Battle Scars of a Sales Leader
Understanding the stories of resilience, strategy, and leadership is essential for success in the competitive sales world.
James will uncover the raw and unfiltered real-life experiences of sales Leaders, exploring the ups and downs and lessons learned in the high-pressure sales world.
Battle Scars of a Sales Leader
From Startup to Global VP: Mastering Modern Sales Leadership
James sits down with Andrew Morton to learn about his journey from a Nova Scotia farm to a cybersecurity sales leader, showing that success often comes from unexpected places. Starting with technical roles, he quickly discovered his talent for sales in the early 2000s.
Now as VP of Global Sales at DefenseX, Andrew has consistently turned difficult situations into opportunities for growth.
What makes Andrew's story special is his ability to adapt and grow in the fast-changing tech world.
He's successfully moved from selling hardware to modern cloud services, always focusing on building genuine relationships with customers and partners.
His approach combines old-fashioned values of honesty and hard work with modern business strategies.
Key Lessons:
- Success comes from being adaptable and willing to learn
- Technical knowledge combined with people skills creates unique advantages
- Authentic relationships matter more than fancy sales techniques
- Challenges can become opportunities with the right mindset
- Understanding both business and technology is valuable in today's market
Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. You've come all the way from North America to join us, especially here for this show. So, thank you, thrilled to be here. Yeah, it's great that you could join us. I know I say that with a little bit of jest. I know you're doing a bit of business down here. You've recently been appointed as the VP of Global Sales for DefenseX, which is a startup soon to be scale up cybersecurity company that is going global up soon to be scale up cybersecurity company that is going global.
Speaker 1:And, um, yeah, I've just been so excited watching the progress of the company, but also having conversations with you to understand how successful you guys are having the success you're having in north america, but also what I'm anticipating is going to happen in this region. So today I'd love to um, you know, just learn a little bit more about your journey, your sales journey, your leadership journey. Like, how did you get to where you are today? And you know, for that are listening. It's really, how can we understand kind of who you are as a person, like, how did you, how did you really get to where you are? What are the lessons you've learned along the way?
Speaker 2:Certainly. Well, I'm not going to go back to childhood, but I could give you a little nugget. First I worked a lot in the Bay area, southern California, texas, new York, had experiences overseas, but I'll get to all that. And where I came from originally was a farm in Nova Scotia. So this is we're talking Eastern Canada town of 300 people kind of thing. And I will say when you come from a farm and you kind of place like that, the first thing you think as you get older is okay, I want to go see the world. And well, being here in Australia is a good example of that. Not my first time here, a beautiful country, but definitely my first time here for business. I was here much younger, at a much more careless time in my life and it was a lot of fun and it's really great to be back here. You know, now in the business community, you know, and after coming through it looks you know it looks very much like Canada. That makes sense. You know, being a, my current home is in Vancouver, british Columbia.
Speaker 2:Early in my career, when I got out of school and I was kind of trying to figure out what you want to do, I was a very technical guy from the get-go but I thought I wanted to be in arts, which is kind of a funny path, even though my first computer I got when I was 11, in a time when not a lot of 11-year-olds had computers. To date myself a little bit, my first computer was a Commodore 64. My first language I programmed in was basic. So you know, maybe some of your listeners don't know what that is, but you have floppy disk drives and all this kind of thing. A very different time, when I got into the working world, you know, I did work to do some tech support and various types of things in marketing and I saw right away that the sales guys are the ones that had the parking spaces, the tech support guys had the cubicles. The sales guys became president. Many of the techies unfortunately did not and I kind of did the math and I went okay, I think I know what's going on here. So my first, first real professional job out of school was actually at a computer distributor. It was a hundred percent commission, awesome. So this is a company called glo which is no longer around because they're acquired by tech data, and it was feast or famine and I learned very quickly what feast or famine meant right, which meant if you don't sell, you do not make money. That's like that's it, that's all. So we're talking nineties and they did date myself a little bit.
Speaker 2:And back at that time, you know, client server was a new idea, novell and networking was kind of a big deal way back at that time. So I'm dating myself a lot with all this, but at the time it was, it was a dialing thing. When I got there, many of the established reps looked at me as a 20 something kid and said I feel really bad for you new guys, because all the good customers are taken. So a little, you know, a young, arrogant version of myself went screw you guys. Of course there's more there and they gave me a list of zeros and non-producers and within I guess I'm supposed to pound my chest in a thing like this. I don't like to do that because I'm kind of humble. But within seven months I made this marquee milestone. If you were a million dollar a month rep, we're talking 90ss you were like a rock star there and by month seven I was there. Wow, a year, a million dollars a month, a million dollars a month in gross revenues, wow. So at that age. Yeah, so you know. I didn't have a concept of what that meant. I guess when you don't know any better, you're willing to go for it.
Speaker 2:I would show up at six o'clock in the morning. I would leave late at night. That was my deal, in fact my biggest argument with my sales manager back in those days, who I've actually stayed in touch with over the years on and off, great guy, he, uh he said my biggest battle was I want a key to the office. And he looked at me and said there's no way I'm giving this punk a key. So I had to prove my worth just to get the key. And one day I remember this very distinctly sitting at my cubicle one and the key gets dropped on my desk and he walks past me. Incredible, it was like this big moment, right, yeah, and it's funny how this works in life. Just when things are perfect, then things get shooken up. That's how it works.
Speaker 2:And I was recruited and being a computer distributor. We had IBM, we had 3Com at the time we had all the big brands, hp we're talking client-server. This distributor was very much focused on all client-server products. All bars in Western Canada at the time that's where I was living at the time. I was recruited by IBM, which became Lexmark.
Speaker 2:When I got there, I realized all the stuff I had no idea about. I was not a professional. I was rough around the edges, to say the least, because nobody that's you know. Nobody's there to teach you, and I would definitely say that that was one of the best experiences of my career. Not that it was great to work for a big company, but I highly recommend anybody that ever wants to take an entrepreneurial path work at a big company first, because what I learned at Lexmark, which became Lexmark IBM had spun this thing off. Ibm had gone through a lot of changes, so what I got was all the best of what ibm had to offer for training, mentorship, all that good stuff how to run a meeting, how to be responsible, you know, yeah it's funny.
Speaker 1:Now you say that I actually had a similar path myself okay, a few years behind you, um but I graduated and out of university in the uk and ended up doing my first couple of years at SAP and that was my first cut into the world of sales and software sales, and it was tough in the sense that trying to understand complex ERP solutions when you come out of university was challenging and they weren't necessarily set up to support the grads at the time. It was their first year of the grad program, but I was incredibly well trained and it was an incredible opportunity to have a great logo on my CV as well. That opened up a lot of doors moving forward as well.
Speaker 2:It does help. And if anybody ever said to me what should I do when I start a company, I always say why don't you go work in a big company first? So you know what it's like and you also know what you don't want to do.
Speaker 1:well, and you know what's funny because, uh, when I left there, I just migrated from the, the big company, to the mid, to the small one and I actually found I cut my teeth really well in the smaller companies and I really enjoyed that startup scale up world. Um, but yeah, absolutely it's good to, I think, try a few things, um to see what you do like. I want to ask a question yeah, you stepping into 100 commission-based role at the age of you know, 21, 22, whatever that was what was, can you think back? Like what was your primary motivator? Like what, what actually really was the reason that you went into that role? Was it money? Was it sense of achievement? Was it proving yourself.
Speaker 2:You know what it was is. I felt at that age especially, this was my shot, this is my opportunity to prove myself and get into the real world, the real world of grown-ups, because at that age you know you don't really know any better. Yeah, you say you do, of course you know, you and you. I think there's a realization everybody has at that age where they come out and they suddenly realize that 2021 maybe they really don't know everything and I realized that as soon as I got there, because the you know all of all of my co-workers there were all like in my, in my little view of the world, the time grown-ups and when you're like 21, 22, you're not a grown-up yet, you really you're just figuring yourself out and the world certainly changed around. You know what you know. Now people are staying with their parents longer and everything. At that time I was that when I was 18, right, and it was a funny time because you're still kind of a kid. And then you suddenly realize, okay, this is like, this is like kind of serious. These like really here, these guys are, these guys have mortgages and real stuff. I have a roommate, I live with a bunch of animals. I'm still a kid right. So very different time. I was still like that at 30.
Speaker 2:Took me a while to get to that part too, but it really I saw it as an opportunity. I saw the bigger picture. Yeah, it bigger picture. It was a really short time in my career, so short that it's not even one of those things where I'm like, hey, this is my background. I really see, you know, being recruited to an IBM spinoff company as really my real, first real job, if that makes sense, although I do treasure those days. And why that one is is because it was time to grow up a little bit, and I said when I say grow up, meaning understand when you wake up and learning those objectives and all of that. But what I definitely learned in my first gig we'll call it because it was a bit short was responsibility, that I was responsible for myself and I was really running as a salesperson, my own little business inside a company, and I was very lucky to have that, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I find that you can spot salespeople that have been, maybe when they're in college, university they were waiters or bartenders or something because they had this services mentality, they understand that sense of today that makes sense, customer service today, and what you put in is is correlated to what you get out as well yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:It's a little more of my journey I got. I was recruited from there to an offer. I loved where I was working so much. I work with a great team of guys, uh, women, and they're a great bunch of folks at Lexmark and I really just loved being there. And I remember somebody saying to me you know how long do you think you'll stay? And I said I think I'll stay here forever. That's my mentality. And that guy looked at me and said, yeah, you don't want to do that. That guy's still there, by the way, which I thought funny, great guy, even good, good bunch of people.
Speaker 2:I was recruited to 3com, which is a company that doesn't exist anymore. They're acquired by hp back in the 2000s time frame and I very quickly, long story short, became a very large part of their number for the broadband global business had big carriers and all of that. And it's funny how, again, I started to peak and as I was, I was peaking in that job. Things changed, the world changed around me. 3com was sort of imploding, to say the least, do you remember what year that was?
Speaker 2:yes, so I left 3com in 2001 and the reason why I resigned? I had a great business, one of my. I was there. I watched a lot of layoffs happening around us, things were changing and 3com had acquired a number of companies and they think they just grew too fast, too soon and coming out of an ibm lexmark kind of mentality where I'm buttoned down and this kind of thing. When I showed up at 3com was much more santa clara, silicon valley, like you know, and guys would take like the long way around my office and things. They thought I was a bit, you know, a bit rough because I was this driven character, right as a kid, right.
Speaker 2:And I remember at 3com I I remember handing out business plans to everybody in a sales meeting and they all went what the hell is this? Were you the sales manager? I was hired to be what they called area sales manager and what that really was was a fancy title for a sales rep with a big quota. But then eventually I was like a team lead and I had a branch office I was managing and then, unfortunately, at some point my job was also to help with layoffs, which was a very unpleasant experience, to say the least and my reasons for leaving, where my division was for sale and I was heavily involved in broadband business and we had tried to find a way to get a better supplier for some of our broadband products. There was a whole bunch of reasons why we had to do that. The company never OEM from anybody before. They always built their own stuff. In the middle of all that, they tried to sell my division. That that sale didn't happen and I had to.
Speaker 2:I was actually tasked with calling my biggest telecom clients imagine these massive tier one carriers, calling these guys saying hey, I got bad news for you. All those promises I made to you, uh, company just broke them. So I saw this as a reputation damaging thing and it wasn't the company's fault. This is just where the business was. It's something I had to deal with and I recognized I think it's time to go and I had some options and I started calling around and luckily I'd built a name for myself enough at that point where people took my call and I had an option at a security vendor. I had my option an option at a big networking vendor and at a security vendor and my option an option at a big networking vendor and I, and door number three was do something entrepreneurial. And I did that awesome.
Speaker 2:So the oem supplier. I called him up and said hey, I have an idea. I flew into san francisco airport. We spent eight hours in the united club hashing out what a plan would look like together and I said I said this is basically going to be a well-founded startup. I'm going to, you're going to, I'm going to take your engineering team in taiwan. I'd even been to asia, this guy the guy was a great. He put a lot of faith in me, uh, and left there. We made a contract together about how we're going to build a business. I stole a peer of mine from from three comedy, joined me and we launched something called comtrend in the US and Europe. We went from zero to hero. So I was there and I did this for nine years.
Speaker 1:So you identified a problem and a gap in the market that the corporate world had created and came in and thought I'm going to solve that and build a business around it.
Speaker 2:Well, I launched a business in the US in 2001 in the middle of the internet. Crash Like this has got to be a crazy move, and two months in was 9-11. Crash like this has got to be a crazy move, you know, and two months in was 9-11. It was a wild time. However, broadband was exploding and what I saw was at the time it's like nobody does this anymore but adsl or dsl digital subscriber line, which is essentially the ability to put high speed over copper. Remember the old dial-up stuff before your time? A little bit.
Speaker 1:I remember that sure way back yeah, I mean, there's been.
Speaker 2:Modems are like the size of a coffee table, right. Well, what happened was old dial-up stuff before your time. A little bit, I remember that Sure way back. Yeah, I mean, these modems are like the size of a coffee table, right? Well, what happened was somebody figured out how to make better spectrum on copper. What these guys in Taiwan did was they built a really good product and the world was moving towards Asia.
Speaker 2:My vision was Eastern cost structure, western face. Now, at that time it was a pretty radical idea. Nowadays it's nothing new, but at the time it was pretty radical idea. Nowadays it's nothing new, but at the time this is very radical. This is before y-way had really exploded on the global scene and all of that right, and we were building modems and routers and things. We had customers like some big telecoms, not just in us and canada but also in europe. The notables would be like bt telephonica, telus in canada, some pretty big players, uh, centurylink, which is now called Lumen. But when we first launched, nobody would take our phone calls, nobody. I suddenly was hit with oh my god, what have I done for the first week or two? Nobody want to talk to us and we built from that a global scale of about 300 customers, because it took us nine years to get there amazing.
Speaker 1:What was um? You know, when you hit those roadblocks and those hurdles and realize I don't have the brand, the name, they're not taking my calls, what did you, what did you build or implement that changed that path?
Speaker 2:you know, our first one was the hardest one and we had to really give them some good reasons to work with us. I knew just cheap wasn't enough. You know, nobody wins a price war. But what I will say is there was, there was some real needs. I went after I understood compatibility. I really got down with studying my industry and learning and I came into this not knowing how copper andrum worked, but I had the aptitude, so I learned a lot about how Spectrum works. And then I talked about performance and that was my way in. And when you finally kind of get that one little sponsor, that gets you in, one sponsor leads to the next guy, to the next person, to the next person and eventually you build some trust in the organization I found my way in.
Speaker 1:So, being a subject matter expert coming in, adding an extra layer of value over and above.
Speaker 2:Well, james, the weirdest part is, within a couple of years of that, I was on panels as a subject matter expert in that industry. No way, yeah, because I had done the work. It's the innovator. But really no, I don't. I wasn't born being a broadband expert. I educated myself because I had to. I had to understand what I was doing and how the product worked. When we finally did that, you know each success made the next one that much easier and you know it really becomes that hockey stick.
Speaker 1:You know, and it's fascinating because these sort of things happen to us all the time and the world is changing at such a rate of knots today. Can you think of, can you productize a model of of for someone that is in that situation where they've they've gone out on their own, they're doing something different, they're on their career trajectory Like what is? Are there two to three items that you can say like this is how you need to think about really getting ahead, or getting out of the rats and building something for yourself.
Speaker 2:Become a credible source to the customer. That's the key. It's all about trust, right? Yeah, you know, and even today, you know I'm building trust with our clients. I mean, I've been, you know, somewhat recently joined the team of defense X, which is lots of very exciting, and you know, I'm a I'm a very loyal person and I believe I'm very trustworthy. My job is not, it's not to convince people, that is to prove it to them. If I keep coming back and I keep saying what I'm going to do, I'll call you in a week. I'll call you in a week, you know, for a rep that's really struggling, you know, because all reps struggle at some point. Yeah, yeah, you know the the advice there is rethink how you're approaching your customer and give them some reason to want to talk to you, because differentiation now, you know it's, it's difficult.
Speaker 2:But at that time even you know, what we had later on in that business was it was commoditization, which I knew was going to come, you know, and what came on the scene was yyzte, you know, some of the big branch from mainland china. They're really making a charge, they're making giant investments, they're literally buying the market, and what kept us in play was the trust we built with our customers. It certainly wasn't the price, but it took us a while to get to. To get to that we also found, you know, very much like the markets I'm in today, the word of mouth among all the mid-tier operators was a big deal. You know, when this guy over in Oklahoma we're talking mid-tier telcos, this kind of thing, this is kind of old school stuff, but that guy tells his friend in Illinois, that tells his friend in Michigan. You know, these guys are actually the real deal. It's a good product. They did the right thing by us, they stuck by us. We had a support issue we couldn't configure and you do all these things. Yeah, it gets around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean defense x are now operating. Yeah, they've got a scalable solution which fits the enterprise. But you're here with PAX 8 and going to the MSP channel here and you know that's's where I spent my career in software vendor land, building sales teams, and that's exactly what I've done over the years is identify. You know, if you can deliver value and build that trust particularly the MSP community they will go off and tell all of their friends that this is a trusted vendor that you should be working with.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's our biggest challenge in recruiting people is making sure people understand there's responsibility that comes with this. Yeah, the accountability is not just for the number, but it's also to make sure the community is right.
Speaker 1:What was, um, you had your own business and you build up a yeah, your own sales team and go to market team. What is, I guess, the most recent example of you building a sales team? Um, and you know, with that, what is the process and methodology that you went through in terms of, like you mentioned, onboarding or hiring the right sort of candidates or employees? What are the sort of things you think of as an index on for the right sort of people for your business?
Speaker 2:Great question. So I was at a company called Entone and we sold the business actually one of our competitors, which is another story, which is a nice exit. But I built a Latin American business closed and very large opportunities in the us. I mean, this was very, very this was very much. When I arrived, a hardware business that I helped transition to a sas and services model, which is a big transition to make. Everybody in hardware likes to say they're really a software company because nobody wants to be in hardware. But hardware is an essential part of the chain. The challenge is that's commodity and I was hired to do that, to really to help that transition and we did it successfully. And looking for people it was really folks that not only I wasn't as worried about somebody that was an absolute ace and expert in that industry, but somebody that had aptitude. If they were adaptable in some ways that's better because it's because they're actually willing to put in the work and what are the the traits that you look for in a salesperson or sales leader.
Speaker 2:Well, empathy is the biggest one. Empathy, yeah, I think that's because modern, it doesn't matter what customer is there's. If there's a problem you have to be empathetic around it and it's really hard to find that person. But what I'm finding now in people nowadays, everybody's big on authenticity and I think that can translate to empathy. I think that's right. But empathy is a big one Because if they have some humility, they understand customers' needs and it's genuine. People buy into that and it's not a made-up thing. Gone are the days of the swashbuckling lone star salesperson, rock star party all night, sell all day. I think those people are starting to change that and I've certainly been part of that especially, you know big companies. When you're a sales guy at a big company, you sort of do that kind of thing a lot Right, and the world's changing in that it's more now about a team and somebody actually understanding with customer. Hey, you know, here's here, here I actually care about your problems and they actually buy into that If somebody's invested in their business, especially nowadays in the modern MSP model, because nowadays this is not a one-and-done business.
Speaker 2:The old-school software sales were buy some licenses, see you next year, we'll stay in touch. This is an ongoing ecosystem. We're all in this together. Our MSPs really were codependent. We're solving a giant problem for them, which is modern attacks. The way DefenseX works fundamentally is we're dealing with the most modern problems, which is identity theft, which is data loss prevention. Dns security is kind of an old idea, but we wrap that and bundle that, wrap it all into one package. What's important to us is that our MSPs can use it easily. We understand how they want to deploy and I think the reason we've built, we've grown so fast, is because of our service, and that's that's the feedback we get, almost to a point where we're maniacal about making sure we call people back. Our support guys will be on the sales guys, myself included if we're not calling somebody within the hour if there's a problem. And we're learning as a company is how important that is to the customer. It's more than ever now.
Speaker 1:You've gone from big companies running your own business and now you've joined a startup and your senior leadership and globalizing that organization. What attracted you to go from the big and the entrepreneur running your own to now being the head of sales for a small business?
Speaker 2:This is my sweet spot. Okay, I feel like you kind of need to go. Okay, one of the pieces of advice I got from a guy at IBM, lex Mark, was that he became he was a big IBM. All the guys that worked around were 30 year guys. And I say guys because it was very much old school, like nowadays. Thank goodness we have diversity, because this is a big deal. You know, we've been missing out on 53 of the population in the tech industry for years. We're finally getting with the times. This is really cool where we are now in this world. But I say guys because it really was guys at that time. Right, but what he said to me was he became a better salesperson after he became a manager because then he was able to see what was missing in himself by managing salespeople.
Speaker 2:So, having gone to big companies and done these things and I've been involved with m&a and I like to say I'm a recovering ceo I tried that for a couple of years. That's enough of that, you know. And and what I? What I learned in all of that was this is absolutely where I belong. This is my sweet spot, you know. I did it for the last couple of years. Another cyber security company, yeah, and as soon as I met the management of defense x, I saw what we were doing. I thought, okay, that's where the world's going and this is something I can really get behind.
Speaker 1:Let me say sweets what you're talking about, the technology or the type of business, or the size of business, or the industry okay, so great question.
Speaker 2:A couple things the role, the growth role, because it's the fun part, this is the fun stuff, yeah, but also a technology I truly believe in. I think that a sales there's an old saying a good salesperson knows their product. I think in the modern world a good salesperson has to believe in their product Because it's not authentic otherwise. I've seen, I watched some of your podcasts and your other ones and you talked a bit about sales reps are willing to say, oh yeah, I'll cold call, I'll do this, I'll do that. They just kind of say this kind of stuff. Right, my attitude about all of that is, of course, I'll just say that, but I need somebody that says to me I would prefer the person say, look, I'm not comfortable with cold calling, but I'll figure it out and I'll prove to you, than that I want that person we've gone through more change in the last probably two to three years than we have in probably the last decade.
Speaker 1:You know, I think covid has accelerated a lot of with digital transformation, work from home, etc. Um, you know, coupled with that or, you know, sitting on top of that, is also the a new philosophy of of. You know, work like work like balance, working from home, hybrid working you know how have you seen that impact the modern day seller today compared to what it used to be, and if you got a any perspective on um, yeah, if any, if you would adjust anything great question.
Speaker 2:I mean I've adjusted everything. I think you have to adjust. Yeah, it's adapt or die. Yeah, yeah, just like anything else, adapt or die. And where we are now, I've never seen a noisier market because the tools are so much better. You know we have crm tools that are obviously telling us where to call and when to call them and you know it's all kind of automated auto dialers. You know there are legions of cold callers out there using all kinds of ai backed tools to do data scrapes, go find people. It's an incredibly noisy. So to differentiate yourself, you absolutely have to adapt.
Speaker 2:I feel like we're kind of coming to the end of the fully automated approach because it's just too much noise. I mean, I talked to a CISO two weeks ago. I know personally. He said that he gets something like seven calls they get through a day of the dozens of calls of sales reps trying to sell them something From networking equipment, software, hardware, cybersecurity, everything. So I've seen a complete change in all of that. I think that there's a better way to approach them.
Speaker 2:I think this community aspect, that's the modern way, and in modern SaaS we've seen a giant change in how software is delivered and in modern SaaS. We've seen a giant change in how software is delivered when it used to be, you know, big purchase, big CapEx. It's migrated to SaaS over the years and now it's even further over that, to that scale where there's actually less commit for the customer. You know the contracts are changing and you know the way Pax8 works with MSP is very similar, where there's not a lot of commit for a lot of folks. So it's really on us to continually, you know, essentially seek approval from our customer and justify our existence. That's changed a lot over the years. And and then the new. The new style seems to be very much built on trust and authenticity where it used to be very much let's make a deal.
Speaker 1:It's a long-term relationship and does that impact the type of salesperson or the sales skills that you're going to be looking for as you begin to build out your business today?
Speaker 2:Definitely, I think that, like I said, the new it's authenticity. Yeah, I think you want to. You want folks to really believe in it. I feel like, with salespeople, I've always believed that you were, as a sales manager, you, you work for your employees, right, you know sitting back and you know big companies will have the, you know, let's say, like a CRO type, which is necessary, who reports to the board and collects numbers and everything else. But somewhere along that line, those bigger organizations there needs to be someone that's in the trenches with the team and really growing the team, and I find that the teams that don't do that fail.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's that much more important where someone like myself I have. I'm in the trenches, I'm talking to customers, I'm working with people, I'm showing people how it's done, I'm training new salespeople. This is how you earn their respect. It's on. It's my responsibility to make sure they get it, but it's also my responsibility to be that subject matter expert for them. So you're kind of always selling. You're selling internally and externally, but it's not a political thing, it's credibility different yeah, you just reminded me.
Speaker 1:There's a chap I follow on on linkedin, jason lemkin, and he runs a community called saster in north america. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him and um. You know I've been following a lot of the commentary and the comments and the input in in his community and um and I've been getting similar questions in my world, in the recruiting world, um, which is, when you're looking to hire a vp of sales, how do you decide whether you are hiring a strategic person to build out your sales process plan strategy, a tactical person to hold a bag, a sales bag, a pipeline, literally be on the phone closing deals, or a bit of a hybrid, because they're two very, very opposite ends of the spectrum and probably parts of the brain. So I see you doing both, which is I think you're that unicorn. But like what is your thought on that? Because it's really really difficult to do both of those jobs really well.
Speaker 2:It really is. I think you need to have experience and exposure doing both to be able to mix those together. And not everybody can make that change, and that's fair. You know, not every all, we're all made up differently. But I think, especially in a growth company where growth is key and it's a very competitive market, you know you might have the best technology in the world, but if you're not out there promoting it, nobody really cares because it's too noisy a place, and I think you need to have that hybrid and I think you need to have that hybrid.
Speaker 2:It's difficult to find that at the very least, sales leadership. If they, or leadership of a company, like a ceo, sitting there going, okay, I need, I need a sales team, what do I do? I gotta, I gotta build this team out. I can't be the only salesperson here, because that's typical. You know where a lot of ceos see it that way, because they own this thing if they.
Speaker 2:If they can't get it in one, they can build a hybrid where it's kind of like a money ball thing. You kind of get all your, if you remember the way money ball works, rather than trying to buy top tier players, you buy wins and runs. So if you can't find that unicorn. If you can, you're lucky. But if you can't find that unicorn, the idea is you can play a little money ball and everybody kind of contributes a couple of singles and doubles and then the whole thing wins. So you kind of you make a composite of that person with a couple of bodies. One person has to be the manager, but the mandate is. Here's how the process works and it becomes more of a team thing than it becomes the individual thing. Yes, I am the hybrid, but I'm huge on team.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to hire somebody to do certain things that that should be spread around, because we'll just be more effective for our customers I mean, one of the questions is, if you are to and I like that idea of money ball and getting different people for different skills and you know, one plus one equals three Do you think it makes sense? And the question is is okay, well, I'm going to go for two rather than one, because my unicorn doesn't exist where I am. Do I go for the BD person to build the revenue first or to go for the, the vp of sales, to build the strategy first?
Speaker 2:depends on the stage of the business. Yeah, right, it depends on where your goals are where your near term, near and long-term goals are. Depends also who your keepers are, because there's always an investor involved. I mean, my advice to startup guys is think about your investors, what's important to them, not because your whole lot in life is to please you know, please wall street or something crazy like that but you're now the, you're now the custodian to their money. That's a heavy responsibility and, as vp sales, I'm certainly cognizant that our management has, you know, board of directors and things to think about. So I have to make sure that I'm helping them deliver and what they're what they require, because we have to be stewards of capital, right.
Speaker 1:So it really depends on what the business needs and from a time frame perspective, coming in a reasonably early stage startup that's got some funding, what do you think, having been a CEO and now VP of sales, is a fair and reasonable time to give that VP of sales to execute and deliver results, and what roles do you play in actually helping to set what those goals are in the first place?
Speaker 2:You know, we work the targets together, you know, and work the targets together. You know it all depends on the sales cycle and a bunch of other things. Now in our business, we are growing quickly. We are a very fast-growing category. My real competition right now is time. We're signing up MSPs partners at a higher rate, which is positive, which also means we're on a bit of a hiring spree, which is also good. All the right things are coming into place.
Speaker 2:The thing about this, james, is there's not like one thing where you're saying this is the magic pill and this is it. But I will say is consistency is the key. Pick a system, pick a way to do it and stick with it. And be ready to pivot, of course, but stick with it. At least give it a chance to get, to find its way through where we are now in our business. We're growing quickly. Um, we're building the trust of a lot of msps and mssps, because that's what we do and we're solving some real problems.
Speaker 2:It happens to be that in the market right now, like I said this earlier, identity theft is kind of a problem, but as soon as I put that, the people's ears perk up like right away and they go yeah, you're right, it is a problem. I never thought of that. Because think about running a business today. What's going on? You can't open a donut shop without having a web account, two-man muffler shop. You can't run that business without having some kind of connectivity to the outside world. You can't buy Microsoft, you can't buy Intuit, you can't buy anything without having access to the cloud. That browser has become an exposure point for us. For us, the business case is clear. It's right in front of us right now. Our challenge or opportunity is to position that so people understand that we actually have a way to shrink that attack surface, which is the browser.
Speaker 2:Right, give you a little anecdote. So years ago when I was at 3com, the legend there was bob metcalf. So bob metcalf invented ethernet while he was at xerox. If you know kind of the history of the tech industry, xerox Park was this place in Southern California and I think they had a sister park in Northern California. I'm pretty sure they did, and they invented all kinds of stuff there that Xerox never knew what to do with. Apparently the mouse was invented there. So the legend goes, the GUI apparently was invented there. I don't remember Xerox shipping any of those. You know we hardly use those things right. But ethernet was invented there and actually xerox owned the patent because while he worked there, of course any ip you develop belongs to them.
Speaker 2:But he basically left saying, look, I want to go make a business out of this. And xerox's attitude was well sure, you can have the patent you can like, we'll license it to you. Take it, we don't. Nobody wants this thing, this stupid idea called ethernet. They said ibm's token ring was. You know that it's already been invented. Networking is done. The way token ring works is you're sharing a token across a ring. You know, basically a ring of computers all connected very slow. I mean, can you imagine a world today with that in ip can't? Rather than saying in that protocol you can't even. It's the fundamentals of this.
Speaker 2:But he realized after a few years of banging his head against the wall, doing demos and going nowhere, he wasn't actually selling. He was just doing demos and leaving and he wasn't building relationships with the people he was pitching to. This all documented is a really cool documentary. I saw on youtube one day about bob metcalf and what he did and it took him a few years before he finally figured out. When he finally figured out. It was his job to build relationships and be a salesperson. Ethernet obviously exploded and we and as a result of that we're having this podcast think of the connection between those two. But if had he not figured that out, yeah, youtube might not have happened. They're kind of wild, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy and you know just to, just to go on onto the, the concept of relationships and networking, you know slightly different angle. I want to talk about the concept of the channel and selling technology and software through the channel. And then that's obviously Defense X has said you know, we're going through the channel. There's a lot of businesses out there, a lot of SaaS startups, and they've got technology and they're trying to sell it direct. So when they're considering a channel, like how do you think about the mechanics of like when and why do you go to an IT channel? And like what do the economics need to look like for it to make sense for you to do so? Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:You know the channel is a necessary part of all this. That's your path of the customer. One of the biggest reasons is an obvious one to me personally is that you know we can't be everywhere to everybody. It's impossible. You know the law of diminishing returns kicks in very early, especially in a growth mode, because you're thinking to yourself well, I should be boston for this and I got to be in sydney for that, and how do I do all that at once? Channel makes, the channel makes that possible. But more than that, there's already a little trust built with the channel. So you have a little bit of a starting point when you're talking to customers.
Speaker 2:I don't expect people in the channel to do our work for us all the time. It's not realistic because to in fairness to a pac-8, they've got, you know, a couple hundred vendors now in the us and they, I think they've onboarded 60 or 70 vendors here in australia. So they're focused. Their focus is build their business. With all of these vendors as a set.
Speaker 2:My job is to give them, give their customers, some good reasons to want to order it through them and as long as vendors understand that, I think it's a really good symbiotic relationship they can say hey, here's some customers you should talk to. We're happy to make an introduction, but it's our job to build that trust and I think my advice to vendors trying to figure this one out understand what your sales model is too. There are a few folks that build it's not even really a SaaS product. It's a big enterprise thing that might be SaaS. It's multi-year, that's a big contract deal. The channel might not always work for that and that's why a lot of vendors go direct. Our go-to market is very much via distribution, via the MSP, and really our end customer is really the MSP.
Speaker 1:It's really them doing the delivery Is there a tipping point at the average deal size, because that often comes into the economics. If you've got a relatively small average deal size, it doesn't make sense to have a direct sales team. You're going to pay your sales reps more than your revenue if you're trying to cover all of your customers. So is that part of the equation where you think about it? I think so.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, we're not looking to go around the channel. Our philosophy in this is the channel allows us to be in more places. There's also some really heavy financial things that happen with the channel, meaning current currency conversions are kind of a big deal. This is a very messy business. You know, having a good channel partner, like a pac-8, makes that problem go away. Well, that goes then go away. No problems go away, but they deal with the problems. They're well equipped.
Speaker 2:You know my buying power for currency isn't close to what like a pac-8 is, for example. Uh, you know there's a whole industry of currency conversion and trading and flooring. There's a whole. There's puts and calls on currency just like any other commodity, which is kind of a wild concept. They deal with all that when you know, however they do it, they do it well and that they're good at that. The other thing it also does is it allows me to turn to a customer after I'm finished talking to them and say you know what? Here's a marketplace you can order it from. You could have licenses deployed today. That's kind of a powerful thing If I can reduce the friction, even if I'm dealing with somebody directly, and move it to the channel as soon as I'm done the deal. When I say I, I mean we Defense X. It doesn't matter who it is on our team, then it's actually it's looked on quite positively when it comes out from customers, because once they're buying the solution they shouldn't really care if it's going through distribution at that point.
Speaker 1:And for companies that have built their owner-led sales they've built a direct business with a technology that realistically could be sold through the channel. What would be the steps for them to actually start to have those conversations, to begin to go through a channel partner? I would say, you know, it's funny to begin to go through a channel partner.
Speaker 2:I would say you know it's funny. I would say that if you have good direct relationships and a good direct business, I feel like you have something to trade with the channel Say like, hey, I've got this, let's work together as a partner. I'm going to bring you this opportunity. Yeah, and I think it's a positive thing. It actually gives them an advantage because they're not asking for stuff they have. Gives them an advantage because they're not asking for stuff. They have something to trade and, having worked in the channel briefly, and you know the channels like yourself, right, when a vendor comes to you and says, hey, I have a deal for you, you're answering the phone yeah, that's a, that's a bluebird right exactly right, great tips and totally agree.
Speaker 1:So, just um, you know beginning to. To close, and I want to come back to the you know the concept of sales. We've got a lot of people listening that are sales reps. They're aspiring on their way up. You're reflecting on on your journey, mistakes that you've made, and looking back at you know, your 25, 30 year old self and going if I could do things differently, this is what I would do to really get ahead of myself and accelerate. I'm looking to become a VP, a CEO. What are some things that people can think about to really just hone in on their craft today? Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:That's a great question. Okay, I'll give you an anecdote, because I can't help myself. So I um, this is a little bit out of sales, but this is actually a very cool thing. So I actually involved in an entrepreneurial organization, I do volunteer work and I volunteer and I actually did it. I haven't done in a couple of years. I mean, like covid kind of changed a lot of things for a lot of us and things got weird for there for a bit. But I'm actually quite serious about me getting re-engaged with these guys.
Speaker 2:It's an entrepreneur organization. They're called tie the indus entrepreneurs, and tie. They have something called tie as part it, which is the youth entrepreneurs. Now, tie was originally designed to be a liaison group between the East Indian community that joined Silicon Valley and the community at large. That's not an issue anymore. Like 40% of the Bay Area is Indian, so, like that's, they really just become more of like an open entrepreneurial organization. So one of the sessions I was in got I was very lucky isn't actually Vancouver.
Speaker 2:There's a place called Kins market, which is a chain of grocery stores. This seems silly, these little convenience stores. Okay, they're everywhere. They're actually a vegetable store fresh fruit, fruit and vegetables, lee and it always seems to be people. It's like very much English is very much a second language, a really cool place to go to buy vegetables. Okay, he started by a guy who didn't speak english when he arrived in canada. He started with an eight by four table at an open air market. That's how he started and he said to me and we said to the group and he said to me later very cool guy. He said every night he'd walk home from what he was doing and say today was a good day, but tomorrow I can do better. You know, and I go. And so how that translates to salespeople you can always improve, improve, you know, celebrate the wins, but you could always do better.
Speaker 2:And to look back and say what I would do differently, I'll tell you. It's a funny thing. I, you know, I take advice from all kinds of places and one of the things I heard from somebody is it's always moving forward. You know your, your mistakes actually shape who you are going forward Rather than saying I wish I changed that. It's hard to do that what I can say is I have never knowingly done wrong by somebody. There's just no way I would do that and always done my best to keep relationships, some of my best relationships I've had for 20 plus years, and it's because they trust me and it's part of it is, at the end of the night I don't think about all the things I did right. I think, oh, I didn't call that guy, I got to deal with this right away.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of thing that I think in a good sale with a, for a good salesperson to grow, they have to be willing to continue to grow and then not not so much look and say, oh man, what a dumb thing. I did better tomorrow. Yeah, that's great. It's like the one percent. What can I do one percent better every single day and all of a sudden, the end of the year, you're 365 percent better. So ken's market yeah, 65 stores in prime locations across what they call western canada, the lower mainland of british columbia and western canada. Two million dollars turnover revenue per year per store. Wow, he still barely speaks english what a great story.
Speaker 1:You know one of of the guests that we had on previously, dane Meir.
Speaker 1:He's the CEO of a company called MySiso and we were talking about, you know, progression and continually moving forward, and what he talked about was he has a framework for everything and a process that he follows, and it may not just be, you know, it may not be public, but it's something in the backend.
Speaker 1:And, you know, one of his processes is I never go, I never finish the day unless I've done all of my follow-ups, and it's a bit like that one percent. You know, if we're looking at what can I do better tomorrow, maybe the process we could implement is the end of the day. Let me write down one thing I'm going to do differently tomorrow right, just just that process and that consistency of something that is moving us forward. And, like the other piece I took away, this is something that we look for when we're interviewing and, as a sales leader myself looking for sales reps, a key piece I would always look for is coachability and hunger for growth. I don't mind if you don't know everything, but what I want you to do is have intelligence to be able to learn, but the desire and aptitude to learn as well.
Speaker 2:I totally, totally agree. You can't teach somebody to be enthusiastic. That's impossible. You can't fake that. Authenticity, authenticity, same thing Goes back to it. You know, I've had some of my best successes with salespeople that came from different industries, not saying always do that, but just because they were so willing and they wanted so badly to change industries that they're willing to really put in the time and put in the effort. Listen, you know, and the more questions we ask your salespeople, the better. I would say that your ears are your most valuable organ. Despite popular opinion, yeah, your ears will get you everything.
Speaker 1:you'll learn everything by listening I remember the ceo of sap when I joined. He said you have two ears and one mouth. Use them in those proportions. Yeah, well put. Yeah, it's good. Awesome, andrew. I've really enjoyed the chat. Thank you so much for coming to join us today. If there's anyone listening wants to connect with you or learn a little bit more about DefenseX, how can they do that?
Speaker 2:They can drop me an email. Andrew Morton at DefenseXcom Awesome, and I assume that you're on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, have a ping Absolutely Information. Have a ping absolutely information on our company, of course, because I'm supposed to do a plug, because that's what I always do info at defensexcom. Come to our website. You can book meetings with us. We're very actively growing and very happy to talk to people.
Speaker 1:Amazing thanks, andrew, been a pleasure all mine. Thank you.
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