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The the thing that I just like to encourage founders and and product managers what have you is just don't be afraid of sales.
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There's a lot of people out there who are like who would love to tell you a story that it's, you know, it's magical or like oh, you got to be a born seller things like that and it's really not, right?
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Like those people are just talking their their book, if you will.
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And so just like getting good at at those behaviors is going to, you know, it's going to benefit you in a myriad of ways.
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Welcome to Lenny's podcast.
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I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products.
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Today my guest is Pete Kazanjy.
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Pete is the author of my single favorite book on sales called Founding Sales, which I point every B2B founder to.
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He also runs a huge community of sales people called Modern Sales Pros.
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He's also the CEO and founder of Atrium, which is a SaaS product that helps you make your sales team more efficient through analytics and data.
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In our conversation we focus on three things.
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One, why founders should be doing sales themselves for a long time before hiring your first salesperson and also when it's time to hire that first salesperson.
1:04
We get into how to hire for your first salesperson with a look for in the profile and the most common mistakes people make.
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And finally, we cover a bunch of tactical tips for getting better at sales.
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Pete didn't come from my sales background and he learned everything by just doing it, learning, researching, and repeating.
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I know that you'll learn a ton from this conversation.
1:23
With that, I bring you Pete Kazanjy.
1:28
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2:45
Hey Ashley, head of marketing at Flatfile.
2:47
How many B2B SaaS companies would you estimate need to import CSV files from their customers? At least 40%.
2:53
And how many of them screw that up and what happens when they do?
2:56
Well, based on our data, about a third of people will consider switching to another company after just one bad experience during onboarding.
3:06
So if your CSV importer doesn't work right, which is super common considering customer files are chalk full of unexpected data and formatting, they'll leave.
3:17
I am 0% surprised to hear that.
3:17
I've consistently seen that improving onboarding is one of the highest leverage opportunities for both sign-up conversion and increasing long-term retention.
3:25
Getting people to your aha moment more quickly and reliably is so incredibly important. Totally.
3:30
It's incredible to see how our customers like Square, Spotify, and Zuora are able to grow their businesses on top of Flatfile.
3:39
This because flawless data onboarding acts like a catalyst to get them and their customers where they need to go faster.
3:49
If you'd like to learn more or get started, check out Flatfile at flatfile. com/lenny.
3:58
Pete, welcome to the podcast.
3:58
Hey Lenny, super awesome to see you.
4:01
Even more awesome on my part.
4:04
Ever since I launched this podcast, I've always wanted to have you on it. We're finally here.
4:09
We've been online buddies for a few years now ever since I discovered your book on Founding Sales, which we're going to talk about, and it's just been a lot of fun knowing you.
4:17
So thank you again for being here.
4:19
again for being here. The quick story was Lenny had shipped his um different genres of marketplaces and how to like start the liquidity and growth and whatever and I was obsessed with it and then somehow I ran into you at Brianne Kimmel's SaaS School and I was like
4:34
after I I I gave a presentation on founder-led selling and there was like a scrum of people around me and I was talking about like amazing writers and amazing content online and I referenced the the the series and and then you raised your hand you're like that that was me. And I was like what? You're And I was like what? You're amazing.
4:48
And then we got beers and like, you know, and and now now like we're happily ever after. Look at us now.
4:55
And then you encouraged me to make a book out of that post which I had not yet done. Maybe one day. Eventually.
5:01
So we're going to be talking a lot about sales and a lot of the stuff that you cover in your book.
5:04
Before we get into it, could you just take a minute to share a little bit about your background and some of the wonderful things you've done to kind of give folks a sense of your experience in the sales world?
5:14
I think probably the most important thing to characterize for folks is that I don't actually have a background in sales like originally, which is where most sales leaders and and sellers come from a, you know, they they graduate from school be a BDR, become an AE, AE manager or BDR manager, and then go on to sales leadership.
5:28
My background's actually in product marketing and product management.
5:30
I started my tech career at VMware back in the day.
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Tons of like amazing like fun VMware diaspora.
5:37
And then I started a software company called Talentpin.
5:39
It was a recruiting software company in um jeez Louise, 2009.
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And um just like we quickly realized that like man, this software like this B2B software stuff like doesn't sell itself like irrespective of like maybe what people say on the internet, at least back then.
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And so I had to be our first seller, our, you know, our first sales manager, our first sales leader and that's kind of like where I learned how to do sales.
6:02
And I also just kind of like realized like man, this isn't this isn't rocket surgery.
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Um like anyone can can learn this.
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Like if I can learn this like other people can learn this even though there's like no documentation on it.
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And so the software company was eventually acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2014 and then I wrote I wrote a book on on sales for founders and other kind of first-time sellers.
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It's called Founding Sales.
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Mainly it was like the book that I wish I had. Right?
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So rather than like, you know, having to learn via narrative from uh, you know, the rest of the first-round capital portfolio and what have you.
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And then subsequent to that I started the what became the nation's largest sales operations leadership community.
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It's called Modern Sales Pros.
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It's 30,000 sales operations, sales leaders, etc.
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And then started a new software company called Atrium that makes data-driven sales management software and and then here I am.
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So I think a little bit about sales, turns out. Modern sales, right?
6:54
Not not not that old sales, modern sales.
6:59
Ooh, I'm curious to hear what that is, but before I ask you that question, I just wanted to mention the book your book Founding Sales is like the book I give every founder that is trying to figure out sales.
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And every time I give it to them or point them to your even your site that has all for free, they're always just like holy this is exactly what I needed.
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So we're going to be covering a lot of that stuff in our little chat. Rad.
7:19
Can you actually just briefly talk about what is modern sales versus what you called traditional sales or old school sales?
7:24
Oh, I just think that like, you know, there's a little bit of like a mindset change.
7:27
It's kind of it's a little bit related to some of the reasons why founders and kind of other folks maybe have like this perception of sales to be like ew, sales.
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And it's because like people are like you know, their only experience with sales is like Glengarry Glen Ross or like, you know, movies with like, you know, sleazy car salesmen and stuff like that.
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Whereas the way to kind of think about like what sellers are is they're kind of like the the microeconomic agents in the market that bring supply to demand.
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Rather than waiting for demand to find supply.
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Like they they have supply in their back pocket and they they run around trying to find people who ought to have the demand.
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Maybe they have the demand right now.
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Maybe they don't realize that they have the demand and then they like elucidate to them why they ought to have the demand.
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So like A, that process is very important from a technology deployment standpoint and also B, it's like very measurable, especially in a modern environment where like, you know, um with modern CRMs and also kind of like all the digital activity that we do, email, calendar, phone, Zoom, etc.
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Like all this information is now being recorded such that you can then like measure, manage, and improve behavior.
8:31
So very similar to how like back in the day you do product analytics by like licking your finger and sticking in the wind and then like then Mixpanel showed up, then Amplitude showed up, then, you know, so on and so forth.
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And the same is kind of the case in in sales as well.
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So like modern sales is a more thoughtful, operational, rigorous, analytical kind of bent.
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It like it's been around for a while.
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It's kind of like one of those things like the future is here, it's just like wasn't widely widely distributed.
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But but now it's like being much more, you know, much more distributed and much more like embraced.
9:03
Kind of like, you know, the pre-moneyball moment in uh, you know, in in sports and and baseball to kind of the post-moneyball moment.
9:11
We're now kind of like just flipping over there.
9:14
So that's kind of the delta. Awesome.
9:17
I definitely want to talk about ways to get better at sales and like things you've learned about just how to improve at sales.
9:22
But to set a little bit foundation for that conversation, I want to talk about founder-led sales.
9:27
You touched on this topic.
9:27
Your book is basically named after this concept of founder-led sales.
9:31
Can you talk about what that is, why it's so important, and maybe why founders often get this wrong?
9:37
The way that I kind of think about Founding Sales, the the book Founding Sales is it's kind of like the um I I like to think of it as like the sequel to Eric Ries's like The Lean Startup or like Steve Blank's um Four Steps to the Epiphany or like Startup Owner's Manual or whatever.
9:53
Where if you think about the stages of um, you know, that like and this is all B2B right?
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If you think about the stages that a a product goes through it's one you got to like know what problem you're solving right and validate that and it's got to be real.
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It can't be like oh well I thought it I had this problem.
10:10
It's got to be validated and that's like customer development that's customer research right?
10:14
And that's more of like a product management function.
10:16
And then there's um you know building the minimum feature set in order to prove that like maybe technology can fit to this this problem and like solve it like and that's how like we create create value as technologists is like piecing together you know technology and code or like bits and atoms and and what have you in order to solve a problem that people have.
10:35
But then the next step is like okay cool now I got to get someone to pay for this and I got to do that in a reliable fashion and I got to do it in a scalable fashion.
10:43
And so like there's kind of like a little bit of a loop there right?
10:47
It's not like all right the product's done throw it over the wall have fun kids.
10:50
It's more like a it's a loop right?
10:52
We're like the minimum like the minimum viable version of your product is probably going to suck right?
10:58
And then in order to get to the minimum viable step like you got to be interfacing with a lot of customers with a lot of you know and that's and that's like that's a sales behavior right?
11:03
Like get in front of people and be like hey I think you probably have this problem if you look like these other folks right here and the point is is that like you can't outsource that behavior right?
11:13
The founders got to do that stuff and a lot of people kind of ask me that question is like well I I suck at sales or like I'm afraid to talk to people or you know like interfacing with non-friendly parties is like makes me uncomfortable.
11:26
And the way to kind of think about it is like it's um I forget who the the person was who said startups versus incumbents is a race between like can innovation get to distribution before distribution can get to innovation.
11:39
And so this is kind of related concept where as a founder it's going to be way easier for you to get good or like minimally viable good at selling by having like interactions with like non-friendly parties and like you know having commercial conversations and asking for money in exchange for their in exchange for the value delivered.
11:58
It's going to be easier for you to do that than it is for some third party to become as expert at the subject matter that you're tackling that you are.
12:06
Because as a founder early on like use Atrium as an example we make data-driven sales management software which it it exists to help sales managers and teams use metrics and data to improve the performance of their reps.
12:16
I mean the way to kind of think about it is kind of like Amplitude-y kind of DataDog-y Amplitude-y but like for your your sales reps.
12:25
I'm probably the the the expert in sales like analytics in the world right?
12:31
And so like back in 2016 and 2017 when we were doing this if I had like you know put aside the fact that like I already know how to do minimum viable selling if I had tried to get somebody else expert at that in order for them to go out and do that in the market like that would have been not good right?
12:45
And then this is why Steve Blank always talks about like startups can't get through can't get to scale without firing their first VP of sales.
12:52
It's often times because they skip that step.
12:54
And so the founder is like hey man I'm going to like pour a little bit of sales on this hire some you know sales leader or whatever some sort of seller and outsource this and you really just can't do that.
13:04
Not for the first like couple dozen customers. It's just not tenable.
13:07
You like you lose that feedback loop you lose the learnings of like whether or not your message fits the market all that sort of stuff you like you're playing a game of telephone with that with a seller like a third-party seller versus you and like you just want to keep that in one brain to start then package it and then when when you have a repeatable like while loop right?
13:26
Like a selling while loop then package it and hand it to someone else.
13:31
So that's kind of like my diatribe on like why founders have to do this.
13:34
I was going to try to summarize the reasons that you should be doing this and it sounds like there's so many.
13:39
One is figure out what you should actually be building.
13:41
That's the reason founders should be selling.
13:43
Two is learn how to position and pitch and sell. Yeah.
13:47
Three is figure out what you could teach your sales person when you hire them.
13:50
Is that kind of the summary of why you should be selling as a founder for a while? Yeah for sure.
13:55
I mean like one it's going to help you with your product development because you're not going to have that abstracted for sure.
13:59
have that abstracted for sure. Two it's going to help like you're going to be the person who's going to figure out how to talk about it in an effective way and then three it's going to make it such that you can package that up such that other human cuz like that's the way that B2B startups scale is like it's not like WhatsApp or or like you know Twitter or like Airbnb or whatever where you have like this kind of like scalability via
14:22
marketing the way that B2B organizations scale primarily is by adding more sales people who then have customer-facing meetings with prospects and then you cap out with like the number of meeting number of hours that
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are in the week like there's only 40 or 50 hours in the week especially like as a seller because you interface with other people during business hours and so the way that you scale up is by just adding more sales people right? And so that's why
14:45
And so that's why packaging that up is really important because then you're going to shove it into the brains of you know two more sales people and then once they're successful you're going to go to four and then once they're successful you're going to go to eight and then once they're successful you're going to go to 16.
14:59
You talk about this while loop concept which I love.
15:02
What are signs that it's time to hire your first salesperson?
15:04
It's kind of like begs the question when do I do this?
15:09
Yeah I'm not a software engineer but like I like to use technical metaphors with technical audiences when I'm because I think it's like helpful.
15:15
And so it's kind of like when it runs on your local right?
15:20
Now it's time to like see if it reproduces over here right?
15:24
So if it reliably runs on your local and it doesn't like error out um and so so then what would the definition of like not erroring out look like?
15:35
And and so generally speaking it's like kind of is contingent on your on your sales motion but it's going to be like you know that you can reliably at like a at a pretty okay win rate so like maybe 15% or 20% or 25% turn first meetings into eventual customers right?
15:53
And like do that in a reliable fashion.
15:54
It's not like you know I engaged 10 arms-length parties and I got two customers closed is like hey that's great good that's a good start.
16:01
Do that five like five x that 10 x that right?
16:06
So you know take 50 at bats take 100 at bats and now that you know that you reliably for every you know for every cohort of 10 first meetings that what's known in in sales land as opportunities for every cohort of of 10 that you engage are you closing you know are you closing one? Are you closing 1. 5? Are you closing two? Are you closing 2. 5?
16:27
If you're in there but if you're at like yeah for every 30 I interact with I close one well that seems like that's probably like pretty inefficient unless you know you're selling $500,000 deals or something like that.
16:39
So it's it's at the point where you like you have the like it feels like it's statistically significant it feels like it's repeatable because what you're going to then do is like now it feels like it's a safe bet to try to abstract that out to somebody else.
16:53
Because the only way we're going to get to success is like we're not going to have Lenny go and like sell from morning noon and night right?
17:01
What we're going to do is we're going to take the information out of Lenny's brain and we're going to put it in the slides and we're going to put it in the scripts and we're going to put it into email templates and all that sort of stuff and then we're going to shove that into the brain of two more reps and see if we now we can get it to like run in the cloud right?
17:17
In the in the sales cloud here.
17:19
And and then to start out like you may it may fail like the same way you say like all right cool like it runs on my local uh-oh it breaks over here okay why? Right?
17:27
And then that's like the sec the next stage is now you're figuring out how to get those other folks to sell as successfully as you have and that becomes like the next job.
17:38
This is a actually this is the presentation I gave at Brian's SAS school was there's if you Google it it's just called like founder-led selling it's like available online.
17:46
It's essentially there's like a bunch of stages in the B2B maturity journey and like you have to go through them in order to get to the next one.
17:57
If you jump stages like you're kind of hosed.
18:00
And so in this case like if you know that you can reliably sell this yourself that's great then the next thing to do is get you know at least a couple people reliably selling as well as you not 10 because you're never going to get two successful if you're trying to onboard 10 concurrently.
18:13
And then if you get those two successful now you've earned the right to go to four eight etc.
18:21
I love this heuristic that you shared that you want to get to about 15 to 25% of contacts closing to a customer.
18:27
Yeah I see you're shaking your thumb.
18:29
I think that's a really useful so it's like a third a bit less than a third and doing like 50 to 100 attempts is roughly where you want to be.
18:38
Yeah and and importantly what you don't want to do is and I think probably a lot of the product managers like to listen to Lenny's podcast here might appreciate this is like you got you like you want to bring on like cohorts of users and then kind of like see what's going on then learn and then bring on new co- cohorts of users right?
18:53
So going and like doing 100 at bats and then being like okay did it work or not versus like hey let's let's have 10 for like prospect and try to get 10 first meetings have all those like have all those interactions see how your conversations land see how the discovery questions are are evoking the right response or not the right response see how your slides land see how your demo lands all that sort of stuff.
19:14
If it's working well and you're getting to the next stage yeah this is great I would love to introduce you to my boss. Ah that's a good sign.
19:20
This is like yeah I'm just not getting it.
19:22
All right cool back to the drawing board hard right?
19:24
So versus doing like 100 100 all at once and then being like all right now did it work? Right?
19:29
We want to like break it up and and then like constantly just be iterating iterating iterating.
19:33
And like again for your I think your audience might appreciate this the way to kind of think of a sales motion.
19:38
So sales motion is like a fancy pants way of describing just like all the things that you do in order to take a prospect and like you know bring them through the sales process and then eventually close them.
19:49
And one helpful way to think about it is kind of like software, right?
19:52
And like what you want to be doing is like constantly updating it.
19:56
Like, "Oh, that was a really interesting question that that the prospect asked right there that I didn't have a good answer for it.
20:00
And moreover, I didn't have a slide for it.
20:03
You know what I should do?
20:03
I should make a slide that handles that objection." Right?
20:08
So that so I can show it to them visually.
20:10
And it also it'll help it'll help give me uh guardrails and a talk track. And that'll be nice. So I'm going to do that.
20:16
I'm going to like and then I'm going to update the I'm going to update the source code, right?
20:19
And like now my sales motion has been updated. Right?
20:23
And then the next loop through, ideally, the next time that person says like, "Oh, I don't know, Lenny.
20:27
It doesn't really sound like, you know, XYZ."
20:31
You're like, "Oh, you know, a lot of people say that, but here, if you if you look over here, you can see this."
20:36
"Oh, yeah, that's a really good point." Wonderful.
20:38
So as the next step, let's go ahead and talk to your boss, right?
20:39
And so like now your sales motion has been updated and the collateral's been updated.
20:44
And now we're like we're being more effective sellers.
20:46
And you're just going to do that dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of time before you're like you have a a repeatable sales motion.
20:54
What's interesting is with this heuristic, like 2/3 of the time it's not going to work out. No.
20:59
And so a lot of times they're going to be like, "Yeah, I don't get this. Leave me alone." Yeah.
21:03
Is there other leading indicators that tell you you're improving knowing that like only a third or maybe a fifth of the time it'll work out?
21:08
Is it like talking to the boss off more often?
21:12
What else do you look for? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Totally. It's right.
21:15
So like what are the leading indicators of success?
21:16
Because if you're only looking at like lagging indicators, So again, it's probably like a it it's like a funnel on an on a new feature, right?
21:24
So the opportunity is is like an an at-bat, right?
21:27
Or a potential transaction.
21:29
And so usually what you do is you model out the stages in your opportunity.
21:32
And so generally like there will be kind of different stages depending on the the sales motion.
21:36
So like use Atrium as an example.
21:39
We we sell on on customer data.
21:41
It takes like 5 minutes to turn on an Atrium account.
21:45
So you know, it's it's really really helpful for folks. They just sign in.
21:48
They OAuth with Salesforce.
21:48
So really important part like stage in our sales motion is did we we call it data light, right? Has data been lit up?
21:55
And so that's a stage, right?
21:58
We have a discovery stage.
21:59
We have a data light stage.
22:00
We have like a um what we call a preview stage.
22:02
Like are we previewing it with the staff?
22:05
Then we, you know, get to a commercial discussion.
22:06
And so you can measure how you're getting to those stages, which is kind of like, you know, somebody lands on like whatever page that that Lenny was in charge of at Airbnb.
22:16
And like did they click on the right thing?
22:19
And did they get to the next thing?
22:20
And they get to the next thing? Get to the next thing?
22:22
And so in sales, it's kind of the same thing.
22:23
And so the more sophisticated version of this is looking at stage conversions, what have you.
22:29
The less sophisticated version of it, which early on I think is the appropriate way of doing it, is like, "Hey, man, are we getting second dates?" Right?
22:36
So like just, you know, just just metaphorize it to to to Hinge or, you know, Coffee Meets Bagel or like whatever the the the more recent one is.
22:44
It's like, "All right, are we getting to second dates?
22:45
Are we getting to third dates?"
22:46
Cuz if we're if we're not getting to second dates, like probably something's like a miss there.
22:50
And so what we want to do is we want to say, "Great.
22:53
Of all of our 10 first meetings, how many get to second meetings?"
22:56
Like it would be great like the lagging indicator is, you know, two wins out of 10 or what have you.
23:01
But I'm going to come into these conversations and I want out of my 10 first meetings like I want seven of them get to a second meeting. Right?
23:10
And then I want of those seven, maybe I want like, you know, I want 4.
23:12
5 of them to get to uh to get to the third meeting.
23:17
And then ultimately, I want like two or three to to win.
23:19
And that's the way to kind of think about that.
23:23
Like those are the leading indicators.
23:25
And so like as those conversions get better, like, "Man, I'm not getting any second dates." Oh, okay, cool. You need a haircut. Right? Or you need a shower. Right?
23:32
And the same applies to your uh to your sales motion as well.
23:34
Like your message is not landing. Right?
23:36
You're targeting the wrong people.
23:38
Why like what's going on here?
23:39
You need to you know, you need to think about it.
23:40
You need a better pick up line. There you go. Right?
23:43
Now you're not even getting first dates, man.
23:45
You're just like, "Man, like yeah, go all the way up to like you need a better Hinge profile picture, right?"
23:50
You're just like not getting any any matches.
23:54
As a founder, do you have to get good at sales?
23:57
You know, a lot of founders are like, "Oh my god, I don't know. We're going to do PLG.
24:00
We're going to be self-serve, freemium. We don't need sales.
24:04
I'm just going to let people figure it out."
24:06
Like is that is it a requirement of a B2B business to get good at sales as a founder?
24:10
I would say you don't have to get good at it.
24:12
You just have to get non-zero at it. Right?
24:16
There's this really great article on Lenny's newsletter on adding a sales sales organization to a self-serve product that Lenny had me write and then uh he edited the heck out of it.
24:26
And it's it's it's really a fantastic asset.
24:27
But what I would say there is that there are a lot of PLG or self-serve motions out there that have really kind of like they they stagnated themselves because they didn't add the the sales piece to it.
24:42
And I would encourage people to read that article.
24:43
I forget what it's called.
24:45
You you added a really cool name. Oh, the transition.
24:46
Layering on sales to product lead growth. Yeah.
24:50
See, you have a you're good at naming things, right?
24:53
I was inspired by uh David Sacks's the the cadence, which I love. Head of operate. There you go.
24:58
Yeah, that's a that is a great that is a great article.
24:59
So it's not that you have to be great.
25:02
You just have to recognize that it's important.
25:05
And so like a good example of this would be probably like the most famous example of a organization that like maybe didn't get sales religion as quickly as they should have would be would be Dropbox.
25:14
And you Dropbox has phenomenal early sales leadership.
25:17
So like one of our investors here at Atrium is a gentleman named Mike Marg.
25:21
He's a partner at Craft Ventures.
25:23
He was an early sales manager and leader there.
25:25
Kyle Parrish was the head of sales at Figma.
25:27
Mercer Fure is over at Figma as well.
25:30
There's all these just like absolutely fantastic Dropbox folks.
25:34
But the problem was is that like the organization from a product standpoint never kind of like put all their calorie as many calories behind product development that would like support the ability to sell to across an entire organization.
25:46
And so the way that I kind of like try to succinctly describe that is like never mistake your lead gen for your business.
25:54
And I think the good news is is that like a lot like a lot of people took a lot of lumps there and folks have learned that like maybe Slack almost like missed that.
26:01
But then they brought in a bunch of like Salesforce um Salesforce folks and other folks.
26:08
Actually, Mike Marg was also a early sales manager at at Slack as well.
26:09
And like really got religion around that.
26:13
Because it turns out that you know, people paying, you know, 19 bucks a month or 29 bucks a month or what have you was like really great.
26:19
But you know, getting to a 50,000 or 100,000 or 250,000 dollar contract, like that's like where big ARR numbers start racking up.
26:29
And organizations like want to talk to a human in order to navigate that, right?
26:34
So PLG is great for landing, right?
26:37
And like permeating an organization.
26:38
There's a bunch of great like Craft invest in this like crazy.
26:39
So like Scratchpad is a great example of like very bottoms-up.
26:44
I mean, Atrium's pretty bottoms-up as as well.
26:46
It's like a it's like I don't What is the Robin What is the uh the Silicon Valley joke? Middle out or whatever?
26:51
Cuz we land with like sales managers and SDR managers.
26:56
But it's still like what you're doing is you're like you're solving the problem that the user has.
26:59
But the problem is is like the the user doesn't necessarily have like large budgetary authority.
27:03
So you can get them stoked up.
27:06
But then you got to talk to the person who's got the purse strings.
27:09
And so like that's going to require sales. That's okay.
27:12
And just to punctuate that, basically 100% of B2B companies end up building a sales team, right?
27:18
I would say that's the case.
27:20
I mean, it's it's like it's more of a question of like when versus if.
27:24
So like even like the really famous ones like Atlassian, right?
27:27
And you know, Atlassian, they had a they had they had a sales organization.
27:31
They just didn't call it sales organization.
27:33
And they went like pretty pretty far without a lot but instead what they did was they just like priced the product like breathtakingly low.
27:41
And and I think developer tools can often times do this where because like developers are like pretty technical, they can adopt products.
27:49
They don't need like hand-holding in order to adopt like a product that is like complicated enough to be valuable.
27:53
Like Datadog's a good example or New Relic or AppDynamics.
27:57
But even those guys like, you know, very early on had um had meaningful sales organizations.
28:01
And like one of the reasons why Datadog really I mean, there's a lot of reasons why Datadog ended up winning that market.
28:09
But their sales organization is no joke. Right?
28:11
So even like even developer tools, like you might like think, "Okay, cool.
28:16
Well, the developers can just like swipe their credit cards." Like, "Yeah, they can.
28:19
But then you're going to be eventually capped there."
28:20
I mean, look at Snowflake.
28:22
Snowflake has like, I don't know, 500 sales people?
28:24
Like you're going to need a sales org.
28:28
Let's shift a bit to talking about just how to get better at sales at the skill of sales.
28:32
And I think it's interesting because you don't have a sales background.
28:35
And so you've had to learn how to do this.
28:37
And you did a lot of research and building your business, you've had to get really good at sales.
28:43
So maybe a first question, what's like the number one tip that you have for getting better at sales?
28:48
The first chapter of Founding Sales talks about what I what I call sales mindset changes.
28:54
Because I think the big thing is is is just so weird, right?
28:57
It's just like such a weird shift in behavior.
28:59
Cuz if you think about as like a product manager or as a sale like as a engineer or whatever, like how many people do you interact with day-to-day? About six? 10, maybe? Not too many. Right?
29:11
And it's always the same people, right?
29:13
And so it's like super comfortable.
29:14
Whereas in sales or anything customer-facing, what ends up happening is like you're meeting multiple new humans every day if you're doing it right.
29:22
And that just is like such a mindset shift.
29:25
Like you're not going to be able to remember everybody.
29:28
You're going to have to write it all down.
29:29
You're going to have to use the CRM for that.
29:30
You're kind of like in the starting blocks.
29:32
Like, you know, in on the track.
29:34
Like you're in the starting blocks and like you have 90 seconds or like a couple minutes to to like form rapport and make to make somebody feel like they should trust you.
29:42
And they want to be honest with you, right?
29:44
You have to be very focused on activity orientation.
29:46
Whereas like engineering and product managers a lot of like super deep work.
29:50
It's kind of like Paul Graham's like maker versus manager schedule.
29:54
Sales people have manager schedules, interestingly enough.
29:59
Where what you're doing is you're constantly context switching. Right?
30:02
Like a an ideal salesperson's calendar or a founder who's doing sales is like two, three, four, maybe five customer facing meetings a day with different humans.
30:11
And then moreover, you're have like then you're having incremental interactions with those folks later on like later that week or the next week or what have you.
30:18
So then you have to keep continuity of these multiple parallel conversations, right?
30:22
So it's like it's it's it's totally different set of skills.
30:26
And so it's it feels super weird to start out.
30:29
But what ends up happening is it's just a skill.
30:32
And so you just start doing you start doing you start doing it.
30:35
Um and you just kind of become used to it.
30:38
You become calloused, right?
30:38
So like I'm incorrigible now.
30:40
Like you put me in an elevator I can talk to anyone, right?
30:43
And one of the things that Um so so like one, just recognizing it's going to be a pretty big mindset change.
30:47
And then the second thing you can do is then once you know that there's going to be a mindset change, you can focus in on making those behaviors be better.
30:56
So as an example, one of the things I challenge my staff to do is I call it turbo rapport.
31:02
It needs a better name, but like think about um people that you interact with in the world who maybe are like a little shields up, right?
31:08
Like they're probably used to interacting with people who are like not going to be super nice to them.
31:13
Like maybe it's bartenders or uh flight attendant or like barista or or fill in the blank, right?
31:19
Think about how quickly you can become friends with them. Right?
31:23
Like how you can break that down.
31:25
Because like that's going to be a a really good skill for you to have when you're interacting with with uh with a prospect.
31:30
And then what that's going to allow you to do is then ask them candid questions about their current situation that either A they may not know about or B you ask provocative questions that make them think about the world in a way that like maybe that you want them to and realize that they have pain they didn't want or they that they didn't know that they had.
31:46
So it's kind of like um my my friend Brett Burson had this great tweet one at one point where he said, "Think about the things that you do in your day-to-day that are like a pianist like a piano player playing scales.
32:01
Like da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.
32:05
What is the version of that for for selling?
32:07
And that's like, you know, rapid rapport building, asking good questions, asking follow-up questions, being willing to ask uncomfortable questions. Right?
32:17
All those sort of things and like asking for money and then shutting up and waiting for them to answer.
32:23
All these are very uncomfortable things, but the more that the more you do them like the better like you'll just get good at them.
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33:30
One of the things in your book that most shifted my mindset on sales was this kind of shift from you're trying to convince someone to buy this thing to you're trying to help them and maybe this will help make their life easier.
33:43
Can you talk a bit about that?
33:44
I think this is kind of like the remember the the like the modern sales versus like old school sales thing.
33:47
Like the old school sales thing is like, "All right, I'm going to sell something to a mark." Right?
33:53
Or like the best example of this is like, "Man, that guy's a great sales guy.
33:57
He can sell ice to an Eskimo."
33:59
It's like, "Man, if you're selling ice to an Eskimo, you're an asshole." Right?
34:03
Like what is wrong with you? They don't need ice.
34:05
I mean unless they're like, you know, they're they're visiting uh Southern California.
34:10
And so like as a seller that what you should be doing the way that I like to frame it to people is that you're a consultant that has a particular predilection for a given solution. Your solution, right?
34:22
But we're not trying to like use Atrium as an example, right?
34:25
Like Atrium's minimum ICP is probably like SDRs plus AEs in an organization should probably be like a 10 all the way up to like 300. Right?
34:34
So if someone shows up and they're like, "Man, I got to get really good at sales.
34:38
I need to buy your software P."
34:40
And I don't know I'm like, "Okay, cool.
34:41
Like how many how many sales people do you have?"
34:43
And they're like, "Uh like one."
34:44
I'm like, "Man, I'm not going to sell you Atrium.
34:47
Like you're just going to be unhappy. It's going to be dumb.
34:49
Like it's going to be a waste of our customer success resources. You're going to churn."
34:52
All those sort of things, right?
34:56
But if instead what you what you're doing is you're saying, "Hey, I'm going to go out in the market and I'm going to find the people that match the that are have a high proclivity that our technology solves.
35:05
And then I'm going to talk with them about how they're solving that problem right now.
35:09
And ideally through, you know, a series of questions I'm going to reveal that to them that they're doing it probably not great, right?
35:16
And then once I've revealed to them the fact through kind of this you know, directed questioning what's known as discovery that they're not solving the problem like that they have this high magnitude problem that it is costing them lots of money that it is a pain in their ass.
35:29
And that and then I reveal to them that there is a better way of approaching it.
35:32
And and magically magically enough, I happen to be a representative of that of that solution.
35:39
Well, now like that's an ideal transaction and everybody everybody wins.
35:42
And so like that's and then scale that up across an entire economy and you can kind of see why I was saying that, you know, sales is like kind of the grease that makes the economy work like that and also importantly brings new technology to the market in a way that um that makes every like that makes everything better.
36:00
If someone's listening to this and they're like, "I want to get better at sales.
36:03
What's like one thing I could do differently tomorrow, this week to improve my ability to sell my product?
36:09
What what would that be?"
36:11
There's like the non-complicated version and there's complicated version.
36:13
I think the non-complicated version would just be just like walking down the street make eye contact with everybody.
36:18
And then every person that you like every person you stop next to at like Starbucks or like or like, you know, the crosswalk or whatever, just like strike strike up a conversation with them.
36:26
Like figure out a mechanism by which you can start a conversation with them.
36:29
Like look like compliment their their shirt or their shoes or remark on something.
36:32
Don't use the weather because that's lazy.
36:34
But like figure that out because like so like that's the the first version.
36:39
Probably the more sophisticated version is like, you know, just be very very tight on your ICP.
36:43
Just be very very very crisp around who has your problem and why.
36:47
And so being more crisp around that and then having, you know, having that understood is a great way of of of making sure that you're not wasting time on people who don't have your problem and that you're you're doing more of those loops with people who are like right in the white-hot center.
37:02
So like one is kind of like a behavioral thing and one is more thoughtful thing. That's great.
37:07
Can you actually explain ICP briefly cuz a lot of people may not know what that term Yeah, thank you.
37:10
Um so ICP stands for ideal customer profile.
37:16
And actually it's important to kind of think about there's two things in a in a B2B sales motion.
37:19
There's like the account, the characteristics of the account which is like the company that's going to buy.
37:24
And then there's the characteristics of the human and the personas that you're going to be interacting with.
37:29
And so let's use like Amplitude as an example.
37:33
Amplitude's ICP would probably be organizations that make software products that probably have at least a couple of product managers cuz if there's a a single product manager, it might be like too much.
37:46
Like they might be at the point where they they don't need a full like a full-blown enterprise analytics suite.
37:52
And that's probably it, right?
37:54
And then on the and then on the human side, who are the people who participate in that conversation?
37:57
Well, the product managers going to be the ones who are going to be the users.
38:00
But engineering is probably involved in order to make sure that Amplitude can talk to the cloud data warehouse and so on and so forth.
38:08
And then moreover, the person who owns the budget might be the VP of product, not the product manager.
38:15
Or it might be the VP of engineering or the CTO, right?
38:17
So there's three different folks that we talked about there.
38:20
It's like different humans.
38:20
And so I ideal customer profile is understanding what those kind of like parameters look like for looking at an organization in order to say, "Man, that's an awesome op.
38:30
Let's go get in front of them."
38:33
Versus "I don't know if that's a very good opportunity.
38:36
Like maybe that's let's pass on it."
38:38
And then the personas are "Great, that's an awesome op right there.
38:43
All right, I know that I'm going to have my first conversation with Lenny, but with an intention that I'm eventually going to get to the VP of product at Airbnb and that's Suzy over here.
38:50
And then, you know, once we get validation from her, then um then we're probably like I know that the VPE over here is Frank.
39:00
And like so like knowing who the personas are.
39:03
So that's what ICP and personas are. Awesome.
39:05
There's a template that you've created that helps you kind of lay out your ICP.
39:08
And so we'll try to link to it in the show notes. I have to find it again. Nice. Sounds good.
39:13
So we've talked about founder-led sales and how founders should be starting sales.
39:18
We've talked about just how to get better at sales as a founder as anyone.
39:24
I want to talk now about hiring sales people. And sure.
39:26
And great mug by the way. Coffee is for closers. I love it. Right.
39:32
Can people buy that online or is that just a one-off?
39:35
Uh this is like a Modern Sales Pros um Modern Sales Pros mugs.
39:38
I think we have like a bunch of Yetis that we give away for Atrium as well.
39:42
But like, yeah, we're we're big on the like sales jokes here because you have to it's like we we we stole this from New Relic, right?
39:50
Like being very user-centric and your and your swag, right?
39:52
So like I got my my sales nerd jacket on here.
39:53
I've got my let's get it hat here.
39:56
I've got my coffees for closers mug.
39:58
Like these are all inside sales jokes that maybe your audience won't necessarily get or maybe they will.
40:04
But our audience very much gets them.
40:06
They're like, "Oh man, your hat's so funny. Can you send me one?" I'm like, "No problem.
40:08
You should buy our software." Love it.
40:12
So, hiring sales people, we've talked a bit about a lot of these things like maybe when it's time to hire a sales person when you're closing like a fourth, a fifth of your opportunities, when the flywheel loop is kicking in.
40:24
So, in terms of the who to find for this first sales role, and you mentioned that VP of sales are often let go.
40:27
It's like a very high rate of not working out. Is Is that true? Yeah. Yeah.
40:32
I mean, the way to again, this is kind of mapped out in the the founder-led selling presentation and then also in founding sales, the book.
40:41
I mean, generally what you want to do is you probably don't want to start with like a VP of sales to start, like a sales leader.
40:48
And there's a couple of reasons why there.
40:50
Like even if you figured it out yourself, that's required. Right?
40:55
You you got to you have to get to that minimum sufficiency of 10, 20, you know, 30 customers yourself first, right?
41:02
But then, the reason why I advocate for folks to like hire a couple of sellers or a couple of AEs to start is because again, you have that like software in your brain.
41:13
Like unfortunately, there is no GitHub for sales motions.
41:16
So, it's in your brain, it's in your documents, etc.
41:18
And so now you're going to teach these other these other folks.
41:22
So, what you want to do is you want to hire a couple like early-stage kind of pioneer sellers to take that sales version.
41:28
The the downside of hiring like seeking to hire a VP of sales or like a head of sales or what have you who actually is a head of sales, like is coming out of an organization where maybe he or she is a manager managers or like managers like, you know, 10 like eight reps or something like that is that person hasn't been selling for a hot second, right?
41:48
And I think actually Jason Lemkin had a pretty funny tweet about this the other day where he was like, you know, hiring the VP of sales who's like been there and done that before.
41:58
Like, why exactly does she want to do it again? Right?
42:02
Like, "Oh, you scaled up you know, Data Dog or like Figma or whatever.
42:06
You should come to my like crappy little startup."
42:08
It's like, "Yeah, I'm professionally rich."
42:09
And And so instead, the the the great folks to look at are like the deputies, right?
42:14
Or like those early-stage sellers.
42:17
So, the example I always use here, my last software company was in recruiting.
42:21
So, if you have like a new recruiting technology, so you know, my buddy Troy um runs this recruiting software company called Guide, right?
42:29
They make this like really cool guided hey hiring process for candidates, whatever.
42:34
But it they sell to recruiting organizations.
42:35
So, the kind of early the early-stage sellers that he would be interested in would probably be like early people at like Lever or Greenhouse, right?
42:42
Who sell to the same persona, probably around the same like average selling price.
42:50
But ideally like not an AE who joined Greenhouse like last year or like two years ago.
42:58
So, like Greenhouse Greenhouse has a phenomenal sales organization.
43:01
Their sales leadership is is absolutely fantastic.
43:03
The gentleman who's the CRO over there is a good friend of mine, Sean Murray.
43:06
But like early-stage selling takes like early-stage sellers or people who've been there because you're not going to have all the collateral, like slides and scripts and whatever aren't going to be like all buttoned up and with a bow around them.
43:23
And so looking for those early-stage kind of like grittier grittier sellers is a is a more effective way of going about that.
43:29
So, like those are the folks that you want to look for once you've gotten to that statistical significance of your own selling capacity.
43:35
To make that just even clearer, the suggestion is if you're like say a Series A founder, you What's like a profile of a person you look for?
43:43
You said it's like a deputy at a successful sales org.
43:44
I I'll give you a couple of examples. So, like I don't know.
43:49
Say Say you're doing some sort of like um design tool, right?
43:53
Like I would go look at the the Figma sales organization and I would look at some of the earlier sellers who were there maybe two years ago or three years ago or what have you, right?
44:02
Maybe you could consider getting a sales manager there who's like not super far from selling. Right?
44:12
Like a great example of this is there's this woman, Marissa Fuhrer, who works at Figma.
44:15
She's absolutely fantastic.
44:17
She works on the enterprise team there.
44:19
Like she and she was at Dropbox previously as a seller for a long time.
44:23
So, like she would be a great profile for someone who's not too far from having sold and is like willing to like, you know, roll up her sleeves.
44:31
But ideally, what you're doing is you're like that would probably be the person who you'd want to hire after you've hired those couple of sellers and gotten them to success.
44:40
Because the other thing too with like Marissa, she's probably going to look at your organization be like, "Cool.
44:46
Prove to me that your product fits the market because like I don't want to necessarily take a bet on you."
44:52
And then you would say, "Well, in addition to having a 25% win rate with me, I have these two sellers right here and they both have 20% win rates and you can see that they're both closing $50,000 of of of bookings a month.
45:00
All I need you to do is scale it up."
45:03
In which case that that early-stage head of sales is like, "All right, let's do it." Right?
45:10
She's about to get a bunch of LinkedIn requests. I know. She's great.
45:14
This is like one of the things that we really love at Atrium is like we have um we have really great customers because I mean, like we're creating a new category of software and so it's kind of one of those things where like more advanced, more modern sales managers and leaders like really get it.
45:27
It's kind of how it always is in in category creation.
45:29
But when you find the people who like really get it and like really get it, they turn out to be like awesome.
45:35
And like that's one of the the things that just make startups fantastic.
45:38
What's a sign that maybe it's not working out when you hire your either first sales person either or maybe like first five?
45:45
What are signs cuz you said it's often does not work out.
45:49
What are like early signals like, "Hmm, we should rethink this."
45:53
Presuming that you have And this is another reason why it's really important to do it yourself to start.
45:57
But presuming that you've done that like that you've been able to close business on a reliable way.
46:04
So, again, with like arms-length prospects.
46:08
Like it can't be you know, it can't be Lenny's mother-in-law buying my um buying my software.
46:13
Which can be real actually. Yeah.
46:15
But like I mean, God bless.
46:15
But like she's not ICP for for Atrium, right?
46:20
So, like you can't um this is like kind of the danger of of like, you know, doing revenue trades in your accelerator or like whatever.
46:25
Like it's it's not real, right?
46:27
So, if you have done that and you've sold like 20 or 30 um you know, deals, you know it can be done.
46:34
We have an existence proof of this.
46:36
So, if someone else can't do it the way that you do it, and this is why hiring like two folks to start is is effective, right?
46:42
Like you don't want to hire just one.
46:43
You maybe three, but like four, it's like uh that's a lot to manage. Um at least to start.
46:49
And And so if if you have done that and the person's like their win rates are poor, right?
46:54
Or that their activity levels are poor, things like that, those are usually indicators that it's like not going to that it's not going to work out, that they're not getting those second dates, they're not getting those third dates.
47:04
But importantly, they have to have the materials in question, right?
47:08
Like Did Did you create the slide deck that you take people through?
47:12
And did you give this to them?
47:13
Did you take all the discovery questions that were in your brain and write them down into, you know, a Google Doc or a Notion page or what have you?
47:21
Do you have a demo script for them?
47:23
If those things are not present, then, you know, probably no one's going to be successful.
47:27
Or at least they're going to have to like re-derive all that stuff that you already did.
47:31
But if you have all those precursors and it's not sticking for someone, that's probably a good leading indicator that like they're not going to they're not going to work out.
47:38
time do you give these folks before you make a decision?
47:41
This is why it's so so so so important to look at leading indicators.
47:45
And this is something that like we just think about all the time here at Atrium from a instrumentation and data-driven sales management is like if someone's not having customer-facing meetings, if they're like low activity, you're never going to win anything, right?
47:58
Like if if you have a 50% win rate on two opportunities in a month, um that's probably still not going to be super helpful unless you have a very very very high deal size, right?
48:06
And so looking at those leading indicators, like are they having first meetings? Right?
48:13
Are they having second meetings?
48:14
What does their email volume look like?
48:16
Are they getting um are they progressing things through?
48:18
Are they getting things to proposal?
48:19
And then eventually, are things closing?
48:21
And so that's why bird-dogging I do a bunch of like master classes for Atrium on data-driven sales management.
48:27
And one of them is on ramping.
48:28
It's called like, you know, ramping for success.
48:30
I forget the name of the master class.
48:32
But like looking at those leading indicators, like opportunity inflow.
48:35
Is a person putting like putting meetings on their calendar?
48:40
Are they progressing them?
48:40
Are they being active in the meantime?
48:42
Those are all really good leading indicators.
48:46
And so I mean, if somebody's like not getting first meetings on their calendar, like you know within a month. It's like, "Okay, cool. This isn't working out." Right?
48:53
Now, if they're not getting to second or third meetings, but they are getting those first meetings.
48:57
Well, now you know you've got a different problem. Right?
49:00
Which like they're getting they're getting those first dates, but they're not getting any second date and they're not getting any second date the same way that you were.
49:05
Okay, maybe that's a coaching issue.
49:07
Um or maybe it's just like a behavioral problem that's that you're not going to be able to surmount.
49:11
But the point is is is like having instrumentation on the most leading indicator possible gives you eyes onto whether or not things are working or not.
49:22
And you can make judgments about it.
49:23
Because the worst possible situation is like nine months in you're like, "Man, it's not working."
49:28
It's like, "Man, I bet if you looked at the leading indicators, you probably knew you would have known like two months in like this wasn't working."
49:31
I like they gave us kind of a bottom end of the range like in a month you should be able to know.
49:36
A lot of times what would be like the max by which like if things are going okay by like 6 months you're probably it's probably going to be good or or what is that time frame?
49:46
Oh, like where you know you're successful?
49:48
Yeah, like it's like it sounds like maybe from a month to some future month this is a period where you can get a sense of if this this person is going to work out.
49:55
What's like that range in your mind?
49:58
It's almost kind of like you're you're kind of continuously monitoring, right?
50:02
So like in the first month maybe you spend that time like onboarding the the rep, teaching them, you know, going through mock discovery conversations, mock demos, etc.
50:09
having them ride along with you.
50:11
In the second month we would expect them to have like you know, 10 first meetings or maybe 20 first meetings and we would expect 50% of those to get to second meetings.
50:18
So we would measure those things.
50:19
In the third month we would expect some subset of the month of of those first meetings, the second meetings that happened in the second month to get to a proposal. Right?
50:29
To get to a commercial conversation.
50:30
And then maybe we would expect some of the deals in the in that month to close, right?
50:34
To close when or or maybe the next month.
50:37
And so it's it's essentially like you're looking at the leading indicators in the appropriate time frame such that like if someone is in month three and they're getting a bunch of their deals to proposal, you can't declare victory yet because like the money is not in the bank.
50:53
However, things are looking good.
50:55
So if you get to month four and then and lots of things are getting to proposal but nothing's closing in month four or nothing closing in month five, you should still like you still can't say all y'all y oxen free.
51:03
You should still be very concerned, right?
51:05
But if you if like the leading indicator is at the right level for the right period or right interval in ramp, then you can like you can feel confident but not declare victory yet. Got it.
51:19
Something that this reminded me of is we were chatting ahead of this call and you mentioned that work from home is really bad for sales people in your experience. Can you talk about that?
51:30
Yeah, it's it's primarily bad for junior sales people.
51:34
Like senior sales people have been like selling you know, out in the what's known as the field for for a long time.
51:40
But when you think about the behavior that we're talking about which is learning, right?
51:44
So like what what needs to happen that the new sellers they need to learn the sales motion and then they need to be audited, right? Like instrumented.
51:53
And so like the faster the loops are on that, the better off you're going to be.
51:58
And so if the loops are once a day of like you know, listening to their calls or maybe even like a like a longer interval then just like the correction loops are just going to be way too slow.
52:11
Versus if you're sitting next to somebody or you're sitting amongst like three or four people and like listening to all their calls concurrently and then they get off of a call and it's like hey, that was really good.
52:23
You know, correction here, correction here, correction here, correction here, here. Run it back to me. Now the loops, right?
52:30
This this speed with which you're able to like update their software and making make sure that that the sales motion is running appropriately on them is is quite high.
52:38
And like in early stage startups that's the only thing that matters is like how it's a race against time to make sure that you get to success so you can raise your next round of financing or get to profitability or what have you.
52:47
And so like having distance, right?
52:49
Having asynchronous distance is really problematic for that especially for for junior folks like SDRs, junior AEs, all of that it it really is it really is problematic.
53:00
Once that sales motion is baked and can be like distributed, okay, that's the potentially a different a different situation but like very early on having someone sitting like being able to sit side by side with your sellers is really pretty it's it's hard to hard to beat. So what's the solution?
53:18
Is it if you're starting now a B2B company, your advice is don't be remote, work in office?
53:25
My point of view on that is is like you especially like early stage you you certain like from a founder's standpoint like being you know, shoulder to shoulder with your you're with your co-founder is certainly.
53:35
But even with like you know, a founder who is has a couple of sellers that they're working with, being side by side with them in order to like help them learn faster, teach them more, have accountability and then have like you know, like training loops is really what you need to what you need to do because the alternative is like there's there's a whole generation of SDRs who are like it's kind of like learning loss if you will.
54:02
There's a bunch of like 24 year olds who have never like you know, like never learned the skills that are needed at the same way at the same clip that they would have sitting amongst like 10 others with a with an SDR manager sitting in the middle of them or an AE manager sitting in the middle of them.
54:19
Any last pieces of wisdom before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
54:22
I think probably like the biggest thing is the the thing that I just like to encourage founders and and product managers or what have you is just don't be afraid of sales.
54:32
There's a lot of people out there who like who would love to tell you a story that it's you know, it's magical or like oh, you got to be a born seller things like that and it's really not, right?
54:41
Like those people are just talking their their book if you will.
54:45
And so just like getting good at at those behaviors is going to you know, it's going to benefit you in a myriad of ways even if you don't want to necessarily be an early stage founder.
54:53
Even as like a product manager within a enterprise organization or even a you know, a consumer organization selling behaviors and like good communication and persuasion and like what is like thinking about like what's in it for them etc.
55:06
like those are really good skills for internal selling, for external selling, for you when interface with customers etc.
55:12
It's like you know, all these skills are very important and impactful for for a myriad of personas. Amazing.
55:19
Well, with that we've reached the very exciting lightning round.
55:22
I've got five questions for you.
55:24
We're going to go through it pretty fast. Are you ready? I am.
55:27
Question one, what are what are two or three books that you recommend most to other people?
55:31
The books that I recommend the most there would be the goal by Eli Goldratt.
55:35
There are two books that inspired Atrium.
55:39
One is the goal which is essentially a novelization of the Toyota lean manufacturing system.
55:44
So it's like a process engineering book written as a novel.
55:48
It's like really fantastic and sales organizations are just revenue factories.
55:52
So it's a really like if you want to think about like systems thinking and kind of like you know, processes but in a way that's like not a textbook, it's absolutely fantastic.
55:59
And then the other one is a book by Bill Walsh called The Score Takes Care of Itself.
56:04
Bill Walsh was a really famous football coach for the for Stanford Cardinal and then San Francisco 49ers and he just kind of like broke down how you can't worry about the score in the football game.
56:15
You can only worry about the things that are in front of you you can control and that if you do a high quantity of high quality actions like whatever your position is as a quarterback or a linebacker or running back or whatever, then the score will take care of itself.
56:27
And and that's very applicable to sales as well.
56:30
Like if you focus on those leading indicators and make sure that you're doing it in a high quantity of high quality way, then the score score will take care of itself.
56:38
So those are two two great books I like to recommend to folks. Favorite other podcast?
56:41
Oh boy, I don't listen to too many.
56:44
I listen to Lenny's and I listen to the All-In podcast just you know, so I can get my fill of like doom and gloom.
56:52
And knowledge with this one.
56:52
Favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed?
56:57
I've got a five year old so like we're all Disney all the time.
56:59
So I think probably like the the one that's been on on repeat recently has been Encanto. So yeah, there you go. Love that one.
57:08
Favorite interview question that you like to ask folks?
57:10
So I'm going to change this up on you.
57:12
It's less about interview questions.
57:14
One of the things I'm a really big fan of is job simulation especially in in sales.
57:21
And so I'm a big fan of doing screens.
57:23
So we actually have a written screen that we do with folks which is a Google Doc that has like a dozen or so biographical questions that we allow people to answer and you'd be shocked like the way it that how well it screens people.
57:35
Like you know, 50% of people won't do it.
57:37
And this is not these are not complicated questions, right?
57:38
It's like Lenny, tell me about something that you built that you're proud of. Right?
57:43
Like it's a dozen of those questions and so like one you can filter out people who are not serious.
57:46
You can filter out people who you know, have low levels of give a You also can see whether or not people can communicate in an in a compelling fashion, right?
57:54
With a beginning and a middle and an end.
57:56
You can also see their attention to detail whether or not they like they it's like written with typos or they like forget to answer some of them or what have you.
58:05
So it's not an interview question thing but like that's a huge hiring hack from my perspective.
58:10
And this is a form that folks fill out when they're trying to apply to work at Atrium, is that right? Yeah.
58:13
Yeah, or it's just something that I I mean I for all my portfolio companies as well I like people just use it.
58:18
It's a Google Sheet, right?
58:20
I sorry, not a Google Sheet, a Google Doc, right?
58:22
It's just like and you just clone it, give it to them.
58:26
All right, you have edit rights.
58:28
Let me know when it's done.
58:28
And you'd be shocked like you know, people are like oh, I didn't I forgot to do it. Okay, great.
58:32
You told me everything I need. Amazing. Final question.
58:37
Do you have a favorite story of you or a sales person closing an awesome deal, something that seemed impossible?
58:46
Something that you're proud of.
58:47
There's a gentleman on in our sales organization named Shawn who's an early seller here.
58:51
He's now a sales manager.
58:52
He's absolutely fantastic and um you know, I think one of the things that early stage founders and also sellers have to remember is like you're you're not going to you're generally speaking not going to close the deal on the first time through the pipe.
59:04
Like as we discussed earlier if you have a 30% win rate that's pretty great.
59:07
If you have 20% win rate that's like pretty solid but that still means that like four out of you know, four out of five are not going to close.
59:13
But the next time around they might, right?
59:17
So like win rate on the second time through the pipeline.
59:20
And so Shawn you know, closed one of our biggest customers is a company called Grin.
59:24
They're absolutely fantastic.
59:24
They make influencer management software for brands. Very cool stuff.
59:31
And you know, I think Shawn probably ran like three or four ops with them before they were were able to get a toehold in the account a couple years ago.
59:36
They were much smaller, and so now, you know, they I think they have like 100 SDRs and like 80 AEs that are being managed using Atrium.
59:44
And so, I think there's a good lesson there, which is, you know, it's not going to be the first It's not necessarily going to be the first time through the pipe, and maybe not the second time, but you just have to keep like pushing that boulder up the hill, and then eventually when you do, good things happen.
59:58
What a great lesson to leave us with, very empowering.
1:00:01
Pete, this was everything I hoped it would be. Two final questions.
1:00:05
Where can folks find you online if they want to learn more, learn more about Atrium, the book, and then how can folks be useful to you?
1:00:10
I'm pretty easy to find online.
1:00:12
I'm the only Pete Kazanjy in the uh in the United States as far as I can tell, and Google will auto-correct my name if you uh if you Google it wrong, so like that's pretty helpful.
1:00:21
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, find me on Twitter.
1:00:23
You can also find Founding Sales at foundingsales. com as Lenny's notes.
1:00:26
The the whole book is available online as like hypertext.
1:00:31
Yeah, I mean, you can buy a physical copy as well, but the reason why my wife put it into a Squarespace site was because we wanted people to be able to search it and come back to it and use it as a reference and so on and so forth.
1:00:42
And then in terms of like folks, you know, how folks can be helpful to me, if you if you work for an organization that has, you know, between 10 and 300 sales people and you're looking to make them more of like manage them better via metric, make them more efficient, right?
1:00:58
That's a big watchword these days is efficient sales organizations through better management, Atrium is fantastic for that.
1:01:04
If you just Google like atriumhq.
1:01:06
com is the is the domain, but you can also just, you know, Google Atrium Sales and we'll be the top result as well. Amazing, Pete.
1:01:14
Thank you for being here. Yeah, it was awesome. Thanks, Lenny.
1:01:18
Thank you so much for listening.
1:01:18
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1:01:26
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1:01:30
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1:01:37
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