve, thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here. I mean, if I think about deals and business, people do business with people, and I’ve always viewed relationships as really, really, really important. My involvement in push pins, in deals with customers is very much for me about building relationships with our prospects who then turn into clients, and hopefully who stay customers for a long, long, long period of time. I think that spans a variety of sorts of reasons for doing that. But I see the fundamental one about building trust also in an organization. And so, involving someone with a senior title, a member of your executive team should, really be focused on relationships and making that either – whether it’s the first engagement or leveraging their network where they’ve had prior engagement. It’s all part of that relationship building between people, which expands and extends then towards companies’ relationships with each other.
Steve Watt [00:04:08]:
What do you and other senior leaders bring into these sorts of conversations that the salespeople can’t?
Toby Carrington [00:04:16]:
Well, I think that you do have to put this in context sometimes of the size of an organization today, right? We sometimes – we’re coming at it from the perspective of a reasonably large software company. Of course, there are other large organizations selling to other large organizations or maybe small organizations assigned to very large organizations. I think that the context is sometimes important there, but there’s a universal truth. That when one team is selling something to another person, they’re a domain expert. When we talk about enablement solutions, and we talk about the current state of coaching, and training, and how teams are looking to sort of optimize their go-to-market, we have domain expertise.
A lot of this is about insight sharing, peer-to-peer sharing, and understanding what their colleagues might be doing. There’s simply a different level of relationship and ability for someone with a role like mine to be able to talk to my peers, my colleagues, sort of people with a similar role in our prospect or client organizations. Because we and I also engage at that level with others. I think there’s a lot of peer-to-peer insights that can be gained. There’s a lot of sort of best practice sharing that indirectly happens through that process, which is simply a different level of engagement.
Heather Cole [00:05:43]:
Toby, you get on the phone with folks that are doing the same job or in similar roles to what you do, which is fantastic to be in the same persona. One of the things that we see is a big mistake of reps is they pull on the senior executives to only talk about the product, or why your company, or what the differentiation is. Talk a little bit about, when do you think the best time to be pulled in is, and what it is that the value that you have in a sales cycle itself.
Toby Carrington [00:06:11]:
Heather, there’s a lot in that around timing as well. Because an engagement for senior executive, if it’s a Hail Mary, if it’s right near the end of a cycle, if it feels transactional, is never very successful, right? Sometimes that serves a purpose in terms of reassurance, or something like that towards a prospect. But honestly, it’s much better when done earlier, when we are in fact, not really talking about a deal or being particularly especially not a particular product or something like something like that. So I would say, the majority of the conversations I have, if they’re focused on Seismic, in our organization, it’s about our organization, and how we work with other organizations to deliver them value on the outcomes that they’re looking to deliver. It’s certainly not feature-function-oriented.
I think the other thing is that, in order, we should spend the majority of the time talking about the prospective customer, then about us as an organization, and then maybe, if it comes up in topic, competition and things like that. But it’s very much typically a business-oriented conversation. There is an aspect, as I say, of that sort of reassurance, because often a lot of people, especially with a title like the Chief Operating Officer or something like that are worried about risk management. People are worried about the organization that they’re going to work with, and how that’s going to happen. But typically, the majority of the conversation is focused on the business aspects of the partnership.
Heather Cole [00:07:46]:
Yes. One of the things that I get a lot is saying, “Hey, I see that you’re connected to this person on LinkedIn.” There’s people that you’re connected to that you barely know, and then there’s people that you’re connected to that stood up in your wedding. There’s that huge range in between. How do you manage that and how close is too close when you’re having these types of conversations?
Toby Carrington [00:08:06]:
Leveraging personal friendships and relationships is obviously a good thing to do. But people also have to be mindful, especially as companies get bigger and have these sorts of processes around compliance, or any sort of perceived inequity in a process. You have to be very, very, very careful that there’s not any sort of conflict of interest like that. Sometimes to close might not be a great thing. I think, of course, you range in terms of the connections on LinkedIn. Often, someone like a role like myself has also been sold to hundreds and hundreds of times.
Some of these executive relationships or maybe the other way around, where an executive is engaged with selling, trying to sell to me, or it ranges through to where someone’s very close professional connection. I think, again, understanding that early, being able to clearly map out the executive team out of [inaudible 00:09:37], being able to look for those connections and test what types of connections they are as early as possible is very important. Then, from there, you can formulate the strategy, but I wouldn’t get happy if you hear that my next-door neighbor or my best friend is in the buying committee because that may backfire and they have to remove themselves from the process.
Steve Watt [00:09:43]:
If there’s no existing relationship at all, how does this come together? Obviously, the sales rep comes to you, and ask you to get involved. We’re going to talk in a moment about how you protect your schedule against being overwhelmed. We’ll get there in a moment. But before we get there, the rep wants you involved, gives you reasons you think they’re legit. There’s no preexisting relationship at all. Are you reaching out personally? Is the rep reaching? Is it one of these, our people will talk to your people kind of thing, and we’ll try to set this up for you both? What are the mechanics of making it work, especially with a senior person in a large company who’s got a lot of gatekeepers around them?
Toby Carrington [00:10:22]:
I think here, it will vary, right? I mean, I am a big believer in personalization, being personable, and being relevant, and authentic. We will have people ghostwrite something for me, but I always put it in my own words. I can’t possibly, neither can any executive possibly keep up with the state of all deals, and all customers, and so forth. A proper briefing around what’s going on with this deal, or with this customer, who the key people are, why it is we want to be connected, and so forth. That type of briefing is important. I’m personally a big believer, and anyone can rest assured that if they receive an email from me that it’s actually from me, written by me, whether that’s a rep now, or ChatGPT, helping in the in the future. And it still be written personally for me. Because I believe that, again, executives are pretty well trained to spot whether something is genuine, or real, or not.
It’s absolutely fine for a sales rep or CSM who wants to engage in executive to sort of flag to the people that they work with, that there might be an outreach from me to their executive team. I think one of the big things in some sort of executive-to-executive outreach, you’ve got to be careful that there’s not – you’re not perceived as going over anybody’s head on the prospect side. I think that does happen sometimes. I think it’s always better if the selling team can say, “Look, I think what would be great is for person X to talk with Toby or insert executive name here, because they have specific expertise, have specific things, point of view to share around these topics, which are important to you all.” I think that’s the way to do it, Steve. It’s very relevant to that particular executive. It’s not just executive outreach for the sake of executive outreach. It should be, again, relevant to progressing the relationship forward.
Steve Watt [00:12:20]:
You raised an interesting point there. Do buyers and champions sometimes feel that they are being run over here, even if that’s the last thing you’re trying to do? Do they sometimes get territorial and be like, “This is my decision. I actually don’t want my CEO or my CRO involved in this, because I feel it’s going to get away from me. I want to be the one making this decision and I want the credit for this.” Is there sometimes resistance to doing this?
Toby Carrington [00:12:49]:
I think it can definitely be the case. I mean, there can definitely be a situation, and maybe in a larger organization, where not all initiatives, and things like that have bubbled their way up to the senior levels. I mean, if I reach out to an executive somewhere, and that executive literally knows nothing about this particular project or initiative, and then just pushes it straight back down, that will have a bad look. Again, that’s why I recommend that if you’re going to do that, then it’s teed up in the right way. Where the people on a selling team are talking to people on a buying team, and saying, “Hey, listen. Based on everything we’ve heard, I think it would make sense to connect the executives together.”
Or if we’ve already spoken with that particular executive in a smaller organization, for example, where maybe our selling team has already spoken to the chief revenue officer, or chief marketing officer, or chief whatever officer. Then, me or someone else in our executive team reaching out to that person as a follow-up and building on the conversation that’s happened already is also totally fine. I mean, it should never be a surprise. That will always result in a bad result.
Heather Cole [00:13:55]:
That’s always a trigger of, “How qualified is this? Do we have the right people involved in the team?”
Toby Carrington [00:14:01]:
Absolutely right. I think that as selling teams are thinking about this, Heather, if you can’t map out who the right executives are on a prospect side, and why they might be interested in connecting with you, and you’re simply trying to – you found the name of someone on LinkedIn, and you’re throwing darts by a cold outreach. I mean, using an executive as a BDR, or an SDR is a bad idea.
Heather Cole [00:14:25]:
Always.
Steve Watt [00:14:26]:
How do you protect your schedule, Toby? Given the – there’s a lot of our salespeople who would no doubt welcome your help. You’ve got a few other things on your agenda besides doing these calls. How do you strike that balance of knowing when to be involved, and when to say no, and how do you communicate that within the organization?
Toby Carrington [00:14:49]:
My personal view is, Steve, that our customers are the most important things. Whether that’s our customers, or our prospective future customers are the most important, you know, aspect for me to spend my time on. I treated accordingly in terms of prioritization of topics. No doubt, I’m very fortunate to have a great EA who can manage that. I would say that the filter is around preparation, those reps, or CSMs, or anyone in our go-to-market teams, or other teams that want me to do something in terms of an executive outreach, or engagement, or joint presentations, or whatever it is. Those that are the best prepared, the best understand, why this is beneficial for the client that I would engage, et cetera, who can better articulate that will garner my attention.
Again, a simple Slack saying, “Hey, I see you’re connected to Heather, please reach out.” I’m not going to do that. I need the context. I need to understand why I’m in my – my relationships are very important to me, everybody that I’m connected with that I know. I’m very protective of that. I’m more protective of that than my calendar. I say it’s more – the calendar access, and getting on is easy. Preparation, briefing, showing that they’ve done their homework, I’m still going to be the ultimate judge of whether I’ll use my relationship capital with my connections.
Steve Watt [00:16:20]:
Right. But then, sometimes there is no relationship, right? It’s just, “Toby, I need your help. I need your help.” Look, it seems like a cheat code for a sales guy. It’s like, “Oh, yeah. I’m just going to get Toby to get in here, and boom, I’m going to advance this deal.” Beyond prep and context, I mean, you must have some parameters around deal size, and deal stage to say, “This one’s either too small, or it’s too early, or it’s too late.” I mean, there’s got to be something here so that you’re not being pulled into deals that are just not material.
Toby Carrington [00:16:54]:
I have no materiality threshold in terms of value, or in terms of soundstage, or anything like that, Steve. If I think I can add value to a conversation. By that, I mean, value to our clients, I’ll do that. I will draw a line if something is too late. If this is a, “We’re not sure what’s going on, we haven’t been able to get to the right people, we’re not sure if we’re winning, please do something.” I draw a line at that type of thing. Because, then, the seller hasn’t done a good job. They haven’t gotten in, they haven’t done what they need to do. It’s not my job to sort of play cleanup crew. I would encourage people to really think about that, because in terms of who garners my attention, and who I help, and so forth, I help the ones – this is kind of probably true in business. In general, you always help the people that have helped themselves, that have done their research, have done the homework, that have map things out, that have made it easier, that really, clearly articulate why they need executive engagement.
For sure, it should be part of people’s playbooks to engage executives early often in deal cycles, and so forth. But I just don’t believe that that’s for throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks
Heather Cole [00:18:10]:
I was talking to a C-level person the other day, who was saying they don’t get involved, simply because they feel like it’s an overburden to their schedule. And that once you create the relationship, there’s this tendency to want to continue that relationship after sale. In my experience, I find people have good intentions of continuing it after sale, and continuing this relationship on a regular basis, but it’s not so over burdensome that it takes up your entire day. Do you find the same, or do you tend to keep a regular cadence with folks that you’ve made these connections with?
Toby Carrington [00:18:44]:
I mean, I think that depends and it varies. Heather, I mean, our relationship is both sides, in terms of people wanting to keep that connection. I think what’s important is that people know they have your email, they have your cell phone number, they know how to contact you should the need arise. I mean, depending on the project that you’re talking about, again, if you’re selling to a very large organization, and you have some executive outreach during that. It’s not maybe normal that that executive would also reach back out to you, based on things that are happening in the project. But I’m a big believer that you can’t just be there until you know a deal is done, and then you go away. I consider that I’ve got some very long-standing relationships with key executives in our customer, client, and prospect base. And also, the other way executives that have sold into us or that do business with us over many years.
I think, depending on the nature of that relationship, how strategic it is, how important it is for both companies, maintaining that executive relationship is very, very important. Look, I mean, very large companies, the largest companies in the world, that CEOs and C-level people are most certainly involved in executive relationships with their partners and clients. I mean, I know that to be true, and I think that’s also very true for companies which are scaling. Frankly, I’d be concerned about anyone in the C-level of an organization saying that they don’t have any time to be involved in customers, or customer, or prospect interaction.
Heather Cole [00:20:19]:
Yes, I agree. We don’t want to turn our C-levels into a BDR and SDR. But what is the limit for you? Is it just one outreach or is it multiple outreaches? Or how do you think about that?
Toby Carrington [00:20:32]:
I think if we’re talking about, for example, a cold outreach to someone that I don’t know, via email, a follow-up is okay. Then, executives should view the relationships that they make on behalf of their company like normal relationships. I mean, I can’t ask someone and date three times, and they don’t answer me. Then, I just keep on asking. I mean, at a certain point in time, that’s just being completely ridiculous. I think the same thing is, if for whatever reason, the outreach that I’m making and have made in a couple of different angles is not – it’s not resonating, then you should stop, and we should try some different approach. Or perhaps, it’s an indication that a prospect is not particularly interested in engaging, but at least they will know that that offer is there.
For me, we have busy inboxes, and so forth. There can certainly be a follow-up, but certainly not going to put any executive outreach into a sort of formal cadence, or rinse and repeat, try and follow up multiple times if there’s no interest in engaging. Again, I’m a big believer that a relationship goes both ways.
Steve Watt [00:21:40]:
Are you sometimes more successful in reaching that point, by working up their internal ladder rather than you making that outreach? Particularly, I’m thinking about a senior executive in a really large company, who is going to have multiple gatekeepers, including somebody probably sweeping out their inbox for them. They might never even see your message, because the gatekeeper didn’t understand the context. Do you sometimes get further by kind of working it up their internal ladder, that one of our leaders would like to speak with you.
Toby Carrington [00:22:13]:
An advice I got a long, long time ago, and this was, of course, maybe in face-to-face interactions was, make sure that you understand who the gatekeepers are. That’s often an executive assistant, that might be a chief of staff or someone like that. Flagging that there is going to be a follow-up, whether it comes internally, like the champion that you’re selling to, going and mentioning to the executive assistant, “Hey, watch out for an outreach, which is going to come from Toby over at Seismic. And please, if you could put that on the calendar.” I mean, that’s always going to be more likely to be successful than just blatant cold outreach. To my point earlier around paving the way for that internal outreach, I think that’s always better if you can arrange it.
Heather Cole [00:23:00]:
Do you have a cadence that you use? Do you always use email? Or do you sometimes reach out over LinkedIn? Is there any way, any other vehicles, or channels that you use besides email?
Toby Carrington [00:23:10]:
LinkedIn messages, for sure, I think if someone is particularly active on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn can be quite casual, but also effective at quick responses. I think you can gauge if somebody engages on LinkedIn. I always leave myself. Whenever we have a – in my email signature, or whenever I have an interaction with an executive, if they want to get in touch that way, because some people prefer text. But I think, it’s still probably predominantly email. Heather, at least for me as a professional form of communication, which, again, makes it – you’ve got to make the outreach personal, and compelling, and so forth as well. That would probably be it. Hopefully, you build a relationship, and then you can get a better understanding of people’s communication, communication styles. If you can get on a regular cadence to talk or on texting bases, that’s always a good sign.
Steve Watt [00:24:10]:
Toby, you mentioned peer-to-peer relationships. I want to dig into that just a little bit, because I presume it has to be more than just title matching. More than just our CEO wants to talk to your CEO, our CRO wants to talk to your CRO. If for no other reason, that companies are very, very different sizes. Is the CEO of my startup actually the peer of the CEO of that giant prospect or is that really not the way it works? How do you think about aligning the right people on our team with the right people on their team?
Toby Carrington [00:24:45]:
No, that’s exactly right, Steve. I mean, a company our size, we’re about 1500 people. Of course, I can’t go and demand to talk to the chief operating officer or chief business officer at an enormous company, right? I mean, you have VPs, or senior VPs at some organization that have thousands of people working for them. I think it’s important to understand that you should look at the executive connection at the right sort of sphere of influence, sphere of responsibility at another organization. Of course, the C-level executive of a Fortune 500 company’s calendar probably looks different to the calendar of a company like ours.
Then on the flip side, you’ve got a really small company, where you might not even have VPs or things like that. You might have an organization of 20 or 30 people. The right way to think about that is matching up to a person of appropriate influence, you know, appropriate decision-making authority, that you’re still talking at that right level about business topics. I think it’s therefore important to understand as your organization gets larger, to also not go directly through the C-level when you need to engage. I mean, our organization, for example, we have VPs, and senior VPs, and things like that in different functions. VP of enterprise sales or customer success, who should absolutely be engaging. When we think about executive engagement, that doesn’t always mean go straight to the top.
I mean, we’ve got a whole organization that is capable of making those making those connections. I think that’s important as well to engage all levels, and for also, all those levels of mid to senior management, to understand that they have a role in this, let’s call it executive level relationship building as well.
Heather Cole [00:26:44]:
When you think about it, as we’re thinking about wrapping up, for those who are not doing this or don’t feel like they’re doing it effectively, what are your top tips for how to get better involved and create these relationships? Then the second thing is, what are the top things that folks should really avoid to summarize?
Toby Carrington [00:27:03]:
Well, I think if –we’re trying to condense it into what sort of selling teams should do or go-to-market team should do in terms of better executive engagement, it’s think about simple templates for briefing so that when you’re an executive – I mean, I’ll use a simple example of when we go to a conference. I sometimes have 20 meetings, executive meetings over two or three days. If I would get 20 different formats of information, 20 different ways of learning about an account, I wouldn’t know what was going on, right? So having just a simple standard way to get information and whether that’s done by your sales ops team or something like that, you can do that simply.
Same goes, by the way for requests of board members or things like that. You should create a simple process for doing that, and helping people. Something I’ve done is that, I always copy in the selling team, like blind copy on sort of examples of outreach that I’ve done. So that if they want to reach out again, and help to ghostwrite something, they can try to mimic the style in which I would do that. Again, it’s always customized and personalized, but making it easier for the executive to edit and send I think is important. The other thing I would say is, the topic of keeping engaged as an executive, that’s also the job of the post-sales organization to keep that up.
I mean, I’m not sitting here keeping track of the 500 people that I might have met in a particular cycle. Now some, again, I’ve built a long relationship, and we’ve become personal friends. But others, it also requires the post-sales team to engage as well. Think about having a customer success team, and others create forums like executive business reviews, and things like that, which also drive that engagement again, and sort of creates a forum both on the customer side, and on the supply side for creating that executive engagement. The simple things you can do like that.
Heather Cole [00:29:02]:
Absolutely. What is the biggest pitfall or mistake, either you’ve experienced or seen other people experience when it comes to getting folks at the C-level involved in their sales cycle? What are the top things they should avoid?
Toby Carrington [00:29:18]:
We’ve covered too late, and I think that’s a big one. We’ve covered any sort of random acts of desperation should be absolutely avoided. No executive wants to do that. That’s a bad look for the company. The other things, and I’ve seen some people talk about this, and post about this is give the right briefing to really what you want to get out of it. Because a customer doesn’t want to hear 10 minutes about the origin story of the company, or they don’t want to hear you aggressively talk about competition. They don’t want to hear you talk about things that are not important to them. That’s where I say, like this sort of briefing is very important. Because otherwise, like executives like to talk, and it can go off the rails quickly if you don’t give that proper briefing. I mean that in terms of really, what you’re trying to do, in terms of outcomes out of a call, and things like that.
Steve Watt [00:30:19]:
Would I be right in assuming that these calls are always just one on one? It’s not the sales rep, saying, “Oh, can I join?” Then a bunch of people from there, and it ends up with a gallery of spectators? These are private, personal calls, are they, Toby?
Toby Carrington [00:30:33]:
Yes, Steve. I have a big fundamental topic with anyone else being on a call, or even a call being recorded. I mean, no one among calls that I ever have with anyone else in an executive position are ever recorded. I think that’s just a sort of fundamental part of building relationships. I would say that as well. The seller or whoever it is needs to trust their executive and needs to let them handle that call. Because that’s how normal humans interact with each other, is that they talk and they talk in a private and confidential manner if it’s about topics like companies doing business with each other. That’s a principle I have that, that I think will make a better executive conversation, because you don’t want anyone else hanging around, you don’t want any flies on the wall, and you don’t want anything recorded.
Steve Watt [00:31:23]:
Well, Toby. Thank you for joining us. I think we’ve covered some really good ground. I hope we’ve challenged our listeners and our viewers to maybe think a little bigger, maybe think a little more strategically, and hopefully, to avoid some of those common pitfalls that you eliminated. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Toby Carrington [00:31:22]:
My pleasure, thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Steve Watt [00:31:25]:
What jumped out at you the most, Heather?
Heather Cole [00:31:26]:
I think when reps first start to engage C-level folks to have conversations, there’s often this misconception that they’re coming in to sell or move the deal forward. Toby was really clear that successful conversations involve creating a relationship. So they are talking to that person, peer-to-peer about things that matter to both of them, and not coming in to talk about the product, the competition, unless this is something that that specific executive has asked about, and wants to have the conversation there. It’s so often that there’s a disconnect about what the rep thinks that conversation is going to be about, versus what a really meaningful executive C-level to C-level conversation is really about.
Steve Watt [00:32:11]:
I agree so much. That really jumped out at me as well. I know – I was going to say, I think. But I know that some reps feel, “All right, I’m going to bring in the heavyweight closer, and this is what’s going to happen.” That’s not what’s going to happen as Toby made clear. He’s going to build confidence, he’s going to share lots of insights, he’s going to build the relationship, he’s going to do a lot of things that are going to be very valuable in this process. But he’s not coming over the top as the heavyweight closer and nor should any exec in that situation. Because that peer in that other firm is not signing up for that, they’re not signing up for the heavyweight closer. They’re signing up to meet someone who is their peer. They’re signing up to learn something, to be challenged, to be inspired, all sorts of things not to be, just pitched from a different direction, or from a more senior position. I think that’s really important.
That goes together with so many of the other things that Toby was talking about. This is a one-on-one conversation. This is not recorded. This is not just step 17 in the sales cycle, and everything’s going to be in chorus or everything’s going to be in gong like everything else. This is something a little outside of the cycle. It’s timed, and it’s strategically aligned with that cycle, obviously. But it’s not just one more step. It is a little outside of that, and it’s more personal, it’s more human.
Heather Cole [00:33:50]:
Yes. The interesting thing about that is, when Toby said, it can happen at any point. It can happen way in advance of us having a conversation ever about our product. Maybe they’re in another contract, maybe we’re just setting these relationships up, or it can be deeper into the sales cycle. He doesn’t have hard and fast rule. Except, it can’t be, to save the day. It can’t be the Hail Mary. That makes total sense because it wouldn’t work. It just simply wouldn’t work, unless there was a very specific objective to having that conversation.
Steve Watt [00:34:18]:
Absolutely. You can’t undermine the credibility of your execs by trying to throw them in a deal that’s about to be lost, as you said, as a Hail Mary. That’s not going to work. It’s not going to feel very good for anyone, and it’s not going to be successful. I think this, Toby talked about the fact that this is not just a transactional deal mechanism. This is longer-term, strategic relationship building, and it has to be treated as such. You can’t disrespect your peer and the other firm and you can’t disrespect the process here by just thinking, you can just fire that exec in and save the day in the last moment.
Heather Cole [00:35:03]:
Yes. The other interesting thing, though, is when it’s not necessarily about the sale, you still need to know the context of us as a company having the relationship with their company and that person, and what’s the background there. I know Toby, always asks or he mentioned it in writing, specific to that person, specific to where we are in the sales cycle doesn’t mean he’s going to be selling it. It just means he needs to understand it to have a more meaningful conversation. I think that that is absolutely critical to having any kind of meaningful conversation at an executive level.
Steve Watt [00:35:39]:
Absolutely. That context is necessary to understanding the job to be done of this conversation. This is not random acts of executive friend-making. This is a strategic process, and he needs to understand the context, such that he can deliver what is really needed at that time, and do so in a really authentic and human way. Something else had just jumped out at me, is, I presumed there would be more of a materiality filter that he would say, the deals got to be of a certain size. It’s got to be at a certain stage, and he didn’t, quite the opposite. He said, “No, really, it’s the best-prepped rep. It’s the rep who comes with the best context and the best prop is going to get my attention and going to get my help.” More so than just saying, “Well, your deals are too small. I’m not here to help.”
The fact that he really prioritizes this, and that came clear, when we talked about schedule protection and everything else. He said, “This is one of the most important things that I do. So I don’t need to protect my schedule, as much as I just need to protect my reputation in my relationships by doing it the right way.”
Heather Cole [00:36:57]:
Yes. He also, while qualification is a huge piece of this, the other piece of it is, if I’m a buyer, and I am really hesitant about letting you talk to people above me to help me and to help you make this relationship work. I think that there is a problem with the person that you see as either your champion or decision maker. There’s something wrong with the sales cycle if you are not willing to have these conversations as a buyer. It doesn’t necessarily mean – it might mean it’s the wrong time. It also might mean you’re with the wrong group, the wrong person. It might mean that they’re not serious about it. But it’s also a little bit of a litmus test. The one thing he was very clear about is he doesn’t want to be in a position to be seen as somebody jumping heads into a cold environment, where he’s doing a reach out to somebody who doesn’t even know this is going on. I’ve been in that situation before as somebody that’s been asked to reach out, and there’s nothing more awkward, is the best word for it, for sure.
[OUTRO]
Heather Cole [00:38:00]:
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Steve Watt [00:38:06]:
Check out gotomarket-magic.com for show notes and resources.
[END]
