Pouyan Salehi  

How do you deal with that argument though? That some marketers will say, sales just needs to learn how to close better?

‍

Zoe Hartsfield  

It drives me insane! If you inherently believe that salespeople are lazy, like first of all, you're crazy. Second of all, you should probably have to go sit in the trenches and make a couple cold calls to humble yourself there, guy.

‍

Ross Pomerantz  

I think salespeople - they're not lazy. It's trying to figure out as many ways as they possibly can to not do the cold call. Like how can they be successful in any other way, but the parts that are miserable.

‍

***Beyond Quota Intro***

‍

Pouyan  

Everyone, we're back. I'm Pouyan from Scratchpad. And of course, we've got Corp with us...

‍

Ross  

*Throwing up deuces* Thug life.

‍

Pouyan  

But I'm super excited about our guest today. Zoe Hartsfield, you've got an incredible story. So I'm excited to jump in. And hear all about it. 

‍

Zoe  

Thank you. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

‍

Pouyan  

I think anyone that's made cold calls has an incredible story, to be honest. And you've done some of that so I think that just checks that box.

‍

Ross  

Perhaps we should take it back to the beginning of your sales career. I would love to hear your sales background and clearly you've lived the SADNESS life if you've cried on a cold call.

‍

Zoe  

So like, how do I get by? Or how did I get started in sales?

‍

Ross  

Yeah, how did you fall into this? Was it a choice? You know, like a childhood dream?

‍

Zoe  

No, I'm pretty sure my grandpa whose 93 said the word "bummer" when I told him I got a job in sales. So you know, it wasn't exactly the Porter dream when I was growing up. I was supposed to be a lawyer and - huge disappointment to my family in that regard, but I did actually fall into SaaS sales kind of on a fluke. 

‍

I was working in corporate finance. I was a junior in college. And I was working like 55 hours a week and in school full time. And I was miserable. My manager was like, Hey, I think you'd be great for like a team lead. And I was like, Wow, I can't believe that you see that in me, I would love to do that. He's like, yeah yeah so I want you to apply. You're not going to get it this time around, but apply now so that in a year when it opens up again, like you can apply and you'll get it. And I was like, wait, that like, can you back that up for me? What does that mean? He was like, oh, yeah, well, like you kind of have to get in queue. You need to wait in line. And I was like, alright, so like, if I interview the best, if I'm the best candidate. I will not get this promotion. He was like, that's exactly what I'm telling you. 

‍

So I quit! I put in my two weeks the next day and had no job lined up. I was still a full time student. My partner was like, I can float us for the next six months just finish school. And about six weeks into my sabbatical. I was like, forget this, this is so boring. And I literally just cold applied to the two tech companies in Colorado Springs. One of them was desperate for bodies and brought me in for an interview and talked about how I used to huck credit cards as a sales, like floor rep at Banana Republic. And they were like cool, we'll give you a job. And so thus began my journey as an SDR.

‍

Ross  

Rest is history.

‍

Pouyan  

What happened when you actually got in as an SDR? Talk to us about that a little bit.

‍

Zoe  

Man. I mean, like talking about drinking from a firehose, like having no concept of SaaS for like tech or anything.

‍

Ross  

I was waiting for you to say "talk about drinking."

‍

Zoe  

I mean like that, too. But no, like, I had never experienced a working environment like that. Not only was I surrounded by people my age, but the energy on a sales floor is so different from the energy in any other working environment I've ever had. Like, I went from being in a literal cubicle doing data entry and customer service calls to calling people and selling them shit. And like, it's just a really different conversation. It's a different skill set. Luckily, I figured out that I was very good at copywriting. I was not so great on the phone. And that's like a lot of work. 

‍

But it was really interesting to shift from that [mindset of] you have to wait in line to this is a meritocracy and we will pay you based on how good you are. And that was very, very exciting. I was a collegiate athlete, I was a pretty good student, I am not averse to hard work as long as my hard work is recognized. So like, the ego boosts that it gave me to be at the top of a board in a sales floor where everyone could see Zoe Hartsfield number one. Like it  was great for my ego and also terrible because it gave me a huge complex.

‍

Pouyan  

Yeah, I'll be honest, I don't know how people do it. To sit in a room alone and have to just build your energy up to cold call and then just get rejected and rejected and rejected after that. Like it was hard enough doing it when we were getting started. It was just me and my co founder and we had no idea what the hell we were doing. But to your point, like, we hype each other up. And that was, gosh, that was bad. But alright, like your turn.

‍

Zoe  

So obviously, as a founder, you've had to sell your product. Were you ever in sales prior to that?

‍

Pouyan  

No. We never had - a lot of people ask me since we've been building sales tech products type stuff now for way too long. For a long time. For many years. And it was like, no we didn't really have any sales experience. We were never on a sales floor. We never had anyone to, you know, give us that extra boost and coaching and say, Hey, like, I believe in you. Great job! You'll get it next time. 

‍

It was just us, but we ended up with this product. And we're like, well, shit, what do we do with it now? We have no money, we can't hire a salesperson. So we actually just read every book we could. We talked to every salesperson we could. But ultimately, we just sat there and just picked up the phone and started calling. We had to create our own lists. We had no money to buy some data tool. We even did door to door prospecting for one of our businesses. So it was like a... it was a fully-packed, immersion experience into sales in a short period of time.

‍

Zoe  

So was it worse or better when you got marketing? Finally.

‍

Pouyan  

We just got marketing not that long ago and just for our latest business. We never really had marketing for any other other businesses. So I don't know how to answer that.

‍

Ross  

It's about a nice-to-have versus need-to-have. You know, it's a classic conundrum. And now you got some VC money so you go get that nice-to-have known as marketing. Nate's out there right now, just dying inside wanted to punch me.

‍

Zoe  

Nate is the best by the way. You guys have an excellent marketing leader.

‍

Pouyan  

I'd say the whole marketing team, including Ross, they're fantastic. Sorry I got to throw the jabs in, but you know the one area you called out though that I think is really important, is how do you position and message in the first place? And in some ways people think that falls under marketing, but in a lot of ways it falls under sales. It's like, if I'm just if I'm reaching out to cold call, what do I even say? How do I position this thing? And some of the best salespeople I know are just excellent at positioning and messaging too. 

‍

Zoe  

They should basically just be product marketers. The best thing that I have encountered since working in a company that has some VC money is, it's the first time I've worked with product marketers. And our product marketers are so excellent. And they're so in tune with sales and their whole mission is to make sales easier. And I just kind of love that ethos from a marketing perspective.

‍

Like, early days, when I was an SDR, we didn't have product marketing. We didn't even have training or enablement or anything, it was me and four other inbound SDRs that they were like, Hey, do you guys want to try outbound? We've never done this before. Write your own sequences, figure it out. So I had a lot of ability to test my own messaging, write my own sequences, chose my own verticals - we didn't have territories. It was just like, pick random ass accounts and go after them. 

‍

And so you have to fail fast to figure out what works and what doesn't. Otherwise, you're never going to hit your number and you're never gonna make any money. And that's no fun, like, sales is miserable when you can't hit quota. But it's fun as hell when you're crushing your number. 

‍

Pouyan  

So for for product marketing, are those product marketers great because they did sales before or just that they appreciate what sales does?

‍

Zoe  

Most of our product marketers, honestly, they were writers. They're really good writers. They're really good storytellers. And they're just helpful people. I actually don't think any of them have sales backgrounds. One of them has a robotics background, and one of them was just like a different marketing background. But they are so intimately connected to the problem that we solve, and genuinely measure themselves and their success against the success of sales. 

‍

So I think it's really like aligning your outcomes with sales outcomes. I think that's like, the biggest issue with the tension between sales and marketing right now is like marketers are like, here's a bunch of MQLs sales, like these leads suck. And there's no alignment. But if everybody was measured on pipeline, if that was like the gold standard, then there's not a lot to argue about at that point. If marketers are held accountable to a pipeline number, if sales is accountable to a pipeline number or business development or whatever. Like, that's it. That's a different story. And so I think for our product marketing team, the reason they're so good, is because they don't consider themselves successful, unless sales is succeeding.

‍

Ross  

The only thing you run into though is the attribution piece. And then who sourced what? But really quick because I think I can speak personally for the longest time and many other salespeople the majority of whose listening to this, can you differentiate product marketing versus like generalist kind of marketing? Or how you see the difference between the two? Because there also is a huge technical piece to marketing.

‍

Zoe  

Totally, I mean, there's a bunch of different types of marketing. I would consider myself a bit of a Swiss Army Knife marketer because I've done a lot of random marketing shit before. And I wouldn't say that I specialize in any one piece, but like a product marketer, they're working on our messaging, they're working on our positioning, they're working on sales collateral to make sales better so that when sales gets on a call, everybody is saying the same thing. We're all talking to our prospects the same way. And if I were to stop any person in the company and say, Hey, give me our elevator pitch, it's within a couple of words of one another. And it's all very clear and defined. I need to be able to tell my 93 year old Grandma What the hell a Spekit is. Because, it's got to be that simple. And if I can't, then like we need to work on some of our messaging. 

‍

So that's where I think product marketing comes in. But then we've got an incredible ops marketer. She lives in Salesforce spreadsheets all day. And I can't do that. I'm honestly like, I spend most of my day on LinkedIn and just take calls with random people and try and make intros to the business development team and hang out in communities. My job is so different. I think the key is having a marketing strategy. And like how all of those things play into the overarching goal of like, are we shooting for pipeline? Are we shooting for MQLs? Do we care about attribution? Yes, everybody cares about attribution. But it's like, you have to kind of ask yourself what's the motivator? 

‍

You brought up attribution. People want credit. For me, it's less about the credit, and it's more so like, do I throw more dollars at this channel because it's working? Or do I not and pivot and try something else? And so for us, attribution is more so just like an indicator of where we double down, and less of like, marketing gets credit here.

‍

Pouyan  

How do you deal with that argument, though? That some marketers say well, sales just needs to learn how to close better.

‍

Zoe  

It drives me insane. Oh, my goodness, I worked for a VP. I don't work for them anymore. But they used to be like salespeople are lazy. And I was like, you've clearly never worked in sales. Like you've no idea. That job is so hard. And I think if that is your attitude as a marketer you are set up to fail. Because you're not being a very good partner to your sales team. If you inherently believe that salespeople are lazy, like, first of all, you're crazy. Second of all, you should probably have to go sit in the trenches and make a couple cold calls to humble yourself their guy, and then, you know, move on. But that's like my take on it. It's like you have to have some respect for the role.

‍

Ross  

Yeah, I mean, I think salespeople, it's not lazy. It's trying to figure out as many ways as they can possibly to not do the cold call. How can they be successful in any other way, but the parts that are miserable. You speak very emotionally, and I don't mean that in a negative way, and vulnerably and authentically, publicly. Can you talk about that shift and where you suddenly decided, hey, this is what I want to lead with, and what that's kind of yielded for you and how's that sort of affected the roles that you've gotten and just kind of like your general life trajectory?

‍

Zoe  

When I was an SDR, I was two months into the pandemic. A lot of stuff was going on in my personal life and I actually attempted suicide. Like I tried to be done with life. I didn't want to do life anymore. And I thought that everything was too painful. I was living kind of in this box that I had created for myself because I wanted to be more palatable to the world. And I didn't want people to see how much pain I was in. And that works for so long. And then all of a sudden stuff breaks. And so when that kind of resolved itself, and I got into therapy and started kind of working through my shit, I realized I wasn't doing myself or the people who love me any favors by kind of like, I would never say I was being fake, I just think I was not open. And I was not vulnerable. And I remember how impactful it was for me meeting someone who had been through some things that were similar to me and them sharing their experience and it like... it did something to truly soften me I think. Feeling seen in that moment. 

‍

And so I kind of just made the shift of, well no one's going to hate me more than I hate me. So like, what's the risk of being a little bit more honest, and see what happens. And the overwhelming support - yeah, I get the jokes in my DMs from time to time being like you're an idiot. But like, in general, people are really nice and like, wow I relate to that or I've experienced that too. And I've kind of tested the waters. 

‍

I think there's a balance. I don't ever want to post things for the shock factor. So I kind of have this litmus test in the back of my head of anytime I write about something the question is, does this help somebody with their life or to be better at their job? Or does it make them feel something? And if the answer is No then I scrap it and I start over. But if the answer is yes then it's worth putting out there. 

‍

I mean, social media is such an echo chamber, but it's also an interesting feedback loop. Like you see what resonates with people, you can see people react, you can see the messages they send you. And as I got more and more positive feedback of people being like, I thought I was the only one. I was like, man, there's a real need for a little bit more honesty and vulnerability. And if that's going to be me, sure, because I lived so much of my life feeling so unseen. And so see-through that it's now kind of a core value of mine. Let no one come into my presence and feel see-through. And so if that requires me being the first one to be vulnerable to help other people feel that way and feel seen and feel like they can open up then so be it.

‍

Pouyan  

One thing I tell my team is that you never know. Actually not you never know, but just assume that everyone you interact with has something crazy going on in their life that you have no idea about that you may never know. And for most folks I think that is the case. And I think to your point on making sure everyone that comes into your sphere is seeing is being seen, I think just treating people with compassion as a starting point and as a default.

‍

Ross  

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big proponent of therapy, too. I've been going to therapy for many, many years. Big, big proponent. I like to make jokes about it because I think it makes it somewhat more accessible. It is kind of a silly thing when you think about it, but it is also just like going to the gym or eating healthy. It's  just maintenance of a human. And a lot of people don't see it that way.

‍

Zoe  

I love making jokes. Me and my friend Jack have this quick sense of humor sponsored by trauma. Like I make a ton of jokes about hard things that I've been through, because it makes them more palatable for me. And it makes me more comfortable talking about. I think humor is a really interesting outlet, which is part of why I like your content so much Ross, because I'm like, Yeah it's funny, but it's also super real. 

‍

And I get what you're saying. But I think to your point, it's totally a maintenance thing. It's like being a person is probably the hardest thing you could do with your life. Just existing. It's challenging. And having somebody who's time with you is literally dedicated to helping you solve problems and get better, like it's an invaluable resource. 

‍

And I know the significance is not lost on me that it is not a cheap thing. It is an investment. I'll say it's the best investment I've ever made. Like, if I had to choose between a gym membership, or a therapist, I would choose a therapist and just go run outside. Like there's certain trade offs I think you can make but that is the type of investment that will pay lifelong dividends if you're willing to make it.

‍

Ross  

Fax, shout to Kyle 1pm Every Monday! See you there buddy!

‍

Zoe  

For a second. I thought you were talking to a dead person because you looked up.

‍

Ross  

My therapist Kyle. He's out there. He's alive. Unless I've been making this up in my head for a long time. Who have I been paying then?

‍

Zoe  

He's not licensed. He's just like a guy with an office.

‍

Ross  

Yeah, everyone's like, you're your therapist would be named Kyle. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that sounds Yeah, fair. Fair.

‍

Zoe  

Mine's name is Heather. So shout out Heather.

‍

Pouyan  

What's your recovery song?

‍

Ross  

Yeah, like Heather's busy. You need something. And you need it now.

‍

Zoe  

If I said Careless Whisper will you judge me?

‍

Ross  

No. Absolutely not.

‍

Pouyan  

Wait for which one the hype song or the recovery song?

‍

Zoe  

No, it's uh I'm trying to think like recovery songs... probably anything where somebody is screaming to be honest. Like 2006 heavier, metal -

‍

Ross  

Let The Bodies Hit The Floor?

‍

Zoe  

Yeah, I just need somebody to scream at me. I need to transfer that angst to something else so I actually really love like angry music. But like hype song. Okay, have you heard Mount Everest by Labrynth?

‍

Ross  

I have not.

‍

Pouyan  

No.

‍

Zoe  

How dare you?!!

‍

Ross  

Okay, and then so please hype your self. Gas yourself up right now. Where can people find you? What are you working on? You want to plug anything? Life?

‍

Zoe  

Yeah, I mean don't find me. You don't want to follow me. All I do is... I'm a Saddie not Baddie so like it's really not worth the following -

‍

Ross  

Why not both? Why can't you be both?

‍

Zoe  

I have two projects right now that I'm working on. None of them are ever gonna make me any money but they're just like a creative outlet. One of them is called No Product, Just Vibes. It's a Slack community for people want to bitch about work together. So No Product, Just Vibes. We're hanging out in there.

‍

Ross  

Salespeople are ready for that. This is a perfect audience for that.

‍

Zoe  

Oh, yeah. And then I'm working on a brand. It's kind of like a mental health awareness and I love fashion and clothing and I wanted to kind of like try my hand at designing some, some interesting stuff. And so SADDIE is on a hat that I have. And it's called Manana brand and it's just like the idea of, you know, we need you here tomorrow so get that Manana. So that's something I'm working on. But I mean, other than that, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm a real troll. I'm on Twitter sometimes. Like, not very good.

‍

Ross  

Talk about Saddie. Everything I do is about SADNESS. That's the status. Okay. Well Zoey, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being super real and you know, generally cool throughout this whole thing.

‍