218: Will Frattini On Sales Engagement Strategies To Accelerate Your Pipeline

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James, Say What Sales Buckley, and we are back with the next episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. Big shout out to our partners, Sales Loft, Proposify, Rise, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. These teams and products do amazing things for salespeople all over the world, so we're very fortunate to call them partners. So big round of applause for everyone on that list. Thanks so much. Quick note here, JB Sales is proud to provide support for Service to Software, a team dedicated to helping veterans transition into the SaaS space after active duty. If you're a veteran looking to start a career in software sales, visit service2software.com today and learn how they can help make it a reality for you.

More meetings, more conversations, more opportunities, more sales, that's the name of the game, and we want to turn that into reality for every sales rep everywhere. Learn the skills, techniques, tactics, and plays that make a difference in your pipeline. Stop begging for conversations and start earning them with better messaging. Learn how as a JB Sales member by joining us today at ondemand.jbarrows.com. Today, Zoom Info's own Will Fratini will be joining John in the studio to discuss sales engagement strategies. Will started off at Zoom Info, and wow, did it ever take off. Zoom Info is now one of the most well-respected names in data today, and Will is their director of sales. Let's dive into his story and see how Will and his crew have been doing lately.

A lot has changed, and Will's got some insights that are very enlightening. So without further ado, here's John and Will to kick it off. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrow. It's making it up on Monday. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. Mine was good. The weather here in Boston is getting better, even though it just can't get over that 50 base. I'm just waiting for it to stay in the fucking 70s. And my friend here, Will, is from Boston as well and runs sales over at Zoom Info. So, Will, director of sales over at Zoom Info, how's it going, my friend? It's going great. Happy Monday. Can't wait to talk to you today. This has been something I've been looking forward to for a while.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate it. And, you know, we've been now, because we've been working a little bit closer together now for the past year or so, right? With you guys, Meteoric Rise, I know our marketing team and you guys are doing some cool stuff together. Yeah. No, we share a lot of the same audience and interested people trying to level up every day and, you know, keep filling the top of their funnel and keep kind of growing their business through adversity, especially last year more than ever. So, yeah, excited to chat. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things we went into this, you know, a lot of my team kind of sets the stage for the conversation and that type of thing. And I looked at the doc and we could look, we could talk tactics all day long because I think you and I are very aligned as far as what we do, what we represent and how we're aligned.

But as I was doing a little bit of prep for this, I was really a lot more interested in your journey because there was a post you did recently, about a week ago, where you talked about how you were, what, member 115 at Zoom Info? Yeah, my wife, actually, the day of our IPO, she gave me a framed picture of my interview notes. No way. Nice. That's super cool. I think there were, so I'm from the legacy Zoom Info unit. We could talk more about it, but, you know, Discover or acquired Zoom Info. So when it was Zoom Info at the time, there were like 110 employees and like nine or 10 salespeople on the new business team. So we've come a little bit of ways. I was going to say, now you're up at 1,900, give or take?

Yeah, we've hired almost 1,000 people remotely since the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah. That's a whole, so that's a whole nother challenge I'd love to dive into. But let's talk about your journey here because you went from, what was it, Oxford Global Resources? You were there for quite a bit and then you jumped. So first of all, what made you make that transition to a pretty stable job, pretty stable company to kind of a startup with a lot of risk involved there? A, I'd love to understand what your risk profile is and how you look at risk and then why you made that jump. And then let's talk about the journey all the way through. Yeah, I appreciate that. So I'm actually very risk averse. Are you?

Yeah. So it's weird. Like when I was first in school at UNH, I had finished school a little bit early. I wanted to travel abroad and I had some limitations on when I could do that. So I had to do all of my senior year in the summer between junior and senior year and senior fall. And I was kind of just raring to get a job. And my fraternity at the time, we had chartered a new chapter of it at school. So they actually said, do you want to go do this for a living? Brought me out to Indianapolis. That was a big risk, kind of New Year's Day, literally drove to Indiana by myself, didn't know anyone out there. And that was a very... Are you, were you born in Boston or? Yeah. Born in Manchester, Manchester by the sea area.

So Boston to Indiana is not exactly a similar transition right there. Big shift. So risk profile as a 21, 22 year old, I was like, yeah, what the heck? Let's go do it. And I learned very quickly that just mentally, physically wasn't prepared to do that so far away from home. So by myself. And thankfully, I have a great family foundation that I could come back to. And I had a friend, still my friend, I've known him since we were in kindergarten. His father had been an original employee at the staffing firm that had been acquired for a couple hundred million dollars and whatever. And I was just living in my parents' basement looking for a job. And, you know, with all respect to what the job was, it was an entry level, you know, call center type of a job.

Learning technical recruiting, talking to enterprise IT consultants who had 30 years of experience. Like, but it was one of the greatest things because it taught me how to be resilient, how to cold call. I had some fantastic teachers there about teaching me, like, really just roll up your sleeves and work harder than everybody else. It also taught me how to qualify, how to kind of figure out what a real opportunity was. Long story long, Abby's my now wife. She and I were dating in college, kind of dated again when I came home. She had just moved to Austin, Texas. And Oxford decided to open an office there and I was able to move down there. So I kind of grabbed another risk, but I kind of was worried about, you know, disrupting my flow and figuring out, like, is this the right place to go?

You know, am I in the right spot? Is there, you know, some other opportunity out there for me? I was doing a lot of staffing for software companies and I saw how cool it was that they were making products. And I kind of wanted to be a part of that. Fast forward a couple of years later, we're back in Boston. And it was time for me to start looking for something new. So I started applying to tons of software companies in Boston. And I applied to a company in Cambridge. The recruiter was like, hey, I'll submit your resume to this company you applied for. You know, no problem. I've also been working with this other little company in Waltham, Massachusetts called Zoom Information. You know, they really don't hire a lot of outside salespeople.

They're not, you know, terribly interested in meeting tons of candidates. But I think you got a profile they might like. Literally, that's how I came to meet ZoomInfo. I was really lucky. That's when a recruiter actually is worth it, right? Like, I mean, when a recruiter knows the person. I have a slight disdain for recruiters, just like I do for mortgage people, right? Or like real estate people. Because I hate people who have to negotiate on my behalf when they're, you know, not incentivized to do so. And a lot of my experience with recruiters in the past is, yeah, I'm just going to put you in front of whoever kind of fits the profile, not really understand who you were and that fit. So what about, why did they, why did the recruiter think that your profile, that this specific company that doesn't typically hire from, why did they think your profile is a better fit?

So I think what we ended up talking about in the early days of ZoomInfo and still now, John, I mean, look, tons of customers, but there's so many companies that still think we're the Zoom video company, right? So we have a lot of ones to do, right? A lot of my background was stability in one company. Like, you know, as hard as the pandemic has been, that's changed the realities of what's, you know, normal, acceptable, whatever. But like, they really liked that I had been at one company for four years. They liked that I had gone to different locations and helped open offices and been a central part of the sales process. But when they talked a little bit more to me, it was, they, they, they learned again, all credit due to Oxford's training that I knew how to qualify.

And I knew how to spend my time on what was a real opportunity, as opposed to just kind of like trying to sell at everybody, like a sidewalk vendor. And that aligns really well to ZoomInfo because you have to be, you know, you have to be somebody that understands how to capture like, hey, this opportunity is real because, right? And it, you know, even in the early days, we're very different company, much more commoditized entity that we were selling six years ago. But that was super helpful to kind of make that transition into something I hadn't sold before, right? Six years ago, it was like, you got to have software sales experience. Like, I kind of had to make my case that like, look, you know, I've been in this world.

I understand the impacts of software. I love helping people accomplish their roles. I've been leading a sales team for a couple of years now. You know, I think I can really add value to your customers, but I had to really kind of put my neck out there and make the pitch. So, and let's kind of divert to the qualification piece. What tells, I mean, pause for the journey for a second. The qualification piece, because I think that is, I personally think that's the most important part of the entire sale, right? Obviously, the hardest part is getting somebody to talk to, right? So breaking through, cracking through the noise and getting somebody to give you that undivided attention without hanging up on you.

But once you have that, that qualification dictates the entire sale. So what for you, even back then or in now from a training, you know, how you coach your team and that type of stuff. What, what are kind of the core things that you look for? And it is a deal real that tells you, yup, like that one, we should forecast it or please walk away from that piece of shit. 100%. So I think right before they got acquired officially by Gartner, Topo put the study out that said like executives used to think in 6, 12, 18, 24 month sprints, right? And the pandemic was like, I don't care about anything that doesn't add value to my company in the next 30, 60, 90 days, right? And we love that study for a ton of reasons.

Great company, really smart people that ran it. But like, it's so true to your value of what you're selling in today's world. And again, 6 years ago, this was somewhat true, but today's world now more than ever has to bring immediate value. And so when we qualify an opportunity, you know, realistically, any company that goes to market could and should be our customer. They could be, right? You sell, you know, jewelry to buyers at retailers, you could be our customer, right? But if I don't bring the story to you as my buyer in a way that you can see this immediately add value tomorrow, you'll tell me I'm not ready for you, or it's too expensive, or this isn't the right fit. And so qualification for us is about, am I aligning to the actual immediate impact our product could bring this person?

Because it might be different than somebody else, but I've got to understand what their current setup looks like, what their current process looks like. How they've historically done things to indicate future behaviors, and then fit myself into that and show an immediate impact and lift. And that's kind of something we're always striving to tinker in tune and be better at, right? But that's always been helpful in my career is trying to figure out that story as it changes, right? How do you differentiate between impact? Because I'm all like, we train on impact questions. Like, what's the impact of the business? Like, what happens if you don't make this decision, then, you know, when you said you're going to, those type of things.

How do you differentiate impact to ROI, right? Because I think there's a lot of ROI calculators out there, which I never have been successful using. I've never believed in. I've always rolled my eyes at. But, you know, people still ask for them. Usually people below the power line. So, how do you differentiate, like, legit impact versus me running through you and our ROI calculator here? I think we're really fortunate here to have some incredibly bright folks that work around us that are bringing value every single day to this organization. I'll give credit where it's due. Chris McDonough, I had the pleasure of supporting him as a leader. Now I'm a peer of his, now he's grown in his development incredibly.

He's done incredible things for the people that he's managed and supported. He was an early HubSpot, BDR. And he had a great idea to kind of run these interviews internally with buyer persona employees of our company. And it was like, great idea. And so, we literally had our CFO, Cameron, do a 30-minute session with us. Our VP of marketing, Deanne. Our head of demand gen, Nina. Our CRO, COO, Chris Hayes. And it helped us be able to talk that way and say, look, I know CFOs are skeptical. Our CFO would never want to talk to me. I'm the sales guy. Are you kidding me? He doesn't want to ever hear it from me. He wants to know his internal tribe is aligned. And he's all about ROI, but not if it's coming from my mouth, right?

I mean, what an invaluable lesson to apply and give to our team from Chris, I mean, from McD. Like, those are the things that I would recommend is asking your colleagues how do they buy things. And then is, you know, because our CRO, our COO, Chris, is like, look, you don't have to overcomplicate ROI. If you can sell me something that can make my salespeople sell more, better, faster, I'll buy the thing if my team wants it. Our CFO says, I'll give you a dollar of money I haven't planned to spend. As long as you can show me a clear line to value to generate a couple dollars of return back. And so, two very different ways of saying the same thing, right? That person needs one way of looking at it.

The other needs the other. Cameron wouldn't look at an ROI impact as disingenuous. If it's coming from the internal buying committee, he would look at it as an acronym if it came from me, the sales guy, right? And I think we apply that a lot to our customer. We're very fortunate. We sell to sales leaders and marketing leaders. Like, they get it. They're doing this every day. CEOs, COOs, CFOs think this way already. But even if you're selling to HR, to, you know, operations, to manufacturing, like, if you can somehow interview somebody that has bought stuff before, and that's all the way back to Oxford, that was our number one thing is like, have you hired contract-based enterprise IT consultants in the past?

Because if you haven't, we're not even going to ever talk to you ever again, because it's a waste of both of our times, because you're not going to philosophically align to the value that we bring, right? Yeah, I think the lack of, it always amazes me why we don't, companies don't have more customer advisory boards or internal advisory boards. I mean, we all sell to the same personas of the people that are in our companies and that we already have as customers. And we, as sales reps, we guess all the time about our messaging and what's going to resonate and what's a good question to ask and what's a, you know, and it's like, there's people who are in those roles that we can ask if this resonates.

I mean, I always joke that, you know, when I was at Thrive, my first company, you know, I'd have reps come in and be like, oh, John, you know, I'm having a hard time, you know, getting through gatekeepers. You know, you have any suggestions, I'd be like, I don't know, hold on a second. Hey, Shelly, are you a gatekeeper? Yeah, John. Hey, Shelly, do you deal with sales reps calling you all day long? Yeah. I go, do you have to let some of them through and some of them not? Yep. I go, could you do me a favor and tell my boy here how to get through a gatekeeper? Sure, John, no problem. I was like, just go talk to Shelly. She's right there. And actually back me up on this, Will, because this is my thought process.

I've always done this and I've always suggested this. And say you get like the senior, you know, senior executives in your organization. If a sales rep approached them, say the most junior sales rep, like a 22-year-old kid out of college and said, came to you and said, hey, Will, I, you know, I haven't sold to directors of sales in the past. You know, would you mind if I just grabbed 30 minutes? I have a few questions here for you. I've done some background. Could you give me some insights here? Wouldn't, would you go out, wouldn't you go out of your way to help that kid out? 100%, like 100%, right? And here's a wake-up call. Unfortunately, I'll back you up even more. If you don't work for a company today where that's the culture, I'm not saying go quit your job and go take a huge risk and be crazy and move to Indiana from Boston, right?

But yeah, I mean, look, those are conversations that your executives should want to have because Henry, our CEO, has always instilled that all the way since the beginning, that the CEO, the CFO, the COO, the board, they should be growth-minded or at least sales-centric, right? Not every company wants to go public. Not every company wants to grow 60% year over year. That's okay. But they should be willing to understand and talk to your internal team, if not customers, about the outcomes you generate. And that may even help you uncover, I said, sales, marketing, C-suite for me. Of course, we sell to IT now, right? And we sell an outcome to IT that they care about that might not be the exact outcome a salesperson thinks about.

And if I can talk and understand that outcome, I think people I look up to, you, other thought leaders in the space, if you understand what it is that you actually solve and how people make sense of that value, it makes you that much better of a salesperson. So qualification comes down to like, you know, I'm a huge fan of Doug Land, like Doug Land. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. The easiest, most growth hacky way to learn how to qualify is to just literally understand how the past behavior worked. Right? And the best salespeople are the ones that can figure out how to manufacture a deal out of thin air. Don't get me wrong. But if you can understand how a company has made a buying process before, especially if you're selling to large growth cap companies that are in the mid-market, enterprise companies, if you don't have some semblance of qualification of understanding that behavior and what that path looks like, you'll do nothing but, yeah, this is great.

Well, I love the product. It's awesome. You know, it's... Yep. Happy years all day long. Knocked you in a couple months, though. I have no idea what to do next. Right. That's... And that's very real for our momentum and growth is we're always figuring out, like, what's that extra little thing that can make us that much more efficient with not just having a great product and a good sales story. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the best hacks, too, in this shift, this made... I made this shift, I don't know how many years ago, but I started disqualifying more than I qualified. You know, I just... I ask you all the reasons why you shouldn't do this, right? Because you're going to figure those out.

You might not figure those out because depending on where you are in the power line and decision process and all that other stuff, but somebody along the way is going to poke holes in this story, and I want to poke those holes first. And the credibility you gain from basically being like, ah, you know, I know we could probably do an okay job here, but this isn't really our sweet spot, so, you know, help me understand why are we still having this conversation, right? That type of thing. People end up almost reverse selling it and being like, no, no, no, we definitely need this if you act like you want it, but you don't need it, right? You got it. So, perfect. All right, cool. So, let's keep on this journey.

So, 115, coming out the gate strong, coming from a different organization. You took over... What was your initial role? Did you come in as an individual contributor or did you come in as a director? No, I came in as an AE. I had been in a player coach role at Oxford and, you know, was kind of excited to just see what it was like to be a salesperson again for myself and learned very quickly, even before we started selling this product, that I was very excited to talk about the value that we bring. And things just kind of, you know, I have a really, really good support system. The leadership at ZoomInfo and legacy ZoomInfo, legacy Discover Work has been phenomenal always. So, people are here to make others successful.

And, you know, I was very fortunate where I tried some things, did some stuff that didn't work, did some things that worked. And eventually, people were kind of like tugging on the proverbial shirt sleeve, like, hey, you know, how did you do that thing? And I finally, you know, probably a little confidently, but went to my boss and was like, hey, if you're good at something, don't do it for free. Like, can we monetize this help I'm giving to you? So, I kind of walked into that. And then we... Go ahead. Let me ask real quick on that piece there, you know, that jump from, you know, individual contributor to leader, right? A lot of companies make the mistake where they promote their best sales rep to be their managers.

And a lot of times, the best sales rep has a really hard time articulating how they did what they did, right? So, it sounds like they came to you and said, hey, Will, you're crushing it over here. You're doing a really good job. And then you kind of took that opportunity. How good were you on the artist-scientist scale, if you will, of the artist being the, like, unconsciously competent, right? It's those ones that are just out there. They just know how to interact with people. They know how to spend their time. But I think, honestly, I think that's probably 5% of our population, right? So, where were you on the, I know what my process is, and I can show somebody else how to do this continuum?

Yeah. And it's cool, too. Like, I'll put a little humility out there. So, I went into the manager role really fast, right? And the company was growing at a pace that it kind of acquired it. And we had to hire a bunch of people. And I, you know, have the artist-storyteller side of me pretty well ingrained into who I am. But I also am kind of a numbers logic guy. I don't know what, I mean, the left part of my brain has a lot of the right part built into it, I guess. But, so, I started to look at, you know, our company's metric 2017 was each gold standard would be if each rep could sell $850,000 a year, that's good. Because then we can help grow our business. So, I then had to reverse engineer the math to say, you know, if their salespeople are prospecting and working some inbounds, then that means you need this many number of completed demos that should yield this number of opportunities, that should yield this number of wins, even if you're, you know, an average or somewhat above average performer.

And doing that helped us grow. I mean, it did. I mean, again, certainly didn't do it by myself. We had fantastic leadership, great marketing, an amazing product. Our finance team knew how to spend money that we made in a smart way. But getting kind of that science of it down, what I will say is the humility piece of this. We grew quickly. I'm skipping a couple steps. But when we got acquired, I had just recently been promoted into a, you know, what we would have looked at as a full director historically. And I was running a 30 person organization, a couple managers under me, but we had just been acquired with a very ambitious goal to go public within the next six to 12 months. And that very quickly became too big for me because my skill sets are engineering growth for a startup company, mid-market maybe, but a couple hundred person company, but also being a very good salesperson.

And I had to kind of be encouraged to understand that. And I shifted my role a little bit. And I started managing a smaller team of very high performers, folks that I'm extremely spoiled to that could be able to manage. And that organically grew into, hey, Will, remember when you used to sell this product, you're managing a team of high performers that don't require a ton of handholding. What do you think? And I was, and I kind of said, I would love to do that. So I get to kind of be the best of both worlds now. The nice thing is we have some very senior leaders at our company that have been leading sales teams for 10, 20 years that are in the role that I was going to be in. No way I would have been able to do what they're doing and have the knowledge that they have.

Now, seeing that we have this five to 10 year profile of salesperson who's a really good salesperson, but also a good coach and somewhat scientist to manage. We're spinning up this role now across the company. So we have this kind of not really player coach, but player coach role where managing a smaller team is still possible as a top seller. The reason I go off on that tangent, I've had to understand that success can happen very quickly if you do something really well, but you always have to be prepared that like you aren't the best at what you do and you're not the best and you cannot ever think about yourself as the best. And you might be asked to take on a new role. But I got some advice from one of our senior leaders here at the beginning of when I kind of shifted last, the beginning of last year, the best advice I can give to any sales development rep, any inside salesperson, any marketing coordinator, any sales manager, any director of a newly minted team that's growing crazy.

Just be the best at the job that you're in today and don't try to hurry to get to that next thing because you never know if that job you're in today, if you being the best at it is actually a career progression for you versus the title change or the thing that you're chasing. And that was a really big humility lesson for me because I was kind of the guy walking around like, I'm the guy I helped to build the team. And I needed to kind of not be that guy for a minute. And that's what's helped me kind of grow into this role again at Zoom Info and be very fortunate to be in the spot that I'm in for so many reasons. A good support system can make an enormous difference in our growth patterns. When Will first started at Zoom, he probably made a lot of the same mistakes that we've all made in our past.

But Will became a manager fast because his focus remained on the goals and his team of leaders supported his growth. While luck may have had a lot to do with how Will became what he is, it was his hard work and dedication to excellence that ultimately drove him to become who he is. All right, let's talk about what's popping at JB Sales these days. You got to send me your sales wins. Send me those wins at james at jbarrows.com to be featured on next week's episode of Make It Happen Mondays. Today, we're tipping our hat to Aaron Salazar at Property Melt. Aaron and his team signed up for JB Sales On Demand in February, and he's seen a 25% boost in conversions due to a 482% increase in conversations.

That's how you step it up, Aaron. Way to go, buddy. To some extent, sales is a numbers game. But there's a space for quality as well. What we know is that it's getting harder and harder to break through to new accounts. So take the time to make your outreach matter. Attention-grabbing statements, interest questions, the structure of messages make all the difference in the world. Learn how we do it by becoming a member at JB Sales. Join us today at ondemand.jbarrows.com. Let's throw it back to Will and JB for the second half of the show. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I think that, you know, Doug Lantbeck, to bring up Doug, they had him and Amy Volus at a clubhouse the other night talking about this exact thing about understanding where you fit in an organization.

And once you figure that out, or where you fit in your career as far as what you're great at, right? And sometimes you have to be humbled to be able to learn that. So it's not a similar story, different outcome on my end. You know, my little company, Thrive Networks, I was the fifth guy. I was running sales and marketing. I turned it into a science. I turned this engine on and it ran, right? And then we got bought by Staples. We were the fastest growing company in Massachusetts. We got up to 50 people, 12 million, right? Really, really fast. And then we got bought by Staples and quite honestly, I was, we had been doing the Thrive thing for about seven years and I had figured it out. You know what I mean?

In the sense that there wasn't really a huge challenge for me coming up. I was like, yeah, same exact thing as you. I mapped out our equation. I knew exactly how many meetings we needed to get on a monthly basis, all the channels and what conversion ratios and all that other stuff. So I had it down. And so this new thing was like, ooh, a kind of a challenge for me. I got, we had a $20 million, I'm sorry, $20, yeah, $20 billion company bought my little $10 million company. And now I get to figure out that, like, that's going to be interesting. But holy shit, was I wrong? Like, I was just not the guy. I did, I do not fit in corporate, but I fought it and I fought it and I fought it. I, cause I thought like, look at me, I'm the number one producer.

I'm like literally the heart and soul of this company. I was the guy who stood up every month and said, did the rah, rah, let's do this. And all of a sudden my ego, I probably got in the way a little bit here because I'm like, I could figure this out. Like I'm the guy that should be able to do this. And I was not the guy because the skillset to take us from five to 50 people and zero to 12 million was a vastly different skillset than it was going to take to integrate into a $20 billion organization and take us to that next level. So I'm curious on your end, like, it sounds like there was a little bit of humility on your end to kind of realize it. There was a few people that kind of pushed you to say, hey, you want to try that out?

But there's also the challenge for me of like, well, yeah, but how do I grow to that next level if I don't know? So it sounds like you have a fantastic support system over at zoom info and, and mine was not exactly supportive, right? Mine didn't see my potential, if you will, and say, Ooh, this kid has potential. Let's just put them over here as opposed to beating the shit out of them. So how do you, how do you look at that journey as far as what you're good at, where you fit, but what your potential is? How do you balance that? I think, you know, take a beat and try to think about the right word, but I already kind of have it at the top of my tongue. It's trust. And that goes back to anecdotally, the thing we talked to a 10, 15 minutes ago, like if you don't work at a company where you trust your leadership or they are invested in your success genuinely, right, that should tell you a lot about the decisions that you make and the effort that you bring every day.

Now, I will say there is no way in the world that I can underrate the value that my wife, my partner brings me and the support she gave me to get through what was a huge ego blast. Like it was like, I, I had a hard time not understanding that this could be a very good thing for me. Right. And last year, our team, I would have qualified for president's club as a salesperson. And I was the number one manager in president's club because my team is amazing. Right. So in a 12 month swing going from like, oh man, like maybe they don't to actually quickly realizing, no, my company trusts me. They still want me to be successful. They really know that I'm good at this one thing, like go be the best at that job.

And my wife was able to also remind me that what I will say the day we got acquired, um, I'm, I try, I'm a social brand ambassador for LinkedIn or for Zim Info on LinkedIn. So I'm always out there trying to be a marketer as well as a salesperson. So Henry knew who I was very fortunate for that. And so I walk up, he's like, you're the LinkedIn guy. And I was like, all right, but he goes, but you're the Peloton guy too. Right. So that was like instantly, I was able to get to know Henry, Chris, I already had a great relationship with Chris Hayes, a great relationship with Lou, um, where I trusted them and I trusted their judgment ultimately. And even if it wasn't something that I'm in that moment understood, I trusted in them.

And I could tell based on the interactions that I've had with those three core folks, as well as the rest of the leaders in the business that like, it wouldn't, they wouldn't be offering me an opportunity to do something really, really well if they didn't trust in me either. So I need to trust in that. Now that doesn't mean we blindly put faith in our company and hope it's all going to be great. And like, if you're unhappy, but the, the investment, I could tell that Henry, Chris, Lou had made in me and my success and made in the people around me and made in the team around us. Like it was really important for me to understand, like, this isn't something that's just a fly by night decision. Like this company is going to be a publicly traded entity.

We're going to do a lot more revenue than I can even count. And, you know, that's something that's important for me to understand is I, in that current role, that wasn't going to be the place for me because I trust the people that are making that decision. Right. And I think, again, credit all goes to, all credit goes to Chris, to Henry, to Lou, to the rest of the, Steve Briarton, the leaders here, you know, Dave Sill, who has since retired at ZoomInfo, like the investment that they do genuinely put in the success of us, you just can't underscore that enough. And anyone that doesn't understand that it's too bad if you work at a company that you, you have that trust already, if you're taking that for granted.

Make sure you look in the mirror today, right? Because you might have some really, really phenomenal leadership and phenomenal folks that trust in you. And if you can make the most of that trust and show that you've earned it, right, really special stuff can happen. So that's, and that's what I think is a little bit missing today. First of all, on both sides, right? The trust factor of leadership. I think now the job market is flipped, right? Whereas when, when COVID hit, it was all of a sudden everybody got laid off and kids were begging for jobs, right? And obviously there's a lot of people out there still looking for work and whatever. But now I think it's become, if you're good at what you do, there's a huge flight risk right now for organizations because now the tie to the organization is, is less in the sense that I'm not in the office.

I'm not hanging out with my friends. I'm not, you know, sitting at the water cooler, having these conversations. I'm at my desk. I'm, I'm in a zoom session here. And, and so, and I'm a top performer and if I don't feel comfortable that this company trusts me and I, I have, I'm, I'm, you know, I have upward mobility here and all that other stuff, I get that call from that recruiter over at Oxford, you know what I mean? And there all of a sudden, you know, it's like, maybe take, I take this out. So I think a leadership has to do this, but you know, in really in part that, but the other piece is, is the, I think we have lost, uh, the, the patience game here from a rep standpoint and to your point being the best at what you do and not expecting, you know, like what's next, what's next, what's next, but I'm going to be the absolute best SDR I can possibly be.

And, you know, it kind of goes back to my dad always used to, you know, earn, earn, earn, earn, earn, earn, right. Or earn it, earn it, earn it. No matter what you do, earn it. Don't expect it, earn it. And yeah, it might take a little bit longer, but the quality and the people who matter are the ones paying attention, right. And if they're not, I guess that's a question, right. Which is say I am working my ass off, say I am working to be the best at what I am, but for some reason, I'm not getting the recognition for some reason, like what's your threshold on that one? Will, is it a timeline for you? Is it, you know, Hey, I've been like, say you got to be an SD, you know, let's do a typical scenario, right.

You got to be an SDR for a year and a half before you get, you know, considered to be an AE or promoted to whatever the next level is for you. Right. So I'm that SDR. I busted my ass. I've, I've been top of the leaderboard. I've been doing everything right. And it's around a year and a half. And I see other people around me getting opportunities that I'm not like, where is that line for you of, I deserve this because I'm better than everybody and my numbers prove it. So give me this versus I've earned this shit. Why am I not? And therefore I should probably start looking like, is there a threshold for you that you look at that? I think it's hard to ever say, we figure out where that threshold is because inherently built into the world of sales development, sales, we're competitive.

Hopefully there's some level of ego driving you every day to be better. I think, you know, the, the, as much of an answer I can give without it being a non-answer, the thing I've learned and I'm continuing to learn is there's a difference between being satisfied and complacent and frustrated and humble while you're the best. And in my opinion, if you're the top of the leaderboard, right, if you're hungry to be at the top of the leaderboard every month, you should be being compensated for that. Number one, if you're not being paid what you think you're worth, then that's important to look at financially, take the job recognition out of it for a minute. Like if you're doing a job that you feel like you're working harder than you should be, you're not being compensated.

That's important before you just take another job, talk to your boss about it, understand what the next steps are financially, understand those types of things. But being able to say like, I want to be really good at my job, but whatever I did yesterday doesn't matter because today is what matters is one of the most catalytic things that's helped me kind of have this second, you know, re-ignition of what my career could be. Right. And saying like, you know, let's say I close a big deal today. I, I, this isn't an act. I genuinely look at that as a zero on the board when I come to work tomorrow. Like I'm frustrated if I have a docusign out there that was supposed to sign today and I'm, you know, way above my quota and it doesn't sign today.

Like that's how I look at the world. And I look at it where it's not going to make me crazy and I'm not going to carry that. I'm already home, but it's not going to carry it down to the dinner table and I'm going to make the night miserable. Right. So that's the other lesson learned. But that humility of like, I work at a company where my leaders trust me. I work at a company where recognition is real. Even if it's not like here every single day, let me tell you how great you are. Right. And I know that when I work hard and I put in good work and I stay humble about it, I'm rewarded for that. Right. As a sales development rep, one of the things I, you know, it breaks my heart is like, I used to do all the interviews at legacy zoom info for the sales team.

It's like, Oh, you know, I took this job and they said I'd be promoted to account executive in six months. And I, you know, I initially want to say, well, shame on you for like thinking that's something you earned shame on the leadership for even saying that right now at the same time, the leadership might say that and be genuine. So then it goes back to the individual. Did you really come to work every day, put in the best work you can bring, be ready to be humble and accept even when you're the best, you can always be better because I've seen organizations that their leadership says that in an interview, it's absolutely true. You could get promoted in a month if you're the best sales development rep.

Right. But the reality is if you're going to go in and say like, my career path is mapped out this way, cause I'm going to accomplish X, Y, and Z newsflash you're in sales, right? This job is more about failing than about winning. If you want to be in a career path, go be a doctor, go be a lawyer. It's very prescribed. It's very written out for you. Like you'll make a lot of money. It'll take you a little bit to get there. But like, those are the career path progression steps in sales, you know, it's not defined and it never will be. And that's what makes it amazing because you can't really ever put your, put your finger on how to, how to do it other than just to treat every day, every moment.

Like it's a brand new one, right. And an opportunity to be better. Yeah. And the skills, it's funny, you know, the, the patients, the lack of patients, right. I mean, you know, what minimum 40, 50, 60 year career, right. And, and if you're in sales, you know, the, I think, I don't care where you go, the most important thing that you can get and be great at for your entire career is prospecting, right. Because no matter what you do, if you're going to go out, raise money for funding, you've got a prospect if you know what I mean. And so, and, and all the other stuff becomes so much easier when you get that big fat pipeline. So those SDRs that are just itching and they have this perception, I want to be an enterprise AE.

It's like, slow down there, Charlie. Like, first of all, you got a long way to go. Second of all, like if you perfect, it's almost, I think about like Picasso, I'm a, I was going to be an art major. This is why I ended up in sales, right. Cause I went art and then math and then science and all sorts of, I'm like, ah, fucking marketing. Um, but Picasso, like when I studied him, he would perfect the genre or whatever. Whatever the medium was. So he would get all into acrylics and then he would dive into acrylics and perfect his craft and acrylics. And then he would move to, you know, abstract or whatever it was. And he would perfect that. And then he would move. And so by the end he was Picasso, but he wasn't Picasso in the beginning.

You know what I mean? He learned the different pieces of the puzzle that made his career what it was and, and, and became the best at each one of those pieces throughout his career. So he could always pull back on that. And to me, that's what sales is really about. You get great at prospecting. Then you get great at discovery. Then you get great at, you know, presentations and engagement and, and so on. And it rounds you out. And it's just, I, I, I cringe sometimes at that exact same thing that you said. It's like, oh yeah, well they promote, they told me I was going to be in for, you know, six months and they haven't promoted me. And it's all, I've, I've been here eight months. It's like, ah, shit, man.

Like what are you in such a rush for here? And you probably would have like, again, like there's two sides, the VP of sales development who runs that interview process and says, yeah, we're on a quick career progression. I mean, you know, that's very possible if you become the best sales development rep and you have these fantastic skills that the company can't ignore, right? They might want you to stay a sales development rep a little longer, but then figure out a way to make that work for you. Right. The, uh, you know, and Henry, one of our core values of being 1% better every day. Right. And that's just, it's not a, it's not a line. It's not a, it's literally like, that's how we operate here.

And, you know, sometimes that can be hard for folks to understand, like, man, I'm never going to be good enough. No, it's a mindset shift, right? It's just, how do I get a little bit better tomorrow? As opposed to saying, whatever I did, wasn't good enough because you have to feed the ego. You have to keep yourself confident. You have to stay lifted. Um, I think of like, uh, you know, I'm like, you know, I don't golf as much as I used to. I think I played twice in the last year, but you know, uh, 10 cup classic movie, Roy McAvoy says like perfection is unattainable. It just is the best salesperson ever in the world. She's at the top of the leaderboard. She closed the biggest deal on the company because she's the best.

She won't look at that. She'll say, yeah, well, I still have to do X, Y, and Z. And that that's, that's just the mindset. Right. And I've learned that here at some info. There's so many opportunities when you ask about career progression, like what's next? How do I deal with that? What's exciting for me and COVID woke everybody up. Nothing is guaranteed tomorrow. It's not. Whatever you thought you knew about what you're doing, what the world is like, whoever would have thought that that would happen in March of last year. No way. Right. And, but if you can make the most of every opportunity that you're given one day at a time and genuinely not try to rush through everything, like how else did we all get through the last year?

Right. Like that's the reality. Right. Yeah. I would say sales is like golf. It's, it's, you can't shoot a zero, right? You can't shoot a zero in golf. You can always get a little bit better. Right. Um, and that 1%, I'm curious where that came from. Cause I have one, I have 12 personal guidelines and one of them is get 1% better every day. And I got that from, uh, the Ken Blanchard book, uh, raving fans. So, right. Cause it talks about know who you are, know what your customer expects from you and then get 1% better every day. Right. And that whole mentality of like, can you make one more cold call? Can you ask that question that you might not have asked? Like, these are simple little things that if you can genuinely at the end of the day, I try to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day and say, look, am I genuinely better today than I was yesterday?

And if I can say that and really, really believe it, right. Or did I try that extra little piece today compared? And sometimes the answer is no, by the way, sometimes the answer is no. Actually today I was not, I was down, I was not off my game. I wasn't so, all right. I just got to get back on track tomorrow. Right. But if you do it that way, then it's incremental as opposed to like set the bar at a high but attainable level and then throw it up to the next mountaintop when you reach it. We have a, we have a routine every night at the dinner table and my daughter's three and a half. So, I mean, she's developed as far as a three and a half year old can be, but we, you know, at least do them the first couple minutes of dinner and it's not a cheesy hokey thing.

It's literally everybody goes around and asks what's the best part of your day. Yeah. We do that too. We talk, what are you grateful for today? Like at the, at bedtime we do it. And so let's say, you know, give me the top three things that you're grateful for today. And think about like, so managers, right? How easy is it to do call coaching and be like, boom, boom, boom, here's what's wrong. Go do this. You know, yes, you're probably right. But if you think about like, Hey, why don't I just give you one actionable thing that will help you be 1% better on your next call. And just think about that as leaders, like, is it more impactful to sit there and tell our people what they did wrong every day when they're already their own worst critic and they're already trying to be somebody else tomorrow.

And they're already rushing to get through that next step. Or is it better to just say like, Hey, let me give you the freedom to go be successful. But every time we talk, I'm going to give you some little actionable item that you can go do on your very next call. Right. And that's, again, culturally at ZoomInfo, you can look at things that are very competitive, very growth minded. I mean, but that's what makes it work is because we all genuinely are trying to help each other be 1% better, not just for the sake of like hitting a growth number. We have shareholders now. That's important. Yeah. You got to pay attention to that. But like, but that's what makes it, that's what makes it work. It's not, it's not just trying to work hard to be working hard.

In sales, you show up and do 15 hours a day and you're in the top quartile of your team and you want to high five for it. Like, did you skip the workout today? That would have helped your endorphin levels go up. That would have helped you go be 1% better on a call as opposed to making three extra hours of prospecting that didn't really get you anywhere in the morning. Like, those are the things you have to look at, see like, what is it actually that's going to help me perform at a higher level? Because if you can be more efficient with your time and you can be more, you know, level, leveled out where you're not burning the candle at both ends too hard, right? That allows you to have progression and then great things should happen.

Your company should recognize it. Your company should ask you what your goals are, right? But it's not, it's not, it's not something that should just be given, right? I totally agree. And look, let's finish up with this. This is, I think there's a whole nother podcast in and of itself, but I think on the, on the mentality side, because I, I see you and your team probably facing it more than most. Cause I get this a lot, you know, well, John, you know, we sell a commodity, you know what I mean? And, and I think you, you know, if we bucket the industry that you're in, as far as, you know, contact information, you know, if we boil it down to the absolute bare bones basics and say it's contact information so that they can get, you know, have better insights into companies and make better connections there.

You know, yeah, but you got seamless, you got this, you got that, you got all these other companies out there doing the same stuff with the same data. And yeah, your story is a little bit better than mine. And so this, this mentality of, well, we sell a commodity, right? What is your advice to people who are stuck in that mental trap of, yeah, it's a pricing game here. Well, you know what I mean? Like they asked me, you know, how much per lead I can get and ours is 20% higher than the others. And so they're going to go with the others. So it's nothing I could do about this. What's your, what's your advice to your team and how have you worked through that mentality to get people out of that mentality?

If you have to talk about what you do in an outcome-based, based view, like you can't, if you talk, if you think your value is commoditized, first of all, that's the biggest problem, right? If you believe that it's commoditized, that's your issue, right? But if you, if you talk about you being the operative word, I know you don't, but if you think about the outcomes that you generate, what does that do for your future client, for your existing client, it helps them understand like what that's actually going to mean to be a customer, like, you know, I'm not trying to just help you win a couple of deals, John, like no disrespect. Like I know you will, but like, I'm trying to be your partner and help you grow and accomplish the two, five, 10 year plan that your company has as a vision, help you achieve your personal goals.

Right. And then it becomes who's the better salesperson a little bit, like who can talk the talk, which is something that we can control. The other thing to think about is you don't want it to be about always about they buy you for you. Right. So the more you can objectively measure, like, yeah, I can understand why you would say this is commoditized. What I would point you to is we're the company that seems to know how to retain and grow with a customer, right? We operate in the small and mid-market business space. That's historically been really hard for any company that sells a product to retain revenue, let alone grow. And you can see in our public financial earnings from Q4, we retained 108% of our revenue.

I hope you trust me for my sales pitch, but I hope you actually take the objective facts a little bit higher, right? Do I need to then get into the weeds on the financials about, you know, why us versus we could do a whole other podcast on this? I'd love to, if you want to. Yeah. The idea of selling you versus another company, I think the world has to understand that we need to move away from that. And our buyers always want us to compare each other with each other. And they'll ask, who do you compete with? And we can all have some fun answer that's, oh, I don't have any competitors. If you think about like the way I try to approach is like, where's the ceiling? Like I'm in sales. I can meet someone at a trade show and manufacture a deal out of that meeting.

I'm in sales. I could meet someone on a soccer field and manufacture a deal out of that meeting. I can find deals in Zoom Info. I can find deals on other platforms. But my ceiling with one platform is always going to be higher. And the nice thing about what I bring to the table is that you're not going to run out of aspirational limitations with our solution, with our company. I'd love to show you how, why. And I can objectively prove that other companies have done the same thing, right? That's just a different approach than saying like, I'm going to be 20% more effective than the product that costs, you know, 5% of our product. Because think about back to the original thing we talked about.

Every CFO doesn't want to hear that. They don't care. Like they don't care, right? They don't want to hear the whole like, why am I objectively cost analysis better than blah, blah, blah. It's like, just what is the outcome you provide? And does that matter enough to justify the value that you're asking for? 100 out of 100 times it will. As long as you paint the story the right way, you qualify if the opportunity is real, you know. And that's been very helpful for us at ZoomInfo, right? Yeah, I think the, you know, to, to, I'll go back to some conversation I had with Dave Cancel recently over at Drift. And he said, look, everything's commoditized. Literally everything, every product everybody sells, training, commoditized, right?

You know, whatever, pick it. What isn't commoditized is the experience. 100%. And so kind of like, you know, like Gong talks about like, you know, what's your, what's your nexus, right? One of their nexuses is, it doesn't matter what you sell. It has everything to do with how you sell. And, and that to me right now is, is the mentality that I think reps need to grab onto. Cause it literally, I, I even say, look, training's training, like who gives a shit, but like, what are you trying to achieve? And I'll tell you, and then going back to all the things we talked about disqualifying, I don't think it's the right fit, but here it is. And when it is, I'm going to push on you. Cause I know, right.

And I'm going to show you examples of other people and those types of things. But the experience that you have with me throughout that sales process is going to uncommoditize the experience for the prospect. You know, if you do end up on a spreadsheet with the speeds and feeds and the numbers, you've, you've done a horrible job as a sales professional, right? You need to have that bigger conversation of, yeah, yeah. Throw me on a fucking spreadsheet. I don't give a shit. But you know, what are we like, what are we trying to accomplish here? And how can I help you get there? And that experience is the key. A hundred percent. So awesome. Well, well, like I said, I think there's like three or four other podcasts that we could do here.

So let's definitely set some more up here. But just to finish thing up, where, where do you want people to learn more about Zoom Info, get in touch with you? Like, what do you want to leave people with here? Yeah. I mean, we're spoiled by our marketing team. So if you're looking for something that we can solve, you're probably going to find us. Check out our websites, info.com. Check LinkedIn. We're putting a lot of content out there. Our marketing team does a lot of work with medium.com. We're putting out webinars all the time, content. We're just trying to continue to help folks be that 1% better. I love networking and talking to shop with folks about this stuff, obviously, as you can tell.

So it's been a pleasure. I'm really excited that we got to do this. Yeah, me too. And just for everybody who's listening right now, it's Will and it's Frattini, right? F-R-A-T-T-I-N-I. They nailed it. All right, perfect. So Will Frattini, look him up on LinkedIn. Follow him. To your point, I see you post a decent amount. So you're still the LinkedIn guy. Are you still the LinkedIn? Even though you're 1,900 people, are you still the LinkedIn guy over? No, not anymore. Again, always trying to be humble. I'll give the hat tip to probably Kyle Willis right now is crushing that game. He's a great follow. He's got a podcast too. But yeah, no, I try to always put something out there that can help somebody every other couple of days.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Will. I appreciate it. And like I said, we'll probably have another one of these coming up here in a few months. So good luck on the rest of the journey here. I'm looking forward to continuing this partnership and seeing where you guys can take this. So thanks for coming on. Likewise. And everybody else out there, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation, got you to think a little bit, maybe pull the nugget away, how you can get 1% better. I love that theme. It's one of mine. But regardless, like I always say at the end of all my podcasts, even if you have a shitty day, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because if you made somebody smile, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that these days.

So thank you all very much for listening and I will see you on the flip side. All right, everybody, that's a wrap. Will has been remarkably fortunate and developed quite the skill set as he's grown with Zoom info over the last six years. It's personalities like Will's that recognize that we can learn from others and help others succeed. And that's ultimately how we succeed that make the difference in our sales environment today. Man, it's like a circle of life kind of thing. Thanks a lot for coming on the show, Will. We appreciate you and we will have you back sometime soon. Before we get this one behind us, I want to thank our audience for tuning in every week. It's your loyalty that drives us to continue to create content that helps you grow, overcome obstacles and become a better seller yourself.

Thanks for being with us after all these years. JB Sales is available for any and all salespeople that are looking to invest in themselves. We are delivering world-class sales training courses, complete with certifications that you can place on your LinkedIn profiles, strategies that command attention from your prospects and data-backed tactics that boost results. They don't only help you reach goals, they help you exceed those goals. So become something more by becoming a member at ondemand.jbarrows.com today and follow us on Instagram for daily tips and techniques at JB Sales Training, all one word. And be sure to join us for our weekly webinars. Find them at jbarrows.com in the blog and events section today.

We'll see you next week, everybody, when we bring you another great sales professional that's sure to help you sell better. We'll see you next week, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.