Achieving Success in SaaS Sales and Beyond

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:05):
And now the number one audio program that helps you
to hire, get hired and soarhigher in the Salesforce
ecosystem.
It's the Salesforce Career Showwith Josh Matthews and Vanessa
Grant.
Okay, welcome everybody.

Josh Matthews (00:21):
We are joined by Dylan Ferguson today.
Okay, welcome everybody.
We are joined by Dylan Fergusontoday.
Dylan is awesome, not justbecause we happen to go to the
same university, probably atslightly different times, but
he's been involved in theecosystem the Salesforce
ecosystem for 17 years.
In fact, he was right aroundthe 7,500th employee at

(00:45):
Salesforce.
He spent some time there.
He's been deeply involved inSaaS sales.
He's operated as channelmanager and he's run sales teams
.
In fact, currently he's over atFullcast right and he's the
go-to market expert over there.
We're going to be diving inwith Dylan and talking about

(01:08):
some interesting topics.
I think we're going to talk alittle bit about what it's like
to be a salesperson in theecosystem.
We're also going to discuss andtouch on interviewing, both as
a hiring manager and as acandidate too, and a couple
other topics.
In the meantime, let meintroduce my co-host, vanessa
Grant.
Welcome, vanessa.

Vanessa Grant (01:28):
Hello Josh, Happy to be here with all of you
again.
Vanessa.
Grant, I'm a product owner fromFinTech Company and excited to
co-host and talk to Dylan whoapparently we were co-workers
for like three years and justdidn't really cross paths.

Yeah right.

Large companies remote, you never know.

That's true.
You forgot to announce to youthat you're also a social media
darling.

I am a social media darling.

And we have our regular panelist, mr Peter Gansa
.
Welcome, peter to the show.
Always a pleasure gang.
Great Good to have you here.
So let's go ahead and just talktopical stuff.
Anything been going on.
Anything been going on inSalesforce.
I mean, I think it's kind of aquiet week over there.
I think they've got an earningsreport coming out about.

(02:18):
Well, maybe it came out half anhour ago, so maybe that's
something we can talk about in acouple of weeks.
But, vanessa, I'm assuming alow travel situation for the
last couple of weeks.
How have things been going?

Good.
So Tahoe Dreamin's next week.
So that's what I'm gearing upfor, Excited to go to Tahoe
again, I know.
So I did hear like that therewere like 300 layoffs on the
Salesforce side, I think, maybein Europe, but that's something
that just also crossed my radar.

(02:52):
And then also in happy news andI don't think we discussed this
last time but the Dreamforcespeaker announcements came out
and so I'll be hosting, likeit's not hosting.
I'll be speaking in like it'snot hosting.
I'll be speaking at in theadmin theater for two sessions
with my speaking partner, TomBassett, and I'll also be
hosting a Salesforce businessanalyst networking community

(03:15):
event at Dreamforce.

So congratulations yeah thank you,
congratulations on those.
That's awesome, pretty exciting.
I think the only thing I'mgoing to be doing at Salesforce
that might be or excuse me atDreamforce.
I'm just going to kind of holdopen office hours on a picnic
table for a few hours so you cancome up, say hi, catch up,
maybe get some free adviceeither on your career or on how
to hire people.

(03:40):
I do want to just address whatyou shared about the Salesforce
layoffs.
With the 300 people it's0.000375% of their employees.
Okay, it's nothing like.
It's literally absolutelynothing.
Don't look at that and be like,oh, you know, the sky is
falling.
It's not.
If they didn't fire that manypeople in any given sort of

(04:05):
amount of time, I'd be shocked,because there's turnover and
adjustments and some people joinand then they guess what they
join and they don't succeed, andso then they're let go.
Or maybe there's a new push fordata cloud and so they don't
need all the resources that wereon some other cloud.
Right, it's just how it goes.
So not a big deal.
It's not like a year and a halfago during the Christmas

(04:26):
layoffs of 22.

Oh, yeah, it wasn't 23, 22.

I can't remember.

I'll throw in one other little tiny bit of news.
So there's going to be a newDreamin event which is
supposedly going to be on August8th.
Registration just opened up forSoCal Dreamin.
We're actually going to get anevent in LA which I'm pretty
excited about.

Peter Ganza (04:45):
Oh, that's cool.

Newport yep.

Yeah, because it's so hard to drive the five
hours.
You know that's good.

Well, I mean to get a Dreamforce hotel, though
it's just cheaper to go to Tahoeor I guess.
Socal now.
So that's the issue.
It's, like you know, early bird, I think, for Dreamforce was
like $1,400, something like that$1,500.

Yep, yep, and that ended yesterday, yeah.
So now you're going to cough uptwo G's and I'll tell you
something too If you're notgoing this year, but you are
going next year, then when theyannounce the dates which is
generally around March, I thinkusually around March as soon as
they announce it, book yourhotel.
That's what I do, oh yeah.

I think I booked my hotel.
Actually, I think I found outabout the Dreamforce dates
almost soon, right after lastyear's Dreamforce, because my
hotel's been booked since lastNovember I think, and I'm paying
like $1,000 for the monster andI'm staying there for a week
and, yes, I'm sharing a bathroom, but I'm not going to get

(05:52):
closer to Dreamforce than themonster, and certainly $1,000
for a week, dreamforce week.

Yeah, that's great, I have another hot tip.

So if you're a little bit intimidated by those
Dreamforce prices and you aremaybe interested in speaking, or
even if you're not little bitintimidated by those Dreamforce
prices and you are maybeinterested in speaking, or even
if you're not interested inspeaking, when the call for
speakers for Dreamforce opens up, submit an abstract anyway.
Even if you get rejected, theywill likely give you a very
large discount this year it wasa 35% discount for folks that

(06:20):
didn't make the cut but stillsubmitted to speak.

Yep, yep, I got one of those.
Yeah, that is a good idea.
Game the system is what Vanessais saying.
Just game the system, save afew bucks, good job.
Yeah, well, guys, let's dive in.
Dylan, tell us a little bitabout yourself and what you're
doing right now.

Dylan (06:41):
Yeah, the father of seven .
That's my most important thingI do.
I recently left seven years ofSalesforce consulting where we
built a pretty large company.
I started when there was about30 employees, we built it to
7,000 and it was acquired byInfosys and now I work with a
lot of the same people that didthat with a company called

(07:02):
Fullcast, which is specificallyfocused.
It's a managed package thatplugs into Salesforce, but not
exclusive to Salesforce, andit's really a platform around
the whole revenue operationslifecycle.
So anything from territorymanagement and having automated
policies pushed directly intoSalesforce for you to manage
those territories that you build, to capacity planning, to quota

(07:23):
target management so right nowa lot of that's really manual
and in spreadsheets and so oryou're using modules from three
or four different behemothtechnologies like EMR and then
Salesforce or some CRM, and it'sjust not a centralized
go-to-market strategy.
So there's a big opportunity inthat space and that's where I
spend most of my free time ishelping people figure that

(07:45):
problem out.

Yes, and you're very good at it, and you're also
very good at collecting art, soDylan has some amazing stories.
You just came back from a monthin Europe where you I believe
you shared that you loaned oneof your degas for the exhibit.
Is that accurate?

Dylan (08:02):
Yeah, that sounds fancy, it's fancy, it gets uh it's
fancy, it gets because it'sfancy, though it's fancy okay
the story is, I found in utah anoriginal sketch that edgar de
god did, and it was the firstsketch, what they call a premier
pense in french, uh, whichmeans the first thought of a
painting that actually hangs inthe national gallery in london.
And the unique nature of it.

(08:22):
It's called miss lala thecirque fernando.
And the unique nature of it.
It's called Miss Lala theCirque Fernando.
And the unique nature of it isthat it's a sole source painting
of a person of color, not in aservice mentality, so it's a
circus performer.
She's hanging from her teethfrom the rafters of a place
called the Cirque Fernando.
And so they wanted to put anexhibit together of all the
studies that they got didleading up to that final version

(08:45):
that just hangs in the gallery.
And so I got to take all sevenof my kids to Europe for a whole
month.
It's my first like career breakthat was longer than about
seven days in 20 years.
So I got my first summervacation since I graduated high
school.
It was so much fun, oh my gosh.

You have waited a long time for that, my friend.

Dylan (09:05):
Yeah, yes, it was.
It was so nice to be able to dothat.
But, like we, we did some coolthings, like we took our kids to
the, to the a hundred acrewoods where AA Milne wrote
Winnie the Pooh.
We stayed two doors down fromthe house where he wrote it, so
we literally had a three minutewalk to the Pooh bridge, to and
the forest that ChristopherRobin played in.

(09:26):
It was so much fun, so a lot ofcool things like that.

I love it.
That is fantastic.
Well, let's dive into somecareer-type stuff for a second.
A couple of the One of thethings that we spoke about when
we last chatted was a little bitmore on the sales side.
Right, we have largely ignoredthe fact that within this
ecosystem exist thousands of AEsand RVPs, people who sell SaaS

(09:53):
products, people who sellconsulting services for
Salesforce partners and all ofthe folks, all the good folks
over at Salesforce, who are insome sort of account executive
or leadership around salescapacity.
At the end of the day, I think alot of times people forget it's
Salesforce and it's sales sales, right, that's how it starts.

(10:15):
It's sales, right.
But we've paid very littleattention on this program to
those folks and maybe some ofthe needs, demands, curiosities,
things that they may want someassistance with.
So let me ask you this Now youhave hired many sales folks over

(10:36):
your career, right, and you'vealso worked at major brands like
Salesforce, like Workday, overthe years too.
So I'm really kind of curiouswhen you think about the kind of
person that maybe they're notcurrently selling SaaS products,
you know, maybe they're noteven in sales.
What are some of the qualitiesor things that people can do to

(10:59):
investigate whether or not thatmight even be a viable career
trajectory for them.

Dylan (11:05):
Yeah, great question.
I think it's a couple of things.
It's a little bit of DNA.
You have to really discoverthat you're going to be
comfortable being uncomfortable.
Some people wake up everysingle day with a knot in their
stomach because there's a numberand they have to get themselves
to that number.
There's a lot of variables thataffect whether that's a
possibility or not, and you tendto rely on a lot of people to

(11:30):
get that to that outcome,especially in the Salesforce
ecosystem.
Whether you're sellingSalesforce Direct or if you're
selling services, there's just alot of coordination.
So you've got to be good atworking with people and that the
people enjoy working with you,or it's going to be a short
lived experience.
you've got to become yeah,you've got to be comfortable
knowing that the, the the gameresets every month or every

(11:54):
quarter, depending upon whatkind of a plan you have.
So it's like you've got a chessgame going and then someone
just throws all the pieces offat the end of that month and
says you got to start all overagain, no matter you were.
So if you're not comfortablewith that for the rest of your
life you may not want to do it.

Right.
And then there's the commissioncomponent too, where you know,
oftentimes people who acceptsales roles are paid less than
what they actually need from abase standpoint to live on,
right, yeah, so maybe someone,for instance, might be living a
$150,000 lifestyle.
They make commissions thatallow them to save.

(12:32):
Maybe they're making 170, 200ktypically, but they may only be
getting a base salary of $90,000, right, which means they and
some sales folks get paidquarterly.
Some sales folks get paidmonthly.
Some sales folks get paidmonthly, others every week.

(12:53):
It's generally monthly orlonger, and you have to be able
to have money in the bank andnot spend it and that's not easy
for everybody.

Dylan (12:57):
Yeah, and taxes can be tricky with that too, because
they don't necessarily deductthe amount of money that you
might need them to, because it'snot a consistent number every
single time you get a commissioncheck.
So I've had a lot ofexperiences with people in sales
who get it, spend it, thinkthey're making a lot of money.
At the end of the year they owesix figures to the tax man.
Yeah, right, yeah.

(13:18):
So you know it's high risk,high reward, for sure I mean.
One thing that I love havinghad seven kids is that if I need
a raise because I got anotherbaby coming, I just got to work
better and smarter and faster.
But I can't do that, you know.
Lucky for me it's worked out.

It's funny, my uncle, who's a realtor, he's a
commercial realtor, he's abroker, and what I do it's not
dissimilar.
Right, right, you know prettygood commissions for every deal,
but you know, you don't knowwhen the next one's coming,
necessarily, and and we alwaysjoke about like oh yeah, I got
to get my windows replaced onthe house, or something like
that.
It's like, yeah, no problem,just one more deal, right, just

(13:55):
one more deal, yeah yeah, that'sexactly.

Dylan (13:59):
It's kind of nice spring though for me, like if you have
the right like I'm talking about, you know dna and what makes
someone successful is if theidea of not being capped right
an operations program, an ITstaff, and they're giving you a
product that's been vetted andtried and true and all your only

(14:32):
job is to go out and findpeople who are going to value
that and build strongrelationships and continue to
stack on top of that over time.
So if you look at it from thatpoint of view, that you really
own your own business, butthere's a lot of the stuff that
you probably aren't interestedin spending your time on, like

(14:52):
operations or marketing or it,whether it's front office or
back office nice thing is thatthat's all done for you.
All you've got to do is nowtake what's been built and go
out and find people that aregoing to be interested in that
value and then being a goodsteward of conveying that value.
So that's what's really niceand that's you know, I did that
at salesforce, I did that atsimplest when I was on the

(15:12):
consulting side was reallybuilding my own business over a
period of time.
And to you know your earlierquestion about.
You know what kind ofcharacteristics had yielded.
You know people who are good inthat area.
It's people who are creative.
You know you, these, thesedeals, don't get done the same
way every time.

(15:32):
You have to find, like theunique nature of the deal and
the creative nature of the deal,whether that be flexible
payment terms, whether that be.
You know a couple clauses thatexplain that you know if this
one issue doesn't work, here'swhat we can do to fix that issue
and just really understandingwhere the fear lives and then
figuring out how you can partnerto overcome that fear.

(15:52):
So just that resilience to dealwith.
You know rejection and knows,and also the creativity to and
especially in a saturated market, help your client understand
what's unique about you, becausein a lot of ways they're buying
what you're putting out there,but also what's unique about the
product and the team of peoplethat you're bringing to the

(16:13):
table.
So that whole skill set tendsto yield really well.
And I find that a lot of thepeople that I work with tend to
be first children, which maysound like a strange stat, but
they spend most of their livestalking to adults, so they've
always had to punch above theirown weight class.
They also had to be prettyresilient about going out and
finding the things they want andthere was no blueprint, so they

(16:34):
got really good at askingquestions and being you know
inquisitive and that yields,that yields you know positive
results.
And so it was.

It was one of the questions I would ask quite
often when I met othersalespeople is are you the
oldest in your family?
And very often they'll say yes,yeah, it's a really great point
.
There are also studies aroundfolks who have have grown up
with dyslexia as an exampleright, where they were really
forced to be more verbal intheir communications.
I'm, I'm, look, communications,look.
Dyslexia is definitelysomething that can be managed

(17:11):
right, absolutely can.
I don't want to dive into ittoo much.
I don't have it, but I havepeople in my family who do and
it's a real thing.
There are amazingly successfulpeople in sales who just at a
very early age, had to deal withfeeling different, having to
figure out different modalitiesfor learning, different
modalities for communicating,and they got really good at

(17:34):
reading people, really reallygood at reading people, and it's
so critical in sales for peopleto like you and be an authentic
person that they like, notfaking it.

Dylan (17:48):
Yeah.

So if you're unlikable, you probably
shouldn't go into sales.

Dylan (17:54):
Yeah, I would say that's accurate, you know.
I'll give you an example.
When I was interviewing for thejob at Simplist, I met with the
CEO, a guy named Ryan Westwood,and it was one of the best
interviews I've ever been in,because we spent.
Our conversation turned into atwo hour conversation and he
never once asked me about a dealI'd closed.
He never once asked me aboutanything really related to

(18:16):
business.
He got my life story.
He said tell me about yourself.
Where did you grow up?
Where were you born?
Tell me about what your friendswere like when you grew up.
What was a challenging thingthat you had to overcome when
you were growing up?
And you know what did that.
What did you learn from it?
And after two and then he'dshare things with me.
And after two hours, he sayswell, I think I know everything
I need to know and we're we'reinterested in making you an

(18:39):
offer.
And I was, because I knowenough about you as a person to
know you're going to besuccessful.
And I thought it was one of themost Jedi mind tricks that I've
ever been through in aninterview.
And he was right.
In the seven years I workedthere, I never once missed a
quota.
I averaged 50 deals a year forseven years and I did 11% of the
all-time revenue.
And it was all based on thefact that he knew to ask me

(19:03):
about my family.
He knew what my why was, why Iget up and go to work every day.
He knew what obstacles I'd beenover.
He understood that I'd seen andbeen through trauma, which
means I'm probably a bit of anempath and I'm going to be able
to read a room well, and he alsosaw me cue into not just
talking about myself, but Iwould tend to flip it around and
say well, how about you?
Because I wouldn't justinterview and ask just to answer

(19:29):
questions.
I would ask him for responsesto similar questions.
I'm like this is how I handledit.
What about you?
What's the hardest thing you'veever done?
And then you should curiosity.
Yeah, and then you know peoplelove to talk about themselves.
And then you get to learn as acandidate, a lot about the
person you're potentially goingto go work for, especially if
it's like a C-level and you'relike can I trust this management
team to do what they saythey're going to do, especially
if it's in like a startup phase.
You know, tell me about how yougot funding in a company that's

(19:52):
in this.
You know a saturated marketLike Salesforce is only venture
backed.
At the time I was going toSimplus four other partners ever
in history and there's 1600partners in the ecosystem.
So tell me how you gotSalesforce ventures to give him
capital.
And that was a fascinatingstory.
But I learned a lot about this.
This guy didn't have a problemgetting money.
He spends most of his daytelling people no, and that was

(20:13):
a really interesting like keyfor me to know that I was on the
right track with the rightleadership group that really
could do it.
And now the same team isbuilding this company full cast,
which is why I came over, it'swhy I invested my own money into
it and you know, that's that'sthe big component, and that
thing I love about thesalesforce ecosystem is.
You end up building you a bitof a network, but almost a
family of people that you,you've been in the trenches with

(20:35):
, that you struggle with, thatyou did hard things together
with, and then you come out andbetter as a result of those
things that you, you, and sothat makes it nice for a job
hunt.
You meet enough people in thisecosystem and you do enough
complex deals.
People know what your skill setis.
They know what you bring to thetable, and so, as they scatter

(20:56):
and go to other places, you endup on podcasts like this, or you
end up at a different SaaScompany, or you get a phone call
saying, hey, I just started myown thing, would you want to
join me?
And so that's another way ofjust creating longevity for
yourself in an ecosystem.

I love it, man, and that style of interviewing
that you described, that's likesome Jack Welch level stuff.
Yeah, you know, like for real,that's really unique.
I'm curious how did thatexperience, that singular
two-hour experience, influencethe way you interviewed and
screened candidates for joiningyour teams?

Dylan (21:35):
That's a good question.
I mean, it taught me that tellme about a deal that you closed,
one that you weren't supposedto win, is maybe the worst
possible question you could asksomebody, because it makes them
feel like they're taking an ACTtest.
But getting people to openabout who they are tells them

(21:57):
that you care about them as aperson, you care about the
people in their lives, you careabout the challenges they've
gone through at a personal leveland that right there, like I
went into that interview notplanning at all to join, I was
like the CEO invited me to comein for an interview.
You don't say no to that but Ihad no intentions of joining a
30-person firm while I worked atWorkday I mean, it was just not

(22:17):
even on the table In two hoursI was ready to sign and I'm not
an easy person to do that with.
But it was just such a uniquepersonal approach and it told me
a lot about the culture thatwas being developed there.

Now, was this the first conversation with anybody
that you'd had at the company?
It was, so this wasn't like thethird interview or something
like that.

Dylan (22:43):
So this wasn't like the third interview or something
like that.
No, it was the.
They were hiring their firstenterprise salesperson and the
CEO said I want to.
This is the most important hireI might make in terms of the
next jump for our company.
So he wanted to be to get hisfirst impression first.
So the recruiter has reachedout to me and said okay, brian,
I'll meet with you on this day.
And I went in and met with themand then I met with everybody

(23:05):
else after the fact.

Yeah, I like that .
And you know, you saidsomething that really resonates
with me, which is that firstimpression.
Right, because so many, sooften, people get a first
impression and then they spend alot of time basically trying to
undo that first impression,right, which I don't think is
necessarily a bad thing, right?

(23:29):
Because and we've talked aboutthis a lot on the show, if
you've heard us discuss this inthe past one of the things I
encourage people to do is to tryto find.
If you really like someoneimmediately, then go find a
reason why they might notsucceed in the role or a reason
why it might not be a successfulrelationship to have this
person on your team.
You got to do that.

(23:49):
That's how you de-risk the teamand protect your other
employees from a bad hire.
Right, but at the same time andI can share this and use a golf
analogy so often when you walkup to hit your putt, that first
idea, that line and speed thatyou're thinking of, that's the
right one.
But the longer you stand thereover the ball, you know your

(24:13):
brain gets in the way of whatyou know what Malcolm Gladwell
describes in Blink about youknow you've got this
supercomputer going on and italready knows Don't mess with it
, yeah.

Dylan (24:25):
Yeah, I mean that experience compared to what my
experience was when I leftSeagate to go work for
Salesforce.
Salesforce, I was only 30 yearsold and I was applying for a
job as a senior accountexecutive, which is?
I didn't know at the time, butI was the youngest person ever
hired to be a senior AE in theenterprise space and when I

(24:47):
joined the team, everybody wasin their 40s or older and they
actually thought I was there toset meetings for them until they
found out I was an AE.
But the interview process wassuper intense.
So what happened was I was atSeagate and my boss in New York
left and went to Salesforce tobecome an RVP and we were

(25:07):
implementing Salesforce.
And I thought, wow, this isreally revolutionary.
This is 2012.
And I said why am I workinghere?
I want to go work for thiscompany.
That's like changing the world.
So I reached out to my old boss,who's now an RVP in New York,
and I said, hey, are there anySalesforce jobs out here in the
West Coast that you're aware of?
You can see their job board.

(25:28):
And he's like actually, I thinkthere is one I was just talking
to an RVP that covers that areaout there, let me reach out.
And it turns out he was tryingto manage a guy out which is
going to take some time.
But I got a warm recommendationfrom my boss to this guy and so
he agreed to meet with me andwe met probably three times

(25:49):
twice on the phone and the oncein person and he says, okay, you
know, he let me know like it'sgoing to take me some time to
manage this guy out.
So if you can be patient, Ireally like what I see here, but
you're going to have toconvince a lot of other people.
I said okay, so the interviewprocess took nine months and I
met people.
I said okay, so the interviewprocess took nine months and I
met.
I had seven SVP or higherinterviews before they were

(26:10):
willing to give me the job.
That's incredible, yeah.
I mean my final interview waswith a person who was one rung
below Mark Ben at the time.
So they really vetted theirpeople out, especially on the
sales side back then, and, likeI said, I ended up getting the
job.
I went to president's club thefirst year but there was a lot
of like concern when they sawhow young I was when I walked in
there and it was really boileddown to the preparation Like

(26:31):
every single meeting I'd get.
I get the recruiter to tell metheir name, their background,
anything they could tell meabout their personality, work on
every possible question hemight ask me, and I would
research and just scour theinternet, watch a million videos

(26:51):
on YouTube, because they had40,000 videos on their
Salesforce platform on YouTube,and so I'd watch all these
videos and just be as preparedas I could.
I'd have notes in front of mewhile I was doing the interviews
so that I could just use theright vernacular, speak their
language, and it worked out.
So it was like a completelypolar opposite experience.
When I was talking to the CEOof Simplest and we never once
discussed what I would calltraditional interview questions.

(27:11):
They'll give you a scenario andsay, okay, how would you sell
this deal or how would youovercome this objection, and
then you're just on the spot todo it versus tell me about what
was the toughest thing you wentthrough as a kid.

Yeah, it's a very different thing, isn't it?

Dylan (27:28):
Yeah.

You know, I've often told people that being in
sales is.
You know, we talk aboutthinking creatively, right, to
be able to overcome objections,and oftentimes it's really about
figuring out, you know, what'syour obligation to the client.
Right, because a lot of peopledon't want to be sold, but at
the end of the day, I think mostpeople actually do want to be

(27:52):
sold.
What they don't want is poorsalesmanship.
They can find that annoying,they can find it cheesy, whether
it's something simple.
I remember talking to this oneguy who wanted to join my team.
This was back when I was atRobert Half and he was mirroring
me.
We know, mirror and match.
He was mirroring me, so soclose, it was so obvious and I

(28:15):
was like buddy, like we're goingto get along just fine, okay,
but you, you know, if I scratchmy nose, don't scratch your nose
.
You're being a little obvious.
Yeah, exactly, you know, takeit easy, just be.
Being authentic is so critical.
However, if you're authenticand you haven't prepared, that
will show.
And you have to be better thanthe other people who are

(28:36):
interviewing and even then youhave to be at least as good as
someone who's mid-range orbetter on the team, and I tell
hiring managers this all thetime.
They're like, well, we want tosee five people, we're not going
to make a decision until weinterview a minimum of five
people.
It's like okay, but you've got30 people on your team, right.
Interview a minimum of fivepeople.
It's like okay, but you've got30 people on your team, right.

(28:59):
20 of them are doing okay, 10of them are killing it.
Do you remember interviewingthose other 10?
Yeah, okay.
So just compare it to thatright, because if they're
matching to that, you don't needto.
You don't.
You only need to talk to oneperson who can do the job really
well.
You don't need to meet withfive people.
That way, you can make adecision.

Dylan (29:13):
That's it and that's the other challenge, too, is like if
people are really boiled down,the hiring and interviewing it's
sales.
Like you know, if you're hiring, you're buying and if you're
looking for a job, you'reselling.
The challenge is that theproduct's you and some people
are very comfortable talkingabout features and functions and

(29:35):
value with themselves and otherpeople aren't are absolutely
horrified to talk aboutthemselves.
That's true, they're not good attheir job.
It just means that theirpersonality and their dna is
different and so it's reallyincumbent on the interviewer to
understand the difference.
Like, just because they're not,mr Extrovert does not mean that
they're not perfect for the job.

(29:56):
It just means you've got to be.
You got to ask the right kindof questions to understand
there's probably two types ofpeople that are going to be
great at this job People thatdon't have to be the prettiest
guy in the room or girl in theroom.
They have to have all theattention.
But someone who's going toempower the people on the team
to get the right people in theright rooms for the right
reasons to have the rightconversations.
There you go, there you go,yeah.

I will.
I just want to add one littlething because we talked about.
We talked about the idea thatthe person getting interviewed
is the one who's selling and theperson who's hiring is the one
who's buying.
But I think it goes the otherway sometimes right,
particularly if you'repenetrating the passive
candidate market.
Someone's got a good job, likeI talked to a guy today.
He's like man, I got a greatjob, I make great money.

(30:38):
I just kind of have this dreamthat I might go to XYZ company
at some point.
So if you hear something, letme know.
Like that kind of a thing.
And we have to sell.
In my role, we have to sellopportunity to, and so do the
hiring managers you know, forthe clients that we support, to
certain people because they havea lot of options.
They might have 10 options.
I had one guy, double mastersfrom MIT, 10 years in the

(31:03):
ecosystem, and he was probablylike 32 years old, right, I mean
, the guy just crushed, he justkilled it.
I blasted out 500 people.
I got him three offers and hehad seven other offers from
other companies.
He took one of mine, which wasgreat.
But these hiring managers reallydo have to sell.

(31:24):
And I recall one of theconversations he had and it was
with a CEO.
He said all the CEO did wastalk about himself and talk
about the company.
He never asked a singlequestion.
He didn't listen to anything.
Of course that was a hard noand it also was not my client.
So thank God for that.
But it can go both ways.

(31:44):
It just depends on where is thepower right.
Who's going to be moredisappointed if it's a no?
And then you know where youstand and now act accordingly.

Dylan (31:56):
Yeah, I love that because I've been in those situations
where you could also you realize, wait a minute, they're
starting to sell me.
There's a turning point in theinterview process at times where
you realize, wait a minute,they're convincing me of their
culture.
They're trying to convince meof what I would experience if I
was there and why I should beinterested.
And you're right, it comes froma passive scenario very often,

(32:16):
when you're like you're alreadyin a good place, you're making
good money, you have a greatlifestyle why would I disrupt
that?
There's got to be a really,really compelling reason to do
that and usually money is notenough.
So understanding and knowing,like what your 30 second pitches
for people that are in that top1% that you know, execute
everywhere they go and have atrack record you were talking
about job jumping earlier.
There's also the idea of peoplewho go and have good tenures in

(32:40):
good places and they havesuccess at each place and you
can see that they're progressingin their career.
Those are the people thateverybody's after and, from a
recruiting standpoint, if youknow those people and you've
built a relationship with thosepeople and you can get them a
guy that can do 50 deals a yearfor seven years.
Then they're always going tocome to you knowing that,
whatever your price is, it'sgoing to be worth it because of
who you actually know.

(33:01):
So again, your network is yournet worth on that front.

Yes, I love that.
Your network is your net worth.
I really love that saying we'regoing to take a quick pause.
Oh, go ahead, vanessa oh no,it's just.

I had a couple questions myself, but uh quick
pause and then we're going tocome to you.

So the pause is really simple because I'm going
to ask you to share exactlywhere people can go if they
would like one of theirquestions answered live on our
program why yes?

so if you guys have not checked it out already,
we have a new websitesalesforcecareershowcom.
It is awesome, and if youscroll kind of halfway down the
page, there is a bright pinksection called Ask Us Anything,
where you'll be able to submitany of your Salesforce-related
career questions, no matterwhere you are in your career.

(33:49):
You can submit anonymously ifyou want as well.
If you put your question inthere, we will do our best to
address it on the show.

Thank you, vanessa.
Well put, and there's also anarea, too, where you can request
to be a guest on the show andjust so you know you don't even
need to do that.
All you got to do is show up tothe live shows.
They're every two weeks,starting at 5.30 pm, just like
right now, okay.
Show up to the live shows.
They're every two weeks,starting at 5.30 pm, just like
right now, okay, and raise yourhand.
We'll bring you up on stage andyou can ask a question.

(34:19):
You can contribute to theconversation, tell a funny joke
if you want, for all I care.
So you know, come hang out withus.
We love doing this.
It's a lot of fun.

That's what I did , and then I got invited.
That's right, we had a funepisode.

Peter, that's right.
Very cool, dylan.
Oh, sorry, no, vanessa, you hadsome questions.
I'm glad that you do.
I'm glad Go for it.

You know sales is not my wheelhouse of anything.
I know everybody kind of has tobe a little bit of a
salesperson in every role, but Idon't know, the thought of
sales scares me a little bit.
But that being said, I don'tknow a ton about it.
I do get the occasional personwho reaches out looking for how
to break into tech sales,particularly in the Salesforce

(35:09):
community, other than pointingthem to the Sales Blazer
resources community, other thanpointing them to the sales
blazer resources.
I guess my question to Dylan isyou know how would you
recommend somebody get startedin a sales career and are there
any resources that youparticularly like?

Dylan (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
There's like what I call thetraditional path, which is
usually like you start as a BDRor an SDR as they call them.
Now Some people are using theterm SDO now that there's AI.
So there's more like learningto operate in an AR format to do
outreach.
But you start there becauseyou're going to work with
salespeople.
Like Salesforce's program whenI first started was if you were

(35:47):
an SDR, you were there for 10months.
If you weren't hired into an AErole after 10 months you were
let go.
They were really just usingthat as a farm system to find
young talent that was cheap,that was enthusiastic, that
wanted to climb the ladder andit worked out really well for
them.
If that doesn't work, thenthere's learn to sell by doing
it anywhere you can.

(36:08):
So if sales is really where youwant to be, learn to sell
something, whether it's cars.
That tends to be a lowerbarrier to entry in some of
those kinds of fields where youcan go in and kind of learn some
basic principles.

I did that and it was like freaking bootcamp man
and it was great.
Yeah, it was great.
It's different now, but it wasgreat.

Dylan (36:28):
The biggest conception I think that people make the
mistake of when they think aboutsales.
It's like same thing as withlawyers, I think well, I'm a
good at arguing, it has nothingto do with a lawyer's skill set,
but you hear it a lot.
It's same thing with sales.
It's like it's it's convincingsomeone to do something that
they don't want to do and thathas.
That's really not what sales is.
Sales is overcoming fear.
It's understanding what thefear is, what the obstacle is

(36:56):
for them, to overcome that, andhelping them find the confidence
that that fear is holding themback from progress and value.
And so that is really the nameof the game, of what you're
trying to achieve.
The second component of it ispsychology.
It's understanding the personacross your table, not from a
how can they enrich me, but howcan I help them solve big

(37:20):
problems that they're likelygoing to have to bet their job
on the outcome, and if I canhelp them do that, then you've
established a relationship thatyou can lean on, potentially for
the rest of your career.
I call them lifetime customers,and so when you understand that
you genuinely care aboutsomeone else's success and that
you're not so focused on yours,your success will happen by

(37:43):
lifting others.
So you lift yourself by liftingothers, which is more of a
service mind than it is like awhat you might think of as a red
alpha type personality that'sout for themselves and they'll
squash anyone in their way.
That doesn't really work intoday's world very often and
when it does, it only works fora short window.
It's kind of a scorched earthapproach.

(38:03):
But relationship selling is thefuture because AI is going to
do a lot of the skill set typestuff.
The salesy stuff that peoplefind cringy is largely being
handled other ways.
But it's the relationship sideof things.
It's like can you look someonein the eye and know that they
genuinely have your interest inmind and can you be honest and
say it does this, it doesn't dothat.

(38:24):
We're so afraid to say thingsdon't work or things don't
achieve the goal.
So that's, I guess that's thenumber one thing I'd say is
start somewhere.
Start wherever you can lift,where you stand, and then, once
you've got some experience, thenmake a run at the company that
you really want to work at.
Meet some people that are doingthose jobs, connect on LinkedIn
, join networking groups in yourcommunity, like here in Utah we

(38:48):
have a place called SiliconSlopes.
There's a tribe house which iskind of a an executive
networking group.
So learn to join those peopleand build a network, because
those are the people you'regoing to call when you have
something to sell and they'regoing to have a reason to answer
the phone because they know whoyou are and they know what
you're about.

It's a.
It's a really great questionand a great answer, and I just
want to add one other thing,which is they generally don't
teach you how to sell in college.
Right, there aren't a whole lotof degree programs, you know,
business degrees and things likethat.
But actually getting the repsin it's like you can learn how
to ski on the mountain.

(39:25):
You know you're not going tolearn it from a video.
You know, unless you actuallygo out on the mountain, Like it
doesn't work like that right,you have to be in the trenches
to figure it out.
And to do that, it really helpsto have some foundational
knowledge about sales and withthat in mind, there are so many
really fantastic sales trainingsnow available on YouTube.

(39:48):
They weren't available when Iwas coming up or when Dylan was
coming up, but just check out acouple good books.
One of my favorites is how toWin Friends and Influence People
by Carnegie was coming up orwhen Dylan was coming up.
But just check out a couple ofgood books.
One of my favorites is how toWin Friends and Influence People
by Carnegie.
It's probably the first book onsales and relationships and I'm
a huge fan of anything producedby Og Mandino.
That's O-G that's his firstname Mandino, M-A-N-D-I-N-O.

(40:12):
He wrote the Greatest Salesmanin the World, the Greatest
Miracle in the World, a wholeseries of books, and I found
some of his guides to beabsolutely invaluable,
particularly when I was 24 yearsold selling Subarus, right,
that stuff.
Every night I'd read that stuffbecause it'll give you some of
that support and motivation thatyou absolutely need when you're

(40:35):
listening to no's all day long,Because you're not just going
to be automatically successful.
You know you might get lucky,right, but long term, if you're
not investing in yourself tobecome a master at your craft,
no one else is going to do itfor you, and so you must have
that desire to invest inyourself.
There's no Salesforce trailheadfor this, for instance, right.

I mean, I know that they have like the sales
blazer program, if we're kind ofgoing back to the Salesforce
side, but I feel like that'sonly been around for like the
last year and a half.
They've got the salesrepresentative certification and
I don't actually know howvaluable those things are.
So I would love to, I mean,dylan, if you've explored any of

(41:19):
those things.

Dylan (41:19):
Just I was curious to hear what your perspective on
some of those things were.
To be honest, I haven't.
But there are some, someprograms and some universities I
do know that do offer salestracks as a, as a four-year
degree, like Weber State here inUtah actually has the oldest
sales degree program in theUnited States.
Oh, that's cool, yeah.
And so I know some peoplethere's, like the CEO of

(41:40):
MarketStar sits on the boardover there and helps support
that organization and they dosome really cool stuff.
As a matter of fact, when Iworked for Evolve, which is part
of Seagate, I did 200interviews in one year to hire
for 11 reps and most of the repswe hired came from MarketStar
because they all had gonethrough that Weber State sales
program, ended up at MarketStar,got their start kind of on the

(42:01):
phone at the very, very, verybeginning of SaaS sales and then
we hired them in and we kind oftrain them on our process and
we probably had an 80% successrate on those, those resources.
So you know, understanding froma hiring standpoint, we're
we're some feeder eithercompanies and or programs are,
and then maybe even establishinglike internships and things

(42:23):
like that can be a good way,especially if you're a cash
strapped.
You know, up and coming companyinternships, where people are
are eager to get that experience, but they know the market's
saturated and it's verydifficult to get hired.
Both can get a win there.
The side component to that iswhat you were saying is I love
the idea of the YouTube thought.
I love that you have thingslike Twitter where you can reach

(42:44):
out to people you know aresuccessful in an area that you
want to be successful.
You can see their feeds.
If you're lucky, you canconnect with them and ask them
questions there.
Lucky you can make, you canconnect with them and ask them
questions.
Like there's a whole influencercommunity now that you can look
to and try to understand.
If you, if you're good enoughto understand what they're
selling because that's howthey're making money and how
they're selling it you can learna lot just by watching them do
it and that influencer becausethat, you know, that's the

(43:06):
number one thing kids want to begrowing up now is they want to
be influencers, and sounderstanding that component is
going to be the future of sales.
I guarantee you that.

Yeah, those are great points.
Can I ask you, did you have amentor when you were first
coming up?
Was there someone?
I mean, you know now and thisis why I'm I'm posing the
question nowadays, so manysalespeople they might.
Someone might get their veryfirst sales job and then they're
working from their bedroom, youknow, in their apartment, doing
sales.

(43:36):
No one's listening to theircalls, right, no one's reviewing
their emails.
Nothing like that's going on forsome of these folks, and I
can't imagine how much longer itwould have taken me to adopt
some of the basic skill setsthat have allowed me to have a
successful career in sales overthe last 30, 30 years or so,

(43:59):
without having people sittingacross my desk saying don't,
don't say that, say this, right,tell them this right now, like
you're on the phone and they'relike coaching you as you're
going Right.
Or you know, maybe I've got acustomer at the, at the sales
lot.
I can run into the manager'soffice and be like hey, jeff,
they just said this, what do Ido?
And he's like say this, thensay this, and ask them this,

(44:21):
then say this.
And it's invaluable, but alittle harder to do now.

Dylan (44:28):
Yeah, what you're talking about is another feature of
what makes a great salespersontheir DNA, and I call that
curious execution.
So it's not enough to have aquestion, but you're going to go
do something about yourquestion.
And so I was the first personin my family to graduate college
or high school, and firstperson to go to college.
I also happened to be theoldest in my family too, and so

(44:49):
I had to just learn to go askquestions to get information
that I didn't have.
And so, to your point, I had alot of mentors.
Like I have a piece of art.
You know I have an art habit,and one of the it's a picture
Art habit.
I love how you put that.
I have an art habit.
The painting is of this fatherholding up his little boy above

(45:13):
his shoulders, and the father isstanding on a whole bunch of
people's shoulders below him,and the general ideas that were
all lifting each other and thatno one's self-made, everyone's
standing on someone's shoulderslove that.
That's a metaphor for my career.
It's like I.
I look for people that I knewwould take an interest, because
they knew that if they gave metheir time and their, their,

(45:33):
their counsel, I would put it towork, and so every time I would
meet with somebody, I learnedthis little trick and like I'll
share it with you guys.
Here is when you get to acompany or do you get someplace
and you find somebody that youadmire, go up to them, tell them
what you admire, why you admirethem, and say could I grab 30
minutes once a month with youjust to ask you some questions

(45:55):
so I can get a little better, alittle smarter, a little faster?
You're asking them for the mostvaluable thing they have, which
is their time, because they'llnever get it back.
But they're only willing toinvest that because someone else
did it for them, and I made aliving off of getting those
nuggets from people but alsoshowing up prepared, so I had
questions.
I would give them a quickupdate on our last meeting,

(46:18):
things they shared with me andhow I had applied that, so they
knew that they were getting areturn on their time with me,
and then showing them my resultsand or my failures, and so
that's something I passed on tomy kids, and I too have been
lucky enough to be able tomentor some other people.
But I feel like if you put goodout there, you get good back,
and so we all have thatobligation, and so I still have
mentors today that I work withand I do very similar things,

(46:41):
and I also am quick to make surethat people know that my
calendar is up to date and ifit's open, it's theirs.

So that's the short answer to that that's
wonderful, that is, it's trulywonderful.
I particularly like that youdemonstrate you describe
demonstrating the value that youlike that you took their advice
and this is what the result wasRight, because otherwise you
just suck.
You just suck in someone's timeso well, but I taught you this

(47:07):
last month.
Why are we meeting again andnot talking about something
different?

Dylan (47:12):
and not talking about something different.
Exactly, and if you're askingfor something and they're seeing
that you're doing somethingwith it, they tend to get
excited because they rememberwhat it was like when they
learned it.

Exactly, and I think in general, this idea too,
of just go out there and helppeople right.
Help them out and once in awhile you'll get paid for it,
right.
It's a mentality that hasserved me well.
I think it's served Stephenwell, other people on my team
and on teams that I've run inthe past.
If you're helpful, I mean nowcharge for what you sell, right,

(47:46):
but outside of that you knowit's free.
What can I do?
How can I help you?
Who can I introduce you to?

Dylan (47:55):
If you're really wise, you're going to do that outside
of just your career.
You're going to do that aboutyour relationships.
You're going to do that withpeople you admire that do a
sport or a skill or an activitythat you've always found
fascinating.
I have art mentors.
I have spiritual mentors.
I have family, I have dads thatI look up to.
I have those kinds of things.

(48:16):
I have people that I know thatare younger than me, that are
doing really cool things, thathave a skillset that I don't
have.
I'm.
I'm reaching out to them formentorship, whether it's
entrepreneurship, whether it's.
You know, they've just gonethrough some crazy tragedy and
yet they're.
They're positive and upbeat andhealthy and happy, and then you
did trying to understand howthey're seeing that Right.
So just even if it's just aconversation where you're

(48:46):
showing up for somebody you'regoing to, you're going to be
mentored as you mentor, and viceversa.
So deploying that principlegoes above and beyond just the
career.
It's like if that's a goodquestion for everyone to ask is
like what is it that I admire inthe world?
Is that I like and do I knowsomebody that can help me enjoy
that part of the world or mypart of life better, then go do
it.

It's, it's so valuable what you're sharing
with everybody today.
Dylan, I can't thank you enoughfor being on the show and
sharing your unique history andsome of the not just the
experiences but the mindsetsthat have persisted throughout
your career to achieve what Iwould describe as a wild success
throughout your career.

(49:23):
To achieve what I woulddescribe as a wild success.
And you know, guys, I don'tknow if you really cued in to
the first part of theconversation here with Dylan,
but he said that he just took avacation and it was his first
summer vacation in 20 years.
Right, and so there's somethingabout hard work, dedication,
know all of these things and,let's face it, a lot of
sacrifice, because when you'rein a sales, or when you're in

(49:46):
sales as you kind of mentioned,it's you're only as good as your
last month or your last quarter.
And it's true, you know, andcompanies can be some companies
can be very forgiving and othercompanies can be ruthless about
it.
We don't care if you werenumber one in the world last
year, you have not met theminimum expectations for the

(50:07):
last quarter.
Your job's on the line.
That sort of conversationhappens every day across this
country, right, and so gettingyourself into to a position
mentally where you can handlethat you know and not have
excuses, but just own what'sgoing on in your world and grow

(50:27):
from there.
I think it's absolutelycritical.
Yeah, you nailed it, so tell me.
I want to ask you first of all,vanessa, do you have any other
questions for Dylan before I youknow, before I dive in, I don't
want to.

No, no, go for it .
I'm enjoying the conversationtremendously.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
I love talking about hiring andsales and so much of it is well
, 100% of it's relative to me inmy life, right, but I think so
much of this is actuallyrelevant to absolutely everybody
.
I actually wanted to ask you,vanessa, I wanted to ask you,

(51:09):
peter, as people who are notsales folks, you know what are
the things that salespeople doat a high level?
I'm not talking about you knowthe person helping you find the
mops at Target, right?
What are the things that can bereal turnoffs for you when
you're interacting with asalesperson?

For me.
I think the I've been getting alot of just kind of cold
messages through LinkedIn andthat's kind of generally an
instant no for me.
I tend to like to have a littlebit more of a rapport.
If they're like pushy ongetting something closed within

(51:50):
some kind of I don't know soundlike an invisible kind of
timeline, like they completelyunderstand like the scope of my
project or the reality of myneeds, like I don't feel like
they've done their due diligenceand they strike me as they're
more trying to sell me somethingrather than trying to fill my
needs.

So non-consultative selling right
yeah.

Non-consultative selling, I think, is a good
overall way to put the type ofselling that does not work for
me, unless I'm desperate fortheir product.

Dylan (52:20):
Yeah, vanessa is talking about the difference between a
numbers game guy or gal and avalue person.
Exactly.
If they show up with a bird intheir mouth, you're probably
going to care about what theyput in your LinkedIn inbox,
because they're giving yousomething you didn't have before
that you're finding value in.
They're showing up with hey,when are you free to meet,
you're not even going to openthat.

(52:40):
're finding value.
But if they're showing up withhey, when are you free to meet,
you're not even gonna open that.

Oh yeah, I get 20 emails a day that say they all
say the same thing.
They're all from differentcompanies.
Hey, josh, quick question Couldyou use three more clients this
month?
It's like come on, guys, youknow like what's up with that?
Y'all getting it.
Is this all that chat gpt isspitting out now?

(53:02):
The same garbage to everybody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah actually Iwould.

I would be curious, dylan, with the
consultative selling which is alot of what you do, especially,
I imagine, in the salesforceecosystem.
I know from being a consultantfor a number of years.
There's always been thatchallenge of how do you scope a
project properly, particularlywith Salesforce where there are

(53:27):
so many out-of-the-box features.
But it is a very complex systemwhen you're trying to customize
it for a specific industry andespecially when you're talking
about revenue operations.
It can even get even morecomplex if you're talking like
CPQ and then connecting withERPs and things like that.
How do you approach projects totry and scope them properly?

Dylan (53:47):
Good question.
Well, typically you're dealingwith a multi-pronged animal, so
you're not going to do it in onehour.
And I always laugh when peoplesay, well, we scoped it, we did
a scoping call, so we're readyto start building a statement of
work.
I laugh.
It's like you did a scopingcall but you haven't scoped the
deal, because you got to makesure you've talked to IT.
You got to make sure you'vetalked to the key stakeholders

(54:09):
in the product.
So if it's a service cloudproject, you got to make sure
not only have you talked to theservice team, but have you done
a day in the life?
Have you sat in a chair anddone a ride along with the
people using the tool andunderstood what challenges,
where they got hung up, how manyclicks it takes to get through
something?
So it's good.
Consultants will go to eachperson involved and they're

(54:30):
really going to understand thepreflow of how that job gets
done and what that customer'sjourney looks like, so that, as
they're really thinking throughall the areas that have to be
considered, that they are askingall the questions in each of
those categories, then you'realso going to look at what are
the limitations.
Okay, they're doing a processthat doesn't replicate into your

(54:51):
system.
So helping them understand whatthey do get and what they're
going to have to change and whatwe call that change management,
how they're going tofundamentally change the way
they operate as a business, andthe training that's going to be
required, in that A lot ofconsultancies do a really good
job of selling you thetechnology and the mousetrap.
They don't do a very great jobof setting you up for success so

(55:14):
that the money you spent on themousetrap actually gets
utilized by the team of peoplethat are going to be handed it.
And so that's where you get thedifference between adoption and
realized value and getting a Cgrade.
From a CSAT standpoint, you'regetting an eight or lower
because people don't even knowhow to use the tool.
They don't understandfundamentally how their job just

(55:35):
changed and they're just goingto be what I call participating
skeptics.
So to your point, vanessa, it'snot one person doing that.
It's, like I said, getting theright people in the right rooms,
and that's the thing thatdrives me crazy about
salespeople is they think thatthey're the star of the show and
they're really not.
They're a facilitator.
It's getting a Vanessa Grant inthe room to have the
conversation about her skill setand her unique knowledge and

(55:58):
her past experience and projectsand have a one-on-one
conversation with the personthat's terrified that if she
signs up for this project and itdoesn't work she's going to get
fired.
It's having a conversation notonly just with the department
head but also the people thatsupport that department head.
So lead routing Well, that's amarketing conversation.
Are they aware this product ishappening?

(56:18):
No one wants to do a project inSalesforce and it's their
project.
So if it's IT doing it and theygo tell sales and service that
they now have a new tool, it'sgoing to feel like IT's tool.
But if you get sales, it andyour service team involved from
day one, it's going to feel likeit's their tool.
So you got to have a sharedsense of ownership across the

(56:41):
business and if you do a goodjob all that heavy lifting up
front you're going to get eightmore projects when that's over,
but most people just care aboutthat project.
They're going to do it bad,they're going to pick a
different partner and you'regoing to lose that business for
the rest of your life.

And then when?

Dylan (56:55):
they go to five or six different companies.
They're not calling you toreplicate what they just did.

The last company, Yep, I think that's great,
thank you.

Yeah, super helpful.
This has been a really terrificconversation.
I did want to take just amoment, guys, and talk about a
very specific career issue witha lot of folks and that's job
hopping, and we're going to getto that right after Peter Ganza.
Go ahead, Peter.

Everybody is in sales.
I'll just say that at theoutset, when I was at Symantec
many moons ago, the CEO at thetime, john Thompson, had a great
line that I use often this isthe most important quarter,
because next quarter there won'tbe any incentives, right?
So I just wanted to put thatout there, and I mean in terms

(57:44):
of like the noise on LinkedInfrom you know salespeople, I
tune that out.
It's all just automated garbageas far as I'm concerned, unless
it's relevant and I am asalesperson for I mean for what
I do, that's pretty easy becauseit sells itself.
But I also act on behalf of myclients, salesforce partners,
and I got to admit I love itbecause I'm an ass about it.

(58:07):
I mean, I'm outside of thecompany and I can just push for
discounts and free stuff and Iactually enjoy it.

Thanks for contributing, peter.
Yeah, some really good points.
So I had a follower of minereach out today.
This individual is curiousabout what opportunities are out
there for her.
It appears that she recentlyaccepted a new post, about four
months ago.
It also appears that it's hersecond job or third job in eight

(58:37):
months.
I think she was with the onetwo jobs ago for a little bit
longer, but we've got someserious job hopping going on and
I wanted to address that.
So, just by a show of hearts, ifyou could throw up a heart, if
you've ever had three jobs ormore in a year, I'd love to see
that.
Or even you know, most peoplehave had two jobs in a single

(58:58):
year.
That happens especially in your20s.
Okay, no one.
All right, that's good.
So when we job hop, it's sortof to be expected a little bit
in our 20s.
Right, it's not looked uponkindly, but it's to be expected
because you're finding yourselfand you're figuring things out.
However, if you start doing alot of job hopping into your 30s

(59:20):
and, god forbid, into your 40sor later, it poses a real
challenge and puts up a lot ofbarriers to high quality
companies that will not have aninterest in you because you
cannot compete, because theycannot trust or in some way
justify to the powers that bethat this is the job that you're

(59:42):
going to make it right.
It's no different than being aserial dater three months in a
relationship, then three moremonths in a relationship.
Six months in a relationship.
Three months in a relationship.
It's going to be prettydifficult for someone to feel
confident that your marriagematerial if that's something
that you desire it's going to bereally hard right, and so one

(01:00:04):
of the things that I shared withthis gal was that it's
generally one of three thingsare going on.
The three things to payattention to are one it might be
because it's a bad job market,right, maybe it's just.
Maybe the economy's tanking andyou lost your job and everybody
else did, and then there aren'ta lot of great companies hiring

(01:00:27):
at that time that fit yourskill set and you have to work,
and so you'll say yes tosomething that otherwise you
normally never would.
So that's reason number one.
Reason number two is poorscreening of the companies that
you're joining, in which case Istrongly recommend reading an
article on Salesforce Ben, youcan find it.

(01:00:47):
It's called Career Checklist,and to get there, just type in
joshforcecom.
Forward slash career checklist.
Okay, again, it's joshforcecomforward slash career checklist.
This is your go to guide.
Whether you're in theSalesforce ecosystem or not,
whether you're going to work fora Salesforce partner or not,
this is the article that willteach you exactly how to deeply

(01:01:10):
research an organization, aswell as excellent questions to
help vet that company to makesure that it's going to be a
really good fit long term.
And then the third reason isreally about your own personal
mental health, I think, right,personal challenges, either with
your ability to focus, yourability to take direction, to be

(01:01:33):
held accountable by others,maybe you have thin skin, or
possibly just a lack ofrealistic expectations.
Now, I have interviewed I don'tknow how many hundreds of
people who are job hoppers and Ihear the same thing all the
time.
It's generally they'll explainyou know seven job hops.
They'll own one of them andthen they'll blame all the

(01:01:54):
managers or the companies forthe other six.
And it doesn't actually worklike that, because if you're in
a job and you're not happy oryou don't think it's right,
don't leave that job till you'veexamined deeply, deeply, what
part of this is me?
In what area am I being fragile,right, so much so that I'm so

(01:02:17):
unhappy going to work, or I'm soafraid to talk to my boss, or I
dislike the product so much sothat I'm so unhappy going to
work, or I'm so afraid to talkto my boss, or I dislike the
product so much, or I dislikeour clients so much Because, if
you've bounced around a littlebit, there's almost a not quite,
but there's almost a hundredpercent chance that you're going
to experience the same problemswherever you go.

(01:02:37):
You really will Just like if youcan't keep relationships with
friends or partners, romanticpartners, right, you're going to
have to do a little bit ofdigging on yourself, get a
therapist, get a coach, get afriend group and deep dive and
work on the stuff that make youparticularly sensitive to

(01:02:59):
certain environments.
Okay, so I just wanted to coverthat for a little bit and now
I'll open the floor to otherpeople.
Tell me what do you think aboutjob hopping and what are some
ways that people can mentallyget into a position that they
hang onto that job and startworking on themselves, so they
don't keep persisting with thesame issue?

Vanessa Grant (01:03:17):
Oof, that's a tough one.
I mean in general, when I've, Ithink the mental health aspect
is probably the most important.
I mean if it's really, you know,like a manager or a really bad
work situation and you canusually speak to a few people

(01:03:40):
and get a sense of especially ifyou're new on how unusual your
situation might be Like ifyou've got somebody screaming at
you every day like that's aproblem.
But other than that, though, Imean I think there is something
to sticking around long enoughso that you feel comfortable
enough in the role, because Ithink sometimes maybe people get

(01:04:02):
a little bit flustered in thebeginning and I don't really
feel like sometimes, unless theyhave like an astoundingly
amazing onboarding process,which most places don't, it
usually takes, I would say, evensix months to a year to truly
settle into a role and have amastery and be proactively good
at your job.
So striving towards that typeof excellence before you start

(01:04:26):
making other moves and startmoney chasing especially if you
have a decent situation whereyou're at, I think is important.
Master your craft and make that.
Attract money rather thanchasing money in different roles
is, I would say, generally howI tend to advise people.

Josh Matthews (01:04:53):
Yeah, those are excellent points and there's
also a really great question youcan ask people.
Just visitthesalesforcerecruitercom, click
on resources.
There's an article in there onthe number one question you can
ask your future employer.
I recommend everybody checkthat out.
Even if you're not looking forwork, even if you're listening
to this, you're 100% happy inyour role, that's great.
And if you own your ownbusiness and you're never going

(01:05:13):
to leave it, that's fine.
Everyone else I woulddefinitely check it out because
you'll be able to do some ofthat more penetrative querying,
like Dylan does when he's goneand had interviews with
CEO-level folks at amazingcompanies.
So definitely prep yourself,definitely want to prep yourself
for all of that stuff.
I'm curious, dylan, what areyour thoughts on this, on job

(01:05:35):
hopping in general and whatpeople can do about it?

Dylan (01:05:38):
Yeah, as a hiring manager , I saw a certain personality.
I don't really think it's apersonality.
I think it's a habit thatpeople get into and I think it
comes from our culture ofwatching TV.
We are constantly comparingourselves to others.
What would I do in thatsituation?
What would I do if I was thatperson?
And comparison really is thethief of joy, and I think that

(01:06:02):
we get in this habit.
We go someplace.
Very often, people are focusedon people and not on their job
or the outcome or the goal.
Maybe they don't even have agoal, and so if 99% of your
problems are people, it'sbecause you don't have a goal
bigger than any one person andyou're comparing.
I call it the monkey cage.
You're in the room, you'relooking at everybody and you're

(01:06:22):
finding.
What really happens is you'refinding the negative in every
single person that you'relooking at, and there's a really
simple trick that I've learnedthat has cured me of my own
version of this, which is,instead of looking at them,
saying where's the problem,where's the fault, I would look
and say what's, what do I likeabout this person?
So when I meet somebody thefirst time, I'm going to mention
that you're looking for what doI like about them and I'm going

(01:06:44):
to tell them that I like thatabout them.
Like you know, I really enjoyedthis conversation.
I really liked the way you focuson how other people feel, that
you're really making sureeveryone feels comfortable, and
if you become a complimenter,you stop becoming a complainer,

(01:07:05):
and that's typically why peopleleave is because they basically
talk themselves out of their ownjob.
And if you can talk yourselfinto understanding the value of
the people that are around you,you'll start to understand the
value of the company.
You'll start to believe in theteam and not just in your work
and how it's not getting valuedor it's not getting, you know,
measured up, or someone'slooking at you sideways and
makes you feel like you're notgood enough, and so you start
getting into that tailspin,thinking but if you can start

(01:07:26):
looking at being a first liker,people will like you, and then
they're going to care about youand they're going to do things
they wouldn't ordinarily do foryou, which is interrupt their
daily job to help you withsomething.
And then, all of a sudden, youhave people who have a vested
interest in your success, inyour career and in your
well-being.

That's genius level stuff right there, dylan,
I think Tony I don't know if I'mquoting it correctly or even if
he's the one who penned thisbut anxiety and gratitude can't
exist in the mind simultaneously.
When you're feeling gratitude,gratitude can't exist in the
mind simultaneously.
When you're feeling gratitude,right, it's like the ultimate
shield on negative stuff, right?

(01:08:06):
And so to your point.
Find something that you're, asyou mentioned, that you like
about them or that you'regrateful for or grateful about
for somebody, and it reallyquiets the mind very quickly and
kind of helps your prefrontalcortex get back online.
The other thing is too andwe've talked about this in the

(01:08:28):
past careful of your friendgroup.
Now, dylan made arecommendation earlier Find one
of the most successful peoplewho's doing what you do, and ask
them.
You know you can spend 30minutes with them once a month
and then do the work and providevalue to that person as well.
Doing what you do and ask them.
You know you can spend 30minutes with them once a month
and then do the work and providevalue to that person as well.
Help them to feel like theiradvice is actually working,
right, like so doing.

(01:08:49):
That's really critical.
But on the flip side of that ispeople who are complainers at
companies generally don't hangout with a lot of people.
People have over time learnedthat's a sewer rat and they
avoid them and they hunt thenewbies.
They do right.

(01:09:10):
So when you join a new companyand you walk in, they're often
often not always, but often thevery first people who do
outreach to you are the peoplethat don't have strong, valuable
relationships in the companyalready.
I'm not saying that's the case100% of the time, or even 50% of
the time, but it happens a lot,right, and you must be careful

(01:09:31):
about who you partner with andwho you spend time with, because
that person might just be likehey, I'm going to tell you all
the insides of this company, I'mgoing to tell you who to work
with and who not to, and thisand that, and it might be really
genuine, it might be reallygood advice, or it could be
really crap advice and theymight be messing with you and
you know what.

That's actually great advice, not just for when
you're in a new company, buteven in the I would say even in
the community.
You know, when you go toconferences, when you go to
networking events, sometimes youknow, I think, that there's a
lot of even factions within acommunity.
So just be open minded anddon't necessarily align yourself

(01:10:11):
with folks.
There's that kind of stuffreally can be anywhere.
That kind of stuff really canbe anywhere.

Yeah, and it's infectious, right.
It multiplies like a virus inyou and next thing you know you
want to quit.
And the only thing you need toquit is that relationship with
that Debbie Downer, not thecompany.
Yeah Well, dylan, thank youagain for being on the show.
Any last thoughts, any lastwisdom that you would like to
impart to our audience, who'sbeen gracious listening this

(01:10:39):
long, all the way through thewhole podcast?
Good job guys.

And let me just say, dylan, if you end up
writing a book like a self-helpbook, I'm first in line.
You've dropped some greatnuggets today.

Yeah, really Fantastic.
And I love what you said, dylan, specifically about coming.
You know, having experiencedtrauma which forced you to be
able to be particularly giftedat reading people, right, yeah,
yeah, the same here for me,right, childhood was no picnic.
And you, you know when you'rein, when you're in a family that

(01:11:16):
has challenges like that, whereyou're walking on eggshells and
having to tiptoe around andkind of gauge, like, is this the
right time to talk to thisperson?
And so you know, because theconsequences can be very
devastating, very devastating,if you pick the wrong time, the
right top or the wrong topic orthe right, whatever it is.
It can be really difficult andpeople who've gone through that

(01:11:36):
when they're young do makegenerally very good sales people
.
I know so many people who areamazing at sales and a massive
proportion of them had some sortof severe drama or trauma
growing up which gave them thatempathic ability which otherwise

(01:11:58):
would not have been present,that empathic ability which
otherwise would not have beenpresent.
So I appreciate you beingvulnerable and sharing that.
That actually had a significantimpact on your success later on
.
So good on you, mate.

Dylan (01:12:10):
Yeah, I guess I just leave it with this idea.
Sometimes our greatest giftscome in disguise as our most
difficult challenges.
That's right, and if we're wiseenough to learn from them and
recognize that there's going tobe people that come after us
that don't either have thewherewithal or the guidance or
the maturity to understand thevalue of sitting with it, I

(01:12:35):
think we spend most of our timetrying to avoid pain.
Even as parents, we try to keepour kids away from something
difficult or hard.
We want to do everything forthem, and doing so we rob them
of the opportunity ofself-discovery.
We rob each other of theopportunity of growth from
having gone through the pain.
I'll give you a final examplethe buffaloes.
I grew up in Idaho next to abuffalo farm, and most animals.

(01:12:58):
When a storm storm comes,they'll huddle together and
they'll just stay put, and sothey wait for the storm to get
to them and they spend them thewhole time in the storm and the
storm passes.
What a buffalo do is theyhuddle up together and then they
run towards the storm and theyrun through the storm.
So they spend actually theleast amount of time in the
storm of any of the otheranimals, but they take the worst

(01:13:19):
of the storm.
So they spend actually theleast amount of time in the
storm than any other animals.
But they take the worst of thestorm, but for the shortest
period of time.
Oh my God.

I freaking love that.

Dylan (01:13:26):
Sometimes, if we just look at our struggles whether
it's a job hunt or difficultrelationship or a health concern
and we just make the decisionto run through the storm, we're
probably going to grow fasterand quicker than the rest of our
peers who huddle up and talkabout the other animals and
don't don't do something abouttheir situation.

(01:13:48):
So I love that man.

If that resonate, if you're listening that
resonates with you, go get thebook.
The obstacle is the way it's byRyan Holiday and he never used
that in his book, but he sureshould have, because I haven't
heard of a cooler story,particularly one that because
you grew up next to thesebuffalo it's not like everybody
knows this, right, it's not thatmany buffalo around anymore, so

(01:14:14):
cool the other book I'drecommend is Team of Rivals.

Dylan (01:14:18):
It's about Abraham Lincoln, who had his own sense
of tragedy and struggles andhardships and it's about how he
saved the country by bringingtogether into his cabinet his
number one, all his politicalrivals, where he invited them
into his cabinet, everyone thathated him, and because he
brought them in, he won themover and he was able to keep the

(01:14:38):
union together.
And it's a super long book, butman, is it great.

That's awesome, Can I ask you?
Maybe you know this from thebook.
It used to be that the vicepresident was whoever didn't win
right, yeah, and they becamevice president.
Was that still going on back inthe early 1860s?

Dylan (01:14:58):
It wasn't, and it's funny you say that because I'm a huge
history buff I set a goal toread a biography on every single
American president, and so it.
Actually it stopped about thetime John Quincy Adams came on
board, okay, but yeah, it was soearly on, a little bit, a
little bit before Lincoln, thatstopped.
But the running mates werelargely chosen by the party, not
by the candidate, so there's,can you imagine?

if Joe Biden, if, instead of Kamala Harris right
now, trump was VP, Can youimagine that world?
Team of rivals.
Yeah, yeah, team of rivals.
Okay, team of rivals.
The Political Genius of AbrahamLincoln is the recommended book
and that's by Doris KearnsGoodwin.

(01:15:41):
You can get it on Amazon forlike 14 bucks, so great
recommendation.
Thank you, dylan.
Thanks for being on the show,carving out time out of a very
busy father schedule, workschedule, art schedule.
Thanks to Peter for showing up.
Again.
All of our amazing listeners,thank you guys for joining us on
this live program.
Casey's here.

(01:16:02):
Michael Steven, thank you somuch for showing up and if you
have enjoyed this program, Iwould love it if you could
please go to your favorite appthat you listen to this show on.
Give us a thumbs up and ifyou've got a recommendation or
you want to leave a positivecomment, please go ahead and do
it.
If you've got a negativecomment, well, you can just give
me a call and we'll talk aboutit, okay.

(01:16:24):
So thanks guys.
Vanessa, as always, you rock.
I hope that you have an amazingtime at Tahoe.
I'm sorry I'm not going to bethere this year, but have an
amazing time out there and we'llbe back in two weeks with
special guest Chris Newdecker.
Chris is the Senior Director ofEngineering at BHG Financial.
I've known Chris for a coupleof years, looking forward to

(01:16:45):
having him on.
That's going to be July 31st,at the end of this month, and
that's all we've got for today.
Have a wonderful week, guys.
Bye for now.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Achieving Success in SaaS Sales and Beyond

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Achieving Success in SaaS Sales and Beyond

On Purpose with Jay Shetty