128: Decision Makers & Champions with Geoff Surkamer

Thank you to our sponsors, LeadIQ, Costello, SalesLoft, WorkRamp, and Dialpad for helping us produce this podcast. Head over to jbarrows.com slash blog for the highlights of this episode and explore resources you can use right away. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrow's Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I am very excited for this opportunity to have this conversation with this gentleman who I've known for quite a while because it's a topic. Well, first of all, he's a super cool dude. Second of all, it's a topic that I'm actually personally trying to figure out right now. We're going to be talking about multi-threading within organizations.

But first, before that, I'd like to introduce you to Jeff, the CRO over at Identity Automation. Jeff, what's going on, man? How are you doing? Hey, John. Not much. Loving life. You know, glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me along. And you share the same passion that I do is how do we sell more stuff, period. Right, and sell it the right way, right? Absolutely. Yeah, because we met a while back. It's been, what, like four years, five years? Yeah, about five or six. So we were put in touch with a mutual friend, mutual contact. And the funny thing was, when I was talking to her about some of the sales things that we wanted to do at the company I was at at the time, she just kind of stopped and said, wait, you need to talk to John.

You sound just like him. You've got the same ideas. You want to do the same thing? I'm like, no, no, no, there isn't anybody like that. And so then we ended up meeting in Boston. And I was like, wow, I'm excited because you share that same passion. You know, picking up the phone and making it happen. I've been preaching that for now 29 years. You know, the toughest part is getting everyone else to buy into it. But those that do, they're, you know, planning for their retirement. That's for sure. Right. And they're kind of dictating their own path. I always tell people, you know, you get good in a career in sales and you can kind of dictate your own path and do what you want to do. So you get good at it.

And I think that's what both of us are, you know, try to, I mean, you in leadership roles and me in training, right? We try to look for those people that really want to. And I think that's why you and I, my conversation was so easy because it was pretty evident right out of the gate that we shared a lot of the same values and, and, and same approach. I mean, granted, you're from the Midwest and I'm from Boston. So a little bit of a different style, but same, same fundamental principles of what we're trying to do. So I really appreciate the relationship we've had over the years, man. I do. Yeah, me too, man. It's been great. Let's dig into it and help a bunch of other people out too. Yeah. And help me out too.

Right. Cause, cause I was saying when we were prepping for this, uh, you know, we, Morgan and I had this epidemic really, I call it like, like in Q3, I want to say we lost at least seven deals, at least seven that we know of because we were single threaded, right? We had our champion and we had the person that we thought was, you know, said all the right things. They were at the right levels. And then all of a sudden it was like, they either got fired or they quit. And, and, and, and, and it just like, and like deal after deal after, like by the, like we were forecasting this, like this is going to happen. We had dates picked to do the training and then poof that person left and, and we couldn't, and we didn't close any of them because we hadn't really developed a relationship with the other stakeholders.

Right. And shame on us. Right. I think shame on me for not being aware, you know, and coaching Morgan on to do that, but also shame on me for not doing that myself. Like I got, I gotta be honest, I got lazy. You know what I mean? I got, I'd get with somebody like you and we'd be having that same vibe. Right. And then all of a sudden, poof, you would disappear and go to another business. And I'd be like, shit. Right. So, so in your career and you've been mostly enterprise sales, right? Is that fair? Is that fair to say? Yep. Enterprise software sales. You know, mine is, you know, I'm, my ACV is, you know, 30, 40,000. I usually got two to three stakeholders involved and I need to make sure, but enterprise, obviously, I mean, we were chatting, right.

The stats are, you know, six, six buyers, seven buyers, whatever the number is. What, what are some of the things that like to be multi-threaded, right? Like, what are some of the things that you've worked with your team on, on how to do that? Because I think the challenge that I see is when you lock into that person that you like, first of all, you get comfortable with them. Second of all, you're almost afraid to branch out to other, right? Because there's two types of people like champions, if you will. It's the ones who are willing and able to introduce you and want you versus the ones that are like, I'm the guy. So let's talk a little bit about, you get into an account, you do your prospecting, you latch into somebody who's kind of, you know, an influencer, you know, something like that, who's, who can buy what you sell, you know, it doesn't have the, you know, isn't the one who writes down the check.

But how, what's, do you have like an approach to expanding the audience that starts from that kind of initial call call? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you, if you go back to kind of rewinding that relationship that you were building with that champion, the one that you just got single threaded with, or you have this great relationship with, how did it come about? It's, it's, it's the same technique, if you rewind and play back that movie, you're saying, Oh, well, I reached out to them, timing was good. I was relevant to a topic or a pain point or a business problem or trying to solve. And we started asking questions. They were answering those questions. And all of a sudden you started seeing the whole puzzle start coming together.

Well, that same thing is reps make this, this problem, this challenge all the time. And that they need to then turn around and replicate that, as you mentioned, six to seven times. What's even better is if you can get that champion early on, as you guys are finishing each other's sentences and have he or her go in and introduce you, who else could benefit from learning more about my offer? And they'll say, well, that's a great question. So let me tell you of a similar size organization, similar type of organization. So, so the buyer, I always try to say, look at us through the lens of a customer. So look at John Barrows through the lens of a customer. Look what Jeff Serkner, identity automation, the company I'm with now through the lens of a customer.

And that, that particular scenario doesn't have to necessarily be in some sort of particular sales cycle. It's like, no, what's interesting for them at that individual, that particular point, we joke, you know, the right person in the right seat on the right bus at the right time. That's about, you know, how to manage and put people in the right business. It's also about how to sell. So there's, there's use cases that I absolutely love to share that aren't confidential. And someone says, oh, wait, you've sold to a company our size that had the same problem, was in the Northeast and is the same, you know, particular industry. Okay. I'm all ears and better yet. Hey, Mr. or Ms. Prospect, who else in your organization could benefit from learning more?

And that, that completely opens them up because they say, okay, now I'm not the only one on the hook to learn everything about John Barrow's or, or my company's offerings. It's like spread their own wealth. I like the way you phrase it. And I want to make sure that people heard that, like the way you phrase that question, who, who else could benefit from learning a little bit more about what we do, right? As opposed to what I think most sales reps do, which is say, hey, what is the decision-making process and who has involved? You know what I mean? They go through their band qualification criteria and they're like, yeah. So, you know, who else is involved? Are you the economic buyer? Are you, you know what I mean?

Like, and that's just so robotic is, but I think if you flip it into the positive and say, you know, hey, so great conversation here. You know, who else do you think would benefit from, from having, expanding this conversation? Right. I love the way you phrase that. Now, can I ask you, are you, you've been through Sandler, right? Sandler sales runner. Do you use the upfront contract? I do not. Okay. Do you see, do you, cause, cause I'll tell you something. I, I've had a little bit of come to Jesus on this one, you know, for, for, um, and I think it's a little bit of a crutch, um, to help. And the reason I've, I've, I've addressed it is because I've started to get back into it is for a couple of reasons, but I've, because of Morgan, right?

So I brought him on board and again, challenge of, of like getting to power, those types of things has always been tough for all of us. And it's funny because when I took Sandler the first time, and this, this is where it just kind of proves to me that, you know, training is about, it's 50, 50, right? It's 50% of the content and 50% who delivers it. Right. I mean, you got the best content in the world, but if you got a person that sucks delivering it, it's not going to land. And, and that's what happened to me. Like when I first took Sandler, the way that the Sandler trainer, like did the upfront contract, it was like the cheesiest thing I'd ever heard in my life. And I was just like, dude, like, are you out of your mind?

Like, I'm never going to say that. Right. So I literally for, I'd say 20 years of my professional career, I said, absolutely not. That's stupid. But then gong data came out. Right. And I don't, you pay attention to the gong data stuff. And they said that, you know, that they compared top reps to, to average reps. And they said that the top reps use the upfront contract. So I've been revisiting it a little bit and I've been actually playing around with it to get, you know, access to other people throughout because you set the stage. Right. And if you do it normal, like not da, da, da, da, right. But if you do it kind of like, hey, Jeff, you know, first of all, you know, thanks for taking the time today.

Do you still have 30 minutes? Okay, cool. Well, I just want to make sure that we get the most out of our time. Here's a few things I want to make sure that we go over. What else do you want to make sure that we hit on in our conversation today? Right. So you can make that. You don't have to be cheesy with that. That's not the upfront contract. But you kind of set the stage of what you're there to talk about. And then what you say is, hey, look, you know, my goal at the end of this call is to share with you kind of how we're working with other companies like you. And then if it makes sense, you know, usually it's, you know, after this, we kind of have a discussion with a technical person and maybe somebody on your enablement team.

And so if this conversation goes well, would you be open to kind of making some of those introductions and that type of stuff? And now that I've been thinking about it, like it's actually helping quite a bit. And it's helped Morgan a lot as far as getting the power. So forget about high, wide and deep for a second, like getting from SDR manager, for instance, to VP of sales. Hey, if this conversation goes well, typically we need to align VP of sales. And, you know, is where does that fall in the process? Like you can be passive with it or a little bit more active. So it's funny, you know, how, how like what's old is new. But besides that question for you, you know, say somebody pushes back and say, you know what, Jeff, I'm the guy here.

You know what I mean? If you need something, let's, and you're vibing with them. I mean, I think the hardest one is like the jackass, whatever, man, I'm going to go around you. I'm going to find different ways, but like the cool, you know what I mean? Like we're vibing here. You know what, John, let me, what do you suggest in those scenarios? And they say, yeah, I'm sorry. And the caveat here is you've, you've asked them, Hey, who else would benefit from this? And they're like, you know what? There's plenty of other people that'll benefit for it. I'm going to be the one who drives this though, John. So let's just, let's just stay focused on this. You know, let's meet next week and go from there.

Like, how do you, I mean, that, that's a good and a bad thing. Like, what do you, how do you address that? Yeah, no, it's a great question. You know, as you're, as you're going back and forth and you're clearly getting along and, and they're picking up everything you're laying down and vice versa. There comes a moment when you know, all right, so have you bought anything like this solution in, in this role in your past and tell me what is that path to purchase? Cause I'd like to learn more, not about so much your, you know, we talked about you and your role in the organization, but who do you go to from here? What's that path to purchase? What's, tell me about that sales. Is there something, a presentation I can prepare for you to kind of send around or, you know, You start asking some of those things and they're all, of course, always open-ended and they'll typically all of a sudden, again, like we said earlier, they'll start filling in the pieces to the puzzle without even really knowing it.

So a lot of them, your point was well taken, you know, the jackass can say, it's all me, man. It's me, myself, and I, and those are the three best friends I've got. And it's like, yeah, but that's not going to work for, even if your ASP is 20, 30, 40, 50,000, it doesn't matter in any organization. It doesn't matter if it's private or public. There's always other people that have to be part of the process. So I would always try to turn that around and say, have you bought something like this? And how did that go very well? And if it didn't, where were the areas that I could avoid so we can maybe work better together to get this solution if you think it's the right solution? And, again, we're kind of coming back around saying, oh, yeah, you know, I did try to buy something and I did have to go to this person.

And also, yeah, there is a presentation to the board. That's the one that always kills me. It's like, we have to go to the board. And those are people that they're not even identified in some cases. So it's going back around to just the same issue, which is walk me through how you've done something like this before in the organization. Again, it's about them. Get them to really talk about it. Yeah, and walk me through that. Like, I think that's the way to approach it, right? Like the open-ended, like, do you, have you, that type of stuff. It's, hey, all right, so walk me through the process from here. You know what I mean? Like, say this meeting goes, again, a front contract type of stuff. Hey, say this meeting goes well.

You know, we're aligned with what we can address, you know, and you really do see how this impacts your organization. You know, what are the next steps from here? Walk me through the process to get this thing taken care of all the way through. Instead of saying, again, too robotically, what is the decision-making process? Right? I think that's, like, what is the decision-making process? That's a salesy thing to ask, and you're probably going to turn a lot of people off with that approach because they're, like, I don't know about you as a buyer, right? As soon as I can sniff a sales rep out, like, applying a very specific technique in a very robotic way, I lose so much credibility. Like, that person loses so much credibility in my eyes because I'm like, dude, let's just have a conversation.

You know what I mean? Like, stop pitching me. Stop using whatever technique it is. Like, does that turn you off as much as it turns me off? It completely does. And I can tell you, even in organizations that I've had sales teams, you know, and especially in the software sales space, I overhear reps. And I know exactly what happens in the sales process. They're, instead of asking those robotic questions we don't want them to ask, they do something that I think is even worse. Hey, can I give you a demo? Now, that's their crutch to where they want to try to get introductions without even asking for those introductions because now there's going to be a whole bunch of other technical people on there.

And you haven't even really gone through and asked and understood what problem are you trying to solve by talking with us today? Help me understand, you know, some of the hurdles that you're having today and that led you to take my call. And immediately I hear reps make that fatal mistake. Yeah, you know, let's, hey, do you want a demo? And it's like, you know, first of all, people that say immediately yes, they don't have authority. You just know it. I mean, they're like, yeah, I'd like to see some new software. Maybe it's something I can go and tell somebody to go build ourselves. But you just, you know, the saying I always have is do a demo below sale. You know, you should be able to referenceable accounts, use cases, you know, then, of course, get to some of the key decision makers.

They say, just give me a drive-by of this thing that it's real. But you've already given me all the references, so it's good. So another way to, you know, another thing to avoid, let's say. Yeah, I mean, I actually hate demos. You know, I kind of have this whole talk track. You know, I go through probably two or three demos on a weekly basis, right? And, you know, because that's how I learn, you know what I mean? And, like, for me, like, especially, because, and look, I'm not a good lead for anybody, but a lot of times, you know, I got some decent clients. So a lot of these sales tools and stuff, they want to show me their stuff so I can introduce it to my client base. And, again, that's how I stay up to date on the newest technologies out there.

So I'll go, but every fucking demo is exactly the same. You know, they start with, hey, John, thanks. You know, is this still a good time? First of all, like, don't ask me. Like, don't, if I pick up the phone for a scheduled call, do not ask me, is this still a good time, right? But, you know, and, by the way, replacement, what you should say is, hey, do we still have 30 minutes? Do you have a hard stop at 2 o'clock? You can say that. That's cool, right? But then there's this, okay, look at a 30-minute demo here that I'd like to go through. And if you have any questions as you go through it, just let me know, okay? Right? And then they press play and they go through every fucking slide like they were badge for in boot camp, right?

And they pause intermittently and go, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Right? And it's just god-awful. And it's just, like, having that context and having the conversation, I don't think I've ever, now, I'll be cautious here because I've always sold a lot of services, not products. So I do take that into account. Like, you do some, you've got to see what the product does. You know, if I'm buying Salesforce, I want to see, okay, show me what Salesforce does. How do I open up a task? But I don't think I've ever used a demo. Like, I don't think I've ever gone through a full-blown demo with somebody that wasn't kind of a little bit more off the cuff where I pulled up a few slides and showed them a few things while we were talking.

But I don't think I've ever said, okay, stop now. Now let me press, you know, now it's my turn and let me press play. And it drives, so this is another topic I want to dive into with you, which is the difference between a sophisticated buyer and an unsophisticated buyer. Right? Because I think you and I are, well, I know you and I are very similar. Where, when we decide we want something, like, when we have identified, like, okay, I need this. Right? We do some homework. It's not like I'm just random. It's not like I just Google the top five vendors and call them up. Like, the whole stat of corporate executive board, by the time somebody comes to you, they're already 60% to 70% of the way through, whatever that is.

Like, so I consider myself a relatively sophisticated buyer. If somebody finds me, like, and all of a sudden backs me out and puts me through their piece of shit, bant qualification, have to show you a demo, let me bring in my boss. Like, I will lose, even if I want their product, I will bow out as fast as I possibly can. Right? So, how do you identify, or how have you coached reps in the past to identify, like, sophisticated buyers who you really just need to show them this thing versus unsophisticated buyers who are really just kicking tires? And the easiest example here is price. So, like, and reps get it all the time. Calls, hey, could you tell me how much this thing costs? Right? And what the best reps should, you know, what reps should do is, well, let me understand your needs and all this other stuff and blah, blah, blah.

But there's a line there because there's some times where I literally just need the price. You know what I mean? And if it's within range of what I'm expecting to pay, send me the contract. Right? But then there's other people who are just looking for price so I can put it on a spreadsheet. So, how do you identify sophisticated versus unsophisticated buyers? You know, I probably oversimplify it. And I will be the first guy to take as much advice on this as anyone because it's so oversimplified, but it works. Who owns the problem? So, what separates the sophisticated versus the unsophisticated is at the organization that you are trying to sell a solution to, who is that one person who is in charge of that one department that affects and feels the most pain from this same recurring problem?

Who is that person? That's where I start. That's the most sophisticated person. That's the one that has to wake up every day and say, man, I need to fix my sales training in your case. And, you know, this isn't working. Our prospecting is awful. Not enough top of the funnel generation sales team. Not enough bottom of the funnel generation sales team. It's broken all over the place. You know, and it's somebody who owns that. So, hey, in that case, it's the person who owns the number ultimately. Right? And then there's always somebody who has to really implement that. And chances are, if it's like an enablement leader in our organization, I mean, our sales effectiveness guy is like my right-hand guy.

I mean, we don't go in meetings without each other because he owns that tactical execution. And I own the strategic problem and solving that problem, which is we need to grow the business at a faster pace. And, you know, together we're pretty much helping each other out. So, you know, that's always that first qualified who's sophisticated is defined to me as who owns the problem. And, but if it procurement does, all due respect to all the procurement friends out in the world, you don't. You were handed. The problem was to get the best price. That's not the value of my solution. We'll get to that. I promise you, Mr. or Ms. Customer, we will make it fit in your economic parameters. But right now, I need to understand, I'm also the first guy that says no to the customers.

It's like, we're not a right fit. You're just not going to be a good fit. And, you know, people are like, you're kidding me, Jeff. You would sell, you know, anything to anybody. Well, there's fun and games with that. But the last thing I want or you want is the downstream effect of, like, a problematic customer. And you always rewind and say, I didn't find the owner. I got hooked up on the wrong person. And we just, it was one disaster after another. I always say the success of an implementation is similar to a successful of a sale. Who's the owner that owns the business problem? Who owns the success of getting the project implemented? And there's always two to take. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how we get caught, right?

And a lot of us get enamored with the people that tell us what we want to hear, right? The happy hours piece of this, or happy years piece of this. Happy years, yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because I try to dissect, you know, early on in the sales process, middle on, like those things. Because I agree, you know, I agree. Like, in the middle, you want to say, you know, again, who does this affect the most? And what is the effect, right? Try to quantify what that effect is to see how big it is, right? And that's why questioning is always so critical early on. But what are some of the other ways that you've seen other reps and organizations you've worked with be successful in expanding that audience?

Is it through research and finding different opportunities in those companies? Is it, you know, reaching out through LinkedIn and making connections? Like, and where have you seen it really bad? Like, have you seen anybody just completely screw up an opportunity because they had somebody who were working with and they tried to expand and they got slaughtered? Yeah. Yeah. We'll start with the bad first. Because, I mean, those you, you seem to never even, you can go to as many shrinks as you can to get brainwashed. They just keep popping up and milk at night. You know, I think the biggest challenge and it's, it's also the reason you can fix the problem is you, you've got to be able to build that relationship.

And, you know, you, you've taught some of us the best way, candidly, and that's, you can't build a relationship unless you're, you're, you're relevant. So, you know, the relevancy starts with, are you paying attention? You know, we had a guy, um, president of a software company was a, was a prospect of ours. And we came in and we sold them some software and then the rep came back to try to sell some follow-up software. And, you know, he, we invited him to our sales kickoff one year. You know, we, we asked him, Hey Jim, you know, why, why did you buy from us? And, and, you know, if, if you, if you weren't going to buy from us, odd, odd question, why wouldn't you buy from us? And he's like, wow, okay.

I thought you wanted to talk about all the positive things. No, let's go, let's go negative and dark to dissect that. And he said, the first thing is you got to know my business and reps make this fatal mistake all the time. And they're calling Acme brick company and they think that all Acme brick does is make bricks. Maybe Acme brick is actually a massive road construction company. And, but they just thought that, Hey, in your brick making property, what? Okay. Click, hang up, done. They're not doing the homework to build that relevancy, which would lead to building the relationship. And when they do, like we started, they do it with one person and they're like, Superman, I did it. I, I, I'm, I'm actually, I've got somebody, he really likes me.

He really liked, he's calling, he's listening to me. And it's like, yeah, but he's one or she's one of five, six, seven people do the same thing. Better yet, do your homework on who that prospect is. I've always said, you know, um, if, if you're selling, it doesn't matter what industry or what you're selling, you know, look up the press releases, your stand, the dynamics, you know, you may see that they were sued and yet say, look now every dollar counts. I have a solution to help you drive more effective sales processes and Hey, sorry about what I just read, but man, let's see if I can help you get through it. Somebody on the other lines can be like, okay, that's a different approach, but now you feel my pain because you did your homework and it's, you know, it's, it's KYC, know your customer.

People just don't do it. They don't do it enough. And that drives me crazy. And when I'm on the receiving end, it's the same thing. I hang up on sales reps. They're like, Hey, weren't you that guy that worked at that company? And I'm like, okay, great. Thanks for reading my LinkedIn profile back to me. Why don't you tell me something about my organization and the relevancy that you could help me with something that's maybe on press release or something you read on Glassdoor or some other sort of feed or an RSS or, you know, even follow us on LinkedIn, you know, like be relevant. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing how many reps just go through the motions, man. And I, and I can tell by the way, because I, I still think that reps are saying this.

And by the way, I think this is for anybody listening out there. I think this is honestly one of the most insulting things you can say to anybody, right? Which is tell me about your business. I honestly think that is like, like if I, cause I put the pieces together here. I say, look, if you think about what, what's, what's everybody's most valuable asset, right? Time, right? And if you think about how long, so my most valuable asset, uh, is time. So if you want my time and you get my time, right? 30 minutes on like, or whatever it is. And the first thing you do is say, tell me about your business. Like that's where the conversation's over to me because, because the amount of money that I spend on marketing, SEO, advertising, whatever, to tell the world about my business.

And you can't take five minutes before the end of this conversation, before this conversation to kind of look up a few things and ask me, ask me contextual questions about my business. Hey, John, I saw this. Like I actually even tell people when I'm, when I'm meeting with them, I'll straight up say to start the conversation, Hey Jeff, you know, in preparation for our meeting today, I was actually on your website and I actually was taking a look at through some of the articles and I noticed you guys, you guys are doing some really cool shit there. Like talk to me a little bit about that and how that impacts whatever, right? That's my small talk. My small talk isn't the weather, sports and any of that.

My small, my small talk is what I've, what I've been seeing about you. That's kind of, that I'm curious about, right? And I, and I think people, and people pick up on that, right? Cause, cause I can tell, you know how I can tell we still do that as sales professionals. Um, I don't know about you, but when I get on a sales call, like I've gotten, you know, on the preliminary sales call, I don't know how many of those you're on these days, but on the preliminary sales call, the, the, the rep will say, or the, the, the executive will say, well, John, you know, why don't, why don't I give you a little background on, on, on us and kind of where we're coming from. Right. And they start going into, we were founded in and dah, dah, dah, dah.

And I actually feel awkward these days cause I actually interrupt them. And I'll be like, Hey Jeff, uh, look, I appreciate that. I totally do. I really do. You know? Um, but I was on your website. Uh, I read about your history. Uh, I know what you guys sell. I know who you sell to. Right. Now I have some contextual questions that I want to ask about what you're doing from a standpoint, you know, that type of stuff. But I, you know, look at the end of the day, I, I kind of, I gotta, we can skip this part and, and you can literally feel people be like, Oh, wait, uh, wait, we can actually have a real conversation. Yeah. Just like, I get it. You know what I mean? Like it's amazing. You're doing them a favor.

Totally. They're, they're saying, all right, I got to take 15 minutes of this 30 minutes and tell you more about us because that's what every sales rep is asking me. But think about you changing up the cadence. Like, no, I totally did all this research. Here's, here's what I learned about that. Now, uh, also reps make this mistake. So let's call out one of the other things where they don't do the contextual research on the organization. They just do it. They just do it on the person. Yeah. It's like, Oh, Hey, yeah. I saw you're a new England Patriots fan. How about that? You know? Oh, wow. You think they're really going to go undefeated. And if you, somebody's like, dude, I'm not in a bar. I don't have time.

I appreciate you doing that, but you're not relevant to me. Yes. I'm a fan. I live here. I got a suit, but at the same time, it's like, I got a problem here. Let's figure out how maybe someday we can solve that problem and then go celebrate at a Patriots game. There you go. Right. And that's, and that's what I call like fake personalization. You know, we used to be taught in sales, like you walk into somebody's office and you look around their desk, right. And you see that they're a fisherman and you're like, Oh, Hey, are you a fisherman? Cause I am a fisherman. You know what? I've fished once in my fucking life and it's, you know what I mean? And it's just like, you know, and I, again, I smell that a million miles away.

I'm like, God, kids, stop it. Like, just get to the point. Like the way, you know, relationship, I think, um, you know, again, corporate executive board, they have a challenger sale, right. And they say, I think a lot of people misconstrue, misconstrue challenger sale saying that, Oh, you have to be a challenger. And those other four personality types, the relationship job, the lone wolf and whatever, that those aren't really going to be successful. That's, that's not what they're saying. They're saying the most successful reps are going to be, but those other approaches are great. But the relationship sale I look at these days, and I don't, I think relations obviously are extremely important, but I just think they've changed on how we create, develop relationships.

It's no longer about, you know, taking people out to golf and dinner. And well, let me take a step back in most industries, in some industries, it's still the way to way of the world. Right. Um, but in most, it's not about dinner and golf and that type of stuff. It's about adding value. And you know what, you know how you can add value to my life is give me time back. If you can give me time, if we can take care of this, that's why I don't do face-to-face meetings anymore. It's weird. People ask me, even in Boston, they're like, Hey John, cause you're swinging by the office. I'm like, why? And they're like, well, you know, I kind of want to, you know, just meet you. I think it'd be good to kind of, you know, grab.

And I'm like, look, at the end of the day, I can light up zoom. We can have this conversation just like this face-to-face and like we can do it in a half an hour. If I come on site, that's 45 minutes for me to get there. It's an hour for, for the conversation. Cause we're going to chit chat and do dumb shit. And then it's 45 minutes on the way home. And that's me. And I'm going to be self-centered here, but for you too, you're going to be sitting in an office for an hour with me when we could literally do this in 30 minutes. And I could give you 30 minutes of your life back. Is that, you know, right? Yeah. And it's a, you know, it's the video approach. I mean, the zoom approach is, is I think is barely scratch the surface.

I think when you get some of these people that like you said, let me just give me 15 minutes, give me 30 minutes and I'm going to save you 90. And you're like, what do you mean? Well, we don't have to go and arrange calendars and figure out the commute time to meet at a lunch place. It's going to be too crowded or too loud for us to talk. When I'm just asking for 30 minutes for us to just sit down and figure out, can we solve each other's problem? Is there, is there, do I have a solution that will help you and tell me about some of the other areas of your business that maybe I didn't learn on and I can learn about and I can hear more. So I can actually put even a more compelling offer to you to solve some of the broader problems.

That's good. Is that going to help you sell this internally? Yeah, absolutely, Jeff. Great. And we just did that right now in 15 minutes. And I think that speaks volumes. It really does. I agree with you on some industries still, you know, golf and all that. I actually am finding, I just had a meeting yesterday in Atlanta with some great guys and they've done our due diligence on our product, our solutions, the company, you know, they've talked to customers of ours on, you know, just the whole hidden reference stuff. And so I sat down at lunch. I, you know, they asked questions, basic kind of, Hey, tell us a little bit about, you know, what's new in the organization. And I, even I made the same mistake.

I started going through the whole kind of corporate pitch and the customer prospect actually is, and the partner like put their hands up and said, you don't have to do that. We got it. Yeah. Really? And they're like, yeah, I've already got a bunch of dollars allocated to buy your solution in the beginning of next year. So let's, let's learn about each other. And I'm like, excellent. And the partner guy goes, yeah. Like, do you like to play golf? What do you do when you're not working? And so it was very interesting from that perspective. The funny part about that, John, is it actually went full circle back to the business without anybody having to do any of them. I didn't have to pull out a sheet to check boxes and answer questions.

But, you know, I guess the theory or the kind of the moral of that story is you've got to be able to stick and move because every situation can be different, even on a video conference of 15, 30 minutes. Oh, totally. Yeah. And again, I think there's a time and a place for everything. Right. And that initial call call, I, I, I, I'd argue that whether it's relevant or not, because you don't even know if it's worth spending time together, right? Like on site and developing that call this way. Right. And, and I think that what you said there in that scenario is you, you just, uh, that client that said, Hey, we got it. Like, that's a sophisticated buyer. You know what I mean? Like they did their homework.

They know, and they're, they're at, they're at a pretty comfortable spot with your solution. And now that's when relationships matter. You know what I mean? So like when I, when people come to me and they say, John, give me the price or how much does this cost? I'll say, Hey, all right, just walk me through how you got here. Just walk me through how you got to walk me through how you got to this conversation. What'd you do? What'd you look at? How much research did you do? Those types of things. Cause that'll dictate what my response to you is going to be at this point. And if they can walk me through a pretty impressive process where they were like, John, we went on your website. We read some of your reviews.

You know, we, we've talked to Miller Hyman, we've talked to Sandler and, and, you know, we're, this is what we're looking for. And so really, you know, I've, I've identified you as one of the top three vendors that we want to work with. And I'm trying to get a gut check on price here so that we can figure out whether you're in the range. Right. You do that, you do that. All right, cool. It's, you know, how many days of training do you want? That's what the dollar rate is. If you want any online, you know what I mean? Like I'll just give it, I won't, I won't bother at all with going through Bant or any of that crap. Right. You know what I mean? That's a sophisticated buyer. Yeah. I mean, they proved you.

Yeah. Similarly. Yeah. Just walk me through it. And, and so, so let's put it, cause I think that sophisticated buyer can become your champion. Right. Um, and if you, if you really work with them well enough, what's your definition of a champion? Cause I personally think the champion is the third most overused phrase in sales, right? Touching base is one. Checking in is two. Champion is three. Let's not call it champion. How about a coach? Coach. Well, that's well, so not, but I differentiate coaches and champions. I'd like my definition is, you know, and I, by the way, this is something for everybody out there and every organization who's listening. I would highly recommend you sit in a room with your, your managers and all that other stuff and literally define what a champion means for your organization.

It's going to be different in different ways. You just got to make sure you have that common language because your definition of, if I, if we don't have it defined, then your definition is going to be different than mine. Right. Um, my definition is, you know, they can steal budget. Like they're not necessarily the budget holder, right? They're not the one who, who has the budget, but they can steal it in the sense that they're in the room when the decision is made and they can stand up and fight for whatever you're trying to sell them. Okay. And then the other one is, is they agree to be your champion. You actually have the conversation with them, right? You're like, Hey Jeff, you know what?

Uh, you know, it looks like we're getting a point where, you know, we're, we're close to the finish line here. I got to ask you, you know, when, when the rubber meets the road here, you're going to be my champion. You're going to help me get this thing over the finish line. Right. And I asked it now, I have the luxury of doing that. Cause I'm a, I usually sell to sales, CROs, that type of thing. And, and you know, like when I say, Jeff, will you be my champion? You know what that means. Right now? Everybody else kind of gets a little weirded out about that question. You know, I asked that to like an HR director once and she was like, what the hell are you talking about? And I'm like, Oh shit.

Right. So do you have a definition, uh, or at least a loose definition of what a champion means for you and your organization? Yeah, I think, you know, I would agree with you a hundred percent and I'm glad we, you mentioned the differentiation between a champion and a coach. Cause you know, um, we'll get to the coaching of the champion that, that is somebody who is fighting for you in that organization. I mean, they are the ones that has the pain. It could be that pain holder. And like you said, they could have budget. They could not have budget. Maybe they don't have enough budget, but they're the ones that are saying parading around and waving, you know, the JV flag, if you will, for, for the organization saying, look, I've done the homework.

They're the sophisticated buyer. Now they're also infiltrating and, and getting others within the organization to rally. So good, good thing is they're a natural leader within their organization and they've been outfitted with all of your selling value and propositions that they can go and start really getting a whole parade of people to follow them, to cross the line or go in the corner office and say, we've got to fight for this thing. That's, that's, that is a definition of a champion for any type of sales model. The coach, you know, I, I like having both, obviously, James, the coach is pretty interesting. The coach is the guy or the gal that is, is, you know, giving us information, right?

It's that mole there. I love, I love, I love building that relationship with the coach because they're telling us things that, you know, Hey, um, if you, if you're, if you call this person right now at their office, they are, they're completely wide open on their calendar. So go ahead. They're giving you inside information. Of course, legal. Yeah, of course, they're giving you that, that insight. And actually pause there for a second. Cause that's exactly how I look at champions versus coaches, right? I look at a coach as usually you're going to hear from a coach, great information, right? As far as like politics and all that other stuff. But what you usually hear from them is, Hey, you didn't hear from me, but this is what's going on.

You know what I mean? And so it's like, thanks for the Intel, but now I got to do something. Now, what do I do? Right. Whereas a champion, they won't say, but you know, they won't say, don't, you didn't hear from me. A champion will say, go talk to so-and-so you need to convince that it guy that this is the right solution for you. And if you don't do that, then you and I aren't going to have a pot to piss in here. Right. So like, that's where you, you know, you try to really get them to, to buy in, but also act on whatever. Right. And to your point, it's good to have both. It's great to have both. Right. Cause, cause your coach could actually uncover some stuff about your champion and let you know that that's not a real champion for you.

Right. Cause they're just saying the same thing to everybody else. Yeah, exactly. And it ties into, again, something you said earlier, as far as like, who's like, when you identify the problem, the real problem, right? Who does this impact the most? Yeah. That is the person that you, I think you should go after for building a champion. Right. Yep. Absolutely. Which is different than the coach. And I love the fact that you discern it. And a lot of, a lot of people make the mistake. It's one and the same. It's not, you know, it's the, it's the, the, the coach is also the person. Hey, texting. I just got out of a board meeting. Yeah, exactly. We need to talk. Okay, great. Bad news. That's okay.

I'd rather have that now than, you know, not learn it and have a deal. Like you said, you know, fall out. Hey, the person you were working with is no longer here. Oh, oh shoot. Okay. That's why we started the conversation. How do we avoid getting single thread? Yeah. And that's exactly it. Right. Cause you gotta, you gotta expand the audience there and you gotta know who you can leverage to expand that audience. So, um, cool. Well, let's, uh, I do, I'm curious now for you in your role as CRO. All right. Cause could you help? It's funny. I, I train technical people, uh, you know, technical sales reps on technical, who sell technical solutions to technical people and business acumen, going back to understanding your customer and those types of things.

It's amazing. I'll do this survey in most of my trainings. I'll be like, Hey, and we talk about personas and how to go after personas. And I'll say, Hey, let me ask you in here. Anybody know the difference between the CTO and a CIO? So, right. So you'd be amazed at how many people like literally like senior reps who have been selling technology forever can't articulate the difference between that. And so I want to kind of get the same, I'd love to get your insights on the, on the same type of scenario from a VP of sales to a CRO. Yeah. Like what's the difference there? What's the fundamental difference there of a VP of sales to a CRO? And then let's give the audience a little bit of insight on how to sell to a CRO.

Yeah. You know what I mean? So, so tell me, tell me what, what that, what that jump did for you and what you now, now that you've been in it for a while, you say, Oh shit, this is, yeah, this is the difference. Yeah, no, it's, it's great. I mean, I tell you three years ago when, at least for me, three years ago, as a, as a VP and SVP of sales, um, you know, my whole remit was, was new bookings period, new bookings, new bookings, new bookings. Um, we had a team that did renewals. So that was all the recurring revenue. Um, and new bookings for us was not just net new logo, but it's upselling new, again, new bookings to existing customers. Um, it was about then that somebody had called me and said, Hey, you know, I'm the chief revenue officer at this company, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

I've got some questions about your stuff. I was like a CRO. Wow. That. Okay. And, you know, of course, some of these buzzwords like, you know, chief customer officer, uh, uh, customer success, you know, person, a lot of that's born out of, you know, the technology space, you know, as they kind of evolve on a regular basis, we joke technologies in dog years, you know, one year in our space is like seven and others. And so I think a lot of people are reuniting or reinventing different, different phrases, um, for me and, and, and others that I know with the same title, um, you know, for me and the role that I'm in now, I own the whole go-to-market strategy. So I have, I have more of a remit than just new bookings, um, and similar it's new bookings of, you know, add-ons upsells and, and also net new logos, but it's, it's also, I own the go-to-market strategy from a marketing perspective of demand generation.

Along with that comes some of the other functional areas that are adjacent to just pure sales that actually can accelerate sales. And like our solution engineers or the SEs are part of my organization, enablement, uh, sales ops, which we've actually combined into what we call sales effectiveness. So, and, you know, they always ask them, okay, what does that mean? Are they proposal writers? No sales effectiveness are there to remove every single roadblock internally and externally as much as possible. So sales people can sell more stuff here. Um, and of course, you know, the overall messaging and awareness and PR aspect within marketing is, is also part of my remit. And, you know, that's a lot, man.

That's a lot. It is. It's, um, but it's, it's fun because when you piece that whole thing together and everybody's, you know, again, common language champion versus coach, but if everybody knows what the go-to-market organization does and who is responsible for top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, you know, I always keep it simple, Hey, marketing, you know, you make the phone ring and sales, you got to fulfill that demand, you know, create demand, fulfill demand. Well, guess what? It's blurred. I need, I need marketing. And, you know, if they're going to listen to this podcast, they'll know that next year you're going to have a number and that's going to be a new concept for them. They're going to be like, well, what do you mean?

No, I need X amount in upsells that are influenced and driven by marketing. Are you closing the deals? No, but you need to have enough upsell campaigns, bottom of the funnel filling that I can measure it. And that we will put that on your reward on your performance basis. And it just can't fall into sales. Just like as I started, Hey, marketing, you create demand, no sales. Guess what? You got to do too. You got to come. And that means you got to pick up the phone, you know, borrow the phrase, John, make it happen. There you go, man. It's funny because I always said that the advent of the CRO position was because the VP of marketing and the VP of sales just couldn't get along and right. And customer success.

Right. And, and the C and the CEO was like, I can't deal with you two yelling at each other. I'm going to hire somebody on top of you guys so you can shut the fuck up. Right. And, and actually do what you're told. So, right. Cause, cause you have, cause those are the big three pillars, right? It's sales, marketing, customer success. Cause they all touch revenue. Um, and so you need heads of each one of those, but you know, a lot of the CEO does have to be in, in most organizations, they have to actually be the chief evangelist. They have to be the one out there as the master sales man or woman going out, selling the vision, selling the funders, selling the stuff. They don't have time to get their hands dirty on day-to-day operations after they get to a certain size.

And so a CRO is really the person that they kind of lean on to, to, to say, okay, could you figure out my revenue mix here? And I mean, is that, is that like from a direct report standpoint, you know, do you have three direct reports of those three divisions or do you have more than that? I have more than that. So, um, I have the head of marketing. Um, I have the head of the, the pre-sales. Okay. Um, I have, uh, heads of, of sales. I have one that does public sector and one that does enterprise. Um, I also have the sales effectiveness leader and, um, I have the SDR leader as well. And I also have the partner leader. Wow. So, so actually you just mapped out a contact strategy to a CRO, right?

Cause, cause like if I, cause you know, we kind of talk about this as far as like, how do I get somebody like yours attention? Well, you know, me putting all that shit in one play probably ain't going to work, but if I come after you, let me ask you, if I come after you and start talking a little bit about your sales org and how they're jet driving and then that misses, right? Cause you got a good sales leader on that team or whatever. And then my next one, I come at, well, marketing from a, you know, how about the, and then the next one is more about the SE team that falls under you. And then the S, right. I could map out a story with like, like value props on each one of those things that tell the story to somebody like you.

And, and I'm guessing at any given point in time, you have at least in your head, if not written down, which departments need the most help. Right. And so if I come after you with a three, four, five, six, 10 touch cadence and, and I keep throwing darts and one of those lands, there might be an opportunity there for you to be like, all right, you know what? Yeah. I didn't need you on the sales and the marketing side, but man, my SEs are, you know, they're struggling right now. And whatever you just said there, let's talk. Right. Yeah. Well, it's funny, John. Yeah. It's right here. This is the action tracker of every functional area and some of their big rocks. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of it is, I should have it color coded because there's some that are all, they sync with each other.

And, um, you know, if we can solve that problem in that functional area, like you were just talking about, that's going to benefit these guys. So, I mean, we know from what we do, and especially what you guys have been really successful at is, you know, the SDR initiative that's gone on in the last three, four, five years is for me personally, I think it's, you know, it's just starting to really form. It's been storming. And now it's starting to really form. And there's some people in the market that are really darn good who've done this a few times in building that out and getting a really strong cadence. But, you know, where those guys report to has always been the interesting thing, you know, well, it's marketing, you know, and, but, you know, I always say that's fine.

But I think if I kept them separate with a common goal, they are going to, they're just going to keep finishing each other's sentences. And it's just going to be this great cycle of marketing is creating the leads and they're all over them. And marketing's giving them great feedback saying, you guys did awesome. You helped me with my numbers. What can I do for you? Get me more. OK, so now they're both fed off each other. It's, you know, it's, let's use football. It's offensive and defensive. Mine, you know, hey, you got a good offense and defense is going to get a lot of rest. And then they're going to come on and they're going to give the ball back to the guys that don't score. It's the same thing in this business.

And that's, I mean, bringing it back to my, your Patriots analogy for me, right? This year, Tom Brady, good for him, right? But man, our defense is stout. Our offense is average at best, right? Even with Tom Brady, it's average at best. But we can, we can shift the pieces around right now and try to figure out what it looks like because our defense is just crushing everybody, right? So, I mean, I think that's, it's, that's the definition of team is like, you know, when one's strong, let the other one figure it out so that that one could be strong. So, we have the low mark there, right? But you got to work together on this stuff to make it all work. You know, I was hoping that would be the case for the Bears this year, but that's not it.

I know, man. I know. It's tough, man. It's like, there's certain teams that you're just like, oh, you want them to be, like, you got to, like, I think the NFL is like, come on, Bears. Like, we need you to be good. You know what I mean? We need you to be in the NFC playoffs. And we need, because everybody wants to root for the, I think they're just the old school, right? Like, come on. Yeah. So, anyways, I wish you guys luck. But look, I'm going to tie this up. We're up on the hour here. And I think, you know, people want to keep the, I usually like keeping us to 30, 45 minutes. I mean, I think I could learn a lot from you along the way, man, just asking questions. Because, you know, your experience, like, I've never been a CRO.

You know, I've never been a VP of sales of a multi-million dollar company who sells enterprise, right? And so, I appreciate your insights here. How can people learn more about what you're doing? I mean, what's going on over at Identity Automation right now? Are you guys hiring? Are you like, how can people learn more? Like, what do you want to kind of shout out there? Yeah. No, it's great, John. Thank you for, yeah. Identity Automation is a leader in identity and access management. So, a lot of people go, what does that mean? But, you know, with more and more SaaS applications that are out there and the risk of, you know, multiple passwords and lack of authentication and just, you know, bad guys out there in the marketplace, you know, our whole position is how do we build that perimeter around an organization to where someone can log in once and do a multi-factor authentication and get access to all their applications?

You got a major productivity gain there. You know, big markets for us are a lot of large workforces or large end users. So, K-12, higher education are great customers for us. Government entities are great customers for us. We've had a lot of success recently with healthcare. You know, healthcare is challenged in this country. It's, you know, multiple years behind the technology curve. But, you know, they've got a lot of regulation, a lot of privacy. And if you can increase the productivity of doctors and clinicians and just overall back office, they can save a lot of money and put that to better use. And, of course, you know, the big enterprises, we have some organizations, 30,000 employees that can log in and within seconds and get full access to all the applications in a safe and secure way.

And, you know, it's fun because we're a Houston-based software company. And, you know, we've been around for, you know, since really about 2004. And, you know, it's fun because we're in the really huge software security space. What I love the most is, you know, being in Houston, it's not known as a big software mecca, but we're getting some great talent. There's some great people in the market. We're hiring. We're growing. Part of our big initiative this year is what we call IA 2.0. The company has been growing 20%, 25% year after year after year. But we said, hey, imagine if we put a few of these key pieces in place, like more demand generation, SDR program, partner program, you know, really get the sales motion and execution moving, hired sales effectiveness leader, just started kind of putting the foundational strength in.

You know, we should be able to grow 40%, 50%, 60%. So, you know, we're a lean, mean, fight machine. And I know it's overused, but, you know, we're having fun and taking names at the same time. So, yeah, we're, hey, people want to sell software and they want to sell IDA access management software, then give me a shot. Bring it on. I love it. And for those of you who want to look up Jeff on LinkedIn, it's actually G-E-O-F-F. And then last name, I'll slaughter it, so I'll spell it S-U-R-K-A-M-E-R. All right, look them up on LinkedIn, connect with them there if you want. And then I'll obviously go to Identity Automation and check out what they're doing because it sounds like you guys are on a rocket ship right now, which is cool.

Yeah, man, it's awesome. So, thank you. Yeah, no problem, Jeff. I appreciate you coming on here. So, hopefully everybody got some value out of this as much as I did. And just like I said to everybody all the time, right, like if you don't do anything else today, go make somebody happy. Go make somebody smile, right? Because you could have the worst day out there, but if you made somebody smile, you made a difference, all right? So, thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Have a great week, everybody. Let's make it happen.