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
Sales Success & Strategy: Insights from a 15-Year Industry Veteran
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of SaaS sales leadership in Australia with industry veteran Jamie Deveaux.
With over 15 years of experience and multiple leadership roles, Jamie shares the principles that have allowed him to build a strong reputation and sustained success in a competitive market.
"customer first, company second" and how this approach impacts sales success and employee happiness.
Discover the critical need for a strong work ethic, the dangers of becoming a "commodity" in a market with over 3,500 vendors, and the three key metrics Jamie inspects to litmus test a business.
Whether you're an individual contributor or a seasoned sales leader, this episode provides invaluable lessons on navigating career growth, handling difficult situations, and what separates top talent from the rest.
We were talking before we sat down here about how, in software world, in SaaS, sales and I would say probably doubled down and amplified and magnified in Australia like doing the right thing and being a good person is so incredibly important and if you don't, then you burn yourself right, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:You've been incredibly successful in your career. You've been in Australia for 15 years. You've had multiple leadership roles and have still got a strong reputation in the market. Like what do you, what do you think that you have done from your leadership perspective that have allowed you to have the success that you've had, that have allowed you to to keep growing and be a desired leader in the region?
Speaker 2:You know. To come back to a guy who, who you know, you and I both have been mentored by mike cullen. You know, one of the things he said to me really early on in my career is, like, no matter how you have to think about it, it's and as much as this might sound terrible, but it is kind of true it's the customer first, the company second, new third, and and the alignment to that is, if the customer is happy, then generally your employees and staff and company are happy, they're buying, they're happy, there's good reviews. So then that impacts you as an individual leader as well. If those two things are in check and you're growing and your staff's happy and everybody's you know, making their bread, making their money as a salesperson, then ultimately you should be happy as a sales leader. So I think those core things and always keeping those in check is super paramount. It's always the customer first and I think I've always, in my whole sales career, I realized that we need those individuals to pay for our food on the table and take care of the things that we need to take care of, and if you burn that bridge early, you're in a really bad situation.
Speaker 2:Um, secondary is is like making sure your staff is taken care of right. Um, and I I can't say that I've always done that, you know what I mean like there's been different priorities that have taken, but I think at the forefront it's always been making sure that people are good, they're happy. You're doing regular check ins. You're making sure that you know there's alignment. You have to read we're in sales. You have to read how people are feeling. You can tell when someone's a bit off and maybe when it's a personal conversation or there's something personal going on.
Speaker 2:You need to be in touch with those things in order to make sure that they feel valued in the organization things in order to make sure that they feel valued in the organization and then I think the rest takes care of itself. I really love what I do. I love being in sales. I still love the hunt and, you know, being a part of the acquisitions and I've had a really colorful career in the past 15 years in Australia and I still think that it's a new challenge every day. So to share that with new individuals coming up is really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's great to hear you say that customer company individual, because I took that into Datto when I went to Datto and there was at times when I saw sales reps potentially, you know, had things around the wrong sort of way. Yes, it's easy to get those three things messed up. It is, it is, and and part of it is is education and coachability and you need to help to take people on that journey of understanding the bigger picture. But yeah, if someone is too, too focused on their hitting their commission check, then that actually can you 25% company.
Speaker 2:When you become a manager, it's 50, 50. And then when you become a C level or above, it's 75, company 25, you, like, you have to make a lot of difficult decisions, you have to do a lot of difficult things that you don't necessarily like, that impact staff, that impact customers and unfortunately you're the messenger for those things. So you can't.
Speaker 1:you, you know you've got to be able to take the good and the bad with, with, with sales leadership specifically can you think back to any times when you've witnessed firsthand your team muddling those, the order of those, um, those events up and putting themselves first and like how do you handle that conversation and tell us about a sort of success or failure in your own career when you've been coaching someone around that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's been so many times I can't really count. And that's the crazy thing about being a leader. I think when you're talking to someone who it's you know. What a crazy thing is is a large majority of it comes down to how well they're doing Right, and I hate to say that, but you know someone who's arrogant, or potentially not, but is killing their sales number and doing all the right things in terms of the target.
Speaker 2:You maybe take a little bit less pressure on them, but I think there's always got to be a level set at any point, or consistently through someone's tenure in your company, right? So there's got to be like a recheck of what the goals are. What are they looking to do? They want to become a sales manager? Do they just want to write the lights out and make as much commission money as possible so that they can pay for that new car or the Rolex or whatever they want, you know, and you've got to understand how they fit into the company and and and how you fit into them, hitting those goals and and keeping that level set. I think that is super important, um.
Speaker 1:I want to. I want to touch on that point where you said that you know if someone's maybe a little bit arrogant or they're a bit of a pain in the backside, like they get a little bit of grace if they're hitting the numbers, yeah, what's the tipping point between? Um of grace if they're hitting the numbers? Yeah, what's the tipping point?
Speaker 2:between um, between them being too much of a dickhead.
Speaker 2:You know and you know the no dickhead policy, um, for when it's their, their pain is actually outweighing the revenue that they're overachieving with I think as soon as it impacts someone else within the team, I think that is an immediate no-no and that's that's an immediate verbal warning and then you know that's a very you've crossed the line here. It's time to go over as soon as that individual, like contributor, starts to, you know, um impact other people's roles within the organizations, or customers or other departments. Um, I've I had that.
Speaker 2:I hired a girl from England and you know she I think she was three weeks with the company and just tore a strip off of someone in finance, the finance department, right, and I had a lot of time for her. But the finance department had called me in Australia and told me what she did and she was still within her probation and I went in and I addressed it immediately. I'm like you can't talk to people the way she was frustrated with a billing or some kind of, the way the, the payment went through or something like that, or how long it was taking. It was something so non-issue. But she had just decided to pull a rank that she didn't have and I immediately checked her very clearly. You know, like this, like I've got the director of the finance department contacting me to talk about a problem with you. You know there's one of two ways this is going to go and you're not going to like both of them.
Speaker 1:So get yourself in check, or you know like understand, I'm like.
Speaker 2:and then clearly from there I said if you have a problem, I'm your manager like, I'm your leader, I'm like. And then clearly from there I said if you have a problem, I'm your manager, like, I'm your leader, I'm the one you have to report to. So if you have a problem with someone else or someone else in the department, talk to me first and let's get to the bottom of it. Then Did that work? It did. Yes, it immediately changed the whole way. The whole perspective Made it a lot harder on me because every other day it was something else. But you know, that again was something I could manage, as long as she wasn't affecting other employees in the organization or customers or you know that that's super important.
Speaker 1:something else I've noticed about your career um, certainly I've known you is the numbers, the number of liquidity events that you've been through. Yeah, how many have you been through in the last 15 years?
Speaker 2:In the last 15, I've been through, I guess, four significant. Yeah, so enable, enable to SolarWinds. Solarwinds going private, solarwinds then going public, again in 2018. And then, and then more recently, dropsuite being acquired by Ninja. So that deal's not finalized yet, so we can't talk too much about that today, but that one's coming up, I think, in the next couple of days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's incredibly exciting. But I've been through a couple of those myself and as a junior rep within an organization like on one hand it's exciting, On the other hand it's pretty challenging, right, Because there's so much internal change and pressure and different mandates coming at you. What was your experience in going through that and has your ability to handle that change matured and how do you do you handle that change? Because a lot of people are and again, we talked before we sat down it's a lot easier to come into a change organization than to change in an organization agreed.
Speaker 2:So how have you been successful with that? The first one in in 2012, when SolarWinds acquired Enable. What was really good about that acquisition is they were buying us because they're a long-winded sales process and we were very short. Our sales process, I mean, you can remember it was 15 to 30 days from lead gen to close and they didn't really know much about our business, so they really virtually left us untouched. I mean, we still had the same direct reports, we still had all the same things. So that was a really good first acquisition for us. I think you know you and I went through that together and I think you would agree that that was, in general, a good acquisition because we got pretty much left alone. I'd say a bad one was when we acquired LogicNow, which was GFI formerly, which was our largest competitor. The two businesses on paper were virtually the same and that one got announced.
Speaker 2:I was on a plane back to Canada and it got announced at 6.30 in the morning and I was literally going to jump on a plane two hours later and so I had my team contacting me. What does this mean for me? And the fear, uncertainty and doubt was was kicking in and I was just getting on a 24 hour flight back home so I didn't even know what was going on to a level. So I think those experiences really having different experiences allows you to know that there's no control over like where you're going to go, like decisions get made in these acquisitions. But I think it gives anybody who's going through it or is potentially going to go through it the advice I'd give is like dig in, know your data, know your metrics, know your company, know your worth within your business and really focus in on those things Because, at the end of the day, whatever decision is made is out of your hands in a large majority of cases. But make sure you don't doubt not being included in that next move or something else. Make sure that you shine in those parts of change.
Speaker 1:So you talked about some good things around knowing your data, your numbers, your worth, etc. How does one, as a individual contributor or junior person within a business um effectively communicate that so that they can effectively um poise themselves as a valuable member of the team?
Speaker 2:yeah, I I think like early for me in my career, I said yes 40 times more than I said no. You know, even though I didn't like it. It was like I didn't personally like what I was being asked to do. I would put my my hand up and do it. So it gave me exposure to a large majority of other parts of the department and it gave me exposure to people that could make decisions. So I think that that's important to the level of not being annoying. By the way, If you are a targeted rep, which most of us are, then you need to be doing everything you do you can to hit those targets consistently. And if you're not, you need to do a serious SWOT analysis on yourself and understand where your your problems are. Can you fix those problems individually?
Speaker 2:or do you need help from me or someone else on the team to get you to that level? And I think the I think the bigger problem I see with younger people is is they know these things but they don't take action on them. And I think, like, if I can give one level of advice, take action on them. Um, and I think you, like, if I can give one level of advice, take action on weakness, like it's not, it's totally okay to be like I don't know this, or put your hand up and say I'm not good at this. How can I get better?
Speaker 1:that's where I think leaders thrive but, if, if you know nobody, if you don't ask, you don't get really yeah and I mean there's been a huge amount of change and redundancies and they're still going on at the moment yeah which is which is frustrating. I'm hoping that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I do believe that there is, um, but something which we talked about was make yourself indispensable yes within the organization and whilst I would say no one's indispensable, no one's, everyone is is a number to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:Um, if you can help to relieve workload pain, frustration from peers, from your manager, uh, by by again doing things that that make their lives easier, then that's going to elevate you kind of one step a hundred percent, yeah, that you couldn't have articulated or shortened it up more that's.
Speaker 2:That's really's really where and I get afforded a lot being in Australia I get afforded a lot of luxury to make decisions on the fly and deal with things and basically run it as my own business. And I've only done that because I've earned that right Doing things before I'm being asked to do them or, you know, just running it responsibly, effectively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having that, go go get it.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:Just continually don't see it. Don't be that person. That's not my job. I'm not going to do it sort of mentality. That is the worst thing you can be in today's world.
Speaker 2:I honestly, I think I owe so much of it to.
Speaker 1:I owe so much of of my success to work ethic you just raised something what something that you that, that line that you hate. That's not my job and I share that sentiment as well. I want to. I want to transition to um, to hiring. You've you've hired a lot of salespeople over the years and, um, I've got kind of both sides of the question. When you're going through um, an interview process, what is something that someone will say in an interview that will be an immediate red flag and give you the X straight away?
Speaker 2:Um, the one of like one that I come back to a large majority of time is is the money thing. Um, I hate, I hate that to be it, but you know, a lot of people feel entitled that they should get more because they have a master's degree or they've spent x amount of time in a customer service role, but they've never really done sales and they make that very aware very quickly. Oh, I thought it was more. Can I negotiate more?
Speaker 1:that that's an immediate, like you know, red flag to me, like and is that a red flag at the at the final stage as well, or or even?
Speaker 2:early on. I've had people come in like in the first interview, yeah and, and you know, offer what the pay? You know, when you disclose the pay packet, you know you can tell that they're not, they're not happy with it or whatever the case is.
Speaker 1:My answer how would you encourage people to have that conversation, because it's probably good that you qualify them out really soon. If there's a misalignment at the same time, I'm with you. If someone's coming in and talking about money on the first date, then that's. That's a bit of a problem for me as well. Yeah, and I've seen candidates get pushed out straight away For that reason it depends on the role too.
Speaker 2:I got to be honest.
Speaker 2:I mean I think you know, at this point in my career, commanding a salary is a relevant conversation or equity in the company or something along those lines to get you to where you are. But I mean, if you're just starting out and you've never had a tech sales role Like we're not talking about money You're going to take what you can get because you want the job, the, I think I like. I like a level of arrogance. I mean there's not really too much that sets me off. It's just really not being engaging, one where it answers. Another thing that doesn't really excite me a lot or turns me off If someone doesn't do the research on the business, like that drives me nuts you know.
Speaker 2:So like if I get into an interview with someone and they kind of I ask them what do you know about drop suite? And they're kind of piecing together or reading the website while they're on it, like that to me is an immediate like okay, like you don't even care enough about you knew you had this interview for a week. You didn't care enough to actually do some research, watch some youtube videos, do do something to to understand what kind of company you're going to work for. Well, that kind of gives me some understanding of what kind of employee you're going to be when I hire you. So usually that is a bottom of the pile or garbage resume right immediately I, I was talking about this very same thing.
Speaker 2:It's such an easy thing to do, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 2:If you have not got the time to look at what we do before we have a conversation, I don't have the time to take this conversation anywhere, like even a mission statement or a value proposition like that, at the very least, if someone came out and just spit the mission statement out to me immediately and they memorized it, that to me is like you're in, yeah, but when it's like piecing it, I think you guys kind of do this or you kind of do that, or like I'm just I'm blown away by the fact that, like they obviously are just hiring mass, looking for they've applied to 50 positions and they don't kind of care what they get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that to me is definitely something and on the flip side of that, what are the things in an interview process that you're looking for that you can tell someone is a really high quality candidate?
Speaker 2:The first thing I do is like give a good alignment of, like the company, what we're looking for in the individual, to to level set with them to understand is this the job they want? The. The second thing is really just like background. So, like you know, in we we face these kinds of situations in this company on a regular basis. These are some of the parts of your job that you're not going to like. You know, cold calling people and getting told no, whatever the case is. And then the third thing is I generally get them to pitch me yeah the company, yeah, on a voicemail so I get them to call me.
Speaker 2:I still do that today, I've done it for years, but basically a why they should get the job in by the time a voicemail ends, right? So if those three things like fall in alignment, I think that's where I'm I'm good. So I don't know really how to articulate that into the three bullet points.
Speaker 1:Um, so that's a sales bit of an interview process. Is so, initially, what you do? Is you frame it and saying, like you're almost level setting and just explaining what you do, this is what we do. Is this, is that your alignment and are you comfortable that we should progress the interview moving forward? Is that right?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah. So like the first one, level set and then a little bit of conversation around that I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:It's it's almost a question in itself, like what's your interview interview process? But even as we look, if we go through that process, what you're looking for is, um, like, how do you tell if someone is a is a good fit, as, once you've explained what they do and you do that to me, I'm like, oh yeah, jamie, that sounds really good. That's exactly what I'm after. Um, yeah, okay, like what is it the? What is it that you're looking for in terms of what they say or how they respond? Or like is it iq? Eq is an example. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:Um, there's a, there's a hiring manager we're working with at the moment and he says I'd love to learn a little bit about who you are and what you do. Let me go first. My name's X and I've been in Australia for 20 years. I've got two daughters and I'm passionate about football. As an example, tell me a bit about yourself.
Speaker 1:And he says if they respond and they say, well, this is it. I've been in cybersecurity for 10 years years and I'm really passionate about a new business, he goes they've missed the point, they don't have that emotional intelligence piece, right? And so he goes I'm looking for someone with like emotional intelligence that can build rapport. I want to see drive, I want to see passion, I want to see that they're intelligent so that they can learn new stuff. Do you look for some of those sort of characteristics like how are you if everyone goes, yeah, that's the job I'm after, how do you then qualify? Um? How do you grade someone? Um that this is, this is someone that is a high quality rep, or this is someone in my a class, in my b and my c?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean it's so much about about feel I know the, you know the roles. But I mean I take it to the most recent. I've just recently hired an SDR and we went through a first round and you know, I shortlisted, I think, two candidates. One was from the industry and just very monotone, kind of came across as a little bit arrogant. Like you know, know, I've been there, done that those people I find are a lot harder to to kind of train in a new role. Um, if, especially if, they have that attitude.
Speaker 2:The younger one was straight out of school, didn't have a job outside of like a retail shop and so, but what was really good about him is he had taken the time to research the company, he had had a really good personality about him. You could tell he could work with customers, he was, you know, customer facing, and that is like the first crux of what we do, because we're always in front of customers and dealing with issues. If they can do that at the first level, I think that is what I'm looking for. I am looking for emotional intelligence, I'm looking for them to understand how to hit a goal, hit a target, um, but we ended up coming down to an individual who was in car and and and, uh and property sales before very young kid. He's 24, so he's had some entry-level jobs in there and just like it was his energy over the interview, um, I threw him with, I, I, I what does energy mean to you?
Speaker 2:Like the ability to carry a conversation. It's not a one sided interview. I think, like that old school interview mentality is just it's so boring, you know where do you want to be in three years, where do you want to be in five years, like it's. It's. It's not about that, it's about you know, know the ability to like do I want to work with this? You're in interviews, validation, right. You're wondering do I want to work with this guy? Can he do the job and do they want to work with me? I mean, like we forget that sometimes as hiring managers, don't we like? We automatically are looking, we have the pressure of filling this role and we just feel that way, but ultimately is that, does that person want to work with me as the individual? So I think there's a lot of back and forth that needs to happen there and if that ultimately goes well, my first interviews are 15 minutes if not less.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very short, right, and it's those three things. It's do they want to work with me, do I want to work with them and do I think they can do the job?
Speaker 2:Correct, they can do the job. Correct. If I get those three things, that let's go through a bit more. If I tick those three things, then I'm okay to send it to my to to my next, um it to the second and then third round and then ultimately make that decision at the end. Yeah, um it's just, it's very quick for me because your resume tells me what you've done, so I don't really need to pour over that for, yeah, 15 minutes. My goal is to understand do can, can we, can we do this together?
Speaker 2:and I'm going to give you all the bad parts about this job and I'm going to tell you everything you're going to be doing every day and it's, it's probably going to suck if you're an sdr or you know, if, if it's, you've never done those roles before, um, and if you're still happy at the end of that and and you know, you still show that, that eagerness to want to come, then yeah, 100, a hundred percent that. That that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I like the way. Yeah, do I want to work with you? Do you want to work with me? Are we, are we connected? Are we compatible? Do I like your energy? Do you like mine? Maybe it's a sales person to me.
Speaker 2:I mean HR kind of hates me for it, right, because they wanted me to get right down to the emotional side, but and maybe it's a salesperson me but it's all about qualifying out. I've got a hundred people applying for this job. I need to like weed out and and unfortunately you know as much as I'm saying this it could come down to a feeling or a vibe you get or just something in your gut that tell you this isn't the right move. Yeah, um, and, and largely my gut's been pretty good so I trusted a large majority of the time.
Speaker 1:When we look at growth in a business high scale, fast growth business and especially a small business the people that you get into the business are critical to your success. If you get someone that is not able to come up like to execute, when you bring them in, that can really hold you back. To come up like to execute when you bring them in, that can really hold you back. What do you do, or what does the organization, or what's your philosophy of how you um, you get high quality people into the business oh, that's a really big uh question.
Speaker 2:I I would say, you know, I think it's got to be right, fit, right time. A lot of time, I think a lot of it is just coming down. I think you need to know what your next position is or what you're looking at out of that role. High growth businesses small like you know, I'm in kind of one right now. We're only 160 plus staff right, so it's quite small.
Speaker 2:So the hires I make aren't I can't be hidden right. They need to come in. They need to come in relatively quick and make impact. I think laying out, if I hire you, this is you're going to be, and making sure that they're coming along with you on that journey right like this, is why I'm hiring for this role and this is why I think you're going to be good for it. But I need you to do these things to put us in position for, in three months or six months time, to maybe promote you or put this, put you in this position and allow them to come on that journey with you because you're you're creating a vision 100% yeah this is our vision.
Speaker 1:This is who we are, what we stand for, where we're going.
Speaker 2:These are our weaknesses yeah this is where we're not good and this is why we're hiring for this role and like making sure that that's clear and making sure that they understand their place in the organization giving them a home yeah, they've got a sense of belonging a foundation first and then building that, that, that path forward with them.
Speaker 2:You know, I I talked to this young kid I've just hired. I brought him with me to melbourne and sydney on a recent road show, um show, and we we had some time at the airport together and I just said, like what drives you? And he's just like money, like immediately, like I want the, I want the rolex, I want the car, I want the, I want the house, I I want all that stuff. And I'm like what you know, the first question I asked him is what do you think you need to get you there? And he couldn't really answer it or articulate it in a way that made sense, right. So you know, I talked to him then about like how I've, where I've come from and the things that have instilled in me to allow me to be successful. And you know, know, now we're in, now now he's kind of coming on that journey with me. He understands that he's got a place, he understands that he has a to hit these goals, to get where he that's the coaching element.
Speaker 1:Probably did you for filming that you can help to get him there as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's definitely a big thing. If you have people that on your team that don't like working for you, then you're not going to get anywhere together. Um and it comes back to our original point like a lot of arrogance comes from that. You know sales reps can be very like I know more than the next person, or whatever the case is.
Speaker 1:That level set is always important, I think, consistently throughout someone's career I want to change the um, the topic slightly, um, away from, away from kind of motivating salespeople et cetera, and I want to. I want to make an assumption. Let's just say that you've hired a top performer, you've got an A player that's come in. He sold on the vision. What are the other GTM? Go to market components that a business needs to build as part of their foundation in order to ensure that that person is set up for success.
Speaker 2:Are we talking about like, like a siloed office, like a like Australia, or?
Speaker 1:Either it could be. It could be a siloed office like Australia. It could be an Australian business. That's a, you know, a startup scale up there. They're building their, their foundational sales team. Um, and just a little bit of context, I've been working with a lot of um scale-up companies in the services world, in the sass world and and there's a lot of pressure on an individual first hire that. This is my player. I'd be better be an a player. He better deliver and more often than not they don't correct and a lot of the time I'm not gonna give to give a percentage, but there's a, it's a marriage, right? The salesperson needs to come to the table, the business needs to come to the table with what I call a foundation, like a GTM foundation some ingredients, some leads, perhaps a sales process. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I see where you're coming from, so so yeah, I think I'm kind of going through that a little. I've gone through that in the past three years and you know what I would call an A player. We're the fastest growing region two years in a row, and top percentage growth region two years in a row. And you know, that is probably largely because I was hired as with the title, but more of an individual contributor, with the title, but more of an individual contributor. I think the first thing that if I can just talk from personal experience and then expand that down, is the first thing I did is learned everything about the company I could and understand where the cracks were and understand what I needed from a resource perspective. Then I went and asked for those things from. Luckily, I had a good relationship with the CEO, so I asked things directly top down.
Speaker 2:Usually if you ask the top person first, you're, you know you're going to get better shot if you have a good relationship. So I think when you hire that a player in your market, um, you, you it does need to be a give and take. Again, coming to that level set meeting or that quarterly check-in, what are the things that are really bothering you, or what things could we expedite, make faster, what are the things that we could work with you on to help accelerate your growth an extra 10, 20%? If they don't have the answers, then you need to be cautious of allowing them to make that decision, especially if they're the A player and understand that a little bit more, maybe, what they're getting out of it. But it also, I think, translates down to like firm targets and understanding of like you know what the expectations are and making sure that they can manage those first, before they start thinking about everything else in the business so targets kpis commission plan correct those need to be solid.
Speaker 2:I mean like they can't be willy-nilly or like, oh, if you hit your number at 70, like that's okay, like if, if you're going to be wishy-washy on that stuff and don't set those realistic um targets and goals, then then unfortunately, like the business is going to fall out and and eventually that a player will lose faith in you because their numbers will start to turn the other way because, well, he doesn't reprimand me if I don't hit my number in this month, or he doesn't give me flack if I miss these things.
Speaker 1:There's two things I've picked up in that. One is having a fair comp plan. The other one is having a management rhythm to make sure that you're inspecting what you expect with that person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we do quarterly check ins and there's there's like pretty much a full SWAT quarter on quarter.
Speaker 1:And this is with headquarters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, this is with your direct reports and then with my direct reports as well.
Speaker 1:Just on a quarterly basis. Quarterly basis, yeah, the one to ones as well, yeah.
Speaker 2:On a weekly basis or One to ones are weekly with my direct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually that's a good point like what is your cadence?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I do one-to-ones beginning of the week because I think it's the most crucial time to impact a week. If you're doing a one-to-one on a friday, it's okay, but I think a lot of people are still in the crux of you know they haven't had that mind clear of saturday, sunday, depending on what your work schedule is. So I usually like to to do mine Monday immediately or or Tuesday morning, but not past Tuesday afternoon. Why? Because time's crucial, right? If we found that we got 30% less leads from marketing last week, well, someone needs to get on the phone and pick up the slack on those extra 30. We need to go call some lists or do some things to get that momentum back up, because I know my metrics and I know if we don't, if we that bottom falls out in week two, we're probably not going to hit the number.
Speaker 2:So it's really good for you to understand what happened last week, what went off, what was the activity, what maybe didn't go so well and how can we change those things in the next week. And then your monthlies your I don't do monthlies, I do quarterlies, cause that's where targets are run. And then your quarterlies are taking all of those small one-to-one meetings and basically saying, hey, this has been a consistent issue, what are the things we can do to fix that? Or this is really good. How do we continue to do more of that? And that's really the cadence that I follow and it's worked extremely well for me. That doesn't go to mention that I'm on the phone with these guys yeah, two, three, four, five times a day. In terms of little stuff that needs to happen, but those times of focus where you're just talking about them and their role and what their output is and what their capability is what are the top you talked about metrics in terms of marketing leads.
Speaker 1:What are the top three, four, five metrics that you have got just off the tip of your, your tongue in terms of what you're looking for on a monthly or weekly basis, either with your, I'm going to say, for the business you know as a regional leader marketing, sales, success, support, whatever that may be. What are your go-to metrics to litmus test, how are you doing close ratio?
Speaker 2:okay, um, like, I mean at the end of the day, um, there's, there's two key metrics I always focus on it's. It's you know what's our show-up ratio of what? Like, if we did a marketing campaign, how many people showed up and actually interacted with that campaign and moved into the sales process? So if we did, you know, if we hit 1500 people but 10 showed up, like that's not really a good ratio. Maybe we don't do that again, or we tweak the marketing or we tweak the message and then, once they're in the sales process, it's like what is our close ratio on conversion to sale and what's that time frame?
Speaker 2:The more we can enhance that and whittle that down, the better we get in understanding what our speed bumps are or what our pitfalls are going to be. So, what our speed bumps are or what our pitfalls are going to be, so that's the first metric a lot of the times. And then the other side is growing trends with existing customers and understanding when they're buying licenses, how regularly they're buying licenses and what can we do to accelerate that. In our world there's so many SaaS products, right, and we have five or six competitors to every solution that's out there, whether it's backup or virus or whatever it is that. Um, it could just be that they have got two different products doing the same thing and they didn't know that you could do this, so they've they've not launched it in. So you really want to keep in key metrics on your existing customer growth, churn rate and then the one I find would that be like a white space analysis type report.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do heat mapping so it's like, basically, I've you know, kind of nerdy but I've got my wife to create me this. She's a financial analyst so she does all the guru excel stuff and I've got a heat map that I basically can plug in the data and it gives me an understanding of you know where drops or where hits have been so that we can impact a time of like immediate right. If a customer deploys 300 seats, you should be on the phone with that person immediately, like you know, and saying, hey, what happened, what? What can we do to get another one of these in three months or whatever the case? Or adversely, if a customer turns, same thing.
Speaker 1:I just want to go back and ask you the question again and just say there's three key metrics that I hold close to my heart, or there's three key metrics that I inspect every single week. Okay, and that'll be a cool.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:There's three key sales metrics, or whatever that is.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's three key sales metrics that I hold dear to my heart. How many leads have come in? Obviously, do we have enough people to talk to what our current growth rate is with existing customers? And churn. That churn is something you need to get on top of immediately if you see it happening. And then, like the third one is close ratio understanding. You know how we're doing with the people that are in the pipe to get them to the ultimate goal of getting them on board with our solution.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And then if we peel that back, that's the business layer in terms of how the overall sales marketing engine's going, those three pillars or those three levers. If we look at a rep and you want to understand like the activity of a rep, do you go down at that granular level to understand like number of meetings or 100?
Speaker 2:okay, yeah, so the the great thing about ai is like it is giving us this stuff in real time. Stuff I had to like go through extrude, excruciating pain and you would remember this like excel sheets and call logs, and we run everything out of outreach and it just gives you those metrics like bang right on a clear dashboard, so I don't even have to look at it. I can see how the, the voip call is through outreach, so I can see exactly how many times that individual's picked up the phone, I can see how many times they've touched, for how long they've been on the phone and then ultimately what's that resulted in in terms of bookings and and completed meetings. It's all good if you book 30 meetings, but if they don't show up, yeah, you're talking to nobody.
Speaker 1:So we talked a bit about marketing and sales and leads, and that's obviously close to your heart. I can see what is your belief, philosophy, expectation of who drives leads for the sales team marketing versus sales and what's that ideal ratio that you should be oh, this one's gonna get me a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2:Um, I grew up in a sales-led lead system, so, um, cold calling and, just, you know, getting out in front of it and and driving the leads. We didn't have a really good marketing engine at the first company I was with and therefore it fell on sales to make our number. We and, and the. The vibe was always um, you know, if you can't hit your number on your own, then you shouldn't be blaming anybody else. Um, now that that's changed massively we've got so much more accessibility to marketing and the social media and things like this that I think it's it's got to be a 50 50 between marketing and sales to a large majority, depending on what kind of model you're running or what kind of product you're selling, but I believe in SaaS specifically, it's got to be a 50-50. You've got to be bringing your own leads from a sales perspective, but you've got to count on marketing to get you that extra little bit, month on month, quarter on quarter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and you touch on outreach as a tool bit, month on month, quarter on quarter. Yeah, I agree, and you touch on outreach as a tool when you look at the solutions that you're using from a, an enablement perspective or just tools within your business, whether it's ai or non-ai. What is your favorite tool or tools that you you look to today?
Speaker 2:I mean, we just got outreach. So I and honestly, this 24 year old kid who I've just hired knows more about it now than I, than I do, and I find that incredible. That's that lets me know that I've hired the right person, but Gong has been a really good one. Okay, Gong is? It's an AI technology that you just hook into a Microsoft meeting and it basically condenses all the asks so that you can. You know anything you've said you're going to do, you do. It puts all that in Salesforce. It puts all the metrics in for you.
Speaker 1:It puts it all in for you automatically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, once you link it up to Salesforce, you don't have to worry about it. So I can literally get off a call and the Coles notes of that call are put in the opportunities put in. I've got to do some small changes, minor tweaking, um, but it's done that and it's recorded the whole call. So if the customer then goes, hey, I need a copy of this, you can just send them a link. It's, it expires in 30 days and it's all done. Um, that tool set I. I was skeptical at first, but I've come to realize it is awesome, especially when you're like oh, what did he say? When you know, you know when he asked this question or what did you say?
Speaker 1:at this point you can literally go back to that or he says I never said that, hang on a second, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or he says that yeah, that's the other worst thing, but yeah, gong has been a really good one. I've not paid for that, but it's just been one that I didn't think was going to be that great. It's just transformed the way.
Speaker 1:Um I I've looked at the business amazing and just as we begin to come to a close, what advice would you give to your 16 year old self that is looking at a career in sales right now?
Speaker 2:stop being so emotional. Um, I, I struggled a lot early in my career with emotion and and being able to temper that and and um, realize, like overthinking things that were never going to happen, right, um, like just getting in your own head about, like everything, oh I'm going to get fired, or this is going to happen, or this is going to happen and it never does, or it never happens the way you think it's going to happen, in the 50 ways. Um, but yeah, it would probably be the emotional side of it, I think, and how can you overcome that? I, I, I started to really heavily read. So mentorship was one way, like someone that you can be yourself with. So, my, my old boss, frank, who you'd know, we, when I get on the phone with him, I would say this is a Jamie Frank conversation, or if it was a business conversation, it's like it's a business conversation so he could understand what side of emotion I'm playing on. And that really helped me out because he was, I was able to kind of channel through that.
Speaker 2:Um, but then I did a lot of, you know, reading Ryan Holiday's um, stoic, you know, uh, reading, um, I've done a lot of reading in emotional intelligence and realizing that that five minutes of getting that news that you think is the worst thing in the world, your actions in that five minutes, will dictate what's going to happen, you know, at the end of the day. So it's better for you to just shut up, take it in, take a night to think about it, take two days, whatever the case is, and just worry. My problem when I was young is I reacted immediately. I heard news I didn't like and I just threw I still, I still do that today, yeah I still do that today and I try, I go.
Speaker 1:You know I'm gonna sit on this and the next day I look at it and go. You know what it's done.
Speaker 2:I don't even bother about this I've written so many emails that I've deleted and and left in drafts that I have just drafts and drafts, and then I wake up the next morning. I'm like you know what, whatever, it's not worth it, I'm not going to go so. So if it was 16 year old me. It's just stop being so emotional, Just get over it, get on with it and, and, and, and, you know, keep going forward.
Speaker 1:Awesome, Jamie. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really enjoyed it. If anyone's listening wants to get in touch with you or learn a bit more about drop suite, how can they do that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so you can contact me on linkedin, um jamie devoe. I've got a unique name french canadian so you can contact me there um. Or obviously um through email, jamie at drop suitecom. Um. I'm pretty active in in media, so if there's something you need, I'm more than happy to help out where I can.
Speaker 1:Awesome thank you so much great to chat. Thank you, cheers, appreciate it james.
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