Pouyan Salehi:
But that's on the assumption that they keep changing the goalposts.
Scott Leese:
100% agree with that. So introduce me to the CEO and the board, and the VC that will not move the goalposts. And, you know, I'll bake you a cake.
Ross Pomerantz (Corporate Bro):
I mean, that's it to me.
Pouyan:
Do you bake cakes?
Scott:
I gotta moves you ain't never seen.
*Beyond Quota Intro*
Ross:
Are we recording?
Pouyan:
We're recording. Off to a slow start.
Scott:
Take 2. Because we did this like a year ago, and it didn't record or something.
Ross:
Yeah, it didn't save so we thought we'd keep using the same technology and try again.
Pouyan:
I know, we've evolved the format a little bit. So I don't know if we just want to redo some of those questions, or if we just want to read his chat about a couple of topics and go into those two. So I'm open to either, Ross, I don't know if you have any thoughts.
Ross:
One thing I've been thinking a lot about is just like the sales image problem. What are some potential remedies for... Why does everyone hate sales people?
Scott:
Only reason I got into sales is because I had a friend who I played college tennis with, who said to me, Hey, you should take a look at sales as a potential career path. And the only reason that conversation came about is because of the four and a half years prior to that, that I spent in the hospital, I started having stomach problems, gi problems. And I went from 6'2" 195 to 6'2" 140. In about six weeks. By the time I got done with the health part, like I was a drug addict. Because I had been taking liquid morphine and Dilaudid and oxy and like everything you could think of while being hospitalized. So I had to kick. Get off of all of that stuff. So I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life, what my career was. And so, you know, I was talking to one of my buddies, and after school, he had gotten into sales, and he's like, you're super competitive, you know, like, you been in leadership roles, like, a lot of selling is like, you know, getting your point across all that kind of stuff. And so that was how I ended up there. And I was very impatient. You know, I had a really strong sense of urgency. And I wanted to make up for lost time. And I didn't think I could do that at a big company. So I specifically decided to go to an early stage startup
Pouyan:
What a story.
Scott:
And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be super open and talk about all this kind of thing rather than keep it private. You know? If you've been on a sales floor, enough of them, probably half the floor is either a current degenerate or an ex-degenerate of some sort.
Ross:
Or a budding degenerate.
Scott:
Or one who's on their way.
Ross:
I think there's a beauty in sales that a lot of people just… well sales has terrible brand reputation. But the beauty to me is that it is the great equalizer. It's the number one profession to me that represents - this is going to sound - I'm not going to say diversity of the world because I know we got problems in tech sales. But I mean, like a diversity of people. Diversity of backgrounds. You don't need an MBA to do it. You don't need a hard skill to do it. You can figure it out.
Scott:
It's the Blue Collar job in the White Collar world.
Ross:
It's the modern day coal mine.
Pouyan:
That's right. To Ross's point, it's the equalizer. It's a place where I can out-earn you, Mr. Harvard MBA.
Ross:
It's the most foundational skill there is. Period. Like in life, it doesn't matter. Those degrees, like, you can be really smart, but it doesn't mean you're going anywhere.
Scott:
It's just been so historically disrespected as well. Like when I was going to school, there's no courses in sales at university whatsoever. None. And people kind of still think of it as like, I'm cruising around the neighborhood trying to sell knives and -
Ross:
Banging on doors.
Scott:
Banging on doors and you know, trying to force my way into homes to sell you swampland in Florida or used car lot before you could get any information about the car online. Do you feel like it's changing a little bit? Do you feel like any of the perception is changing or softening? A little bit or no?
Ross:
I think that yes, I think it is changing. I saw it at Stanford. I mean there was a big moment in one of my classes where a former chairman of JetBlue was like, your CEO works for your top salesperson. And I felt all 80 people in the class look at me. And I was like, that's right motherfucker. That's right. All these folks who hadn't considered it, they're starting to realize ohhh yeahhhh, I see how this is important now. You know, it's hard to know until you're truly put in that position where you're fighting for your professional life.
Pouyan:
The original salespeople were commission only. Eat what you kill.
Ross:
Yeah.
Scott:
And then that moved to, you know, okay, you got a salary, but it may be like a 30/70 split where the base is low and the variable is high. And then it's been 50/50 splits for a while. And then even the arena that you play in, like, there's not that many Boiler Room kind of environments anymore, at least in b2b. Those have kind of died off and you see people no longer [are] hyper-focused on [making] 200 calls a day, Pouyan or it's a rap. Like get out of here. And now you have people kind of questioning commission models and quota and that kind of thing and the chatter about like, why do we even have quota? Why? You know, there's a lot of people who talked about it, I think Sahil has talked about it, I think John Barrows has talked about it before. And, you know, you see some of those kinds of conversations. And I think the attitude perception is changing and softening a little bit. And I think we're doing ourselves a little bit of a favor as well, because the internet has empowered buyers, so much. Like these, like pushy, kind of sheisty tactics that people could get away with before, like, you can't do that anymore. You know, you just can't. It's not gonna work. So people are selling in a much more thoughtful, consultative manner, because the buyer’s informed. So, you know, it might be a slow evolution, but there's signals, in a lot of places, I think that the perception is changing.
Pouyan:
I was gonna say, when you say the perception is changing perception, from whose perspective?
Scott:
I would say the general public. People who are kind of not in sales, or in the business whatsoever. So, you know, people who are, I'm trying to think of who my neighbors are, like... I got a pharmacist, there's a teacher, there's a nurse, like, these people, who are my neighbors, still kind of give me shit, like, oh, that's the sales guy, the salesman-type-thing. Right? And I think some of that stuff is starting to evolve a little bit, because I think the general public is having better experiences when they have to interact with salespeople. And then inside the industry, I think it's almost overwhelming at times. Don't sell it this way. You can't be that sheisty person anymore, it's not a volume based game, don't do it, customer first, value selling, all this kind of stuff. You can't get away from it. So those are signals. I'm by no means trying to say that it's massively changed. I just think that it's evolving a little bit. The perception.
Pouyan:
I was shaking my head a little bit earlier, because I don't think it's changed all that much. But I do agree with you, Scott, that I think it's trending in that way. And there are those signals that you're talking about. Then Ross was talking about the classes at Stanford. They didn't have anything on sales when I was going through the MBA program, but I believe they have some now. And it's been a few years that they have it. My only concern with it, though, is I wonder if I mean, just relating back to some of the other courses that I had, and I took some on like entrepreneurship and some of this other stuff. Most of that stuff was just all so theoretical, that it was useless. And I wonder if that's also, you know, in terms of the classes on sales, it’s so very theoretical on like, how do you design the sales process? And how do you approach or even think about sales? Now, don't get me wrong, it's great that I think the appreciation of sales is there. There's more of a spotlight on it. It's an important enough skill set or competency that it deserves, not just courses, it deserves attention. But I think Ross, what you said is just so spot on and just from my own personal experience, until you actually [experience] your own personal success depends on you having to sell something, I don't think you fully grasp it. Because you can learn the theoretical stuff all day long. But until you actually need to do a cold call until you actually need to deliver some results. Or, you know, whether it's your quota, whether it's your company, whether it's your product, doesn't get to where you need it to go. That for me was the moment that I was like, Whoa, shit. This is something really important that I need to learn that no one had taught [me]. Not at Harvard, not at Y Combinator, nothing else and it was just picking up books, reading them, finding other salespeople that could learn from them. But I think the best was just straight up doing it. And it's a recognition of how important of a skill set it is and saying, I'm going to, I'm going to keep doing this until I become decent at it, or at least decent enough to make some progress and then hopefully become great at it one day.
Scott:
I'll tell yeah, I'll take it. You know, there's at least some level of progress.
Pouyan:
And I would say the other piece that I'm seeing - and maybe this is just our approach to sales at Scratchpad - but I have to believe that a lot of companies that are more bottom up or product lead growth are leading this way too, is the approach to selling is different. And our approach is very much one that is very much like you talked about with leading with - what we call it is leading with giving. You can call it consultative or what have you. But it's a very different flow than I think traditionally has existed in b2b SaaS, which is alright you're on a call [and] I'm just here to qualify you. I'm just here to see what I can sell you. And I think that piece of it, too, I'm realizing that it's a slightly different skill set than a lot of salespeople I talk to. And so I wonder what that might mean for folks that enter sales going forward and saying like, Hey, okay, it's not that pushy, you have to buy. And then from the perception being like, oh, my gosh, there's a salesperson, like, what are they gonna try to sell me now? If that can trickle across, like the universities and into communities and whatnot, like these things start to be opportunities, you know. And maybe we get some more diversity into sales roles. And then over time, that means the leadership in these selling organizations becomes more diverse, right? And that starts to further evolve. How these organizations are run and the power dynamics there.
Ross:
Do you think the world of sales is going to consolidate? Do you think that there's gonna one day be kind of a SEAL Team Six of sales folks and we don't need 500 SDRS and 800 AE's? And it's just gonna be like a smaller team that's just better?
Scott:
I hope so. I really do. I mean, imagine for a second that me and you team up and we get another 10 or 12 buddies that [have] been in this game for a while and we're all really good. And it's just like, Navy strike team, right? Pouyan hires us for six to 12 months, we're going to scale him so fast, he's gonna get to this much bigger number than you'd ever get to before and then we dip out. And then we go do it again for another company. I can totally see that happening. I could also see people no longer working for one organization at a time as a salesperson, right? What do you care? Let's say I work for Pouyan and I'm your senior account executive. If I hit my numbers for you, what do you care if the other half of my day is spent working for XYZ company that's not a competitor? Totally different. So I'm getting two salaries and two commission checks. As long as I hit my number, what do you care? I can see that world potentially evolving.
Pouyan:
I could see that working. And I could actually see that being really beneficial for certain salespeople, right? Because you get a lot of flexibility, you get a lot more freedom, your earning potential can go up, especially if you're hitting your number, and you're not having to put in, you know, the full 100% time because then you can diversify your income stream, which I think can be helpful. But I think from you know, being on the other side of not thinking about growing a company where sales is such an important part of it and growing a sales team. I do think there are certain side effects of that. Number one, I think it depends on how you view sales culture and what role sales actually plays within the company. So for us, while certainly hitting numbers is important, we actually ask of our salespeople to share a lot of their insights. And so to us, it is much more than just a transactional. Alright, hit the number and that's it go off and come back in tomorrow, hit the same number. There's so many insights that we've gathered that feed right back into our design process and product development from the salespeople. And it's one of the things that we actually look for in the interview process when hiring folks that say like, we want to hear from you. We want your voice to be heard on all of these things. And so I think if it were more mercenary or transactional we would miss out on all of that. And sure, we can hit our number and maybe in the short term, we'd get a big spike. But thinking about how we would scale this thing, like to five years from now, I think being able to build that portion of it in would certainly be something that I guess I would have to think about and say, how can we make sure that we get that benefit as well from this from this function called sales?
Scott:
I just feel like I could deliver you all of that, and do it for somebody else at the same time.
Pouyan:
Yeah, that part of it I'm not opposed to at all.
Scott:
Executing numbers, but like the feedback loop for product and participat[ing] in the culture and all that kind of stuff. Like you can't… no one will convince me right now that salespeople are working their tail off, nine hours a day. They're sprinting and stopping, and there's a nice life balance there. Okay, they're doing a little bit of work for 90 minutes, and then they're watching a fucking Netflix episode. And then they're jumping back on, and they do a little work, and then they go walk the dog, and then they do a little - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But for some people, an overachiever-type-kind-of-person, or somebody who's very career-oriented, money-hungry, like, I could do those things you're talking about, and also do it at another company.
Pouyan:
So two things there. One that I could see. I just meant I was referring to the short term come in, hit that number, grow it and then scale it and then move on. Like that piece of it was, was a piece you'd miss out on so much. But let me ask you this, though. If you're hitting your number, it means you're being successful. Why not keep going where you're already successful, and make even more money there? Instead of having to do multiple.
Scott:
I can tell you exactly why. Because most people will change the commission plan and fuck me and not let me get that much money. You just move the goalposts on me and the uncapped commission is not really uncapped. So what we find is that -
Ross:
It's just impossible.
Scott:
It's impossible, right? It's impossible. So okay, so let's say I'm making 500 grand a year selling for Scratchpad. And one person's stance is like, well, you should pour more of your energy and efforts in Scratchpad. I could do that, but you're gonna keep moving the number on me historically. So I really can only get to this 500k kind of marker, I can't ever really get farther than it or beyond it. Meanwhile, I can just take this other gig over here, that's gonna give me $150,000 base and give me another 400k OTE, and I get stock options in both places... Why? That's guaranteed money versus optional, or versus variable money.
Pouyan:
But that's on the assumption that they keep changing the goalposts.
Scott:
100% I agree with that. So introduce me to the CEO and the board, and the VC that will not move the goalposts and, you know, I'll bake you a cake.
Ross:
I mean, that's it to me.
Pouyan:
Do you bake cakes?
Scott:
I got moves you ain't ever never seen.
Pouyan:
I may need a cake for myself.
Ross:
One slice of his cake, you will be so high.
Scott:
Exactly, right.
Pouyan:
I'll make sure not to eat that cake right before going into a board meeting.
Scott:
If the goalposts didn't get moved, then you have a point. But nobody keeps the goalposts, you know, in place.
Pouyan:
Why do you think that is?
Ross:
Because hypergrowth man! Because we have to 10X this bitch.
Scott:
Because greed. Because greed.
Ross:
Yeah, like, my thing has always been exactly what Scott's saying. You go find me a sales team that's like, honestly man we need more heads because we cannot handle the demand right now, like, this just sucks. We are letting deals slip through the cracks. No one. None. Zero. Exactly. Zero people would ever admit to like letting deals slip through the cracks because we have too much inbound. Maybe you do have a lot of inbound that isn't getting covered if you're right at the very beginning. But for the most part, I have never been too busy to work on another active deal. I haven't. And had to push off a deal. Like, shit I gotta prioritize these deals, which ones worth more and blah, blah, blah. No. I want to work them all. So the cycle just repeats. It just keeps repeating. And then salespeople go try and look for the next company. And then we're like, well, let's fuck them over on options. And then that's a whole other piece.
Scott:
Except now what you see is rather than people going to work for other companies and double dipping, they just go work for themselves on the side.
Ross:
Yeah.
Scott:
If I rewind the tape to 2016 when I first started at Qualia, I would guess that like 10% to 20% of the employees had some kind of side hustle. I bet you that number is like 60-70% at this point. Whatever those things are, consulting coaching products, influencers.
Pouyan:
Yeah, we talked about this in an earlier episode on becoming creators. I've talked to a bunch of folks who are selling stuff now going into E-commerce because that's become easier.
Scott:
Yeah. So rather than double dipping and serving two masters who will move the numbers on me. People are like, you know what? I can do this thing on my own. Control my own destiny a little bit. Right? So… people just get greedy. That person that's worth 20 billion just can't stand not being worth 30 billion. It's how I look at it.
Ross:
And so like going all the way back to the original question at the beginning is, well, how do you change something like this? Because Ben and I were talking about this earlier today, it's like, say a prospect picks up a cold call, they're like, oh, shit, a salesperson. Their backs are against the wall. The salesperson is like, hey, motherfucker, I'm already back against the wall, because I have to hit numbers. So I'm probably gonna be a little bit like outside of what I really want to be. But [I sort of have] my back against a different wall. And so you create this conflict of interest between putting the buyer first and respecting your prospects. Like, no, I'm trying to survive. I'm trying not to die over here. So there's already like this perverse incentive to close business. That goes back to the quota thing. Do we get rid of quota? Like, what are - maybe there's no real answer, but like, systemic changes that can be made to change the way salespeople have to behave, therefore, change the way that prospects view salespeople?
Scott:
Some of it has to do with the hypergrowth stuff that you talked about, and the insanity of evaluations. I mean every day I see somebody who raised, you know, 250 million in like, a series B, and they have like, 5 million ARR. And I'm like, what? Like, what are we doing? You know, so just not putting ourselves in those kinds of situations, maybe a lot more tempered growth a lot longer, you know, kind of bootstrapping before any capital is infused whatsoever. Maybe a more balanced cap table, where a founder doesn't keep 35 to 40% of the options. And the VP of Sales gets one point if they're lucky, right? And just a more like socialist kind of balancing act. You know the last place that I worked at, like, every single one of my sales managers had the same goal. Didn't have sales teams, where like, Pouyan's team hit their numbers then he's getting paid, Ross's team missed, and I'm over here as the VP of sales I missed like, we all had one number, the same number. No different teams, total, like socialist structure. It's still operating like that even two years after I left. So there's a transparency there. And like, we're all in this together versus us versus them kind of dynamic. You know, you could change the incentives a little bit. So salespeople are not the only people on the hook if they miss a target. When was the last time a VP of Marketing got fired for not hitting KPIs? I have no idea. When was the last time that VP of CS got fired because they didn't hit the retention number or the upsell number? I have no idea. Has a fucking VP of product or engineer ever been fired for being late on their release date too many times? Not that I know of. So why are we the ones with our neck in the guillotine all the time. There's something to explore there. Maybe just pay everybody and take away the quota. Give that a run, maybe that would help. Maybe we build better products that solve real pain and are not like nice to have solutions. So the product does a lot of the selling for itself.
Pouyan:
I know we don't have a lot of time left but I'm curious just to get your quick thoughts on this, Scott. In the world that you described if you get rid of quota and I can see a lot of the arguments for that. How do you reconcile the salespeople that are really like numbers driven, goal driven? Top performers, want to be top of the pack and want to get paid for it?
Scott:
How do you do that with the engineers right now that want to be the top of the pack? And the best of the best?
Pouyan:
I don't know if that translates exactly in that way. And I don't know. I don't have the answers to this but I do know that, like, I know a lot of salespeople, and we talked to a lot of them that are... they're there to win. Whatever it is, they want to outperform everybody else, right? And I think with sales the way that it's measured and I think if you were to find a way to measure the output of engineering then might that then translate. I just haven't seen it right. I guess you could maybe measure lines of code written quality of code, number of bugs. But in sales -
Scott:
Sounds like you just found metrics!
Pouyan:
But I don't know if those are the metrics that matter. I mean, you can come up with metrics for anything. Right? But they could be vanity metrics, bullshit metrics.
Scott:
Well listen we've been getting fired for 50 years on vanity metrics. So, you know, we can swing the pendulum a little bit that way.
Pouyan:
But I don't think revenue is a vanity metric.
Scott:
But you are aware that we've been fired based on more than just revenue? Right?
Pouyan:
Oh for sure. I'm just saying in the world, where if I'm a salesperson and there's two options I've got. Or maybe let's call it three. There was the - it's quota only. There's no base like you just take what you get -
Scott:
Commmission only. Yeah.
Pouyan:
Commission only, right. Yeah, sorry, commission only there. You've got the 50/50, which seems to be fairly traditional half base-half commission. And then there's the other world, where there is no commission. You get rid of quotas. So I'm just saying in that world, I was curious, like, where? How does that work?
Ross:
Performance bonus.
Scott:
Yeah. Or you just just pay everybody the top end, because that's the value of a top seller. If I hire a top engineer, I'm going to pay top engineering salary. I'm not going to make them earn it. I'm not gonna make them perform in order to get it. So let's say a commission only, like realistically, somebody can earn 300k. On a 50/50 split, somebody has 150k base and a 300k OTE in the no quota situation, just pay Scott 300k.
Pouyan:
I think the assumption I'm making, though, that maybe we may be off on is I'm assuming a no cap commission. I'm assuming your commission rate [would] even have accelerators on top. So if you perform more, you are getting paid more, right?
Scott:
I just don't believe that there is actually a real uncapped commission situation. Because it becomes at a certain point, physically impossible to attain or do more or I blow it so far out of the water that the CEO calls me up, and he's like, Listen, you did 9,000% a goal. I'm not prepared to cut you a $700,000 commission check this month. So instead of the normal 12% commission that you're gonna get, once you close deals over a million dollars, we actually drop your commission percent to 1%. So I don't know anybody who has a true, uncapped commission potential, not even a drug dealer. Even a drug dealer has limitations. Put upon ‘em by the supply. I just don't know where that exists. Everybody talks about uncapped commissions, but there is a cap, it's just invisible. But it's there.
Ross:
Yeah. The cap has been considered by the person drawing up the comp plan. They have figured out the upper - the max.
Pouyan:
If there is truly a cap in that world, then yeah, I see it. But I think -
Scott:
If you can draw it up without it, then I think your argument carries weight. I just don't know anybody...
Pouyan:
Maybe it comes at a scale. For what it's worth. We legit don't have caps on commission. And we have pretty healthy accelerators on top of it. And just from my perspective, I would be that CEO that would be happy to write that check. Because you deserved it.
Scott:
I hope everybody who is interested in a sales role is listening to Pouyan right now and rushing to apply to Scratchpad. Because that's super rare.
Pouyan:
And I'll admit, I may be missing something that maybe changes once you get to a certain scale. I don't know.
Scott:
Like, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to have one of your sales people on here and be like, realistically, what's the most money that you can make here?
Pouyan:
Yeah, and I would be happy to actually do that. Take your time because we have one that I mean, we haven't been selling for all that long. But I don't think we've even had anyone for a full year but one's already hit well beyond 100% of quota and the accelerators kick in and I will be happy for that person to receive that check because they performed and they outperformed. And not only for themselves, but they did it for the team and the company. I feel like that's the piece that at least my perspective on it is that sales isn't just a silo. Like sales is such an integrated part of the company.
Scott:
So please put everybody else's head in the guillotine in the same exact way because we don't exist in a silo. So we should just have one revenue number. All of us. Marketing, sales, CS, you. We have one revenue number. And it's we all do our part to get there, we either win together, we lose together. No CS VP runs and signs that DocuSign. No VP of Marketing is signing off on that Panda doc. They won't do it. And sure as shit, no engineering manager will. I have this debate with my brother all the time Pouyan, who you know, who's a senior engineering leader at Twitter, and he's like, that would never work. And I'm like, why? Well, you can't measure it. And then he spits out these KPIs. And I'm like, you can measure that. He's like, yeah, but like duh-duh-duh the there's always a fucking excuse. There's always some excuse. Why they can't be held as accountable as we can?
Pouyan:
I think there is something there.
Ross:
Preaaachhhh.
Pouyan:
I think the accountability piece should be leadership. In my view you should hold every person, department, function accountable, but the way you measure that accountability is going to look different. Alignment is what matters. Am I being held accountable on the things that I actually have control over and impact the business in the right way?
Scott:
So if I’m your VP of Sales and I miss my sales target two quarters in a row. Would you fire me?
Pouyan:
Depends on the context.
Scott:
No extenuating circumstances, I’m a good employee, I work hard, I’m doing my best, but we’re hitting 77% to goal, 72% to goal, like VPs of Sales get fired all the time, every day for that exact scenario.
Pouyan:
Yeah absolutely, but -
Scott:
Okay, but VPs of Engineering or Product miss release cycles two quarters in a row and nothing. Ever. Happens to them.
Pouyan:
Not here.
Scott:
Fair enough. You’ll be the first. When you fire someone who misses two releases, please make a LinkedIn post about it because every salesperson on the planet will like it and it will be the most-liked post in LinkedIn history.
Pouyan:
But I think it all depends on how you’re measuring success in the first place. What are those core outcomes that you’re measuring for that role or department and how is that person performing against those. And I think the challenging part in sales is you could hit 70% and you blew it out of the water because really what you should’ve hit was 50%. Because there was a fundamental issue in the product. Marketing didn’t deliver the leads, you did. So that’s why I said it all depends. You have to look at it in context.
Scott:
Well you are a gentleman and a scholar. I can’t even begin to tell you how rare it is that a founder would think that way. Just that sentence that you just uttered. Well you only should’ve hit 50% so you massively over-achieved. Never. Never did I hear that. Never did I hear that in 17 years.
Ross:
Sacks has never said that in his life.
Pouyan:
Well we’ll reset the perception little bit, by little bit here.
Scott:
This is how it changes maybe. One brick at a time. One Pouyan-Scratchpad at a time.
Ross:
I think we should put all the engineers’ metrics up on TVs around the office so we can see how many bugs each one is responsible for And then we take the CS people. We put them up there too. How well are you renewing people? How much work are you doing?
Pouyan:
For what it’s worth we do some version of that at Scratchpad. We run on cycles and every 2 weeks we have - in the same way we have sales commits to a number, we actually have engineering and product commit to their objectives and we look at how far did we go on those objectives? And it’s hard because there are certain things that you absolutely don’t have control over, but it is working and it follows that same model. The idea of scoping things properly, then committing and then being held accountable for it.
Ross:
But there’s also a misconception that sales has control over everything to you. It’s like, she had a bad dream about our product and now she doesn’t want to buy. Like, okay that’s my bad.
Pouyan:
Or sometimes it happens where everything went great and it’s multi-threaded and then your internal champion who was gonna buy… is no longer there. That shit happens all the time and it impacts the deal and is it the salesperson’s fault? No.
Scott:
Well historically that person gets fired. So what you end up with is people like me who are super defensive about it and have PTSD for themselves and all of their employees because they’ve been through scenarios where people don’t think and operate the way you’re talking about.
Pouyan:
We can have another session on how do you unpack that before joining a company. How do you learn how folks are promoted or fired?
Scott:
That would be a well attended webinar in the middle of the day.
