June 29, 2025 • 26 mins
We explore the founding journey behind a high-growth SaaS business (Reachdesk), with its founder, Alex Olley, highlighting the importance of grit, cultural alignment, and hiring for mindset over pedigree. We discuss how their values, “be bold, learn fast, get things done”, shape a resilient team and how a structured, scorecard-driven hiring process ensures long-term success. The conversation also touches on the power of team-based wins and embedding customer-centricity into every role.
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Episode Transcript
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Matt Best (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with
(00:02):
myself, Matt Best and thewonderful Jonny Adams. We're
joined today by the fantasticAlex Olley from Reach Desk, so
founder, and now CRO at ReachDesk and Alex, it's brilliant to
have you on on today, and we'regoing to talk about a couple or
a few specific things that we'resuper excited about. So firstly,
we'd love to understand a bitabout your background and your
(00:22):
the sort of founder story, as itwere. We find that our listeners
really, really, really valuethat insight and your
perspective, what's gone well,what's changed along the way,
and those sorts of things, andthen your approach and
methodology when it comes tokind of sales. It's something
that we talk a lot about on thispodcast. It'd be really
fantastic to hear. And then, asever AI comes up, the importance
(00:43):
of AI, but also the importanceof balancing AI with a kind of
human centric approach. We'lldive into that as well. So
really looking forward to thatconversation today. And thank
you so much for joining us.
Alex Olley (00:52):
Oh look. Well, firstly, thank you for having
me. I don't get to do this inperson as much, so this is, this
is a bit of a treat, actually,in the studio looks awesome, but
yeah, I suppose we actuallydon't know each other that well.
So I'm kind of introducingmyself in many ways. So I used
to be this, essentially the CEO.When you start a company, you
kind of look around with threeother co founders, who is the
CEO here, and I was like, It'sme, but we, we decided from
(01:13):
like, literally day one thatthis was, this was going to be a
product that was going to bereally well suited for US
market. And by going all in. Weknew we had to change things.
But actually, at the same time,I've been in sales for 15 years.
I've been ahead of sales. I lovesales and marketing. I kind of
always wanted to be the CRO Idon't think I really wanted that
CEO title long term anyway, butyeah, I love everything. Go to
(01:36):
Market, and we're in thisfortunate world where I kind of
sell to myself, as it were, youknow, where we built it for
sales and marketing teams. I'mone of the personas, so it's
kind of easy before I was sayinglike E commerce tools. And I've
never been in E commerce. Inever really understood what was
doing. So I love the world thatwe're in. And yeah, I'm keen to
(01:56):
get into it and start chattingwith you guys. Fantastic.
Matt Best (01:59):
And that's brilliant. We'll dig a bit more into that,
into that, into that, thatjourney that you've gone on from
sitting around a table,presumably, or maybe in a bar
just debating who should be theCEO, who should take what role,
as is customary on the growthworkshop podcast, we'd love you
to answer this question if youwere to choose two people to be
on your personal board ofadvisors. These are people who
would advise you personally onlife, on work, on your business,
(02:22):
on all facets, who would they beand why?
Alex Olley (02:24):
Look, I think it's really hard one don't be
offended by if I don't if, if mymates are listening and then
they're not getting chosen, thendon't be offended by click. I
think that there are two peoplehave had massive impacts on my
life who I would actually like.I would love to have them on a
continued journey. And one ofthem is actually Jay, who I
(02:44):
started reached us with. Now heand I, we met in 2012 I was one
of his first sales hires in hiscompany. Yieldify, amazing
journey, like we went from likezero to, I think it was 12
million in a year, and it waslike colossal initial growth. He
taught me a lot, and we ended upstarting reach desk together,
and at times, there were a lotof clashes, actually, because it
was a different relationship.Was no longer his sales leader
(03:06):
or anything, or that AE the samelevel, but he helped me so much,
like he was that we were talkingabout before, he was that
mirror, that person that wouldask me the hard questions. But
also you need someone that'stelling you doing a good job. I
didn't have that for manypeople, particularly when you're
found it's quite lonely. Veryfew people are saying you're
doing great, by the way, all youthink is, I want to do better,
(03:29):
and I want to do more, andyou're trying to reach that next
milestone. You get there, andit's the next thing. And he was
the one saying, enjoy thismoment, enjoy these things.
Like, I remember there was a daywhen we'd lost a load of deals.
You know, there was some, like,five or six people. I'm
thinking, this is awful. What amI doing? I've given up
everything. I've given up, like,a decent salary, and really
great company can buildsomething. And he was the one
(03:51):
saying, dude, don't worry. Likeyou're just in the struggle. And
there's always a breakthrougharound the corner. Having
someone like that is gold. Theother person that I probably
bring on is guy called Fergus.And Fergus was Marc benioff's
right hand man. He's actually inbenioff's book Behind the Cloud.
I actually didn't know that atthe time, and it's funny, the
way I met Fergus was actuallyduring our series B due
(04:11):
diligence. I had this moment. Iwas called into this meeting,
and I was like, Guys, what'sthis meeting that's happening?
So it's an investor, they wannado some due diligence. I'm like,
okay, just present your normalstuff that you presented to all
the other investors. And Iremember presenting things, and
it was supposed to be half anhour meeting, I think it turned
into a four hour meeting. Andthere was this guy called Fergus
(04:31):
who was just asking theseconstant, like, really difficult
questions about, like, sales,velocity by Channel and metrics
and enablement and scaling andall this stuff. And I was, I
don't really know what I'mdoing, and I'm remember calling
my founders up afterwards. So Ithink I just lost us our series
B guys. What was that about?Anyway? So they actually came
back to us, and they wrote areport, and I think it said
(04:52):
something like, Alex is a decentsales leader, or something like
that, a bit sort of middle ofthe line. And it was Fergus
report. I think I'm allowed to.This, but doesn't matter anyway.
And I actually, I messaged himafterwards. I said I didn't get
it. You told me a new one there.And that was that was putting
one that the most intensemeetings ever. I thought we'd
lost everything. And he's like,Yeah, well, I'm just trying to
(05:14):
test you. I'm trying to pressuretest you. And I said, Well,
you're clearly full ofknowledge. Can we work together
and you level me up? And he justsaid, Yes. I was like, wow,
okay. And I looked him up andwent, Oh my God, this guy's
actually, like, He's a beast.He's done it. He's taken
Salesforce, I think he joined at5 million, error, and he left
Salesforce, and they're like,one half billion. So you talk
(05:35):
about like, I'm at the zero toone guy, the one to 1010, to 50,
blah, blah. He's like, there forfive to one point, however, many
billion. And those sessions withhim just took me to a totally
different level. And I thought,I think I had too much ego, and
he kind of brought that me backdown a little bit. But it was
just like, here's a problem. Ithink it's, I'm sorry if this is
(05:57):
a really stupid thing to bebringing to you. Can we work
through it? And most of time,you're like, it's not stupid
problem at all. Actually. Youthink if actually, you're
thinking about the right things,but you just think about the
wrong way. And thoseconversations would translate
into massive impact. And so froma go to market standpoint, I
would always want him with me.
Jonny Adams (06:12):
I think that's so interesting and quite jealous.
You've got these amazingadvisors around you. No offense
to my advisors. Of course, I'mcurious to know a little bit
more about reach desk as well,and maybe where the origin is,
because we don't have a problemin the world about ideas. What
we have a problem about isactivation, implementation,
(06:34):
right? You know, I thinkactually, was it smaller than 1%
of ideas actually become tosomething as successful as what
you're building. And for thelisteners, you know, what is
Reach Desk, it would be great tohave a bit...
Alex Olley (06:43):
Sure, if you boil it down, we help companies create
and accelerate pipeline usingdirect mail, gifting and swag,
like you can do that for yourexisting customers and employees
too. That's ultimately,ultimately what we do. And so we
started it because essentially,when was this, about 2017 I was
seeing. I had SDRs, A's in myteam. We weren't seeing the same
(07:05):
results from calling, fromemailing, as perhaps we used to
when I started in sales. I had adesk phone and a print out
sheet, and that was it. It waslike, these are your people you
need to call. And it was justsmashed through the numbers. But
back in whenever that was, thatwas 15 odd years ago. You could
dial 10 people and you mighthave five conversations as
unheard of, right? But so thatthat that's taken to ridiculous,
(07:28):
and then where we are today andin the middle was kind of reach
that square, and you saw therise of these sales engagement
platforms like outreach andsales loft. We just weren't
seeing the results that wewanted. And I do remember it was
working for Danish company, andthe CRO asked me to go to
Denmark. These results aren'tgreat. The pipeline, it's just
(07:49):
not really growing. You need tobring some ideas to the table,
and we discuss certain things,the standard stuff that you'd
expect. And is that? What elseyou got? I said, I wish some
people gifts. And there was thisreally awkward, like, it felt
like five minutes. It wasprobably in about 10 seconds,
and he just burst and laughingin my face. I was like, Oh, what
(08:11):
have I said? I may as well justlike, hand in my notice now. And
he kind of literally just like,are you? Are you joking? That's
your solution. It's like, we'regoing to send people gifts. We
didn't know was we'd alreadystarted doing it, and we had, I
used to give my SDRs, like mywhat, my company card, and we
would go on these shoppingtrips, and we'd research our top
accounts and our prospects andeverything. And we would go and
(08:33):
buy these, like, custom giftsand have their names engraved on
it and everything. Then we wouldsend them to their offices, and
soon as they arrived, we'd callthem, and we were getting that
5% response rate on email. Wewere getting like, 50 to 75% on
sending people stuff, someone'swho's done really well. And I
still remember this moment whereone of the STRS Charlie sent, he
sent this amazing they it wasthe CMO of pretty little thing
(08:57):
fast fashion brand, right?They'd just done their unicorn
campaign, and he sent this,like, personalized unicorn with
this like gold embossednotebook, and he'd done a lot of
research on it, and he'd beentrying to get through to her for
about a year, right? And themoment it landed, she called
him, and she said, I don't knowyou guys, what is it you do?
What do you want? And the nextday, we're on a train to
(09:20):
Manchester to meet her. We satin her office and we had this
meeting. And so what we starteddoing is the company I was at
the time. We had five officesaround the world, and people
heard about this story. Soeveryone started doing the same
as us, doing these personalizedcampaigns, going on these trips.
And we would, we would get supercreative with them. We do we and
(09:40):
we it would be holistic as well.We do it as part of email and
video follow up, and it was donereally well, but then it broke
because no one knew how much wewere spending, no one could like
track it. We had this newmarketing director who basically
shut it down. Said, we're notdoing this anymore. Guess what
happened? Our response ratesdipped, our pipeline dipped, and
that's when I started lookinginto solutions to help automate.
This. You know, we were only inEurope. There was no one doing
(10:03):
anything to help Europeancompanies. There were certain
companies starting to do it inthe US, but no one was really
thinking about the internationalside of things. And I called Jay
and Milan, the two brotherswho'd founded the business I was
at before at yotify, and Iactually said, I was like, What?
What do you guys do? And theysaid, we got the same problem.
Everyone spoke to us like we'reactually doing this. I thought,
this. I thought we were the onlyguys doing this custom gifting.
(10:26):
We're doing it, and we can'tfigure out how to scale it
either. So we realized it's awidespread problem, validated
it. And it's one of thosemoments where I think you
mentioned that the meeting inthe bar, we met in a bar in
London, Victoria, and kind ofthat day, almost instantly, just
said, Let's build anothercompany. And it kind of just
happened there and then. And Ithink I went home and spoke to
my wife, was that I'm going tostart a business with guys from
(10:48):
yotify. What do you think? Shewas like, Yeah, great. Don't
think, I don't think she thoughtI was, I was serious. You know,
we're building and then that wasit really so it was based off a
problem that we saw, yeah, andwe wanted to make sure that we
could build something thatwasn't just a US based business,
but at the same time, mostpeople I spoke to in Europe, the
(11:09):
problem I had was that I'd speakto people in Europe and they're
like, gifting really similarresponse to what I got when,
when I said it to my CROeveryone I spoke to in the US,
they were like, Yeah, we doalready. It's we've got loads of
budget for it. And this is,like, part of our our culture,
and like, gifting out there,within, like outbound and ABM
was absolutely massive. And sowe decided to build a business,
(11:32):
and then at the same time, wewere like, We need to get to the
US fast.
Matt Best (11:35):
That's crazy. So I guess that's your that. I mean,
that's starting to feed intothat sort of founder story. I'm
really interested to understand,as you were going through that
build process, were thereanything specific areas or
things that sort of thosehurdles that you had to leap
over that you could share withthe audience? And a bit of
advice, perhaps?
Alex Olley (11:54):
How long you got?
Matt Best (11:57):
That's often the response, Alex, but yeah,
there's a couple of kind of keythings that you're like, you
know what? I don't know, madethat mistake, or saw that
opportunity that I haven't seenbefore or since, that could be
useful.
Alex Olley (12:09):
Our first biggest hurdle was, how do you get to
the US? But I still have tothink about, how do we have the
right team in the hometerritory? I'm an advisor to a
number of businesses. I see thiscommon mistake of like, we
basically the home territorygets left behind, right they go
to the US, and they forget aboutwhat the relatiview, and that's
usually where the culture is.And one things I learned is
you've got to take it with you.Now, when I've tried going into
(12:30):
other countries in the past, Ifelt like I could just hire a
squad on the ground, and it'snever worked. For some reason
when I've taken people with me,I mean, so when we went to the
US, I went myself. I brought keypeople with me who could share
that knowledge, who could makesure that you know when I'm not
there, the culture of how we dothings, our DNA is maintained
and really instilled those.Those things were pretty
(12:53):
critical. But like, I think ifyou my approach to everything,
we call it, actually, it's, Ididn't coin this. It was Adam
from ebster, who works with GuyRubin, and call it the caveman
theory. And it's basically likegoing, you need to go and get
your food club over there andbring it back to the cave. And
that's what outbound is to me.So at the very beginning, and
(13:16):
every business I advise, I makesure, as long as it makes sense
to have this sort of likeoutbound method to what you do,
because of the particularlyearly stage, particularly early
stage is one of the easiestthings that you can control. I
see loads of companies nowtrying to spend too much time on
building a brand, and they talkabout distribution, but it's
actually not distribution. It'sthat at the beginning, zero to
one is brute force, and you haveto go and get it. And that
(13:37):
lesson is so underestimated. Andwhenever I tell people that it's
particularly that early stage.They come back to me, like, I
get it now I've just got to goout there every event. I'm there
we, like founders, are diningtogether. They're pushing
forward, and I see too manycompanies that aren't prepared
to do that. And my word, I'mglad we did.
Matt Best (13:53):
It's fascinating. Just that sort of mindset piece.
I think it's important. But theI want to just step back into
the culture. How big is yourteam now in the US?
Alex Olley (14:03):
It's about 70 people.
Matt Best (14:06):
How did you scale that and scale the culture as
well?
Alex Olley (14:11):
How do we scale it so the culture, as I said, you
have to bring people, yeah, andyou've got to insulate them. And
it was only I remember thispoint. I remember hiring a
couple of people, one of themstill with me today. And when I
was hiring people at thebeginning, I was thinking,
mainly, yeah, can you do thejob? You got to tick the boxes,
but do you match our DNA? Like,if you don't, you don't make it.
(14:32):
And I remember having people, Ithink you could be an athlete
beast. You could crush it here,be just the wrong fit. And I've
seen companies tumble as aresult of, like, hiring bad
apples. That was one of mynumber one things I was looking
for. It's like, Are people gonnalike you? Are we gonna like
working with you? But also, wedo have a certain hustle to our
to our culture. It's not, areyou good people? Do you want to
get beers and have families likeI expect people to show up a
(14:56):
little bit early and work alittle bit late. I expect you to
be in the zone the entire. Mytime, I had to embody that. And
I'd say to people, if I'm notlike that and I don't embody
that, call me out on it. But youhave to lead by example. You've
got to hire people that aregoing to embody that too, and
that's how you scale it. And I'mnot gonna lie, I had moments
where I got it wrong. I got thewrong leaders. I think, you
know, the gyms of the world,great examples. One, because
(15:17):
they're hungry, they want tomove up the ranks. But I did
hire leaders who didn't embodythat. I think I did make the
mistake of looking at their CVand their experience too much.
And I'll put my hands in the airand say that those are mistakes,
not necessarily just here inprevious businesses too. Getting
that right is so important,because the moment you don't and
people are disconnected, theythat you start getting the
(15:38):
messages being like, what'shappened, and there's that awful
Slack message you get going. Iremember once someone was
saying, like, what we done here?Oh god, it's my fault. And so
I've prioritized the mindset,the mentality, all those things.
I actually wrote them down. It'sthe type of attributes I wanted
for people, and that's what we'dhire for, and that's in our
hiring process that values thatculture piece is really
(15:58):
essential. And we built thisreally robust hiring process,
which is almost like a salesprocess. It's like four steps.
There's non negotiables. Ifwe're not unified on it, if
we're not unanimous, they don'tyou don't allow people in. And
it's literally like scorecards.It's relentless. And that's
where you asked about scaling.You can scale hiring and
(16:19):
building out a team when you'vegot that in place. I see too
many companies are just like,Yeah, cool. They worked at Adobe
or Salesforce, and like, they'rejust going to bring all that
experience and they're going tosave the day. And you've just
got the wrong person.
Jonny Adams (16:32):
Clearly, I'm enjoying this. I mean, as a
host, it's like, I think if theaudience was hearing it's like,
Alex, you're sharing some greatinsights, but just give us the
answer, right? And you're on theit's like a trailer this
particular piece, because yousort of go and then, because the
two things I'm really curiousabout as you describe that, and
we often talk a lot aboutculture, Matt and I have worked
(16:53):
with a mutual client for fouryears. They went from detesting
the word sales, physically maybebeing sick around the word
sales. Now the manager isactually using the word sales
for years, but that's culture,right? That. And it takes a lot
of psychologists would say ittakes, you know, three, three
plus years to change culture ina large organization. My point
(17:13):
being, though, is you've startedto tease us a little bit with,
you know, you've got this list.What's the list I'm interested
in? Maybe just share a couple ofthose things that you that you
recruit for, it would be reallyinteresting, because you alluded
to one before and and maybe I'dlove to hear the values that
you've got as a business,because values match up to
culture. Values then enables abusiness to run the right hot
(17:36):
and cold behaviors. Values wouldbe great. And also, what are
some of these other things thatyou look for when recruiting?
Alex Olley (17:41):
Yeah. So the attributes, let's break it down.
The attributes are different byrole. I look for pretty similar
things like BDRs and AES. I tendto have like a so my strategy is
to hire BDRs that can translateinto AES in the future, ideally.
And what I look for when I'mhiring those kind of roles is
coachability, curiosity, priorsuccess, work ethic and
intelligence. I'm not. I'm notI'm not bothered, like, one of
(18:01):
the best times I made he didn'tgo to university. I don't even
know what his grades are to thisday, but it's just like,
unbelievable, because theintelligence part wasn't about
your degree or anything. It wasaround I understand your market.
I understand where you fit. Iunderstand how you can position
yourself. I understand thetrends that are going on, and
when people can demonstratethose kind of things, I'm like,
(18:22):
You're clearly really smart inthe way that I need you to be.
And that's, that's the mistake Isee companies make. They think
we need intelligent people, butthey need to have this kind of
degree or this, these kind ofgrades that doesn't help you,
like, it might do it if you'reGSK and you're you need someone
who's going to, like, protectyour IP or something. I need
people to sell so I need them tounderstand my market. So that's
(18:43):
the intelligence side of things.Prior success can be anything.
Let me give the example of Ben.He was a professional ice
skater. He can do a back flip onice skates. Not many people can
do that. To get to that level,you need to have, like, trained
to a certain degree and and itkind of goes back to the
underlying bit is that sort ofgrit and that resilience. But
prior success can be anything,really it can. What I'm looking
(19:04):
for is, I'm looking for peopleto demonstrate they've done
something to a level that veryfew can achieve. And that might
be that you were a reallysuccessful sales rep in the
past, but if your prior successwas, well, I was an account
executive before. All right,where were you on the
leaderboard? Is the question Iusually ask, and I'm going to
validate that with your oldboss. And if you're not, if
there are 10 of you and youweren't one of the top two,
(19:26):
probably weren't very good.Simple as that, the work ethic
you can test within theinterview process, with their
diligence on following up, andtheir attention to detail within
their presentations, that kindof thing. I asked a question
around like, describe your yourideal work week that helps you
be successful. And then what I'mlooking for is, like, a
systematic approach with no gapsin it, where they're like, Okay,
(19:46):
so I get in at 830 I start at845 because the day before I've
prepared 845 to 930 is dialing,and it's like, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang. And do all my followups. I'm not that's what I'm
looking for. Ultimately, that'swork ethic. And then everything
surrounding the interview.Process is, I'm looking for
those kind of things. Theconnect with me on LinkedIn,
saying, love this, whatever youspoke about...
Jonny Adams (20:06):
It's a sales process.
Alex Olley (20:07):
Exactly.
Jonny Adams (20:07):
And it's a buying process as well. And if they've
got some emotional intelligence,which I think is your beast
around intelligence as well,they should see it like that.
You know, absolutely resonatewith that the values of the business.
Alex Olley (20:18):
Yeah. Be bold. Learn fast, get things done. Be bold.
Learn fast. One value, Oh, wow.Get things done. Okay? Bold,
learn fast. Get things done. I'mlike that. I'm relentless,
right? I take I'm a big risktaker, right? I'm big on
learning from my failures, sothat I've always like day one, I
was like, you will makemistakes. You will make mistakes
all the time. That's fine. Ifyou keep making the same
(20:39):
mistake, it's not okay. So we'vegot to learn fast, but we've got
to take risks. We've got tolearn fast. But I'm all about
scoring 70% on the exam andgetting things shipped rather
than trying to perfect stuff,and I ask questions in the
interview process like give mean example of a moment when you
took a big risk and what youlearned from it. It's as simple
as that, and so long as theycan, doesn't matter what it is.
(21:00):
Sometimes they can articulatethat. I'm like, Okay, you are
part of our values. I've heardsome crazy things. I'm like,
this is brilliant, because I'msurprised you took that recipe.
You learned a lot from it,whether it went bad or wrong,
you're learning from it, allright? Treat people like people.
It's pretty, pretty selfexplanatory, right? That's what
we're all about. You don't needto be like that. We don't
(21:22):
tolerate it. And when we see it,we call it out, deliver
happiness, which is like, that'sbasically what we do at reach
desk. It's kind of thefoundation of what we do.
Obviously, we send gifts andthings, but we do that because I
think happy people means happycustomers, and we want to try
and embody that in our culture,and then probably my most My
favorite one is win as a team.Win as a team, win as a team.
(21:43):
There are no individuals, asmuch as you know. There's the
sad truth to sales that theperson who closed the deal gets
to ring the gong, and that'sthat. But we don't celebrate
like that. Our Gong channelcelebrates the BDR that opened
up the opportunity. It tags thesolution engineer that was on
the call, because we're like,when we and that seems like such
a trivial thing, but I thinkit's so important, and we shout
(22:04):
each other out with we don'thave this culture, this sort of
toxic sales culture, which I waspart of before. It's like, you
know, chess beating the salesmentality. It's like, you do win
as a team. Without that BDR,without that solution, engineer,
without the CSM jumping on totalk about the experience
they're going to get, we've,we've won deals because that's
our approach, whereas ourcompetitors are just like in
(22:26):
that one lane, and they have,I'm not saying all of them are,
but some of them are like that.And we've had the feedback from
prospects. I asked them, Iinterviewed them. They say, why
did you choose us? They're like,You sent an army, and we felt
that that's what we were goingto get. And the experiences,
which is way better.
Jonny Adams (22:42):
Love that, massively resonate with, you
know, teams win deals, and youknow, you can see that with the
evolution of a more complexbuying cycle, more personas,
more stakeholders. And we know,because as a consultancy, we
have to go in as a team. Becausehow can you deliver a project
that's multi millions over multiyears with just one person, it's
impossible, but that ability tomatch up to those personas and
(23:05):
have the ability to match up tothe behaviors as well, right?
It's so crucial. I know there'sloads to unpack on that comment.
Matt Best (23:11):
I completely agree, and I love it's a sort of
element of simplicity there,Alex, it's like the clarity that
you have. It's like, this iswhat I need. This is what I'm
going to get. I've got a methodfor getting it. I think this is
also interesting. I wondered ifwe'd surveyed all of the, you
know, the sales directors andeven CROs like yourself out
there in the market, said, howdo you in an interview recognize
or measure whether someone'sgoing to align to your values or
(23:34):
not? I wonder what the responserate? I mean, there's a there's
a poll there, but like, youclearly gone, I can understand
whether they're going to alignto this value by asking them
this question. And so often it'sactually about, Okay, talk to me
about your experience. What'syour process for, for closing a
deal, like, all of that stuff,or, like, talk to me about the
different clients you've workedwith. But to your point,
actually, it's the it's theunderlying behavior that you're
(23:56):
looking for, because you cantrain in that other stuff. You
can help someone understand it,as long as they're demonstrating
the right capabilities or theand the right desire. It feels
like desires are kind of bigthing in there as well.
Alex Olley (24:07):
Yeah, big time. And I think the thing I learned with
these things is, like, I'vespent so much of my time
documenting this stuff, and forpeople listening, I've literally
got this document. I havetemplates that I can share, but
like, think about that, thatthat sales hiring process. There
is a document which says stageone internal talent team, they
ask these questions. And partthat, by the way, is actually
candidate experience as well.Because I've been, I hadn't
(24:30):
interviewed for a long time now,but I remember I used to and I'd
be asked the same question overand over again, and I these guys
talk about about stuff this isawful, yeah. And so part of it
is like, Hey, are we on the samepage about like what we're
asking so that we can actuallytest for different things?
Otherwise, we may as well justhave one stage. And so I treat
everything that way, and I dolike internal memos, and I put
(24:50):
things in Google Sheets whichbasically like this person is
going to ask these things theyare testing for these
attributes. Really critically,this what a model answer looks
like. Here's a score out of 10if they don't. Make this score,
they don't get through greatstage one. Stage two,
attributes, questions who's up,who's involved, and it's just
that it's a systematic approachthat we've put into our ATS
scorecard comes up. We can wehave an unbiased way of looking
(25:13):
at things going no, this persondoesn't make it simple as that
speeds things up, gets everyone aligned.
Jonny Adams (25:18):
And it saves you a ton of money, yeah, because we
know that, you know, Miss hiringis five times the salary, you
know, and we've all made somereally shocking hires, haven't
we, and it comes back to arobustness of recruitment
process. And I think when you goback and you recruit and you go,
do you know what that wasinteresting, what was the
recruitment process like foryou? Do you know what, what I
really liked was the rigor, andthat rigor, where they feel like
(25:38):
they're achieving something ateach stage as a candidate keeps
them bought in. And recently,we've had someone, you know,
when we've been doingrecruitment, actually drop out
at stage three, because we'vegot four stages best that they
drop out at Stage Three ratherthan cruising to stage four,
thinking there's some mutual andthen all of a sudden they're
going to drop out three months later.
Matt Best (25:56):
Indeed, thank you so much for joining us, Alex. We
look forward to having you againon part two.
Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with
(00:02):
myself, Matt Best and thewonderful Jonny Adams. We're
joined today by the fantasticAlex Olley from Reach Desk, so
founder, and now CRO at ReachDesk and Alex, it's brilliant to
have you on on today, and we'regoing to talk about a couple or
a few specific things that we'resuper excited about. So firstly,
we'd love to understand a bitabout your background and your
(00:22):
the sort of founder story, as itwere. We find that our listeners
really, really, really valuethat insight and your
perspective, what's gone well,what's changed along the way,
and those sorts of things, andthen your approach and
methodology when it comes tokind of sales. It's something
that we talk a lot about on thispodcast. It'd be really
fantastic to hear. And then, asever AI comes up, the importance
(00:43):
of AI, but also the importanceof balancing AI with a kind of
human centric approach. We'lldive into that as well. So
really looking forward to thatconversation today. And thank
you so much for joining us.
Alex Olley (00:52):
Oh look. Well, firstly, thank you for having
me. I don't get to do this inperson as much, so this is, this
is a bit of a treat, actually,in the studio looks awesome, but
yeah, I suppose we actuallydon't know each other that well.
So I'm kind of introducingmyself in many ways. So I used
to be this, essentially the CEO.When you start a company, you
kind of look around with threeother co founders, who is the
CEO here, and I was like, It'sme, but we, we decided from
(01:13):
like, literally day one thatthis was, this was going to be a
product that was going to bereally well suited for US
market. And by going all in. Weknew we had to change things.
But actually, at the same time,I've been in sales for 15 years.
I've been ahead of sales. I lovesales and marketing. I kind of
always wanted to be the CRO Idon't think I really wanted that
CEO title long term anyway, butyeah, I love everything. Go to
(01:36):
Market, and we're in thisfortunate world where I kind of
sell to myself, as it were, youknow, where we built it for
sales and marketing teams. I'mone of the personas, so it's
kind of easy before I was sayinglike E commerce tools. And I've
never been in E commerce. Inever really understood what was
doing. So I love the world thatwe're in. And yeah, I'm keen to
(01:56):
get into it and start chattingwith you guys. Fantastic.
Matt Best (01:59):
And that's brilliant. We'll dig a bit more into that,
into that, into that, thatjourney that you've gone on from
sitting around a table,presumably, or maybe in a bar
just debating who should be theCEO, who should take what role,
as is customary on the growthworkshop podcast, we'd love you
to answer this question if youwere to choose two people to be
on your personal board ofadvisors. These are people who
would advise you personally onlife, on work, on your business,
(02:22):
on all facets, who would they beand why?
Alex Olley (02:24):
Look, I think it's really hard one don't be
offended by if I don't if, if mymates are listening and then
they're not getting chosen, thendon't be offended by click. I
think that there are two peoplehave had massive impacts on my
life who I would actually like.I would love to have them on a
continued journey. And one ofthem is actually Jay, who I
(02:44):
started reached us with. Now heand I, we met in 2012 I was one
of his first sales hires in hiscompany. Yieldify, amazing
journey, like we went from likezero to, I think it was 12
million in a year, and it waslike colossal initial growth. He
taught me a lot, and we ended upstarting reach desk together,
and at times, there were a lotof clashes, actually, because it
was a different relationship.Was no longer his sales leader
(03:06):
or anything, or that AE the samelevel, but he helped me so much,
like he was that we were talkingabout before, he was that
mirror, that person that wouldask me the hard questions. But
also you need someone that'stelling you doing a good job. I
didn't have that for manypeople, particularly when you're
found it's quite lonely. Veryfew people are saying you're
doing great, by the way, all youthink is, I want to do better,
(03:29):
and I want to do more, andyou're trying to reach that next
milestone. You get there, andit's the next thing. And he was
the one saying, enjoy thismoment, enjoy these things.
Like, I remember there was a daywhen we'd lost a load of deals.
You know, there was some, like,five or six people. I'm
thinking, this is awful. What amI doing? I've given up
everything. I've given up, like,a decent salary, and really
great company can buildsomething. And he was the one
(03:51):
saying, dude, don't worry. Likeyou're just in the struggle. And
there's always a breakthrougharound the corner. Having
someone like that is gold. Theother person that I probably
bring on is guy called Fergus.And Fergus was Marc benioff's
right hand man. He's actually inbenioff's book Behind the Cloud.
I actually didn't know that atthe time, and it's funny, the
way I met Fergus was actuallyduring our series B due
(04:11):
diligence. I had this moment. Iwas called into this meeting,
and I was like, Guys, what'sthis meeting that's happening?
So it's an investor, they wannado some due diligence. I'm like,
okay, just present your normalstuff that you presented to all
the other investors. And Iremember presenting things, and
it was supposed to be half anhour meeting, I think it turned
into a four hour meeting. Andthere was this guy called Fergus
(04:31):
who was just asking theseconstant, like, really difficult
questions about, like, sales,velocity by Channel and metrics
and enablement and scaling andall this stuff. And I was, I
don't really know what I'mdoing, and I'm remember calling
my founders up afterwards. So Ithink I just lost us our series
B guys. What was that about?Anyway? So they actually came
back to us, and they wrote areport, and I think it said
(04:52):
something like, Alex is a decentsales leader, or something like
that, a bit sort of middle ofthe line. And it was Fergus
report. I think I'm allowed to.This, but doesn't matter anyway.
And I actually, I messaged himafterwards. I said I didn't get
it. You told me a new one there.And that was that was putting
one that the most intensemeetings ever. I thought we'd
lost everything. And he's like,Yeah, well, I'm just trying to
(05:14):
test you. I'm trying to pressuretest you. And I said, Well,
you're clearly full ofknowledge. Can we work together
and you level me up? And he justsaid, Yes. I was like, wow,
okay. And I looked him up andwent, Oh my God, this guy's
actually, like, He's a beast.He's done it. He's taken
Salesforce, I think he joined at5 million, error, and he left
Salesforce, and they're like,one half billion. So you talk
(05:35):
about like, I'm at the zero toone guy, the one to 1010, to 50,
blah, blah. He's like, there forfive to one point, however, many
billion. And those sessions withhim just took me to a totally
different level. And I thought,I think I had too much ego, and
he kind of brought that me backdown a little bit. But it was
just like, here's a problem. Ithink it's, I'm sorry if this is
(05:57):
a really stupid thing to bebringing to you. Can we work
through it? And most of time,you're like, it's not stupid
problem at all. Actually. Youthink if actually, you're
thinking about the right things,but you just think about the
wrong way. And thoseconversations would translate
into massive impact. And so froma go to market standpoint, I
would always want him with me.
Jonny Adams (06:12):
I think that's so interesting and quite jealous.
You've got these amazingadvisors around you. No offense
to my advisors. Of course, I'mcurious to know a little bit
more about reach desk as well,and maybe where the origin is,
because we don't have a problemin the world about ideas. What
we have a problem about isactivation, implementation,
(06:34):
right? You know, I thinkactually, was it smaller than 1%
of ideas actually become tosomething as successful as what
you're building. And for thelisteners, you know, what is
Reach Desk, it would be great tohave a bit...
Alex Olley (06:43):
Sure, if you boil it down, we help companies create
and accelerate pipeline usingdirect mail, gifting and swag,
like you can do that for yourexisting customers and employees
too. That's ultimately,ultimately what we do. And so we
started it because essentially,when was this, about 2017 I was
seeing. I had SDRs, A's in myteam. We weren't seeing the same
(07:05):
results from calling, fromemailing, as perhaps we used to
when I started in sales. I had adesk phone and a print out
sheet, and that was it. It waslike, these are your people you
need to call. And it was justsmashed through the numbers. But
back in whenever that was, thatwas 15 odd years ago. You could
dial 10 people and you mighthave five conversations as
unheard of, right? But so thatthat that's taken to ridiculous,
(07:28):
and then where we are today andin the middle was kind of reach
that square, and you saw therise of these sales engagement
platforms like outreach andsales loft. We just weren't
seeing the results that wewanted. And I do remember it was
working for Danish company, andthe CRO asked me to go to
Denmark. These results aren'tgreat. The pipeline, it's just
(07:49):
not really growing. You need tobring some ideas to the table,
and we discuss certain things,the standard stuff that you'd
expect. And is that? What elseyou got? I said, I wish some
people gifts. And there was thisreally awkward, like, it felt
like five minutes. It wasprobably in about 10 seconds,
and he just burst and laughingin my face. I was like, Oh, what
(08:11):
have I said? I may as well justlike, hand in my notice now. And
he kind of literally just like,are you? Are you joking? That's
your solution. It's like, we'regoing to send people gifts. We
didn't know was we'd alreadystarted doing it, and we had, I
used to give my SDRs, like mywhat, my company card, and we
would go on these shoppingtrips, and we'd research our top
accounts and our prospects andeverything. And we would go and
(08:33):
buy these, like, custom giftsand have their names engraved on
it and everything. Then we wouldsend them to their offices, and
soon as they arrived, we'd callthem, and we were getting that
5% response rate on email. Wewere getting like, 50 to 75% on
sending people stuff, someone'swho's done really well. And I
still remember this moment whereone of the STRS Charlie sent, he
sent this amazing they it wasthe CMO of pretty little thing
(08:57):
fast fashion brand, right?They'd just done their unicorn
campaign, and he sent this,like, personalized unicorn with
this like gold embossednotebook, and he'd done a lot of
research on it, and he'd beentrying to get through to her for
about a year, right? And themoment it landed, she called
him, and she said, I don't knowyou guys, what is it you do?
What do you want? And the nextday, we're on a train to
(09:20):
Manchester to meet her. We satin her office and we had this
meeting. And so what we starteddoing is the company I was at
the time. We had five officesaround the world, and people
heard about this story. Soeveryone started doing the same
as us, doing these personalizedcampaigns, going on these trips.
And we would, we would get supercreative with them. We do we and
(09:40):
we it would be holistic as well.We do it as part of email and
video follow up, and it was donereally well, but then it broke
because no one knew how much wewere spending, no one could like
track it. We had this newmarketing director who basically
shut it down. Said, we're notdoing this anymore. Guess what
happened? Our response ratesdipped, our pipeline dipped, and
that's when I started lookinginto solutions to help automate.
This. You know, we were only inEurope. There was no one doing
(10:03):
anything to help Europeancompanies. There were certain
companies starting to do it inthe US, but no one was really
thinking about the internationalside of things. And I called Jay
and Milan, the two brotherswho'd founded the business I was
at before at yotify, and Iactually said, I was like, What?
What do you guys do? And theysaid, we got the same problem.
Everyone spoke to us like we'reactually doing this. I thought,
this. I thought we were the onlyguys doing this custom gifting.
(10:26):
We're doing it, and we can'tfigure out how to scale it
either. So we realized it's awidespread problem, validated
it. And it's one of thosemoments where I think you
mentioned that the meeting inthe bar, we met in a bar in
London, Victoria, and kind ofthat day, almost instantly, just
said, Let's build anothercompany. And it kind of just
happened there and then. And Ithink I went home and spoke to
my wife, was that I'm going tostart a business with guys from
(10:48):
yotify. What do you think? Shewas like, Yeah, great. Don't
think, I don't think she thoughtI was, I was serious. You know,
we're building and then that wasit really so it was based off a
problem that we saw, yeah, andwe wanted to make sure that we
could build something thatwasn't just a US based business,
but at the same time, mostpeople I spoke to in Europe, the
(11:09):
problem I had was that I'd speakto people in Europe and they're
like, gifting really similarresponse to what I got when,
when I said it to my CROeveryone I spoke to in the US,
they were like, Yeah, we doalready. It's we've got loads of
budget for it. And this is,like, part of our our culture,
and like, gifting out there,within, like outbound and ABM
was absolutely massive. And sowe decided to build a business,
(11:32):
and then at the same time, wewere like, We need to get to the
US fast.
Matt Best (11:35):
That's crazy. So I guess that's your that. I mean,
that's starting to feed intothat sort of founder story. I'm
really interested to understand,as you were going through that
build process, were thereanything specific areas or
things that sort of thosehurdles that you had to leap
over that you could share withthe audience? And a bit of
advice, perhaps?
Alex Olley (11:54):
How long you got?
Matt Best (11:57):
That's often the response, Alex, but yeah,
there's a couple of kind of keythings that you're like, you
know what? I don't know, madethat mistake, or saw that
opportunity that I haven't seenbefore or since, that could be
useful.
Alex Olley (12:09):
Our first biggest hurdle was, how do you get to
the US? But I still have tothink about, how do we have the
right team in the hometerritory? I'm an advisor to a
number of businesses. I see thiscommon mistake of like, we
basically the home territorygets left behind, right they go
to the US, and they forget aboutwhat the relatiview, and that's
usually where the culture is.And one things I learned is
you've got to take it with you.Now, when I've tried going into
(12:30):
other countries in the past, Ifelt like I could just hire a
squad on the ground, and it'snever worked. For some reason
when I've taken people with me,I mean, so when we went to the
US, I went myself. I brought keypeople with me who could share
that knowledge, who could makesure that you know when I'm not
there, the culture of how we dothings, our DNA is maintained
and really instilled those.Those things were pretty
(12:53):
critical. But like, I think ifyou my approach to everything,
we call it, actually, it's, Ididn't coin this. It was Adam
from ebster, who works with GuyRubin, and call it the caveman
theory. And it's basically likegoing, you need to go and get
your food club over there andbring it back to the cave. And
that's what outbound is to me.So at the very beginning, and
(13:16):
every business I advise, I makesure, as long as it makes sense
to have this sort of likeoutbound method to what you do,
because of the particularlyearly stage, particularly early
stage is one of the easiestthings that you can control. I
see loads of companies nowtrying to spend too much time on
building a brand, and they talkabout distribution, but it's
actually not distribution. It'sthat at the beginning, zero to
one is brute force, and you haveto go and get it. And that
(13:37):
lesson is so underestimated. Andwhenever I tell people that it's
particularly that early stage.They come back to me, like, I
get it now I've just got to goout there every event. I'm there
we, like founders, are diningtogether. They're pushing
forward, and I see too manycompanies that aren't prepared
to do that. And my word, I'mglad we did.
Matt Best (13:53):
It's fascinating. Just that sort of mindset piece.
I think it's important. But theI want to just step back into
the culture. How big is yourteam now in the US?
Alex Olley (14:03):
It's about 70 people.
Matt Best (14:06):
How did you scale that and scale the culture as
well?
Alex Olley (14:11):
How do we scale it so the culture, as I said, you
have to bring people, yeah, andyou've got to insulate them. And
it was only I remember thispoint. I remember hiring a
couple of people, one of themstill with me today. And when I
was hiring people at thebeginning, I was thinking,
mainly, yeah, can you do thejob? You got to tick the boxes,
but do you match our DNA? Like,if you don't, you don't make it.
(14:32):
And I remember having people, Ithink you could be an athlete
beast. You could crush it here,be just the wrong fit. And I've
seen companies tumble as aresult of, like, hiring bad
apples. That was one of mynumber one things I was looking
for. It's like, Are people gonnalike you? Are we gonna like
working with you? But also, wedo have a certain hustle to our
to our culture. It's not, areyou good people? Do you want to
get beers and have families likeI expect people to show up a
(14:56):
little bit early and work alittle bit late. I expect you to
be in the zone the entire. Mytime, I had to embody that. And
I'd say to people, if I'm notlike that and I don't embody
that, call me out on it. But youhave to lead by example. You've
got to hire people that aregoing to embody that too, and
that's how you scale it. And I'mnot gonna lie, I had moments
where I got it wrong. I got thewrong leaders. I think, you
know, the gyms of the world,great examples. One, because
(15:17):
they're hungry, they want tomove up the ranks. But I did
hire leaders who didn't embodythat. I think I did make the
mistake of looking at their CVand their experience too much.
And I'll put my hands in the airand say that those are mistakes,
not necessarily just here inprevious businesses too. Getting
that right is so important,because the moment you don't and
people are disconnected, theythat you start getting the
(15:38):
messages being like, what'shappened, and there's that awful
Slack message you get going. Iremember once someone was
saying, like, what we done here?Oh god, it's my fault. And so
I've prioritized the mindset,the mentality, all those things.
I actually wrote them down. It'sthe type of attributes I wanted
for people, and that's what we'dhire for, and that's in our
hiring process that values thatculture piece is really
(15:58):
essential. And we built thisreally robust hiring process,
which is almost like a salesprocess. It's like four steps.
There's non negotiables. Ifwe're not unified on it, if
we're not unanimous, they don'tyou don't allow people in. And
it's literally like scorecards.It's relentless. And that's
where you asked about scaling.You can scale hiring and
(16:19):
building out a team when you'vegot that in place. I see too
many companies are just like,Yeah, cool. They worked at Adobe
or Salesforce, and like, they'rejust going to bring all that
experience and they're going tosave the day. And you've just
got the wrong person.
Jonny Adams (16:32):
Clearly, I'm enjoying this. I mean, as a
host, it's like, I think if theaudience was hearing it's like,
Alex, you're sharing some greatinsights, but just give us the
answer, right? And you're on theit's like a trailer this
particular piece, because yousort of go and then, because the
two things I'm really curiousabout as you describe that, and
we often talk a lot aboutculture, Matt and I have worked
(16:53):
with a mutual client for fouryears. They went from detesting
the word sales, physically maybebeing sick around the word
sales. Now the manager isactually using the word sales
for years, but that's culture,right? That. And it takes a lot
of psychologists would say ittakes, you know, three, three
plus years to change culture ina large organization. My point
(17:13):
being, though, is you've startedto tease us a little bit with,
you know, you've got this list.What's the list I'm interested
in? Maybe just share a couple ofthose things that you that you
recruit for, it would be reallyinteresting, because you alluded
to one before and and maybe I'dlove to hear the values that
you've got as a business,because values match up to
culture. Values then enables abusiness to run the right hot
(17:36):
and cold behaviors. Values wouldbe great. And also, what are
some of these other things thatyou look for when recruiting?
Alex Olley (17:41):
Yeah. So the attributes, let's break it down.
The attributes are different byrole. I look for pretty similar
things like BDRs and AES. I tendto have like a so my strategy is
to hire BDRs that can translateinto AES in the future, ideally.
And what I look for when I'mhiring those kind of roles is
coachability, curiosity, priorsuccess, work ethic and
intelligence. I'm not. I'm notI'm not bothered, like, one of
(18:01):
the best times I made he didn'tgo to university. I don't even
know what his grades are to thisday, but it's just like,
unbelievable, because theintelligence part wasn't about
your degree or anything. It wasaround I understand your market.
I understand where you fit. Iunderstand how you can position
yourself. I understand thetrends that are going on, and
when people can demonstratethose kind of things, I'm like,
(18:22):
You're clearly really smart inthe way that I need you to be.
And that's, that's the mistake Isee companies make. They think
we need intelligent people, butthey need to have this kind of
degree or this, these kind ofgrades that doesn't help you,
like, it might do it if you'reGSK and you're you need someone
who's going to, like, protectyour IP or something. I need
people to sell so I need them tounderstand my market. So that's
(18:43):
the intelligence side of things.Prior success can be anything.
Let me give the example of Ben.He was a professional ice
skater. He can do a back flip onice skates. Not many people can
do that. To get to that level,you need to have, like, trained
to a certain degree and and itkind of goes back to the
underlying bit is that sort ofgrit and that resilience. But
prior success can be anything,really it can. What I'm looking
(19:04):
for is, I'm looking for peopleto demonstrate they've done
something to a level that veryfew can achieve. And that might
be that you were a reallysuccessful sales rep in the
past, but if your prior successwas, well, I was an account
executive before. All right,where were you on the
leaderboard? Is the question Iusually ask, and I'm going to
validate that with your oldboss. And if you're not, if
there are 10 of you and youweren't one of the top two,
(19:26):
probably weren't very good.Simple as that, the work ethic
you can test within theinterview process, with their
diligence on following up, andtheir attention to detail within
their presentations, that kindof thing. I asked a question
around like, describe your yourideal work week that helps you
be successful. And then what I'mlooking for is, like, a
systematic approach with no gapsin it, where they're like, Okay,
(19:46):
so I get in at 830 I start at845 because the day before I've
prepared 845 to 930 is dialing,and it's like, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang. And do all my followups. I'm not that's what I'm
looking for. Ultimately, that'swork ethic. And then everything
surrounding the interview.Process is, I'm looking for
those kind of things. Theconnect with me on LinkedIn,
saying, love this, whatever youspoke about...
Jonny Adams (20:06):
It's a sales process.
Alex Olley (20:07):
Exactly.
Jonny Adams (20:07):
And it's a buying process as well. And if they've
got some emotional intelligence,which I think is your beast
around intelligence as well,they should see it like that.
You know, absolutely resonatewith that the values of the business.
Alex Olley (20:18):
Yeah. Be bold. Learn fast, get things done. Be bold.
Learn fast. One value, Oh, wow.Get things done. Okay? Bold,
learn fast. Get things done. I'mlike that. I'm relentless,
right? I take I'm a big risktaker, right? I'm big on
learning from my failures, sothat I've always like day one, I
was like, you will makemistakes. You will make mistakes
all the time. That's fine. Ifyou keep making the same
(20:39):
mistake, it's not okay. So we'vegot to learn fast, but we've got
to take risks. We've got tolearn fast. But I'm all about
scoring 70% on the exam andgetting things shipped rather
than trying to perfect stuff,and I ask questions in the
interview process like give mean example of a moment when you
took a big risk and what youlearned from it. It's as simple
as that, and so long as theycan, doesn't matter what it is.
(21:00):
Sometimes they can articulatethat. I'm like, Okay, you are
part of our values. I've heardsome crazy things. I'm like,
this is brilliant, because I'msurprised you took that recipe.
You learned a lot from it,whether it went bad or wrong,
you're learning from it, allright? Treat people like people.
It's pretty, pretty selfexplanatory, right? That's what
we're all about. You don't needto be like that. We don't
(21:22):
tolerate it. And when we see it,we call it out, deliver
happiness, which is like, that'sbasically what we do at reach
desk. It's kind of thefoundation of what we do.
Obviously, we send gifts andthings, but we do that because I
think happy people means happycustomers, and we want to try
and embody that in our culture,and then probably my most My
favorite one is win as a team.Win as a team, win as a team.
(21:43):
There are no individuals, asmuch as you know. There's the
sad truth to sales that theperson who closed the deal gets
to ring the gong, and that'sthat. But we don't celebrate
like that. Our Gong channelcelebrates the BDR that opened
up the opportunity. It tags thesolution engineer that was on
the call, because we're like,when we and that seems like such
a trivial thing, but I thinkit's so important, and we shout
(22:04):
each other out with we don'thave this culture, this sort of
toxic sales culture, which I waspart of before. It's like, you
know, chess beating the salesmentality. It's like, you do win
as a team. Without that BDR,without that solution, engineer,
without the CSM jumping on totalk about the experience
they're going to get, we've,we've won deals because that's
our approach, whereas ourcompetitors are just like in
(22:26):
that one lane, and they have,I'm not saying all of them are,
but some of them are like that.And we've had the feedback from
prospects. I asked them, Iinterviewed them. They say, why
did you choose us? They're like,You sent an army, and we felt
that that's what we were goingto get. And the experiences,
which is way better.
Jonny Adams (22:42):
Love that, massively resonate with, you
know, teams win deals, and youknow, you can see that with the
evolution of a more complexbuying cycle, more personas,
more stakeholders. And we know,because as a consultancy, we
have to go in as a team. Becausehow can you deliver a project
that's multi millions over multiyears with just one person, it's
impossible, but that ability tomatch up to those personas and
(23:05):
have the ability to match up tothe behaviors as well, right?
It's so crucial. I know there'sloads to unpack on that comment.
Matt Best (23:11):
I completely agree, and I love it's a sort of
element of simplicity there,Alex, it's like the clarity that
you have. It's like, this iswhat I need. This is what I'm
going to get. I've got a methodfor getting it. I think this is
also interesting. I wondered ifwe'd surveyed all of the, you
know, the sales directors andeven CROs like yourself out
there in the market, said, howdo you in an interview recognize
or measure whether someone'sgoing to align to your values or
(23:34):
not? I wonder what the responserate? I mean, there's a there's
a poll there, but like, youclearly gone, I can understand
whether they're going to alignto this value by asking them
this question. And so often it'sactually about, Okay, talk to me
about your experience. What'syour process for, for closing a
deal, like, all of that stuff,or, like, talk to me about the
different clients you've workedwith. But to your point,
actually, it's the it's theunderlying behavior that you're
(23:56):
looking for, because you cantrain in that other stuff. You
can help someone understand it,as long as they're demonstrating
the right capabilities or theand the right desire. It feels
like desires are kind of bigthing in there as well.
Alex Olley (24:07):
Yeah, big time. And I think the thing I learned with
these things is, like, I'vespent so much of my time
documenting this stuff, and forpeople listening, I've literally
got this document. I havetemplates that I can share, but
like, think about that, thatthat sales hiring process. There
is a document which says stageone internal talent team, they
ask these questions. And partthat, by the way, is actually
candidate experience as well.Because I've been, I hadn't
(24:30):
interviewed for a long time now,but I remember I used to and I'd
be asked the same question overand over again, and I these guys
talk about about stuff this isawful, yeah. And so part of it
is like, Hey, are we on the samepage about like what we're
asking so that we can actuallytest for different things?
Otherwise, we may as well justhave one stage. And so I treat
everything that way, and I dolike internal memos, and I put
(24:50):
things in Google Sheets whichbasically like this person is
going to ask these things theyare testing for these
attributes. Really critically,this what a model answer looks
like. Here's a score out of 10if they don't. Make this score,
they don't get through greatstage one. Stage two,
attributes, questions who's up,who's involved, and it's just
that it's a systematic approachthat we've put into our ATS
scorecard comes up. We can wehave an unbiased way of looking
(25:13):
at things going no, this persondoesn't make it simple as that
speeds things up, gets everyone aligned.
Jonny Adams (25:18):
And it saves you a ton of money, yeah, because we
know that, you know, Miss hiringis five times the salary, you
know, and we've all made somereally shocking hires, haven't
we, and it comes back to arobustness of recruitment
process. And I think when you goback and you recruit and you go,
do you know what that wasinteresting, what was the
recruitment process like foryou? Do you know what, what I
really liked was the rigor, andthat rigor, where they feel like
(25:38):
they're achieving something ateach stage as a candidate keeps
them bought in. And recently,we've had someone, you know,
when we've been doingrecruitment, actually drop out
at stage three, because we'vegot four stages best that they
drop out at Stage Three ratherthan cruising to stage four,
thinking there's some mutual andthen all of a sudden they're
going to drop out three months later.
Matt Best (25:56):
Indeed, thank you so much for joining us, Alex. We
look forward to having you againon part two.
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