Battle Scars of a SaaS 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 SaaS Leader
From Sales Rep to Leading APAC Sales at a Billion-Dollar Company
A masterclass in personal growth and sales leadership!
Alex Haddon shares her extraordinary journey from equine sciences to leading APAC sales for a billion tech unicorn.
In this captivating episode, she reveals how her entrepreneurial spirit and adaptability propelled her through diverse industries to become a top performer in SaaS sales.
Learn how Alex leveraged her unique background to excel in the fast-paced world of tech startups.
#TechSales #CareerTransition #salesleadership
🔍 In this episode you'll learn:
🔥 Career Pivoting: How to leverage diverse experiences for success in tech sales
💪 Scaling Teams: Insights on building and managing high-performing sales teams
💡 Global Expansion: Strategies for successfully entering and dominating APAC markets
And I think it's important to think into the future, being in a very fast-scaling environment, even hyper-growth. From the day I joined, we were 2x-ing our targets month on month, quarter on quarter. Alex Hadden, the APAC sales director for the billion-dollar unicorn data snipper Some feedback I kept giving to leadership at the time was I think we should be focusing in, like hyper-focus, into regions so that you've got one person who can really go to market there, make it successful, give feedback on what we need to make that region well more like, successful as a customer, but bring more impact to them.
Speaker 2:so from both sides, really having a look at what you have achieved in the last three years is nothing short of sensational promoted really quickly to team lead sales manager and then coming over from the netherlands to run apac for billion dollar unicorn. That is incredible. Like those opportunities don't come around often and you got not just your foot in the door, but you got your foot in the door and you just accelerated. What did they look like from the outside and what what made you choose them yeah, good question.
Speaker 2:I must, I must think of Alex, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast Battle Scars of a Sales Leader. I've been incredibly excited to have you join this show in particular and tell your story In a real nutshell. I've become acquainted with Data Snipper, where you're currently the APAC sales director, as we've been working relatively closely over the last nine months or so. But really having a look at what you have achieved in the last three years is nothing short of sensational Joining with Data Snipper as an account executive, being promoted really quickly to team lead sales manager and then coming over from the Netherlands to run APAC for a billion dollar unicorn. That is incredible. So incredibly excited to drill into some of the battle scars that you may have earned along the way. But we've had a conversation before and there's a lot more to the story before Data Snippets started, so I'd love to just hand over to you and tell us your story. How did you get to where you are today, and go back as far as you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. Well, first, thanks for having me. Great to be here. It's a long story. I'm a horse girl.
Speaker 1:I grew up riding horses my whole life, loved them, was very passionate and, you know, got to the end of high school, didn't really know what to do and thought, you know, got to the end of high school, didn't really know what to do and thought you know what? I'm just going to go study horses. I did a. It's called Equine Sciences. It's a BSc degree. It's from a Technicon in South Africa, but it really specializes in horses, but more so looking after horses. And I had an amazing time at university, finished that, you know, and then thought I still don't really know what I'm going to do with this degree.
Speaker 1:You know, having horses is an expensive hobby and I kind of realized I'm going to have to need a lot of money to keep my hobby going. So I think the thing that I fell into was sales and it kind of happened by accident. My parents are very entrepreneurial. They've owned multiple types of businesses, my grandparents as well, and so growing up I would always land up being at, you know, my mom's business after school, on the weekends, helping out. Where I can, I would work in school tuck shops selling candy at the dance studios that were related to my mom and my sisters. I would also try and make some extra money and I thought you know I can get into sales. But in the horse industry, so started at they're called tack shops, basically sell horse equipment, feed supplements, nutrition, clothing for the riders, that type of thing and I loved it and I thought to myself I was this.
Speaker 2:this is in South Africa, south Africa, yeah, In.
Speaker 1:South Africa. That's where I was born. I went to school and basically stayed until about seven years ago, but we'll get there. I thought you know, this is something that I would love to do for myself. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to have my own company, my own business. Learned a lot working for other sort of retail stores and other tech shops, but I could do this myself and I could do it a little bit differently. And I could do this myself and I could do it a little bit differently. And when I say differently, it was more about taking it online.
Speaker 1:In South Africa, the market is usually a few years behind the rest of the world, and online shopping we're talking now 15, 16 years ago was a bit of a new idea. The whole e-commerce trusting that if you place an order online, it's actually going to arrive at your front door. There is a lot of steps in South Africa. You've got to get through the postal service, which is not that reliable, maybe going with a private courier company there weren't that many at the time and I just I felt that that was a niche or at least a gap in the market that I could potentially solve for. So to try and condense that journey a little bit.
Speaker 1:I came across another tech shop that was in a startup phase. It was really small. It was run by a girl that I met in the industry and we kicked it off quite well. I came and worked for her initially and through that growth, eventually became a business partner with her. We took that business online and made it hugely successful. We also started importing international brands.
Speaker 1:So I got a lot of experience in more of the retail space but really just being that salesperson being in front of every horse person I knew, trying to be a trusted advisor to them, like if their horse had an issue, say a nutrition issue, I would always have the supplement to back it up and I could post it to them if they were not in Johannesburg, which is where I'm originally from. So I really took that company regional out of Joburg we went to Cape Town, bloemfontein, like all the major states where there were a lot of horses. Eventually I stepped away from my business partner and I opened a side business, still in horses, but I started designing my own clothing, my own brand, and that was also doing exceptionally well. And then we decided to immigrate, so moved to the Netherlands, followed my husband and I think I arrived in Europe and I really didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I was a good salesperson, like that's a skill that I could leverage there to, at least, you know, keep progressing my career.
Speaker 2:I just want to ask a question. It sounds like you're very entrepreneurial. You set up a couple of different businesses in horses to fashion what was the underlying driver driver like? What were you looking to achieve when you set each one of those up?
Speaker 1:I think for me, I just really wanted to be independent at the time. I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to, you know, control my own hours, make my own decisions. I just wanted to be self-sufficient as well. Like I said at the start, I knew I needed to sustain my let's put it down to the hobby at that point, when I was younger, I wanted horses and I needed to be able to pay for them, but I always just knew that I could get further, foster being that entrepreneurial like we're using, that entrepreneurial mindset and spirit. That's really what drove me that independence, being financially stable. I think South Africa is a bit of a different environment. If you can make it as an entrepreneur, you're more set up for your future and your own success. At least from my experience and leaning with my parents, I think I learned a lot from them and they were also very entrepreneurial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny because I've spoken to a few people. I've looked at similarities in parents and the children. In my time when I was a daddo, I noticed that some of the top performers in my team actually had really successful parents, and a lot of them came from the technology industry as well. Um, and there's, it does seem to be that correlation. I don't know if it's nature or nurture, but being able to, um, yeah, really be surrounded by people, that, that that you can learn from and be inspired from.
Speaker 1:I think that's absolutely right. I remember countless evenings sitting with both my parents. Just this is an issue I'm facing. I'm having an issue with my supply chain, or I'm really struggling to deal with the post office I think of a very governmental sort of institution in South Africa. What can I do to solve these challenges? I mean, I would land up in some sticky situations where my dad would come with me in the car just to help me resolve it, because I kind of needed that backup and they would always let me do it by myself. But it was that support structure that was so beneficial, to me at least, and I think that's why I learned a lot from them and almost tried to use them as that reflection when I was building my own sort of career.
Speaker 2:And how did you land in the Netherlands? Yes, of all places.
Speaker 1:So my now husband he was my boyfriend at the time is still a chiropractor, but got an opportunity in the Netherlands to work as a chiropractor and we had a long conversation about this, because it really meant packing up everything and leaving. I think I had a little bit more stability in my own career at that point. He studied a lot longer than I did and I think in those seven years that I spent building my business he was still completing his chiropractic master's. We really had to decide if this is what we were going to do. I think, being South African, only having a South African passport, you know we don't have to get into it.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of turmoil in South Africa and we really wanted a bit of that exit plan. We decided, okay, let's do it, but we have to do it properly. So we decided to immigrate, which meant I had to consolidate everything with my businesses. So part of it I sold off, the rest I kept, but sort of also shelved for a little bit to think what can I do in the future with it. But we really moved to the Netherlands. So we immigrated, packed our bags, I followed him and that's what got us to the Netherlands, more specifically Nijmegen, which is a town or city rather on the border of Germany, so it's a little bit more inland. It's not that Amsterdam sort of expat bubble, the Randstad as we call it, expat bubble, the Randstad as we call it. So it was very much like the Netherlands.
Speaker 2:So you landed in the Netherlands, your boyfriend, soon to be husband, is delivering on everything he studied for becoming a chiropractor, and you go out to market to find a job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a challenge. I think this was pre-COVID, so remote online working wasn't really a thing. I said we landed in Nijmegen. It was a challenge. I think this was pre-COVID, so remote online working wasn't really a thing. I said we landed in Nijmegen. It was a very Dutch city, so we had a little bit of an advantage. We speak Afrikaans. It's a very old dialect of Dutch, but I was by no means fluent in Dutch, so finding work for me was somewhat of a challenge. I picked up random jobs here and there. I actually landed up at a bakery, had so much fun. I think that's where I learned Dutch really quickest.
Speaker 1:Literally selling cakes had a great time, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted in the long run because in the back of my mind I wanted to be in tech. You know I'm a millennial. Most of my life I've grown up with technology and technology has evolved a lot with me. I also introduced that technology element into my own equestrian store in South Africa by getting it online really like leveraging the e-commerce space to make it successful and I knew that the tech industry was a lot bigger than at least what I knew of it. I mean, I had no real idea of what the tech industry was like at all, but knew that it was an interest of me. But how do I get in? I really wasn't sure what to do. I had no network, no connections, and at the time my perspective was really that of well, you've never worked in tech, you didn't study a business degree, you don't have a BCom or anything like that, how are you going to do this? But I kept thinking well, I know I'm a good salesperson. I really am. I can only speak for myself because I haven't really been employed by anyone other than being an entrepreneur. But I can speak to my successes and my results and I just put myself out on the market. So I started applying to every tech company that I could think of, internationally, in Europe, in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1:The issue for me in the Netherlands was the language. Internationally, I think remote working wasn't yet really a thing. Everything was in office. So we actually made a big decision to move to the Randstad, which is the Amsterdam, utrecht, the Hague area. It's more expat-friendly, there's more English. Jared, my husband, decided that he would change practices, so he would move to a practice that side as well. So at that point he followed me and let me try and build out my own dream and career there and through all the interviewing I landed a job at Bookingcom. So that was my initial introduction into technology. So I think for me it was mainly just the element of keep trying, never stop. Apply to as many places as you can attend all those interviews. Learn from every like like messed up interview. There's always learning from there to do better at the next next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just picking up like this innate drive that you've got within you, and also this um, at the same time, this, this principle of you, create your own luck as well. Nothing is going to be handed to you.
Speaker 1:You really, you really need to put your best foot forward and put yourself out there to get there.
Speaker 2:So, and what year are we in now? This is.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is 2018.
Speaker 2:This is 2018.
Speaker 1:Yeah, late 2018, just going into 2019.
Speaker 2:2019. So you were bookingcom for.
Speaker 1:Very short time actually. So bookingcom was a huge step to us moving to the Randstad. I actually got the job before we had moved. We kind of played it by ear If I got the job, we would move, if I didn't get the job, we would stay in Nijmegen. And I got a job at Bookingcom, so really exciting. Okay, let's move.
Speaker 1:Then came the hassle of finding a place to live. That's a different story, but I this was about middle of the year of the 2019 so got to the company first day on boarded, love the company. They've got an amazing culture. They had a nice campus in Amsterdam. You know, I for me, I'd never worked in corporate.
Speaker 1:It was very different for me to kind of fit into not being that. I mean, I was always an entrepreneur. I answered for my own faults, I would correct my own challenges but also made my own decisions, whereas now you were part of a much larger team and I mean a huge team, this global company, thousands of employees. So it was a bit of an adjustment for me, but I was just really grateful for the opportunity. I was actually in the customer services department Massive change of pace. It was intense. You're answering the phones all the time helping clients, both guests but also on the hotel side of things. But for me it wasn't really what I was looking for in terms of a career.
Speaker 1:So my stint at bookingcom was short. I was there for seven months, maybe eight months ata push, but I knew that I had a step into the tech world. Now I had a really good company on my CV so I was starting to build more of a profile for myself. But I wanted to be in sales. I really wanted to be talking to clients, but more to bring them value and, you know, add something to their organization, make them more impactful, help them get their company to the next level, no matter what the issues they were facing. The role at Bookingcom for me was more safe. I was servicing more client issues that I couldn't do much other than follow the processes that Bookingcom allowed us to in terms of helping. But I knew I could do more. So that's when I went back on the market to look for a more sales position and that's when I landed my first account executive position in a small startup tech company. Canadian company.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, I really hope you're enjoying the episode. Imagine if you had your top three sales reps continually on the hunt for top talent as you scale your business. That would be amazing, right? Because we all know that talent can spot talent. Well, that's basically what happens when you partner with Bluebird. We help SaaS leaders like you build high-performing teams, introducing you to the best talent in the market fast. If finding A players is a vicious game of hide and seek, let us help you so you can get back to doing what you do best serving your customers and running your business. Make sure you click on the link in the description and we look forward to chatting soon. Now let's get back to the conversation. I love your story because you've come from completely out of industry 10 years or so being an entrepreneur in horses in retail in bookingcom Land, your first SaaS job as an AE there for another year or two.
Speaker 1:Two and a half years, actually Two and a half years.
Speaker 2:And then get what I think is it's not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but the opportunity to join a startup scale of SaaS business that has just been valued at a billion euros and is just on this crazy trajectory. Those opportunities don't come around often and you got not just your foot in the door, but you got your foot in the door and you just accelerated, and that's the piece I guess I want to just drill into a little bit specifically. How did you? You know you came across Datastip, but I can't imagine they were a big global brand at that point Like, what did they look like from the outside and what made you choose them?
Speaker 1:So it was, I think, for me. At the first SaaS company I got into I joined as an account executive. I had more of an account manager type experience, the classic role of managing that book of business. It didn't really give me the value add or the fast-paced environment that I was used to from being an entrepreneur myself. I could kind of set my own pace and I always took things to the next level Very great company, great culture. I was very happy there. But I felt a bit capped in terms of what I could do and I knew I could do more.
Speaker 1:At that point I actually reached out to a recruiter, bluebird, and I met Michael and I explained to him my whole situation, what I've done, what I'm capable of, what I would like to do. And I think at that point in my career I actually got that first point of mentorship outside council in terms of growing my kitchen cabinet of people that I could lean on to really get advice and help. And we spoke about a lot. I remember our first conversation and he sort of said to me what are you looking for? And I dived into a few top of mind things for me, but again, I didn't. My time at a key cafe. That's where I was a first account executive. I didn't know anything about the SaaS industry looking at sales methodologies or how to build out playbooks. I really didn't know anything. If you told me about Medic, I'd be like, sorry, what Can we dive a bit into that? I just said that I wanted to be in a fast-paced environment and I wanted to make a change. I wanted to bring value to any type of company. But Data Snipper stood out to me because I like the idea of fintech, but not really within the financial services space, but more a fintech type of solution that could help be impactful to end users. So when you think fintech, you think of the bigger players, like banking applications, but that's all like that's big tech.
Speaker 1:What Data Snipper was doing was something that really brought value to auditors, which is, I mean, a very, very valuable person in the fintech. Well, financial industry, not just fintech. You know their entire career, what their whole job is, built on trust. They bring trust to anybody. If you read a financial report, if you're looking at stock numbers, you trust those numbers. Why do you trust them? Because the companies put those numbers out, so that's an auditor at some point or a financial professional has touched those numbers to vet them. So when I started to really understand what DataSnipper was bringing in terms of an improvement of workflow for auditors, I thought, no, this is a great tool. I see the value here and I really don't understand why there is no other tool like this in the market.
Speaker 1:I went through the interview process with DataSnipper, spoke with ex-auditors as well, and I also branched out a little bit to back-channel DataSnipper. I spoke to some of my friends that have been working in audit for the Big Four, asking them if they've used the product. Some of my friends that have been working in audit for the big four, asking them if they've used the product, what do they think, and they only said great things about the solution, but they also told me about areas where they thought it could maybe do more or help them further, and I just decided that I think this is something I want to get my hands on. It sounds really exciting. Again, I don't know how to scale an organization. I don't know anything about sales methodologies, but I know how to sell and I can.
Speaker 2:This is an impactful tool that is going to bring value to the people that Dave Snipp was trying to sell to at the time. I love the fact that you you a lot of candidates, you know. What I find is is like we speak to them and they will take whatever job they're offered. They just want to get a job, they just want to get a company, they want income, they want just to be employed. But if we flip this around and in that circumstance the interview is actually one directional, it's the company interviewing the candidate, whereby, if you, as a candidate, flip that around and actually really truly have a goal of understanding who this organisation is, their value proposition and interviewing them, one is you validate it for yourself, but two, you also demonstrate your skills and capabilities as part of that process as well.
Speaker 2:So it's actually a working case study, so it's a double win. So no, great to hear that and great tips as well. So you came on board. They obviously hit the jackpot in finding someone that was a great salesperson and entrepreneurial. Came on board as an account executive and I think it was just over a year you were in that role and saw great success.
Speaker 1:A question how do you compare or liken entrepreneurship to software sales? Yeah, good question. I think for me it was all about the focus, you know, when I joined it. So maybe to make clearer, when I had my first role at Key Cafe, I was given very specific focus and maybe by chance or maybe in complete error, they put me on a market and they were like go make us successful there. And I thought, okay, I can go do that. And I was super successful, got in some massive key logos for them, really got them off the ground up and running into a market that they had no traction in at all.
Speaker 1:And when I came to DataSnipper, we had a bit more of a free-flowing environment where the inbound leads would be on maybe a rotation basis to the different account executives, but there wasn't focus and some feedback I kept giving to leadership at the time was I think we should be focusing in like hyper-focus into regions so that you've got one person who can really go to market there, make it successful, give feedback on what we need to make that region more successful as a customer but bring more impact to them.
Speaker 1:So, from both sides, after building in a bit more of a process and a playbook and then trying to like nuance it per region, a little bit of localization. I think what really made me stand out, or at least be successful, is that I got rid of all the white noise. I had various regions that were my focus, but I also looked down at what is going to make me successful, what's going to get me to my number so that I could hyper-focus into that space. The other regions they were just. It was fluff for me If I got a client there and it was working great. But I had hyper-focus and I can't remember what your exact question was. But I think the question was that that's what made it successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's the similarity between entrepreneurship and SaaS sales. And again, what I'm picking up here is. You're not just coming in here as a sales rep. You've got that entrepreneur mind of I'm not just here to execute on sell. I'm actually here to look at this as a holistic opportunity of adding value to both sides of the coin. How can I?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah and I think it's important to think into the future. You know, being in a very fast scaling environment I mean we had even hyper growth from the day I joined like we were two xing our targets month on month, quarter on quarter. People get lost a little bit in like that roller coaster, like it's going so fast and you're being very reactive. I wanted to bring more proactivity into my thought process, my thinking.
Speaker 1:I wasn't really in a strategic position at the time as an account executive, I just had to close revenue. But I really thought about what can I do today but is actually going to help me in six months time, in a year's time, and not forgetting to focus a little bit on that forward thinking, that strategy which, going back to being in that entrepreneurial mindset, I also had to forward think all the time because if I was by myself, didn't have a massive team, if in six months' time we're not closing new clients or my retail business is not making money or doing online sales, that's going to be a me problem in six months' time. So how can I prevent that being a data snipper problem in six months' time? So how can I prevent that being a data snipper problem in six months' time Forward thinking I want to go back.
Speaker 2:You mentioned playbooks and implementing playbooks. Just unpack what is a playbook in your world.
Speaker 1:So, from my experience and within our world, it's the process, it's the sales strategy and the sales cycle that you'd be putting your clients through in terms of getting them over the line. When I joined data snipper, we had a playbook I think a very good start of a playbook. That was, you know, built by my sales manager at the time, who is now the the vp at data snipper, but it could be improved. So taking that playbook and saying right from inbound, lead all the way to contract closure, to onboarding the client who's responsible for which piece? How can we nuance it per territory, say, per market segment, and what is going to ultimately make your clients successful? Because when you start speaking to someone, you want the deal to close. That's your goal as a salesperson. You want to bring in the revenue. As a salesperson, you want to bring in the revenue. So it's just a whole bunch of strategies company strategy, your own personal, maybe, strategy as a salesperson to get those deals over the line.
Speaker 2:I'm jumping around a little bit here. I'm interested in your response here. When I'm looking at, when I've interviewed as a sales leader, I typically look for characteristics and I look for IQ, eq, drive, coachability, inquisition, cultural fit and I share different mechanisms of identifying what some of those pieces are. And when I talk about drive specifically, I say it's not just the verbal communication Someone says they're driven or they've achieved a particular goal but it's the nonverbal communication, it's the way they respond, it's their body language, etc. And I can see like so much drive in you, in in an abundance, like you're sitting here and I'm just, I get excited, like just listening to this story. So my question is like what drives you, like what are you really truly like trying to achieve now, in the future, and what, what gets you? Yeah, so completely personally.
Speaker 1:I want financial freedom.
Speaker 1:I think, that's a huge goal for me and my husband. We would love to one day be able to sit back, retire and just know that we're financially sound. So that's, I think, drive for me is to just be as successful as I can be right now so that I don't have to worry one day about our situation. I don't know if we have a little bit of a PTSD or trauma from leaving South Africa, but I think starting new in Europe seven years ago with nothing, it was a big sort of eye-waker for us. We really need to build out our safety net now so that we're comfortable in the future. So that's obviously where all my sort of, I think, ambition and drive falls into is our future.
Speaker 1:But on a day-to-day level, like what drives me is I just want to be making an impact. I like having impactful conversations. I want to help companies be successful as well. It's not just about my success. I want to make their companies more profitable, more efficient, bring value. I love having sort of those conversations with people, whether that means I'm going to get a deal over the line or maybe we've just had a good sort of those conversations with people, whether that means I'm going to get a deal over the line, or maybe we've just had a good sort of sparring session with each other on how we can help each other be more impactful. Like that really gets me up in the morning meeting new people, learning new things. Every time I speak to a client, like I'm learning something about their world, their challenges. Maybe it can help me in my situation, or not.
Speaker 2:Like it's constant growth that I'm looking for. Yeah, love that, love that. So I want to. I want to transition forward to um the. There's a couple of leaps in your career and they're major milestones going from a individual contributor to a people manager. That's one. And then, you know, that's phase one. I want to ask you a little bit about that. And then phase two is like people leader to a regional leader. So you know, on that journey of going from ic individual contributor to managing a team in the netherlands, what were, um, what was that experience like? And and what were the, the unknowns that you, you, you went through that, you went off.
Speaker 1:I didn't expect that yeah, I think for me that was, I feel, like the biggest sort of personal challenge at this point. I was always a strong individual contributor. I've always had my goal. I know what to do to achieve my goal. I can manage my journey. I'm responsible for my own success. So being that IC was my strength.
Speaker 1:I think being super successful in my role also opened up doors to get, you know, promotions go to that next step.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting with my manager at the time and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do when it was coming to promotions, what you want to go into a team lead role or do you, you know, want to become more of an expert in your field?
Speaker 1:And I thought to myself, like which is the muscle that I feel like I can start strengthening a little bit, like what's going to take me to the next level? And I felt like people management was something I really didn't have too much experience with outside of. You know the classic at my retail equestrian store I would have a couple sort of temps working for me or just like not massive global go-to-market teams that we would have to sort of manage. So I think for me, I just really thought about putting myself always in my team's shoes. I've been there, I've done the work. I know how hard it is and I know what it takes to get you to the next level. Always try and reflect back, but then look at the team and think how can I best support them to be as successful as I was?
Speaker 2:And when you're building out your team. I mean you're a high operator. I imagine people interviewing with you it's going to be tough to reach the qualification to be selected to join the team. But what are the key characteristics, traits, skill sets that you look for?
Speaker 1:I really need someone who's an entrepreneur at least an entrepreneurial mindset someone who's an entrepreneur, or at least an entrepreneurial mindset. I think it depends on the stage of the team and what you're hiring for. In my experience, every time I've been hiring, it's been that go-to-market team. So I really need self-starters, people that can put themselves out there, that have maybe shown some experience in terms of dealing with challenges. But for me, what is more important is what did they do with those challenges? What were the outcomes? So I often ask for examples, if I would speak into them to try and vet their experience and see if it's, if it's going to be a good fit for my team and what I expect in terms of them being a high performer and then leaning on that accountability if they've made mistakes in the past.
Speaker 1:I want to see that people are not afraid to tell me about their mistakes and what did they do with those learnings to apply to the next challenge they had, or maybe a next career? Those are things that I really look for. To be honest, I don't really dive into numbers. If you're dealing with someone that's come from a startup environment or big tech, I would, of course, ask them their quotas and make sure that they are aware of what their goals were and what they had to do to achieve them. But I've hired people that were hitting 200% of their quota month on month, quarter on quarter, and I've also hired people that really couldn't bring in a single deal in six months because of circumstances that they were facing. So I really dig deep, I try and understand what those challenges were and what did the candidate do with those challenges to take their opportunity forward or give feedback to the organization?
Speaker 2:those things are really important and I think that goes down to accountability and being an entrepreneur, which is a self-starter yeah, that's a really good point, because one of the the challenges and it's a double-edged sword is a lot of hiring teams are asking about your quota attainment what was your percentage against quota?
Speaker 2:And I want to see how you've achieved every quarter for the last two years. It's really just the icing on the cake, because the reality is maybe they're lying. It's really difficult to validate whether they're truthful or not, and they're a great marketer saying that they've overachieved, but also there are circumstances where it wasn't the reps or the individual's fault for not hitting their number. A lot of the times, companies have got leadership changes, the quota changes, the market changes, et cetera. I think it's a leading indicator, but really being able to look for those underlying aspects is really important as well. Yeah, and just to go one more step on that, do you have any golden questions that you ask as part of an interview process where you're just really able to extract information that is going to help you?
Speaker 1:yeah, good question. I must. I must think of it so to I actually go into my interviews quite conversationally. Yeah, I don't really have a set sort of template of questions that I like to ask, so it really depends where we go in terms of the conversation. Um, if I feel that we're going more into a conversation type of interview, that to me is normally a good sign, provided that the candidate is still quite impactful, gets to the point and really shares their message.
Speaker 1:But if I feel like I need to get more into the, the questions in terms of guiding them, um, I always lean back to uh, challenges, success stories, what have you done? So I dive a little bit deeper into maybe a previous product they sold or what it was like, and then I ask them so I want to hear the biggest deal failure, tell me which deal didn't work. I really want to understand why. They can white label it, of course, and not share client details, for example, but I really want to understand what were the challenges. And then I would pause them and say understand that challenge.
Speaker 1:Where did it go wrong? Why do you think Was it? If they say sales execution, what was the learning from that? And did you apply that learning in the future deal. So I would hope that the candidate could kind of give me that full picture, because then I can see that like intellectual curiosity in themselves, that self-understanding how did they apply their challenges? Sometimes candidates need a bit more guidance in terms of how do we ask those questions or how do I get them to the answer that I'm looking for. So that's normally how I frame my interviews. It's maybe not as classic as normal interview structures, but that for me is important.
Speaker 2:I think it's a great way. I'm not a big fan of your typical interview type questions. You can extract so much, but I love your additional layer is you can extract so much, but I love your your you know additional layer. I love that example of tell me your biggest failure because you can learn so much. For was it their fault? Was it not? Did they take accountability, did they?
Speaker 1:learn are they coachable?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I think it also sometimes, if you are a bit concerned about candidates, maybe reason for leaving their current company. Sometimes it could be because of a misclick with management or maybe they're actually an underperformer. But how they answer that question usually paints a bit of a picture for me of what's actually going on and and why they're looking to maybe move on or find their next step. So it's a bit of a I've got to trust my guts, yeah, when I get into those sort of conversations. But if the candidates has that intellectual curiosity, they have the ambition, they're an entrepreneur, self-starter they normally answer to it quite, I think, clearly in their response yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've been with DataSnippet for a couple of years. Great success individual contributor building a sales team. And then the business, your manager, the CEO whoever it would have been came and had the conversation about you stepping up again and flying to the other side of the world. Talk to me about what was that conversation like and how did it feel, and what went through your mind when you? Were going to take on this again, this new challenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I actually got. It was quite a surprise, to be honest. I knew that Data Snipper was looking to have more of a regional presence in APAC. I did not think that I would be top of mind you know I'm pretty junior in terms of my career in leading this size of a team, like being in the size of an organization. I would have, I guess, thought and this is maybe my like imposter syndrome kicking in like there's no ways they would want me to go over and lead the company. They would hire someone regionally who knows the market, knows exactly what's going on. It probably came well. It did come from the fact that I was super successful in my APAC territories.
Speaker 1:I would invest a lot of time in APAC when I was an account executive. I would get up very early in the morning every single day to make sure I had enough time to speak to Australia and New Zealand and build this market. When I got promoted to the sales manager position, we started hiring regional account executives. So we had a small team in Australia and we were going to slowly start hiring in Southeast Asia. I kept giving a lot of feedback to the organization, saying that I was struggling to manage the team from Amsterdam because of the time overlap. You know, it's just. It was very demanding. They needed me front and center with the clients and one morning I was actually on PTO.
Speaker 1:I was in South Africa having a break and I got a call from my manager who the VP at the time, and I thought, oh my God, something's gone wrong. He would never phone me on holiday. I'm freaking out. Picked up the phone and he was like I want to open a regional office and I want you to go and lead it. What do you think? And I was a bit speechless, to be honest. It hadn't really crossed my mind. I was like me Okay, so I gave it some thought.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I gave it some thought. But that's really how it came to be. It was very sudden. You know, datasnip has really said they wanted someone with you know the tribal knowledge to go over and really stamp our culture in the new office, make sure that all that knowledge that I had had selling within the region I could share with the new team when I build and scale it. So that's kind of how it came to pass. It was very unsudden, but yeah, I think that the company was really excited to have me over. They felt that I was the right fit at the time to come. So, yeah, I obviously said yes because here we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I've worked with the asean market myself for for a long time and it's it's it's different to um, to the western market. So what have been some of the the biggest learnings that you've had?
Speaker 1:you know, for for us, um, it's definitely that localization element, especially if you're looking at apac as a full territory. What we do in Australia and New Zealand is not going to fit Japan, it's not going to fit Singapore that's excluding the rest of Southeast Asia. Go-to-market strategies need to be really defined per territory. You, from our perspective, need to really consider having regionalized reps teams at least, because we're definitely our way of selling is more consultative. We come in as like trusted advisors to the clients. So if you don't understand their culture, their way of working, the accounting world for us is very different per territory because of all the different government rules, that type of thing. You just got to make sure that you've specialised your go-to-market per region.
Speaker 1:Sometimes slowing down, scaling down, makes more sense than trying to go with that big bang and doing all the territories at one go. So where do you want to focus? What's going to bring you the easiest return, with maybe minimum or minimal changes like localisations, like really making sure the product needs to be changed, or have you done enough research for these territories? That is, I think, the main takeaways. It's localize, specialize, that go to markets and for me, it's that slow down to speed up.
Speaker 2:When you yeah, just take a pause. And what I picked up as well is that you're a big advocate and believer in development of the teams and those around you. There's a lot of people that listen to this show, that are aspiring sales leaders, that are on their way up, that are potentially in a rut or considering a career change into SaaS sales. What advice would you give to anyone that's got questions about this industry?
Speaker 1:would you give to anyone that's got questions about this industry? You know, if you want to get into sales in SaaS, it's fast-paced. I think I've experienced fast-pacing in all my sort of positions within sales, but SaaS specifically it's quick. You need to be okay with that. If you're in a startup environment, even more so. If you like speaking to people, if you like bringing value to companies, if you are a true advocate for technology, then this is the role for you. Again, working for startups, I think, is very different to working for big corp or maybe you know bigger tech. They've got more established processes. In a startup environment sometimes there's less structure than you might think you need. So if you're a very structured person, that's great. You have a big value add to the team in general. But very good for your own career to be structured. But if that's something you lean on heavily to be successful, then you might want to not consider a startup, or at least an early phase startup.
Speaker 2:And one thing I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you've mentioned entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship as well. So I also believe that those that can I call it operating in gray and similar to the lack of process, but those that want to build something above just coming in for a day job, I think that those are often great candidates as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I see SaaS sales as a lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's a pretty full-on lifestyle, but it can be incredibly rewarding, both from a development and an earnings perspective. Alex, for those that are listening and might want to learn a little bit more about DataSnipper and who they are and what they do, how can they find DataSnipper?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're online, of course, wwwdatasnippercom. We have our LinkedIn pages, some of our social medias as well. We're very active on LinkedIn, so LinkedIn is really where you can find the most about DataSnipper. If anyone's curious about getting into the SaaS world, maybe from a sales perspective, our teams are scaling really fast and we're always hiring. So if they want to get a bit more of an inside information, they can look me up as well.
Speaker 2:I can give some tips and tricks and how can people look you up linkedin on linkedin? Yeah, perfect, perfect, awesome. Well, look, alex. It's been incredibly valuable. I've gotten so much out of this, uh, this conversation. Thank you for joining us thanks for having me and, um, yeah, really looking forward to seeing what you do next.
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