May 7, 2025 • 40 mins
This Week's Episode:
In this episode of Software Sales Simplified, hosts Kevin Donville and Matt Long welcome Lynn Powers, a successful sales professional at Clari. Lynn shares her journey in software sales, her experiences at Clari, and her insights on building successful customer relationships. The conversation covers the importance of understanding customer needs, investigating their sales cadence, leveraging technology, and developing the role of a trusted advisor in the sales process. Lynn emphasizes the significance of collaboration, optimizing sales processes, and the value of mentorship in achieving success in sales.
About Our Guest - Lynn Powers:
Lynn Powers is an award-winning enterprise sales leader and #1 performer at Clari since 2019, most recently closing Q1 at 280% of quota. With a career spanning Oracle, MapR, and Xactly, she’s built a reputation for turning insight into impact—partnering with the world’s most ambitious companies to run revenue with confidence.
Lynn is a keynote speaker, 2x LinkedIn Sales Star, Sales Success Summit alum, and featured guest on the 30 Minutes to President’s Club podcast. She currently serves as Co-President of Clari’s Women’s ERG and was a previous board member at Women in Revenue. Her commitment to elevating others extends beyond tech—she recently partnered with the American Heart Association to prepare the next generation of female scientists, doctors, inventors, and changemakers through STEM-focused volunteer efforts.
Passionate about bringing human ingenuity and AI together to overachieve, Lynn is a fierce advocate for innovation, inclusion, and impact. Her leadership is defined by mentorship, strategic thinking, and an infectious energy known fondly as “Lynnergy.”
A graduate of the University of San Francisco, she holds a degree in Sociology with minors in Legal Studies and Philippine Studies. Lynn is a proud AAPI advocate and lifelong learner—fueling her growth through a steady diet of tech and personal development podcasts.
How to Find out More About Lynn:
You can find Lynn's profile on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerslynn/
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Software Sales Simplified
01:56 Lynn Powers: Journey in Software Sales
04:25 Understanding Clari: The Revenue Platform
07:11 Keys to Success in Sales
10:49 Identifying the Right Buyers
13:50 Leveraging Technology in Sales
17:33 The Importance of Collaboration
20:22 Building Trust with Customers
23:05 The Role of a Trusted Advisor
25:49 Optimizing Sales Processes
28:37 Advice for Aspiring Sales Professionals
40:47 Like, Follow, Subscribe, and Comment!
About Software Sales Simplified:
Visit us at: https://www.strategicsalesoptimization.com/
Follow us on Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/2tcx7mjx
Send us your questions at - Sales@stratsalesllc.com
Get Your Copy of "Winning Faster"!
Order your own copy of, "Winning Faster: The MOVE Framework for Enterprise Software Sales" on our website or on Amazon.
Available Here:
https://www.strategicsalesoptimization.com/move-book
Why Listen to Software Sales Simplified?
Make Software Sales Simplified: MOVE to Success, your go-to podcast for mastering enterprise software sales through authentic customer engagement and actionable consulting insights. Join us for each episode as we break down proven strategies and real-world experiences to help you build trust, close deals, and drive long-term success along your Enterprise Software Sales or Consulting journey.
Copyrighted Broadcast:
Thank you for tuning in to Software Sales Simplified: MOVE to Success. This podcast is produced by and is the sole property of Strategic Sales Optimization LLC, copyright 2025. Reproductio
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to software sales simplified MOOC to success, your
weekly podcast for the latest and greatest with respect to
selling enterprise software. Whether you are a seasoned pro
or just getting started out, please come and join us here
every week for insights and the latest and greatest on what's
happening in the world of enterprise software sales.
I'm Kevin Donville. I am your Co host.
(00:28):
I'm joined by my illustrious as colleague and partner in crime,
Matt Long. Matt, how you doing?
I'm doing great, Kevin. How's everyone doing?
Doing fabulous here and we're joined by our special guest this
week. We're being joined by Lynn
Powers, who's going to be telling us a little bit about
her experiences with respect to software sales, a little bit
about her journey and some of her advice on how people who are
(00:51):
looking to be more successful and perform better in the world
of sales may be able to achieve exactly that.
But before we go any further, dowant to remind you folks, if you
are liking what you hear, pleasetake a moment like subscribe and
follow our podcast and we'd loveto see you here every single
week. So without much further ado,
Lynn, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on.
(01:14):
Super excited to be here. Thanks Kevin for the
introduction. Well, we're super happy to have
you here, Lynn. You and I have already had an
opportunity to chat a couple of times in preparation for the
call today, and they were fun conversations and I really
enjoyed the chats that we were able to have.
I'm very excited about being able to go in and introduce you
to our listeners here on the show.
(01:34):
I mean, I know a little bit about your background.
You've got a very interesting path.
You know, you were commercial agents, you were an instructor,
you were a board member for Women in Revenue.
Can't wait to delve into more about those things.
So for those who don't know you,take a moment, take the floor,
please tell everybody who you are, what you do, and and the
(01:55):
organization you're with now. Yeah, so great to meet everyone.
My name is Lynn Powers. I have been a seller, we'll call
it for the last 10 years in the technology space.
I originally started selling database software technology,
went to Oracle, sold at map bar.And the reason why I bring that
up is because originally I really wanted to harness my
(02:18):
career around a couple differentareas in sales.
So one being at a Fortune 500 company, another one being
through merger and acquisition activity, another one being sold
through an acquisition, right. And I have the lovely fortune to
work at Clary now. And I've been at Clary for the
past six years and my career trajectory at Clary has been
(02:41):
substantial. I've been our top performer
since we'll call it 2019. So have consistent been hitting
quota. One of the things that I'm well
known for, no pun intended with my name, but linearity across my
pipeline is a great one for me. And so I spend a lot of my time
really diving in really deep with my customers.
(03:02):
My trajectory here at Cleary is no surprise that I do really
well with my customers. And that journey has really
taught me a lot because I started in commercial really
learning and understanding how do you deal with the volumes of
deals and then moved into more of a mid market position where I
got more strategic, really dialed into what are some of the
other components of a sale that I need to start bringing into to
(03:25):
have larger deals. And now I'm a part of our
enterprise team. And so I work with our most
strategic customers on their success within Clary and have
been doing that for the past couple years now.
And so in the midst of the work that I do at Clary, I also spend
a lot of my, we'll call it voluntary time working with
(03:46):
other sales educators and different media companies that
are really hoping to drive better sales across the
universe. And no matter what industry or
what you are doing today and just make it aware that it is a
job out there. I think the other thing that I
hold myself really prideful on is just being a woman in sales.
(04:07):
So it's not common to see a lot of faces like mine in the world
that I live in. But one of the things that I
hope to do as I spread my success in my journey in sales
is also bring awareness and bring other women into the
forefront to have also an experience in sales.
We've had a couple of guests on our show already that have had a
(04:29):
similar type of experience to yours and they've shared that
same perspective as well. So it is an interesting one.
Before we get too much further along though, tell us a little
bit about Clary. I mean, you've been there for a
while and you've had a lot of great success for what is for
maybe some of our listeners who weren't familiar with it so.
Clary is a revenue platform. So what we do is we help
(04:50):
companies create, convert and close all of the different
revenue motions that happened across their business.
So the way that I like to think about it is anyone from a BDR
that starts that initial inception or that first market
touch that goes out there and someone's trying to reach out
until a board member is listening to the feedback of
(05:12):
what's happening across your business and trying to
understand where your investmentshould be put in every moment in
between that should be measured for most companies, you would
think it's, it's dialed in, but a lot of these efforts and with
technology coming to where it isin this evolution, a lot of
folks are moving from spreadsheets or a BI tool or a
(05:32):
mixture of a bunch of different solutions.
And So what Clary does is we really bring all of those key
revenue moments into one platform to really help
orchestrate the team from marketing, customer success,
sales, any cross functional partners to really have a more
predictable pulse of the. Totally see why that would be
important, particularly in our world, that's been traditionally
(05:54):
a very challenging thing for organizations to be able to do
and, and the downfall of a lot of them, even though they had
great products and great teams. Just the orchestration of that
right being a failure point. But you've been, you clearly
understand the value of your solution and how your solution
helps your customers with havingbeen as successful as you've
been, as you said since 2019, you've been the top performer.
(06:15):
What goes into that? How does a person end up
enjoying that kind of success for that duration?
Yeah, I think the number one thing for me is just being able
to create this arena of success around me.
Being able to have the support of my customers, prospects, my
network, my cross functional partners internally is really
(06:36):
key for me. One of the things that I think
helps me over perform is being able to stay focused.
And what I mean by being focusedis being able to finish one
course until successful. And So what that means to me is
I have to set certain intentionsbefore I get started on what
ways do I want to leave meetings?
(06:56):
What ways should I be wanting tomake an impact in this
conversation? How can I take this task and
bring on others that might be able to help or get involved
with what we're trying to work towards?
And so in order to do that, I try to take this approach of
being able to feed my pipeline on that create side all the way
to really understanding how muchdo I need to convert, how much
(07:17):
pipeline do I need to have to beable to convert and then to be
able to close successfully. If you think about now of a
day-to-day of a seller, there's a lot of different tools that
are out there. There's AI in our pocket that's
helping us, right? So it's also understanding where
do we need to embed the different ways to help
accelerate that process with thepeople that are involved.
(07:39):
I'm just curious, who do you, who is your, is your buyer of
your solution and who do you target first?
Do you target them or does it get rolled in up to them or how
does that work? Yeah.
So great question. My target buyer is typically
basically someone within the revenue space, right?
So a CRO is our typical buyer. However, I think now there's
(08:00):
been an evolution in what I liketo think is what is, what is a
buyer in this world? And I think it's evolved to be
more of a buying committee. So there's a lot more people
that are getting involved in these deals.
It's not just, yes, sales wants a tool.
So let's just talk to the sales team.
And now it wants to know if there's AI, what else?
(08:20):
What else do we need to be double checking from a security
standpoint? Should we do that right?
So I think it's a, it's a loadedquestion in the current times of
who is buying and, and how is that approach?
Like one thing that I've done really well with my customers is
really just try to understand what is the pain that they're
trying to solve for and what happens if they do absolutely
(08:44):
nothing, right? And that then tells me who my
real buyer is, because whoever has the largest purse string to
be able to fix that and cannot do without making a change are
the ones that are likely going to be the ones that champion us
through. So I have Michael Buyer, but I
would say that's where I like toget creative.
(09:04):
And I imagine that change somewhat also going from
commercial to SMB to enterprise because that audience gets
larger and larger as you get up the the chain there.
What are some strategies I guessyou used to define or identify
who those people are that you actually need to talk to?
Yeah. So one of the things that I
typically we like to do is just understand overall what is it
(09:25):
today that they're doing for those current solutions.
So we'll take it just from a forecasting perspective, right?
If I know that they would like to change something around
forecasting well likely might involve someone from finance
that's trying to put up a projection typically to their
board. Depending on how deeply involved
their board is. If it's an SMB company or a
(09:48):
smaller commercial business, they might have a very heavy
advisor, right? That is going to influence what
is actually happening in that particular deal versus in the
enterprise space. It's a lot different in terms of
sometimes it needs to pilot it, sometimes you need to have a POC
that validates that. Sometimes there needs to be a
formal RFP that's released and you need to abide by whatever
(10:09):
that RFP is, right? So it's really being able to be
agile about what is your customer looking to accomplish
and how do you then provide the right solutioning and the value
that you're trying to drive withthe customer so that you close
those gaps. I can see why I was getting so
excited when I was talking with you as just as you're going
through your explanation and there was three major pillars
(10:31):
there that you were talking about.
I picked up on your dedication to being disciplined in your
approach, the preparation that you do and also the way that you
are focused on pipeline development with respect to
that. But then as you start talking
about how you engage with the customers that themselves, the
tenants right out of the methodology that Matt and I
adhere to, the move methodology were like just right there
(10:55):
following right along with what you're talking about.
What is the pain? What are they doing?
Who really owns it all that about motive.
What's the cost of doing nothingrelative to that area?
And then operationally, how do they buy?
If they need to buy, how do theybuy?
What are the mandatory steps as you're going through?
And how do I map the value of mysolution to the way they need to
(11:17):
understand that to go and justify and validate the spend,
go and drive this solution home?And I got so excited listening
to you talk about that when we spoke earlier on, Lynn, and I'm
getting excited about it again here.
Do you think that the way that you think about selling, how
pervasive of it is that kind of way of breaking deals down?
(11:39):
I'm looking at the solution. How common do you think that is
in your vertical? I think it's, it's, it's a
little bit different in a coupleways.
One is because I think a lot of competitors that are out there
in particular that I come acrossin relation to Cleary, they
might have a very pointed solution, right, of what we're
trying to solve for the beauty of Cleary, it's a platform,
(12:01):
right? No matter which angle we want to
go, we can take it in that direction.
However, it's the value that you're creating for the customer
of what does that actually mean for them?
So typically folks might say, Ohyeah, here's my 700% ROI number,
right, that I'm trying to track for this, this buying group
where in the reality of it is, is they really just need to
(12:22):
understand what is it that they're changing and how are
they going to orchestrate that change across the business?
And when you start to think about it from that lens, it's a
lot different from just a, I'm solution selling.
I'm trying to find the pain. I'm trying to map the solution.
It becomes how can I stay ahead of what they might need to
deliver on and what ways can I then insert different value
(12:46):
points for them to be that strategic advisor or to have
that strategic guidance right? So I think it's, it is a reframe
of a mindset of the process can no longer just be, oh, here's
the, the stages I need to execute on becomes OK, great, I
have this information, I'm constantly being agile with this
(13:06):
information. Now I just need to just stay
prepared in order to act on it once the time comes.
And I think that's the really balance of trades that you get
within a sales job is you might not know what's coming or you
might you might have an agenda planned, but there might be
other things that intersect in those moments where you can
really take advantage of them ifyou're prepared to have those
(13:28):
conversations in those moments. So I think it's about from a
competitor perspective, it's notjust showing that you have the
material, not just showing that you have a feature available.
It's how are we going to learn this together?
Here's how I'm prepared to be curious about your business
based off of what I know. And here's where I think it
might make an impact, but I needmore guidance to really partner
(13:49):
with me on how to deliver that I.
Think one key aspect or one aspect or feature of Clary is
call recording and then analysis, right?
Because I think we use that our last company actually.
I'm just curious from your perspective.
I mean, the thing I've noticed over the years is that as we've
gone virtual, so many more of these meetings actually happen
online. So you can record them, right?
(14:09):
Because before a lot of it was done, you know, as much as an in
person and you weren't captions,you rely on people's notes.
So I think that's fundamentally changed our visibility and
understanding of the sales process.
I'm just curious from your perspective, how do you use
Cleary now in that respect? And does that help you and the
(14:30):
whole sales team kind of get aligned better in terms of how
you're attacking your particularopportunities?
Talk a little bit about how I approach my Clary because it
really orchestrates my entire process.
So inside of Clary, I have what is called a cadence, which in
any business you have 13 weeks that you have to accomplish
(14:51):
something in one of those weeks.And if you're not looking
forward, if you're not looking back, you might miss what's in
front of you. Essentially, the beauty of AI is
I'm able to get those triggers of, hey, this one might have
some risk in it or this one might be moving faster than you
typically would move it and it will flag me of where I need to
spend my attention. The way that I then use Cleary
(15:11):
is I have triggers that literally tell me what's going
on in any one of my accounts andthen also showcase for me what
is the best message? What is the best time?
What are the other folks that I haven't been reaching out to?
And it populates that as actionsfor me.
You mentioned call recording. I love my Cleary copilot because
after every single call I'm getting a Slack message to me of
(15:35):
a example follow up e-mail basedoff of what I typically send.
I also am getting a list of actions that I need to
orchestrate not only internally but externally as well.
I'm getting that fed into specific slack channels so that
I don't have to go update my team on any of this.
I have alerts set up for all of my technical counterparts.
So they're getting pings if security or IT or something
(15:58):
specific has been mentioned thatthey weren't on a call of.
So there's a lot of background work that I would typically have
to do where I have this busy work of.
So then I get to reinvest my time into other things.
And so the question then becomes, OK, if you don't have
to do all that, where is your time actually spent?
I can fit probably 12 meetings, probably more with customers
(16:19):
throughout the day, which in a normal world would have been
completely insane as like now I can run really fast and go
really wide with the types of conversations I'm having because
I don't have to do that heavy lifting of, hey, I need to
follow up with this. I need to go figure out this.
And all of those resources are driving to me so that I'm just
actioning on them. I think the other thing that's
really powerful is I get this lens of not only what's
(16:42):
happening in deals that I have an opportunity in, but the ones
that I don't have an opportunityin, which is also vital.
So it's educating me on where doI need to feed my funnel, but
also convert the opportunities Ihave at hand and then
continuously repopulate that with, hey, here's another
opportunity that might come up based off of this intent that
came from this account. So from an end to end
(17:05):
perspective, I would say it helps me spend my time more with
customers. I'm able to see that I'm able to
generate more pipeline from it and I'm converting at a higher
clip than I've ever seen in my career, which typically I've
always been a top performer. But here at Cleary, I can really
dial it up in the way that I typically look at it is all of
(17:25):
the quotas, we can call them double.
And if I'm hitting at least 2X of my coverage on that, then I'm
gonna go way over my number. And so as long as I'm
orchestrating that entire 13 week process inside of Cleary, I
know what is needed of me, when it's needed of me and I can just
really focus on my customers. So the day-to-day admin work
that I would typically spend time on is either automated or
(17:48):
everyone has that information feeding to them, where I don't
have to be the facilitator of giving that information to
anybody. That sounds excellent because
one of the challenges that Matt and I had seen over the years is
people have tried to go and manage particularly complex
sales cycles that have a lot of potential stakeholders involved
with. It is how do you make sure that
your organization is ready to engage them correctly and that
(18:12):
everybody understands and the the lattice work of, of success
criteria that ends up manifesting as a result.
And it sounds to me like Clary'sdoing a really good job of
helping you automate and streamline and manage that
process so things don't get out ahead of you guys.
Is that correct? I would say not only that for us
internally, but also for my buyers.
So like I have mutual action plans that are created within
(18:35):
Clary that I then share with my customers so they're able to
dive in and jump in and recourseme if I'm on where I have a mile
incorrect or timeline incorrect.And so when you think about it
from that perspective, it's not just my manager pressure testing
me. I've like, Are you sure you're
going to commit this this quarter?
Are you sure you can bring it in?
And then it just be this weird conversation that slips every
(18:58):
quarter, right? Like they can directly see that
I'm engaged with my buyer, what my buyer is signing themselves
up for, how my buyer is holding themselves accountable.
And if we both are missing that mark, it becomes a how can my
leader come in and help orchestrate or help guide into a
better success path forward versus a weird interrogation and
(19:19):
then this emptiness with the customer, whether you know or
you don't know the information. So I think it just opens the
lens in general between not onlywhat's happening internally but
also externally with my buyers to know what to expect from me.
That's, that's critical. And, and one of the things I
admire about your methodology and your, your daily practice is
(19:41):
and you hit upon it earlier and the phrase you used was learning
together. And it's something that I think
is so important. And I can understand why Clary's
helping you there, because it's helping create visibility, what
you are learning together with your customer.
But that thing about helping thecustomer learn things about
themselves, about their own process, about their own
challenges and their needs that they may not be fully aware of
(20:03):
as they get into the sales cyclewith you is so critical to
building that. Trust and that long term
relationship and the platform upon which you're going to
create this, this contract, if you will, of delivering value to
them. Yeah.
And that's, that goes so much more deeper than just, you know,
what other people in the industry are doing.
(20:24):
And, and you would hit also earlier on about talking about
how things are changing about the way people are buying.
How is that ability to help the customer learn about themselves?
How does that translate to success over the terms of your
engagement with them? Yeah.
So I think the way that I like to leverage this particular kind
of relationship with my customers is I'm an extension of
(20:47):
their team. I want to be able able to jump
in and support them. I want them to feel confident
about any of the presentations, any of the paperwork I'm putting
in front of them. They should also feel very fluid
about how to approach it, how topresent it also to other folks.
I think one of the things in this lens of time that folks are
getting away from, as I mentioned earlier, this concept
(21:09):
of ROI. So the way that I approach ROI
is it takes multiple decisions that need to be made.
It's not just the number that they're trying to get the return
on investment of. It's what actually are you
serving for my group that I can hold to a measurable attainment.
So how has your of being a customer with us impacted you in
(21:32):
comparison to what you were doing before?
And so I like to paint that picture and then decide who
should be held accountable for what and how, how can I showcase
the change of that within our time together in presales,
right. So it's really about weighing
what exactly does value mean to who and then understanding how
(21:53):
do we then go showcase that backto their team?
And is it a buyer or just one person who owns the check that
you need to go get that answer from?
Or is there multiple validationsthat need to happen across
multiple different places and then we're going to get an
answer? One thing that I do to help
empower my prospects and my customers throughout this
(22:14):
process is really sit with them and really understand how do
they buy, How do they sell? Then I can almost mimic that
same home, same phrasing that they're using to then approach
the way that they're using our platform and be able to use it a
lot better instead of force feeding a feature function that
(22:36):
may or may not hit the mark withthe way that their maturity
curve is with technology. Yeah, I like that.
We had a guest on several weeks ago that was a kind of a value
consultant and his thing was like speaking the language of
the customer, not in your language.
Understanding that and really hearing how they express their
problems and the solution and how they care about it is all
(22:58):
really important in that process.
I'm just curious from just the way that you go to these
opportunities, do you work with an SC that helps you?
Do you work with consultants? What does your team look like
and how do you kind of orchestrate that during the
course of delivering or executing on this opportunity?
Yeah. So I typically just partner with
an SEI, don't have a BDR. I use robots for most of that
(23:22):
stuff. So it's again new age of time,
but I'm going into most of theseconversations with just an SE.
What I want to drive with the customer, however, is that
strategic lens. So I think, Kevin, you mentioned
this a little bit earlier too, of what value or how exactly are
you providing value through thisprocess?
And I think it's a part of this evolution too, between humans
(23:45):
and AI, where an AI robot or something can spit me out a
follow up e-mail, which is great.
But what touch can I put on it that will make the buyer feel
like, oh, this is something thatI can use or this is something
that I actually care about. And that's where I think that I
personally love to share what I call my liturgy or enthusiasm or
(24:06):
the efforts that I put towards the project.
But what I'm really trying to dois create that experience where
they're not just using a tool, but it's a structure of how
they're adopting to use it long term.
So is it something that they're checking in with their teams on
or is it a persona that does something specifically in the
tool that they're held accountable to do every week?
(24:27):
Like what is that cadence we're building with them?
And then the way that I also think about this is again,
there's this is a market where you can have a spot solution for
just the call recorder or just the note taker or just the
forecasting or my lovely spreadsheet that's hiding, you
know, like there's multiple different ways that people go in
(24:47):
and take on these different solutions.
Understanding that is a big partof my process.
So just taking it apart, undoingit, redoing it, understanding
why it was built that way. Why shouldn't you change?
Why would you change? And then really getting them to
realize what is that process? Because the biggest fear for
most folks when they're buying is just the change, right?
(25:08):
And if you can hand hold me through the change, I'll
probably be a lot happier and a lot easier to go talk about it
than me being very unfamiliar with something, not knowing how
to do this. I've never done it before.
And that's really the value thatyou're driving almost from a
human, human behavior perspective.
You've touched on one thing I think is really critical is
after all the years in enterprise sales and in
(25:31):
business, it's really about process optimization,
understanding the process and beable to optimize it.
And, you know, so that's part ofthe solution that you're
delivering because I love that because a lot of times it was
about actually helping your customer figure out how they're
going to make this thing happen,right?
It's about, you know, how are they going to implement what's
that's going to look like? Can you hold their hand through
(25:53):
this process? And the more that you can convey
that that's the case, the more likely they are to trust you to
go to the next step. Because it's not always about
the money. They have money to spend, but
it's like, I'm going to spend this money.
Am I going to get the value I need out of it?
And the value is it's going to be used, right?
You brought up a really good point with that that I love,
which is you become an advisor. The way that I like to put this
(26:16):
had on is like you need to be a trusted advisor when you're in
these conversations. The greatest analogy I have for
this is if you just bought a house and you're trying to
install flooring and you're gonna call flooring person and
they're gonna give you a tile, acarpet, like all these different
options and you're gonna have tochoose something, right?
If I know that I'm going to go fill my bathroom with something
(26:39):
and someone comes directly and says, well, you need this
carpet. Like I probably wouldn't listen
to them as much as I would someone that's talking to me
about tile in a bathroom, right?So it's just being very simple
about what is it that you're dealing with that is the problem
or is it just a optimization you're looking to have within
the business? And let's focus on that core
(27:01):
piece. Most customers I speak with,
it's I'm trying to go IPO. We missed our forecast last
couple quarters and we need to get back on a better trajectory.
I'd rather spend time talking about that knowing that it holds
a lot more weight across the entire company than me saying
there's the call recorder, it can help you take notes
(27:21):
afterwards. And this is going to drive you
impact in a certain way. It won't, it won't, it will miss
the mark entirely, right? Like you need to bring the
information that you're learning, be agile with the
different personalities, different people that you're
involving yourself with within the buying committee and then
determine the right solution forthem that comes from that
trusted advising place. Well thank God.
(27:43):
Carpeted bathrooms I think went out in the 70s.
You know, you're bringing up an aspect of selling that is I
think an elevated way of being able to engage the customers.
We're not talking about what oursolution does.
We're talking about the value ofhaving us there and not
necessarily just as a product, but as a partner going forward.
(28:04):
And you're mapping the value with them and reaching across
going you need to fix this problem and it's critical to the
entire enterprises. You were just describing that it
is a bigger issue that has a broader footprint and a broader
impact on the overall success ofthe organization.
How often are you able to bring that part of the conversation to
(28:25):
a sales cycle where it's like it's not just the product you're
getting, you're getting us. We're going to work with you and
we're going to collaborate with you to create this awesome
degree of value and success. I think I do it pretty often.
It's critical for my sales process personally.
The reason why I say that is because if you're not diving
(28:47):
into the why, you're likely going to get a churned customer
2 years from now, right? And as someone that's closed
multi $1,000,000 here at Clary, I hold that weight very
seriously, right? Where if I'm driving the value
and the intention really early, I know exactly what their
expectation is going to be 5 years from now when I'm asking
(29:08):
for them to renew again, right? So I think one of the key pieces
that sometimes people might overlook for example, is what is
it that will help me see the customer differently?
And then how can I apply this again and again and again so
that I have a pipeline full withdeals that can convert versus
(29:28):
this one deal I'm banking on andit must come in, otherwise I'm
going to miss my number, right? There's that balance of trades
of you owe it to yourself as well to find those common
denominators across your accountpatch and say, OK, great.
This is a typical problem that I'm seeing across these
different businesses. And now I can be a consultant on
(29:50):
how I've seen others attack thatone solution versus again,
feature function go to battle, put on my box and gloves with
every vendor that's in every single one of these accounts.
Like it doesn't make sense to dothat.
So I think it being maniacally focused on what is it that the
business is trying to solve and then attach myself to that.
(30:11):
And then the other mentality that I like to keep that's a
little bit different is you can't have this limiting belief
that the whole company is also going to reach out to this
customer and they will only knowabout us because all of the
great work our whole teams doing.
Like, no, as a sales Rep, you are the sole person that is
responsible for that relationship.
And so if there's a way that I can either at least know about
(30:36):
what they're going through or understand or meet the leaders
that are controlling a lot of what's happening in those
companies, like that's a bigger win for me because I'm
understanding a lot more things beyond what the scope of their
my accounts are deal by deal basis, but also my whole
territory. And how can I be successful
(30:56):
across my whole territory versushaving this limiting belief that
I am the only person that's going to get benefit from all
the pipeline that's going to come to me?
It's like, no, you need to go doit and you are the person that
they want to hear from. There's a degree of investment
in the relationship that you're talking about, and you're
(31:17):
bringing your own value beyond just what the organization and
the solution is doing there. And I love that phrase you meant
about not going down and gettinginto a knife fight in a phone
booth over feature function. Well, I've got this button,
which is better than their button.
What advice would you give to anAE out there?
Who's listening to the podcast? Who's struggling with getting
(31:39):
the conversations above that? What kind of tactics or
practices can they put in place to try and and avoid getting
themselves boxed in? Because I hear people on calls,
they'll box themselves into thatconversation.
What advice would you give? Them I would say know your
strengths and play to them. Let me give you an example of
what that means to me. So for example, I come across
(32:01):
Salesforce and every ideal they are, every customer has to have
sales force. And so any person that I'm
engaged with, they at least havethe knowledge of what sales
force brings to the table. Where I see myself as a kind of
a differentiator in where I would run with this advice is
you don't have to be that person.
(32:21):
Know them well enough to know the expectations that they would
deliver and then go challenge that.
Just know that you're not stuck in this box of OK, I need to do
another demo. I need to go do another like
technical qualification, like I need to go do something else
that is in your typical workflow.
It's OK to break things up. I have a lot of pipeline.
So I like to disqualify just as much as I like to qualify.
(32:43):
And so one of the things that I like to do with that is be OK
with saying, yeah, Salesforce, go run your course with them by
week 4. This is where I would be if you
are not there by week 4, we should be friends outside of
this Zoom conversation. And you need to call me on a
serious note and say I have X budget and I only have X much
(33:04):
time because I made the wrong decision.
Like those come from a very confident place, but as a
seller, you need to be comfortable with being agile
enough to make those decisions for yourself.
No one's going to give you that kind of overhead advice either
of like this one's going a little S maybe let's close lost
it and we'll focus over here. It's like you need to be able to
know, hey, what can I do differently within this deal
(33:28):
from a strategic perspective that might have to put it on the
back burner for a second only for me to play faster later.
So I would say my biggest adviceto anyone listening to this
podcast, please take away from this that don't stay in your
box. Be authentic, use your strengths
and double down on whatever those strengths are in a very
(33:49):
confident. Manner, yeah, I love that.
And also, you know, having that North star of the value that
you're delivering always helps because you know, you can pivot
however you want, but you're always calling back to what they
want to do. Maybe your tactic is different
or your approach is a little bitdifferent, but you know, the the
ultimate goal remains the same. One more question for you before
(34:10):
we kind of wrap up here. But you know, getting back to
process, I think you said, you know, one of the things you
loved about Clary is the fact that it helped you kind of cover
the blocking and tackling of allthe things that go on and
opportunity allowing you to focus on the things that are
more important. I think one of the things you
said was FaceTime, but what are the other high value things that
(34:31):
you can do? Once you have all these other
things taken care of, Where would you focus your time?
Yeah, I always like to focus my time on where else can I
optimize, right. So if I look at my last sales
cycle that I did was half the time that I normally spend on a
sales cycle that large. And so it was a lot of OK,
(34:51):
great, I have this time now given back to me, where can I
fine tune things? And so as part of this learning
experience in the deal I just closed last week, it was OK,
great, Chachi BT can help me in XYZ ways, but how do I get
dangerous with it where I'm starting to think more ahead
than I typically would? And how can I get ahead of those
(35:13):
things a lot sooner and maybe put it on a calendar or like put
it on as the agenda for the nextmeeting, right.
So for me, it's always reflecting on what could be
different and how I could be different, but using that time
wisely to then use it with the customer.
So again, I mentioned earlier, Ispend way too much time in
(35:35):
customer meetings, which is the best thing in my world.
But having the time to spend with those customers or meet
with more people within that particular buying committee or
the influencing committee is going to move my deal a lot
faster than me doing another prep doc.
I like bite my tongue saying that because I love my prep
docs, but at the same time I know that if I just hit the
(35:55):
phones and talk to people I'll get more accurate information.
Right. Go, go where the money is and go
where the money generates, right?
I always say if this actually I constantly ask myself this
question if I do a task or if I'm in a meeting, it's like, is
this revenue generating activityor how can I make it a revenue
generating activity? That's, that's great advice.
(36:16):
That's a great perspective to look at those things, right?
And that's a, that's a really valuable litmus test to use on
anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Lynn, one of the reasons why I was so excited about bringing
you on to the call today is because I really think there's
so many practical things that you've brought up today about
how you engage your customers, selling, solutioning.
(36:40):
If there's are people out there that are sitting there going, I
just can't get stuff to land, I'm spinning my wheels, why am I
not making more progress on my quota?
What advice would you give them If they're just they just don't
know what to do next? Say go find a friend in the
company and learn from them. It could be anybody, but at
(37:01):
least you'll have a litmus test of what's happening if you're
even hitting a wall at that aspect.
I just like to get creative withjust who humans are.
This sounds really crazy, but you know, if you're networking
with a bunch of people that livein a big city or there's a
different topic that is top of mind for people that are in that
region or an event or something specific that can gravitate
(37:25):
their attention towards something that might be helpful
or it might be valuable for them.
Or find that common relation with them and then try to
attract it from that perspective.
But my always go to is find a friend and network as much as
you can within the account because the knowledge that
(37:46):
you'll gather can inform what you're actually orchestrating in
the deal itself. And then you can always pivot
and ask for guidance and questions from those early
people that you tried to networkwith or get advice from.
That's great advice. I concur.
I, I do believe that mentorship and and collaboration, sometimes
it can only take a matter of a few tweaks and it can have
(38:09):
tremendous impact on your overall success.
I know that mentorship is extremely important to you.
If there are people that want toreach out to you, Lynn and, and
find out more about you, what you do, your philosophy or seek
guidance from you. Is there you being their phone,
a friend? What's the the best way for them
to reach out to you? Yeah, the best way to reach out
to me is on LinkedIn so you can find me at Lynn Powers.
(38:32):
The other high loving advice I would give to anyone looking to
grow their career or get some type of mentorship in sales is
Women in Revenue also has a really great mentorship program.
So if you're not involved with them or if you're looking for a
new mentor, looking for someone to mentor you or a group to be
surrounded by, really great place to go is so great.
(38:55):
Also to spend time with folks here, I would love to get
people's feedback if there's anyquestions that they have on my
particular deal process or how Itypically engage or how do I
over perform So much so happy tochat with you one-on-one.
Send me a message. Well, and we'll make sure we put
that in the notes for the episode.
It'll be in the description. So people will reach out to you
(39:16):
on LinkedIn and they can also get find out more about women in
revenue as well. Matt, turn the turn over to you.
Anything you'd like to go and share with Lynn before we go and
bring your episode to the close?No, it's just been a pleasure
talking with you, Lynn. I love your enthusiasm as well
as just your methodical approachto things that differently
dovetails nicely with our careers and kind of things that
(39:38):
we thought were important. So thanks again for sharing
everything you've shared today. Absolutely.
Thanks for joining us, Matt. Lynn, thank you so much for
coming out of the call. I enjoyed this conversation
immensely, just like all the other ones we've had.
And I look forward to future ones we're going to be having
again in the future. But we do need to bring the
episode to a close, much to my chagrin.
But thanks to you for coming in and talking with us today.
(40:01):
And thanks to the listeners who've been listening to today's
episode. Folks, if you love what you hear
here, drop us a comment like, follow, subscribe, share your
thoughts with us so we can bringmore great content to you that
matches what it is you guys needif you want to know more about
the methodology that you've heard us bending.
Back and forth about today, go onto the website and buy, you
get the link over to being able to buy your own copy of our
(40:23):
methodology. You can find the links to do
that there. But unfortunately we are going
to bring this episode to a closeand looking forward to being
able to go. I'm here.
We bit of an echo just waiting for it to go away.
So folks, thank you for spendingtime and we're going to be able
to coming back again next week with another great guest and
hopefully we'll have Lynn back on again soon.
(40:44):
Thank you very much. We'll talk together soon.
Welcome to software sales simplified MOOC to success, your
weekly podcast for the latest and greatest with respect to
selling enterprise software. Whether you are a seasoned pro
or just getting started out, please come and join us here
every week for insights and the latest and greatest on what's
happening in the world of enterprise software sales.
I'm Kevin Donville. I am your Co host.
(00:28):
I'm joined by my illustrious as colleague and partner in crime,
Matt Long. Matt, how you doing?
I'm doing great, Kevin. How's everyone doing?
Doing fabulous here and we're joined by our special guest this
week. We're being joined by Lynn
Powers, who's going to be telling us a little bit about
her experiences with respect to software sales, a little bit
about her journey and some of her advice on how people who are
(00:51):
looking to be more successful and perform better in the world
of sales may be able to achieve exactly that.
But before we go any further, dowant to remind you folks, if you
are liking what you hear, pleasetake a moment like subscribe and
follow our podcast and we'd loveto see you here every single
week. So without much further ado,
Lynn, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on.
(01:14):
Super excited to be here. Thanks Kevin for the
introduction. Well, we're super happy to have
you here, Lynn. You and I have already had an
opportunity to chat a couple of times in preparation for the
call today, and they were fun conversations and I really
enjoyed the chats that we were able to have.
I'm very excited about being able to go in and introduce you
to our listeners here on the show.
(01:34):
I mean, I know a little bit about your background.
You've got a very interesting path.
You know, you were commercial agents, you were an instructor,
you were a board member for Women in Revenue.
Can't wait to delve into more about those things.
So for those who don't know you,take a moment, take the floor,
please tell everybody who you are, what you do, and and the
(01:55):
organization you're with now. Yeah, so great to meet everyone.
My name is Lynn Powers. I have been a seller, we'll call
it for the last 10 years in the technology space.
I originally started selling database software technology,
went to Oracle, sold at map bar.And the reason why I bring that
up is because originally I really wanted to harness my
(02:18):
career around a couple differentareas in sales.
So one being at a Fortune 500 company, another one being
through merger and acquisition activity, another one being sold
through an acquisition, right. And I have the lovely fortune to
work at Clary now. And I've been at Clary for the
past six years and my career trajectory at Clary has been
(02:41):
substantial. I've been our top performer
since we'll call it 2019. So have consistent been hitting
quota. One of the things that I'm well
known for, no pun intended with my name, but linearity across my
pipeline is a great one for me. And so I spend a lot of my time
really diving in really deep with my customers.
(03:02):
My trajectory here at Cleary is no surprise that I do really
well with my customers. And that journey has really
taught me a lot because I started in commercial really
learning and understanding how do you deal with the volumes of
deals and then moved into more of a mid market position where I
got more strategic, really dialed into what are some of the
other components of a sale that I need to start bringing into to
(03:25):
have larger deals. And now I'm a part of our
enterprise team. And so I work with our most
strategic customers on their success within Clary and have
been doing that for the past couple years now.
And so in the midst of the work that I do at Clary, I also spend
a lot of my, we'll call it voluntary time working with
(03:46):
other sales educators and different media companies that
are really hoping to drive better sales across the
universe. And no matter what industry or
what you are doing today and just make it aware that it is a
job out there. I think the other thing that I
hold myself really prideful on is just being a woman in sales.
(04:07):
So it's not common to see a lot of faces like mine in the world
that I live in. But one of the things that I
hope to do as I spread my success in my journey in sales
is also bring awareness and bring other women into the
forefront to have also an experience in sales.
We've had a couple of guests on our show already that have had a
(04:29):
similar type of experience to yours and they've shared that
same perspective as well. So it is an interesting one.
Before we get too much further along though, tell us a little
bit about Clary. I mean, you've been there for a
while and you've had a lot of great success for what is for
maybe some of our listeners who weren't familiar with it so.
Clary is a revenue platform. So what we do is we help
(04:50):
companies create, convert and close all of the different
revenue motions that happened across their business.
So the way that I like to think about it is anyone from a BDR
that starts that initial inception or that first market
touch that goes out there and someone's trying to reach out
until a board member is listening to the feedback of
(05:12):
what's happening across your business and trying to
understand where your investmentshould be put in every moment in
between that should be measured for most companies, you would
think it's, it's dialed in, but a lot of these efforts and with
technology coming to where it isin this evolution, a lot of
folks are moving from spreadsheets or a BI tool or a
(05:32):
mixture of a bunch of different solutions.
And So what Clary does is we really bring all of those key
revenue moments into one platform to really help
orchestrate the team from marketing, customer success,
sales, any cross functional partners to really have a more
predictable pulse of the. Totally see why that would be
important, particularly in our world, that's been traditionally
(05:54):
a very challenging thing for organizations to be able to do
and, and the downfall of a lot of them, even though they had
great products and great teams. Just the orchestration of that
right being a failure point. But you've been, you clearly
understand the value of your solution and how your solution
helps your customers with havingbeen as successful as you've
been, as you said since 2019, you've been the top performer.
(06:15):
What goes into that? How does a person end up
enjoying that kind of success for that duration?
Yeah, I think the number one thing for me is just being able
to create this arena of success around me.
Being able to have the support of my customers, prospects, my
network, my cross functional partners internally is really
(06:36):
key for me. One of the things that I think
helps me over perform is being able to stay focused.
And what I mean by being focusedis being able to finish one
course until successful. And So what that means to me is
I have to set certain intentionsbefore I get started on what
ways do I want to leave meetings?
(06:56):
What ways should I be wanting tomake an impact in this
conversation? How can I take this task and
bring on others that might be able to help or get involved
with what we're trying to work towards?
And so in order to do that, I try to take this approach of
being able to feed my pipeline on that create side all the way
to really understanding how muchdo I need to convert, how much
(07:17):
pipeline do I need to have to beable to convert and then to be
able to close successfully. If you think about now of a
day-to-day of a seller, there's a lot of different tools that
are out there. There's AI in our pocket that's
helping us, right? So it's also understanding where
do we need to embed the different ways to help
accelerate that process with thepeople that are involved.
(07:39):
I'm just curious, who do you, who is your, is your buyer of
your solution and who do you target first?
Do you target them or does it get rolled in up to them or how
does that work? Yeah.
So great question. My target buyer is typically
basically someone within the revenue space, right?
So a CRO is our typical buyer. However, I think now there's
(08:00):
been an evolution in what I liketo think is what is, what is a
buyer in this world? And I think it's evolved to be
more of a buying committee. So there's a lot more people
that are getting involved in these deals.
It's not just, yes, sales wants a tool.
So let's just talk to the sales team.
And now it wants to know if there's AI, what else?
(08:20):
What else do we need to be double checking from a security
standpoint? Should we do that right?
So I think it's a, it's a loadedquestion in the current times of
who is buying and, and how is that approach?
Like one thing that I've done really well with my customers is
really just try to understand what is the pain that they're
trying to solve for and what happens if they do absolutely
(08:44):
nothing, right? And that then tells me who my
real buyer is, because whoever has the largest purse string to
be able to fix that and cannot do without making a change are
the ones that are likely going to be the ones that champion us
through. So I have Michael Buyer, but I
would say that's where I like toget creative.
(09:04):
And I imagine that change somewhat also going from
commercial to SMB to enterprise because that audience gets
larger and larger as you get up the the chain there.
What are some strategies I guessyou used to define or identify
who those people are that you actually need to talk to?
Yeah. So one of the things that I
typically we like to do is just understand overall what is it
(09:25):
today that they're doing for those current solutions.
So we'll take it just from a forecasting perspective, right?
If I know that they would like to change something around
forecasting well likely might involve someone from finance
that's trying to put up a projection typically to their
board. Depending on how deeply involved
their board is. If it's an SMB company or a
(09:48):
smaller commercial business, they might have a very heavy
advisor, right? That is going to influence what
is actually happening in that particular deal versus in the
enterprise space. It's a lot different in terms of
sometimes it needs to pilot it, sometimes you need to have a POC
that validates that. Sometimes there needs to be a
formal RFP that's released and you need to abide by whatever
(10:09):
that RFP is, right? So it's really being able to be
agile about what is your customer looking to accomplish
and how do you then provide the right solutioning and the value
that you're trying to drive withthe customer so that you close
those gaps. I can see why I was getting so
excited when I was talking with you as just as you're going
through your explanation and there was three major pillars
(10:31):
there that you were talking about.
I picked up on your dedication to being disciplined in your
approach, the preparation that you do and also the way that you
are focused on pipeline development with respect to
that. But then as you start talking
about how you engage with the customers that themselves, the
tenants right out of the methodology that Matt and I
adhere to, the move methodology were like just right there
(10:55):
following right along with what you're talking about.
What is the pain? What are they doing?
Who really owns it all that about motive.
What's the cost of doing nothingrelative to that area?
And then operationally, how do they buy?
If they need to buy, how do theybuy?
What are the mandatory steps as you're going through?
And how do I map the value of mysolution to the way they need to
(11:17):
understand that to go and justify and validate the spend,
go and drive this solution home?And I got so excited listening
to you talk about that when we spoke earlier on, Lynn, and I'm
getting excited about it again here.
Do you think that the way that you think about selling, how
pervasive of it is that kind of way of breaking deals down?
(11:39):
I'm looking at the solution. How common do you think that is
in your vertical? I think it's, it's, it's a
little bit different in a coupleways.
One is because I think a lot of competitors that are out there
in particular that I come acrossin relation to Cleary, they
might have a very pointed solution, right, of what we're
trying to solve for the beauty of Cleary, it's a platform,
(12:01):
right? No matter which angle we want to
go, we can take it in that direction.
However, it's the value that you're creating for the customer
of what does that actually mean for them?
So typically folks might say, Ohyeah, here's my 700% ROI number,
right, that I'm trying to track for this, this buying group
where in the reality of it is, is they really just need to
(12:22):
understand what is it that they're changing and how are
they going to orchestrate that change across the business?
And when you start to think about it from that lens, it's a
lot different from just a, I'm solution selling.
I'm trying to find the pain. I'm trying to map the solution.
It becomes how can I stay ahead of what they might need to
deliver on and what ways can I then insert different value
(12:46):
points for them to be that strategic advisor or to have
that strategic guidance right? So I think it's, it is a reframe
of a mindset of the process can no longer just be, oh, here's
the, the stages I need to execute on becomes OK, great, I
have this information, I'm constantly being agile with this
(13:06):
information. Now I just need to just stay
prepared in order to act on it once the time comes.
And I think that's the really balance of trades that you get
within a sales job is you might not know what's coming or you
might you might have an agenda planned, but there might be
other things that intersect in those moments where you can
really take advantage of them ifyou're prepared to have those
(13:28):
conversations in those moments. So I think it's about from a
competitor perspective, it's notjust showing that you have the
material, not just showing that you have a feature available.
It's how are we going to learn this together?
Here's how I'm prepared to be curious about your business
based off of what I know. And here's where I think it
might make an impact, but I needmore guidance to really partner
(13:49):
with me on how to deliver that I.
Think one key aspect or one aspect or feature of Clary is
call recording and then analysis, right?
Because I think we use that our last company actually.
I'm just curious from your perspective.
I mean, the thing I've noticed over the years is that as we've
gone virtual, so many more of these meetings actually happen
online. So you can record them, right?
(14:09):
Because before a lot of it was done, you know, as much as an in
person and you weren't captions,you rely on people's notes.
So I think that's fundamentally changed our visibility and
understanding of the sales process.
I'm just curious from your perspective, how do you use
Cleary now in that respect? And does that help you and the
(14:30):
whole sales team kind of get aligned better in terms of how
you're attacking your particularopportunities?
Talk a little bit about how I approach my Clary because it
really orchestrates my entire process.
So inside of Clary, I have what is called a cadence, which in
any business you have 13 weeks that you have to accomplish
(14:51):
something in one of those weeks.And if you're not looking
forward, if you're not looking back, you might miss what's in
front of you. Essentially, the beauty of AI is
I'm able to get those triggers of, hey, this one might have
some risk in it or this one might be moving faster than you
typically would move it and it will flag me of where I need to
spend my attention. The way that I then use Cleary
(15:11):
is I have triggers that literally tell me what's going
on in any one of my accounts andthen also showcase for me what
is the best message? What is the best time?
What are the other folks that I haven't been reaching out to?
And it populates that as actionsfor me.
You mentioned call recording. I love my Cleary copilot because
after every single call I'm getting a Slack message to me of
(15:35):
a example follow up e-mail basedoff of what I typically send.
I also am getting a list of actions that I need to
orchestrate not only internally but externally as well.
I'm getting that fed into specific slack channels so that
I don't have to go update my team on any of this.
I have alerts set up for all of my technical counterparts.
So they're getting pings if security or IT or something
(15:58):
specific has been mentioned thatthey weren't on a call of.
So there's a lot of background work that I would typically have
to do where I have this busy work of.
So then I get to reinvest my time into other things.
And so the question then becomes, OK, if you don't have
to do all that, where is your time actually spent?
I can fit probably 12 meetings, probably more with customers
(16:19):
throughout the day, which in a normal world would have been
completely insane as like now I can run really fast and go
really wide with the types of conversations I'm having because
I don't have to do that heavy lifting of, hey, I need to
follow up with this. I need to go figure out this.
And all of those resources are driving to me so that I'm just
actioning on them. I think the other thing that's
really powerful is I get this lens of not only what's
(16:42):
happening in deals that I have an opportunity in, but the ones
that I don't have an opportunityin, which is also vital.
So it's educating me on where doI need to feed my funnel, but
also convert the opportunities Ihave at hand and then
continuously repopulate that with, hey, here's another
opportunity that might come up based off of this intent that
came from this account. So from an end to end
(17:05):
perspective, I would say it helps me spend my time more with
customers. I'm able to see that I'm able to
generate more pipeline from it and I'm converting at a higher
clip than I've ever seen in my career, which typically I've
always been a top performer. But here at Cleary, I can really
dial it up in the way that I typically look at it is all of
(17:25):
the quotas, we can call them double.
And if I'm hitting at least 2X of my coverage on that, then I'm
gonna go way over my number. And so as long as I'm
orchestrating that entire 13 week process inside of Cleary, I
know what is needed of me, when it's needed of me and I can just
really focus on my customers. So the day-to-day admin work
that I would typically spend time on is either automated or
(17:48):
everyone has that information feeding to them, where I don't
have to be the facilitator of giving that information to
anybody. That sounds excellent because
one of the challenges that Matt and I had seen over the years is
people have tried to go and manage particularly complex
sales cycles that have a lot of potential stakeholders involved
with. It is how do you make sure that
your organization is ready to engage them correctly and that
(18:12):
everybody understands and the the lattice work of, of success
criteria that ends up manifesting as a result.
And it sounds to me like Clary'sdoing a really good job of
helping you automate and streamline and manage that
process so things don't get out ahead of you guys.
Is that correct? I would say not only that for us
internally, but also for my buyers.
So like I have mutual action plans that are created within
(18:35):
Clary that I then share with my customers so they're able to
dive in and jump in and recourseme if I'm on where I have a mile
incorrect or timeline incorrect.And so when you think about it
from that perspective, it's not just my manager pressure testing
me. I've like, Are you sure you're
going to commit this this quarter?
Are you sure you can bring it in?
And then it just be this weird conversation that slips every
(18:58):
quarter, right? Like they can directly see that
I'm engaged with my buyer, what my buyer is signing themselves
up for, how my buyer is holding themselves accountable.
And if we both are missing that mark, it becomes a how can my
leader come in and help orchestrate or help guide into a
better success path forward versus a weird interrogation and
(19:19):
then this emptiness with the customer, whether you know or
you don't know the information. So I think it just opens the
lens in general between not onlywhat's happening internally but
also externally with my buyers to know what to expect from me.
That's, that's critical. And, and one of the things I
admire about your methodology and your, your daily practice is
(19:41):
and you hit upon it earlier and the phrase you used was learning
together. And it's something that I think
is so important. And I can understand why Clary's
helping you there, because it's helping create visibility, what
you are learning together with your customer.
But that thing about helping thecustomer learn things about
themselves, about their own process, about their own
challenges and their needs that they may not be fully aware of
(20:03):
as they get into the sales cyclewith you is so critical to
building that. Trust and that long term
relationship and the platform upon which you're going to
create this, this contract, if you will, of delivering value to
them. Yeah.
And that's, that goes so much more deeper than just, you know,
what other people in the industry are doing.
(20:24):
And, and you would hit also earlier on about talking about
how things are changing about the way people are buying.
How is that ability to help the customer learn about themselves?
How does that translate to success over the terms of your
engagement with them? Yeah.
So I think the way that I like to leverage this particular kind
of relationship with my customers is I'm an extension of
(20:47):
their team. I want to be able able to jump
in and support them. I want them to feel confident
about any of the presentations, any of the paperwork I'm putting
in front of them. They should also feel very fluid
about how to approach it, how topresent it also to other folks.
I think one of the things in this lens of time that folks are
getting away from, as I mentioned earlier, this concept
(21:09):
of ROI. So the way that I approach ROI
is it takes multiple decisions that need to be made.
It's not just the number that they're trying to get the return
on investment of. It's what actually are you
serving for my group that I can hold to a measurable attainment.
So how has your of being a customer with us impacted you in
(21:32):
comparison to what you were doing before?
And so I like to paint that picture and then decide who
should be held accountable for what and how, how can I showcase
the change of that within our time together in presales,
right. So it's really about weighing
what exactly does value mean to who and then understanding how
(21:53):
do we then go showcase that backto their team?
And is it a buyer or just one person who owns the check that
you need to go get that answer from?
Or is there multiple validationsthat need to happen across
multiple different places and then we're going to get an
answer? One thing that I do to help
empower my prospects and my customers throughout this
(22:14):
process is really sit with them and really understand how do
they buy, How do they sell? Then I can almost mimic that
same home, same phrasing that they're using to then approach
the way that they're using our platform and be able to use it a
lot better instead of force feeding a feature function that
(22:36):
may or may not hit the mark withthe way that their maturity
curve is with technology. Yeah, I like that.
We had a guest on several weeks ago that was a kind of a value
consultant and his thing was like speaking the language of
the customer, not in your language.
Understanding that and really hearing how they express their
problems and the solution and how they care about it is all
(22:58):
really important in that process.
I'm just curious from just the way that you go to these
opportunities, do you work with an SC that helps you?
Do you work with consultants? What does your team look like
and how do you kind of orchestrate that during the
course of delivering or executing on this opportunity?
Yeah. So I typically just partner with
an SEI, don't have a BDR. I use robots for most of that
(23:22):
stuff. So it's again new age of time,
but I'm going into most of theseconversations with just an SE.
What I want to drive with the customer, however, is that
strategic lens. So I think, Kevin, you mentioned
this a little bit earlier too, of what value or how exactly are
you providing value through thisprocess?
And I think it's a part of this evolution too, between humans
(23:45):
and AI, where an AI robot or something can spit me out a
follow up e-mail, which is great.
But what touch can I put on it that will make the buyer feel
like, oh, this is something thatI can use or this is something
that I actually care about. And that's where I think that I
personally love to share what I call my liturgy or enthusiasm or
(24:06):
the efforts that I put towards the project.
But what I'm really trying to dois create that experience where
they're not just using a tool, but it's a structure of how
they're adopting to use it long term.
So is it something that they're checking in with their teams on
or is it a persona that does something specifically in the
tool that they're held accountable to do every week?
(24:27):
Like what is that cadence we're building with them?
And then the way that I also think about this is again,
there's this is a market where you can have a spot solution for
just the call recorder or just the note taker or just the
forecasting or my lovely spreadsheet that's hiding, you
know, like there's multiple different ways that people go in
(24:47):
and take on these different solutions.
Understanding that is a big partof my process.
So just taking it apart, undoingit, redoing it, understanding
why it was built that way. Why shouldn't you change?
Why would you change? And then really getting them to
realize what is that process? Because the biggest fear for
most folks when they're buying is just the change, right?
(25:08):
And if you can hand hold me through the change, I'll
probably be a lot happier and a lot easier to go talk about it
than me being very unfamiliar with something, not knowing how
to do this. I've never done it before.
And that's really the value thatyou're driving almost from a
human, human behavior perspective.
You've touched on one thing I think is really critical is
after all the years in enterprise sales and in
(25:31):
business, it's really about process optimization,
understanding the process and beable to optimize it.
And, you know, so that's part ofthe solution that you're
delivering because I love that because a lot of times it was
about actually helping your customer figure out how they're
going to make this thing happen,right?
It's about, you know, how are they going to implement what's
that's going to look like? Can you hold their hand through
(25:53):
this process? And the more that you can convey
that that's the case, the more likely they are to trust you to
go to the next step. Because it's not always about
the money. They have money to spend, but
it's like, I'm going to spend this money.
Am I going to get the value I need out of it?
And the value is it's going to be used, right?
You brought up a really good point with that that I love,
which is you become an advisor. The way that I like to put this
(26:16):
had on is like you need to be a trusted advisor when you're in
these conversations. The greatest analogy I have for
this is if you just bought a house and you're trying to
install flooring and you're gonna call flooring person and
they're gonna give you a tile, acarpet, like all these different
options and you're gonna have tochoose something, right?
If I know that I'm going to go fill my bathroom with something
(26:39):
and someone comes directly and says, well, you need this
carpet. Like I probably wouldn't listen
to them as much as I would someone that's talking to me
about tile in a bathroom, right?So it's just being very simple
about what is it that you're dealing with that is the problem
or is it just a optimization you're looking to have within
the business? And let's focus on that core
(27:01):
piece. Most customers I speak with,
it's I'm trying to go IPO. We missed our forecast last
couple quarters and we need to get back on a better trajectory.
I'd rather spend time talking about that knowing that it holds
a lot more weight across the entire company than me saying
there's the call recorder, it can help you take notes
(27:21):
afterwards. And this is going to drive you
impact in a certain way. It won't, it won't, it will miss
the mark entirely, right? Like you need to bring the
information that you're learning, be agile with the
different personalities, different people that you're
involving yourself with within the buying committee and then
determine the right solution forthem that comes from that
trusted advising place. Well thank God.
(27:43):
Carpeted bathrooms I think went out in the 70s.
You know, you're bringing up an aspect of selling that is I
think an elevated way of being able to engage the customers.
We're not talking about what oursolution does.
We're talking about the value ofhaving us there and not
necessarily just as a product, but as a partner going forward.
(28:04):
And you're mapping the value with them and reaching across
going you need to fix this problem and it's critical to the
entire enterprises. You were just describing that it
is a bigger issue that has a broader footprint and a broader
impact on the overall success ofthe organization.
How often are you able to bring that part of the conversation to
(28:25):
a sales cycle where it's like it's not just the product you're
getting, you're getting us. We're going to work with you and
we're going to collaborate with you to create this awesome
degree of value and success. I think I do it pretty often.
It's critical for my sales process personally.
The reason why I say that is because if you're not diving
(28:47):
into the why, you're likely going to get a churned customer
2 years from now, right? And as someone that's closed
multi $1,000,000 here at Clary, I hold that weight very
seriously, right? Where if I'm driving the value
and the intention really early, I know exactly what their
expectation is going to be 5 years from now when I'm asking
(29:08):
for them to renew again, right? So I think one of the key pieces
that sometimes people might overlook for example, is what is
it that will help me see the customer differently?
And then how can I apply this again and again and again so
that I have a pipeline full withdeals that can convert versus
(29:28):
this one deal I'm banking on andit must come in, otherwise I'm
going to miss my number, right? There's that balance of trades
of you owe it to yourself as well to find those common
denominators across your accountpatch and say, OK, great.
This is a typical problem that I'm seeing across these
different businesses. And now I can be a consultant on
(29:50):
how I've seen others attack thatone solution versus again,
feature function go to battle, put on my box and gloves with
every vendor that's in every single one of these accounts.
Like it doesn't make sense to dothat.
So I think it being maniacally focused on what is it that the
business is trying to solve and then attach myself to that.
(30:11):
And then the other mentality that I like to keep that's a
little bit different is you can't have this limiting belief
that the whole company is also going to reach out to this
customer and they will only knowabout us because all of the
great work our whole teams doing.
Like, no, as a sales Rep, you are the sole person that is
responsible for that relationship.
And so if there's a way that I can either at least know about
(30:36):
what they're going through or understand or meet the leaders
that are controlling a lot of what's happening in those
companies, like that's a bigger win for me because I'm
understanding a lot more things beyond what the scope of their
my accounts are deal by deal basis, but also my whole
territory. And how can I be successful
(30:56):
across my whole territory versushaving this limiting belief that
I am the only person that's going to get benefit from all
the pipeline that's going to come to me?
It's like, no, you need to go doit and you are the person that
they want to hear from. There's a degree of investment
in the relationship that you're talking about, and you're
(31:17):
bringing your own value beyond just what the organization and
the solution is doing there. And I love that phrase you meant
about not going down and gettinginto a knife fight in a phone
booth over feature function. Well, I've got this button,
which is better than their button.
What advice would you give to anAE out there?
Who's listening to the podcast? Who's struggling with getting
(31:39):
the conversations above that? What kind of tactics or
practices can they put in place to try and and avoid getting
themselves boxed in? Because I hear people on calls,
they'll box themselves into thatconversation.
What advice would you give? Them I would say know your
strengths and play to them. Let me give you an example of
what that means to me. So for example, I come across
(32:01):
Salesforce and every ideal they are, every customer has to have
sales force. And so any person that I'm
engaged with, they at least havethe knowledge of what sales
force brings to the table. Where I see myself as a kind of
a differentiator in where I would run with this advice is
you don't have to be that person.
(32:21):
Know them well enough to know the expectations that they would
deliver and then go challenge that.
Just know that you're not stuck in this box of OK, I need to do
another demo. I need to go do another like
technical qualification, like I need to go do something else
that is in your typical workflow.
It's OK to break things up. I have a lot of pipeline.
So I like to disqualify just as much as I like to qualify.
(32:43):
And so one of the things that I like to do with that is be OK
with saying, yeah, Salesforce, go run your course with them by
week 4. This is where I would be if you
are not there by week 4, we should be friends outside of
this Zoom conversation. And you need to call me on a
serious note and say I have X budget and I only have X much
(33:04):
time because I made the wrong decision.
Like those come from a very confident place, but as a
seller, you need to be comfortable with being agile
enough to make those decisions for yourself.
No one's going to give you that kind of overhead advice either
of like this one's going a little S maybe let's close lost
it and we'll focus over here. It's like you need to be able to
know, hey, what can I do differently within this deal
(33:28):
from a strategic perspective that might have to put it on the
back burner for a second only for me to play faster later.
So I would say my biggest adviceto anyone listening to this
podcast, please take away from this that don't stay in your
box. Be authentic, use your strengths
and double down on whatever those strengths are in a very
(33:49):
confident. Manner, yeah, I love that.
And also, you know, having that North star of the value that
you're delivering always helps because you know, you can pivot
however you want, but you're always calling back to what they
want to do. Maybe your tactic is different
or your approach is a little bitdifferent, but you know, the the
ultimate goal remains the same. One more question for you before
(34:10):
we kind of wrap up here. But you know, getting back to
process, I think you said, you know, one of the things you
loved about Clary is the fact that it helped you kind of cover
the blocking and tackling of allthe things that go on and
opportunity allowing you to focus on the things that are
more important. I think one of the things you
said was FaceTime, but what are the other high value things that
(34:31):
you can do? Once you have all these other
things taken care of, Where would you focus your time?
Yeah, I always like to focus my time on where else can I
optimize, right. So if I look at my last sales
cycle that I did was half the time that I normally spend on a
sales cycle that large. And so it was a lot of OK,
(34:51):
great, I have this time now given back to me, where can I
fine tune things? And so as part of this learning
experience in the deal I just closed last week, it was OK,
great, Chachi BT can help me in XYZ ways, but how do I get
dangerous with it where I'm starting to think more ahead
than I typically would? And how can I get ahead of those
(35:13):
things a lot sooner and maybe put it on a calendar or like put
it on as the agenda for the nextmeeting, right.
So for me, it's always reflecting on what could be
different and how I could be different, but using that time
wisely to then use it with the customer.
So again, I mentioned earlier, Ispend way too much time in
(35:35):
customer meetings, which is the best thing in my world.
But having the time to spend with those customers or meet
with more people within that particular buying committee or
the influencing committee is going to move my deal a lot
faster than me doing another prep doc.
I like bite my tongue saying that because I love my prep
docs, but at the same time I know that if I just hit the
(35:55):
phones and talk to people I'll get more accurate information.
Right. Go, go where the money is and go
where the money generates, right?
I always say if this actually I constantly ask myself this
question if I do a task or if I'm in a meeting, it's like, is
this revenue generating activityor how can I make it a revenue
generating activity? That's, that's great advice.
(36:16):
That's a great perspective to look at those things, right?
And that's a, that's a really valuable litmus test to use on
anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Lynn, one of the reasons why I was so excited about bringing
you on to the call today is because I really think there's
so many practical things that you've brought up today about
how you engage your customers, selling, solutioning.
(36:40):
If there's are people out there that are sitting there going, I
just can't get stuff to land, I'm spinning my wheels, why am I
not making more progress on my quota?
What advice would you give them If they're just they just don't
know what to do next? Say go find a friend in the
company and learn from them. It could be anybody, but at
(37:01):
least you'll have a litmus test of what's happening if you're
even hitting a wall at that aspect.
I just like to get creative withjust who humans are.
This sounds really crazy, but you know, if you're networking
with a bunch of people that livein a big city or there's a
different topic that is top of mind for people that are in that
region or an event or something specific that can gravitate
(37:25):
their attention towards something that might be helpful
or it might be valuable for them.
Or find that common relation with them and then try to
attract it from that perspective.
But my always go to is find a friend and network as much as
you can within the account because the knowledge that
(37:46):
you'll gather can inform what you're actually orchestrating in
the deal itself. And then you can always pivot
and ask for guidance and questions from those early
people that you tried to networkwith or get advice from.
That's great advice. I concur.
I, I do believe that mentorship and and collaboration, sometimes
it can only take a matter of a few tweaks and it can have
(38:09):
tremendous impact on your overall success.
I know that mentorship is extremely important to you.
If there are people that want toreach out to you, Lynn and, and
find out more about you, what you do, your philosophy or seek
guidance from you. Is there you being their phone,
a friend? What's the the best way for them
to reach out to you? Yeah, the best way to reach out
to me is on LinkedIn so you can find me at Lynn Powers.
(38:32):
The other high loving advice I would give to anyone looking to
grow their career or get some type of mentorship in sales is
Women in Revenue also has a really great mentorship program.
So if you're not involved with them or if you're looking for a
new mentor, looking for someone to mentor you or a group to be
surrounded by, really great place to go is so great.
(38:55):
Also to spend time with folks here, I would love to get
people's feedback if there's anyquestions that they have on my
particular deal process or how Itypically engage or how do I
over perform So much so happy tochat with you one-on-one.
Send me a message. Well, and we'll make sure we put
that in the notes for the episode.
It'll be in the description. So people will reach out to you
(39:16):
on LinkedIn and they can also get find out more about women in
revenue as well. Matt, turn the turn over to you.
Anything you'd like to go and share with Lynn before we go and
bring your episode to the close?No, it's just been a pleasure
talking with you, Lynn. I love your enthusiasm as well
as just your methodical approachto things that differently
dovetails nicely with our careers and kind of things that
(39:38):
we thought were important. So thanks again for sharing
everything you've shared today. Absolutely.
Thanks for joining us, Matt. Lynn, thank you so much for
coming out of the call. I enjoyed this conversation
immensely, just like all the other ones we've had.
And I look forward to future ones we're going to be having
again in the future. But we do need to bring the
episode to a close, much to my chagrin.
But thanks to you for coming in and talking with us today.
(40:01):
And thanks to the listeners who've been listening to today's
episode. Folks, if you love what you hear
here, drop us a comment like, follow, subscribe, share your
thoughts with us so we can bringmore great content to you that
matches what it is you guys needif you want to know more about
the methodology that you've heard us bending.
Back and forth about today, go onto the website and buy, you
get the link over to being able to buy your own copy of our
(40:23):
methodology. You can find the links to do
that there. But unfortunately we are going
to bring this episode to a closeand looking forward to being
able to go. I'm here.
We bit of an echo just waiting for it to go away.
So folks, thank you for spendingtime and we're going to be able
to coming back again next week with another great guest and
hopefully we'll have Lynn back on again soon.
(40:44):
Thank you very much. We'll talk together soon.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!