244: Alice Shaff on Leveraging SDR Skills to Land a Leadership Role

Hey, everybody. So this one is a really fun conversation. Alice Schaaf over at Anjuna Security, she actually went through my training about three, four years ago. And I talk a lot about kind of the reason I do this training is because for the people that care, right? For the people that don't care, want to be average, I really don't care. But for the people that do care about getting better, right? There's always like a light bulb that goes off when I do a training for two, three, five reps or whatever, where it's like, ooh, and they start thinking of things differently. And Alice was actually one of those people. And now she's really exploded in her career. And she has some great tips about career development, advancement, and how to approach things.

And so hopefully we'll get a lot of value out of this conversation because I absolutely loved it. Enjoy. What's popping, y'all? It's your man, James. Say what, Sales Buckley. Welcome to another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. Big shout out to our partners, Proposify, Gong, Vidyard, Chili Piper, Sendoso, and now our newest partner, Prelay. Prelay's function is to make complex deals easier to manage. From POCs to trials and pilots, Prelay makes those tedious complexities a smoother experience, helping sellers sell and helping buyers buy more efficiently. Check them out at prelay.com to learn more today. The JB Sales membership is really taking off. Thousands of sellers are leveling up by gaining access to all of our training, our courses, our tips, techniques inside of the annual membership to JB Sales.

For a dollar a day, that's right, 365 bucks will get you the skills, best practices that you need to finish the year strong and come into 2022 ready to rocket to the top of that leaderboard. Let's go, y'all. Sign up today at joinjbsales.com. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it up on Monday. Hopefully you had a fantastic weekend. Mine was pretty legit. I got the Patriots going. I got the Red Sox in the hunt here. And I actually have moved up to my brand new office, which I'm super excited about. And I'm even more excited about this conversation that we're about to have because this is going to tie in a whole bunch of stuff that we've been talking about as far as development and where things are going.

And there's somebody who is literally living this. So Alice Schaaf, how are you? Head of Business Development over at Anjuna. How are you doing? Hey, John. It's great to see you again. It's been a while. John and I met in person about three years ago when I was at Looker, before we got acquired by Google. Yep. Yeah. Because I saw that. I said Looker and then Google. I'm like, no, I forgot. Yep. Google bought Looker. So Alice, before we get into this, talk to us a little bit about kind of your background. Because this story, what I want to talk through here is kind of that when we met, right? One of my things that I always look for in training, people ask, John, why do I do this? Right? You know, before COVID hit, why do I fly all around the world and kind of miss my daughter's birthdays and stuff like that?

It's because, you know, when I train, you've probably heard me say 10, 60, 30, right? 10% of people are going to take the stuff and run with it. 60% of the people are going to do something different because it makes sense and it's easy. And 30% ain't going to do shit different. Like I could give a shit. I used to try to reach everybody, but then I realized I'm not going to, you can't, you know, help somebody who doesn't want help. So first of all, for those 30% of the people, I could give a shit about them. The 60% of the people, there's like 50, 50 on that one. Like 50% of them are okay with being B players. And then, but the other 50% of them want to get better. They want to learn. Okay. Those are the ones that I'm focused on.

Right. And it's like the light bulbs that go off where it's like, Ooh, I, you know, going through the motions and now all of a sudden, right. And then there's the 10% that are, I think are always going to be the 10%. So I think you, it seems like you've been on that journey. So could you talk us through kind of how you, you know, what you were doing at Looker and then, and then what happened with our training and then after our training and where, and where it kind of landed in now? Definitely. Um, so at Looker, I started pretty, uh, um, pretty low on the food chain. I was an SDR back then. Um, I was a great SDR. I was very successful, top performer, met two years in a row, but I wanted more and I wanted to, I wanted to move to the sales side and I kept applying and I didn't get in.

So it was just like banging my head and, um, on wall and the same thing happened. And then when I met you, um, something changed for me because I just decided I need a different path. And the way I did it is I got promoted into the customer side and I did renewals, which, um, has sales and customer success in it. So I still worked on contracts and I still, you know, did, um, sales. There's a little bit of hunting as well as farming. Um, and I just loved it. Uh, it was great for two years, but you know, COVID hit, um, sitting at home, didn't do well for social, uh, social and, you know, social people, everybody and sales people. Yeah. So I wanted more again. And I just, you know, I, I met a couple of mentors at Looker who also helped me.

And one of them told me, listen, if you want to go big, you have to leave and you have to find your path. And that's exactly what I did. So basically during COVID, I was watching companies being funded and I just followed the CEOs and I reached out to them. And this is like specific SDR skills where you're looking for your opportunity as opposed to waiting for inbound. Um, and I told these CEOs like, Hey, I don't see you. You've got a, uh, uh, biz dev team. I would like to do that for you. Uh, would you let me? Yeah. And then we had conversations and, um, back, back then I decided I'm going to consult with startups. I'm going to help them because I was trying to perfect my skills in business development.

And a lot of startups don't know how to do that because founders are sometimes product heavy and they're not salespeople. Some of them are an unnatural salespeople. So, um, my passion for people, passion for technology brought me to advise with tech stars. Um, tech star back then I was still at Google and Google. They're, they're really great about letting people chase their passion and, um, helping them become what they want to be and also inspiring to help smaller startups. So that's, that's what happened. Basically I was helping startups and then, um, also looking for a job. And when I finally met the right company in the right space, I was passionate about, I looked for the people first.

So like, I wanted to have a connection with my future manager, with a CEO and it happened. And, you know, it took a couple meetings. I did my homework. I asked a lot of questions and then, and then it happened. And now I'm the head of this dev and have employees. There's so much to unpack with this. Um, let's, let's, let's go back to what changed. So when you were going through the training, um, what, what changed and why? I think, um, your methods really helped me hone on my skills in a way that wouldn't have happened before I met you. Cause I was following you for a while. And then when we met and, um, you start talking about the relationship between SDR and sales, what are the things that they should look for, um, in the partnership and also like how to, um, how to scout for the right leads, how to do outbound.

I decided that that's just my passion. I'm really good at it. And, and then, you know, I tried to look for ways to, to do that, but then I had to go to, uh, I chose a different path and then I went back. So, and you talked to, you said you talked to some mentors, right? So again, you went, you said, okay, I'm an SDR right now. And at Looker, I have to, you know, I have to change my path here because I've gone the sales route and I've gotten turned down a few times. So I got to adjust my strategy. I'm going to go over customer success or, you know, and work on renewals. And then you said, you talked to a mentor internally at Looker or Google. And they said, in order for you to follow your passion or do what you want to do, you have to leave.

Now, how did you articulate? Um, I got two questions on this one. First of all, what was your vision that, that they then said, you, you, you have to leave in order to accomplish that. So what was, what was, what did you say to them that you wanted to do from a vision standpoint? Um, that, that they then said, okay, you can't, you're going to really need to go someplace else to do that and achieve that. Yeah. I think, um, and that's not the first thing he told me, obviously that person we had an ongoing relationship. And I really recommend people who are listening this to this, to choose mentors. They want to be as successful as them. Um, this particular person was a VP back then, and we just connected.

He was on the customer side. I told him, I want to become a leader. I want to have my own team and I want it now. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait for five, five more years or one more year. Yeah. And then he said, you got to leave. And see, that's, see, that's the, the, the heart, the thing I struggle with is, you know, a lot of kids these days seem very eager to go to the next step, right. And not earn the right to go to that next step. But I look back at my career and I did the same thing happened to me. You know, when I was at Xerox, um, I remember vividly, I was, I was a sales rep and, and I was getting so much smoke blown on my ass about how good I was apparently. And I, and I, I just was doing my job.

I did a little bit of a better work ethic than most, whatever. And so they kept telling me how good I was. I was like, okay, fine. If I'm that good, then here's my job right now. Here's the next job. Here's the job. I want that, that job. I want, how fast can I get there? And they were like, well, you have to spend two years doing this, then two years doing that, then two years doing this. And I'm like, wait a minute. So that kid over there on the team who you make fun of, by the way, when we go up, my boss, right. I'd like, I'd be talking to my boss. I'd be like, when we go out drinking, like you literally make fun of that kid. So he's going to get the chance for a promotion the same time I am like, that doesn't fit for me.

Right. But like, how do you balance that with knowing you're ready for that versus, you know, I, I kind of use the analogy of like Picasso, for instance, Picasso, he mastered every single medium before he went to the next one. So he would, he would dive into acrylics or whatever it was, and he would master acrylics. And then he would learn it, learn it, learn it. And he would perfect it. And then he would go to oils and then he would perfect oils. And then he would learn it, learn it, learn it. And that turned him into Picasso. You know what I mean? So what do you say to the, the, the SDRs out there, the, the sales reps out there who are, who are like, I want to go faster. Um, how do you look at the balance of that's great, but you should master your craft here first, before you step over it, because you're not going to, you're building a house of cards if you go too fast.

Yeah. First of all, I love Picasso. I'm, I'm an artist on the side. Art was my first major. Yeah. Yeah. Really? That's one of my favorite artists. I've actually been to, um, to his house and, you know, in Europe and yeah. So yeah, I went to the museum in, in, um, in Paris, uh, the, the Picasso museum, unfortunately, like all the good stuff was on tour when I was there. I was like, all excited. I'm like, Oh, I finally get to go to Picasso's like museum. And they were like, Oh yeah, no, all the good stuff's in New York. I'm like, what? I just love New York. So anyways, but yeah. So I definitely think that folks who are just out of college and it depends where you are in your career. For me at that stage where I told my mentor, I want it now.

I was, um, five years at that, at that company and it made sense. Um, things move slower at Google and sometimes you can't get what you want big companies. They all, they all, they, they kind of have, unfortunately they have to have that structure, right? Because they can't scale without it. So I get it. It's just that itch though, of like, I want to move faster. So, but, but you did master the craft of being an SDR, right? I mean, you were two years in a row, top performer, that type of stuff. So it's not like you came in six months and we're like, I got this. When am I going to get my next job? Like you worked at this, right? Yes, I did. And it took time. I had, I had a couple of kids in the meantime, so it took, um, longer, but, um, I still, I was very patient and I communicated with my managers and I told them where I want to be.

And I took mentors. Um, but for folks who are listening to this, it might be out of college. And I think it makes sense to try a couple of things before you jump, you make a jump, um, before you become a leader. Um, and when you talk to existing customers on the customer side, you actually learn the use case. You learn the type of people that you should target. You learn the ICP really well, and you learn how to, how to offer something they want and solve problems. Uh, I mean that, that to me and for everybody's listening to this, I'm on this, like, I think it was, um, Tim O'Neill over at, uh, Alation. Uh, we did this executive round table, um, where it was just, you know, Salesforce sponsor, whatever.

And I got these executives and we was asking him questions and he, he had that model. Cause I've been saying the predictable revenue model is broken for a long time. The whole segmentation of roles and, you know, handing somebody off 15 times before they actually talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. And it also doesn't set sales reps up for success because for the predictable revenue model to, I think work, you have to be at a certain size to have the progression of inbound SDR, outbound BDR, and then out then sale AE, but AE and SMB mid-market and enterprise, right? Companies like Salesforce, somebody, companies like Looker, companies like Google, they have enough clients to make that progression work.

But most mid-market small businesses, they don't have SMB mid-market enterprise. So they take SDRs and they throw them into basically enterprise sales or mid-market sales, they fail miserably because that's, that's a scary ass thing to learn how to, now you have a quota and you have to close. And all you've been doing is really setting up meetings like that. There's 80% of the sales process still needs to be figured out. And so the, his model is you take SDRs and you put them into customer success. You put them into account management where they are responsible for renewals. And it does exactly what you experienced, which is you learn the product, you learn stories, you understand the likes and the dislikes and how they leverage it.

So now when you then move to an AE role, I mean, how natural was it for you to move from a kind of account management customer success to an AE role? Like how, how difficult was that transition? Um, so I moved from customer success to a leadership role, but I also do sales because we're, we're a startup and everybody does sales, CEO, CTO, even the VP of engineering does sales. He's the hard sales engineer. So everybody needs to know sales. And I think, I think the amazing, um, what's amazing about that move in a transition is that I can do it all. I can talk to customers. I can relate to higher ups. Um, we sell to enterprises. So I'm at a level where I can pull in a VP at Wells Fargo and, and chat him up and tell him like, Hey, um, Hey more her.

Hey, this is what we do. Does it solve the problem? Usually we see this problem at your level with banks. Um, would you take a look and then it becomes more than just a secretary scheduling a meeting? Yeah, exactly. And that's what, let's talk about that Wells Fargo, right? Cause now I'm guessing, you know, with all those stories, first of all, I'm guessing you can pull on any of those customers anytime you want for a testimonial. Um, and second of all, you know, the confidence level of being able to have conversations at those levels. So like when you talk to, when you go after a company, like you're, I mean, you're a startup, right? So startups typically have a pretty big challenge going after huge organizations because you're not proven yet.

You know what I mean? Like they want more kind of like, okay, so what's your approach when going after some of these huge enterprise accounts as a startup with all the knowledge that you've had up to this date, like what's working for you right now with that approach? Yeah. And you know what COVID is definitely challenging because you can't go to in-person events as much as possible and folks are, um, more scared. However, if you call them, if you LinkedIn them and then you call them once they connect, then you get them on the spot and you have to, you have to engage them. Um, sometimes they're even bored at home because they're, everybody's bored right now. They're just looking for, uh, for people to talk to.

And you know, it's been lonely, so it's actually a good time. Um, but for me, when I talk to these enterprise, uh, people, I'm looking for innovation and looking for folks who are into innovation and there's lots of them. Um, because these are the things that help their career. They, these are the things that get them promoted within a bank, within the enterprise. That's, it's actually a really important thing for people who are listening. Look, if you're not the Cisco's of the world, if you're not the sales forces, you know, you always hear like nobody got fired for hiring IBM. Nobody got fired for, you know, Cisco, nobody got fired for that stuff. So there's a lot of up and comers who are trying to unseed some of these bigger organizations.

Right. And I'll, and I tell them my advice to them is don't go whale hunting. Don't go up to the top C-level executive, because guess what? That C-level executive probably built their career off of Cisco, off of Salesforce, off of Oracle, off of whatever. And you're coming in and saying, you've got this new thing, effectively calling their baby ugly, and they're not going to do it. What you want to find is the enablers, the, the, the, the people who internally are on their way up. Right. And, and, and who are looking to make a name for themselves. Right. Because I always say there's two types of people below the power line. There's people who will always be below the power line because they're just comfortable.

They're that sick. They're that bottom half of the 60%, right? Yeah. They're just B players and they're always going to be B players. And there's nothing wrong with that. By the way, the world needs B players to make this world work. If the world was filled with eight players, it would fall apart. It would tear each other apart. So, so though, but you don't want to focus on them because they're not going to get you anywhere. You want to focus on the people who are moving up the innovators, the people who want to be that executive. So how do you, I, how do you identify those people, um, from, from the outset? Like, I think it's obvious once we start having conversations with those people about how eager they are to take that next step and make their mark and whatever, you can sense that through the conversation.

But how do you LinkedIn, for instance, go out and identify, Ooh, this person's probably somebody I should reach out to because they're on that trajectory there. Yeah. I think it's interesting with LinkedIn because it's really helped. It's been a massive success over LinkedIn so far. I, and I think these people, you just see, see it. They write it on their profile. They just say, I love innovation. I'm excited. I'm inspired by innovation. Um, they even put it in their titles sometimes. So, and we usually reach out to director level, um, at an enterprise that's, that's like, um, folks maybe who are hiring, uh, they're always looking to talk to people. They're posting, they're posting stuff on LinkedIn.

You can follow them and you can, I have an interaction with one of the, one of the CISOs at, uh, at an enterprise. And he just told me, Hey, I know you're meeting my buddy at this other company. So after you talk to him, I can talk to him and see, I don't want to meet with you right now. But once you talk to my buddy, then, you know, and they all talk to each other. Yeah, of course. So it's like a community. Um, there are groups, there are podcasts they're listening to meetups they're attending. You got to find those. Yeah. You got to almost immerse yourself in that, in that space of where they are. Right. I mean, these days there's even slack channels of certain types of people, you know, that you can jump in and not to troll, obviously, you don't want to troll and sell anything, right?

Oh, you know, you questioned that. So I got a solution for that, but you listen and then you use that to then go engage. Um, do you have a specific LinkedIn strategy where like you, like you said, you, you connect with somebody and then you call them immediately. So like, what's your, like say you, because going back to identifying that enabler, if you will, you know, the way I, I agree, there's innovation. They talk about it a lot and they're usually the ones posting because they know brand is important. They want to get it out there. So those are the type of people that I want to engage with. Also, you just look at their, their history, their job career. Right. And have they been in the same exact, exact job for the past 10 years?

That's probably not somebody I want to reach out to. Right. But if every couple of years they're moving up and they're going to that next stage of their career. Okay. That's somebody I want to talk to you. But so say we've identified, say you look at a Wells Fargo and you find somebody that's like, Ooh, there's somebody that I want to, what's you, what's your specific approach to, to connecting with them and, and, and what's your highest response rates? I guess, do you use video? Do you use phone? Do you use, you know, how do you engage? Yeah, that's, that's a good question because in the cyber security space, folks want to hide. They don't want to be found. And most of them are not even on LinkedIn and they don't have their emails available.

So it's definitely a, a wild goose hunt. And you gotta be very mindful, um, because they're scared. If you call them up and they suddenly like, who are you? Why are you calling me? Um, you know, they can even, um, go and complain about it on social media and create some, uh, um, stressful situation. And, you know, we never want that to happen. So the way, the way we do it is we usually involve an executive, um, one of my team would, um, I would reach out on their behalf. And then when I'm calling them, once they connect it, then I would call them and that would be me calling them and say like, Hey, I'm reaching out on behalf of my VP of this or the CTO or whoever. And then we would, um, we would make the connection and I'll, I'll say like, Hey, like, looks like you're interested in the space and we want to show you something cool.

And we think it's going to help you because we solve these problems. And it sounds like that's what you're interested in. Is that right? Um, and you got to keep talking. You can't let them, you can't let them talk. Yeah. Wait, wait, what do you mean by that? Right? Because sales is usually make sure that the client's talking more than you. So when you say that, what do you mean in that area? When it's a cold call, you got to do the talking at the beginning. You can't start asking them questions because you're building trust. So first you reach out on LinkedIn and you send some information and ask a question. Perhaps, um, are you experiencing this pain that we know that folks like you are experiencing?

Is that hurting you too? And then when they say yes, but they don't say anything else, then I call them and it's like, Hey, we engaged on LinkedIn. Sounded like you're interested. Um, would you be willing to talk to us for 20 minutes? Um, I never say, let's show you a demo or let's do anything like that. I never book long meetings because people don't really want to talk, um, for a long time with vendors. They don't want to, unless they like you. Well, and you, I mean, you bring up an interesting point because I, I kind of joke, jokingly said, you know, make sure, you know, cause we've all been taught in sales that make sure the client talks longer than you and it, you know, blah, blah, blah.

But when it's that initial cold call, when they know nothing about you, there's actually some gong data on this that talks about how in that initial call, the talk time actually needs to be flipped. Like you need to, you need to talk more than the client because if you pepper them with questions before you've built any rapport or any credibility, they're going to be like, who the hell are you? Why are you asking me all these questions? I'm not going to give you all this information. You know what I mean? Tell me what you got. And so I think we've, we've, I think we've almost mistrained people a lot to say, oh, always ask questions. Always. No, no, no, no. Like when you catch somebody on a cold call and they have no idea who you are or what you're about, you actually have to lean in a lot more than, than them talking.

And because otherwise you're going to get people annoyed because effectively, and every sales rep I know has been through this of, you know, you ask four or five, six, especially to an executive or something, four or five, six questions. And then eventually the executive goes, could you just tell me what you got? Could you just show me the demo? Right. And what they're saying there is, when am I going to get my value? Like you've gotten enough value out of this conversation, kid. When am I going to get my value? So that's why they interrupt us and they're like, stop, just show me the demo. Right. So I think the framing of like giving and getting information, like you've got to give a decent amount of info to be able to earn the right to get some information from them.

Right. Yes. So you start with that. You start with that. Hey, is this a problem you're having effectively? And when they say yes, great. You go into, well, here's how we solve it. Right. Then you call them and you're like, great. You said you were interested. Here's a quick blurb on how we solve that problem. Right. So that's kind of the flow there. And then what's your, what do you say after that? Like, do you just say, you know, does that align? Does like, how do you kind of set the stage for now opening up the conversation so you can ask some questions? Yeah. I would say like, how do you usually go about that? And if they don't know, like, let's talk more. I know you're busy right now. I called you out of the blue.

You know, I didn't mean to interrupt anything you're doing, but how about we talk on Thursday, Friday for 20 minutes. I'll introduce one of my executives. Gotcha. All right, y'all. It's nice to know that people start off at the bottom and work their way up to where they want to be. Alice's story probably resonates with a lot of people that have climbed a corporate ladder in the past, hunting, farming, and then taking over the team is really an inspiring journey. And it's great to see it happening in real time. As you know, we love to shout out the folks that are leveraging our membership to find sales success. And today we're giving a big shout out to Steven Manick of Nimbus.com. In August, Steven's team had a 20% open rate and a 1.3% reply rate.

After gaining membership to JB sales in September, it brought on a 22% open rate and a 2.3% reply rate. October was the cream of the crop. This one brought in even better results, a 33% open rate and a 7.1% reply rate. That is huge growth in a short amount of time. So stay the course, Nimbus team. We love seeing you win and we got your back. So change the results for your team today and join us at joinjbsales.com to gain access to our messaging, our templates, our webinars, our courses, and our trainings. Invest in your team. And you'll find that they invest in themselves. Growth and development is just around the corner. That URL again is joinjbsales.com and I'll see you there. Let's get back to the show.

So that's basically the SDR call, right? Is that you're just qualifying it that is there a need? Yes. Right? Do you do the BANT stuff as far as budget authority, need and timeline stuff at that point right there? So the thing is, is we can see if it's a good time, if they're migrating to the cloud. So, cause we do cloud security solution. So then I would probably see that through the hiring. If they're hiring an architect, then I would see the hiring ads. I do a lot of research and I would read the news, like, are they on the cloud? Like, like Wells Fargo, they're public. So you can go and check what they're using, which vendors, and you can ask them about that and tell them, hey, we have a partnership with this vendor.

And then leverage that, leverage the information that you discovered on the news. And then you know about the timing. So I don't need to ask them, is that a good time for, you know, is there an open initiative? Because there's always a concern when banks are in the cloud. They're always concerned about security. This is something that they're always think about. So in my situation, I don't need the time as much. But I definitely want to talk to decision makers. I don't waste my time talking to folks who are not in decision making position. So I only go for managers, directors, and VPs. Well, I mean, especially as part of your strategy to bring in your executive, right? Like you don't want to bring in your executive to somebody's willow on the totem pole.

I mean, it's, it's no problem to talk to those people and gather insights from them. But if we're going to leverage our executive or somebody else on our team, it's got to be at a certain level there. And that's, and I'm glad you said like the band, right? Because I still think I still shake my head at people who train people on band, because I think you, you end up walking away from more opportunities that are probably pretty real. The only thing that I care about in Bant, and for those of you listening, Bant is budget, authority, need, and timeline. It's an old school way of qualifying accounts. The only thing I give a shit about in Bant is the need. Is there a need there? Because if there is a need there, I can, I can find budget.

I can get to authority. I can expedite a timeline. If I'm any, if I'm good at sales in any way, shape, or form, if there's a real need there for what I have to offer, the rest of that stuff should be, I should be able to take care of the rest of that stuff. And so that's the focal point for you, right? Yes. And I, and I clarify that there's a need during the conversation. Like I would, are you looking into solutions for cloud security? There's a way to ask that directly. And if they're not, I'm not going to waste my time. You know, time is, time is money. I gotta move on to the next person. Yep. And that's, I think the, you know, it's almost disco disqualifying. I made the switch a long time ago to disqualify more than I qualified because like I'm asking, cause look, all that stuff's going to come up as part of the sales process anyways, right?

You're going to figure out why you shouldn't do business with me. Some point at some point here, I might as well get all that stuff out of the way up front. Right? So, Hey, about this. And I'm looking, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't seem like we're a good fit, right? Because of these reasons. And that reverse selling almost gets them to be like, well, no, no, no, wait a minute. We definitely need this. Right. So yeah. Do you have a similar mentality when it comes to disqualifying people? Oh yeah. I always give them a way out. I would say this might not be a problem for you, but usually when we talk to people like you, that's what they say. There's, you know, we, we speak with security officers. They're usually telling us that they're, they're afraid of insider threats, for example.

Is that, how do you go about that? Is that your, a pain in your organization? And that's another takeaway from people listening, right? Look, the only way that we can sell anything, uh, people ask all the time, Hey, John, how do you create urgency? Right. And I'm, and I've done a lot of thinking on that. You, we can't, as sales reps, we can't create, or we can uncover it and we can drive it, but we can't create it. And the way you uncover it is by understanding the priorities, right? Because at the end of the day, when you, you know, when you or your executive stood up and said, this is what we got to do to be successful this year, if I can't tie my solution to one or two of those things, good luck selling anything significant.

So I got to find that stuff. But unfortunately for the majority of my career, I would say dumb stuff, like tell me about your priorities. But what you said there, and you know, and when you say a very general thing like that, you usually get general answers, but what, how you said it, Hey, we're talking to other CISOs, other security people. And these are the issues that they're faced with. Are you facing the same issues like that scenario where you seed it with your knowledge of the situation? So, you know, you know, their world a little bit, then it tends to open up the conversation way more for people to be more engaged and say, Oh, well, no, but, or yes. And right. Yes. And you also have to give them a way out.

Yeah. So you would say like, Hey, I'm not sure this is for you. You're not for everybody. Yeah. So your product is not for everybody. So it could, could be for somebody else, or you could be not the right person. But if you are, and if you're experiencing this thing, we'd love to talk. If you're too busy right now, we can find a time next week, you know, that's still totally fine. And next month, you tell me when, when, uh, when there's a good time. Do you use like the Sandler upfront contract to help with that, to give them that out to basically say, Hey, here's the stuff we're going to talk about at the end of this. If this is not a good fit, could you just let me know type of scenario? Yeah.

Um, I like that because then it gives them a way out. I always like to give people a way out. I even do it with my friends. I just, you know, if I text them like, Hey, I'm in your area, but you know, it might not be the right time. You might be busy, but I've got like half an hour. Would you like to see me? And it's always yes. Cause you know, that's, that's the way it goes with people. I love it. Let's go back to, I'm curious about your, your consulting. So, so you left Looker and, and, and wait, let me ask you real quick. You had two kids, right? Yes. So did you have them at Looker or did you have them when you were a consultant? Yes, I have them at Looker and I was consulting while I was employed by Google.

Cause Google lets you do that. Do some stuff. Okay. So you did have a, so it wasn't like you ended and then you said, okay, now I got to go find a way to make a few bucks and start a consulting. You actually had a little bit of a side hustle at Google consulting with smaller businesses. Okay, cool. And that's actually, again, advice that I give to people who are curious about going off on their own is use your, you like use your existing scenario to prove out whatever model you have and have it be your side hustle. So that then when you leave, there's kind of a softer transition there. Yes. So is that effectively what you did? Yeah. And the fact that I have dependents, it's super important to keep your job while you're exploring things.

Yeah. Cause that's, that risk factor is huge now. Like it's one thing to be your own, like, you know, 25 years old, who gives a shit? You know, if I live on my parents' basement, I, you know, I don't care. All of a sudden kids get thrown into the mix, you know, you're like, Oh, like, and then, and I think that's what holds a lot of people back. So I guess what gave you the confidence that with two new additions to the family, uh, what gave you the confidence that, that you could do this and, and, and manage that as well? Like you, you, you could do what you, you could follow your path. Cause I think a lot of people get held back with, uh, you know, I'd love to be a consultant. I'd love to quit my job.

I'd love, but I got two kids at home. I got families. I need to feed that type of stuff. So, and, and I'm not saying it's an excuse cause it's not, it's a real thing, but what gave you the confidence that you said, you know what, I can, I can do this. I can, I can do both. I just think I'm, I'm a natural go-getter and I have the motivation to go big and I don't want to miss out on things. Cause we only live once. I just took responsibility for my career. I'm the CEO of me and I'm the only one that's going to create my opportunities. People are usually expecting somebody else to go and tell them, go follow your dreams, but it's not going to happen. You got to make a decision and you got to do it and everything else would fall into place.

As long as you're helping people, being generous, um, being kind, um, everything else will happen. You got to be motivated though. Yeah. I think that's that, that piece right there, you know, you bet on yourself, right? I mean, if there's anybody I'm going to bet on, it's me. Um, that's why I like, you know, investments, you know, it's actually for my business, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in the marketplace and all this other stuff. And I got financial advisors and they're telling all invest in this, invest in that, invest in this. I'm like, actually I'm going to invest in myself. Like I'm going to take the money and I'm going to put it back into my business because that's the one thing I can absolutely can control.

I can't control what happens in the marketplace. I can't control what happens in, you know, the stock market. I can't control what happens with COVID, any of that, what I can control, I'm going to bet on. And so I think I love that, that kind of, and that's where there's, you know, the make it happen mentality all came from for me, which is bucket. I'm not waiting for anybody else to tell me what to do. I'm going to go do it myself. And I think that's where I think people need to, when we talk about a players, B players and C players, I used to kind of, I don't want to say look down on, but I used to kind of, uh, you know, B players and C players, but look, happiness is the ultimate goal, right?

Yeah. And so, and your definition of happiness is different than my definition of happiness and happiness isn't making a million dollars. And you know, like the happiness is, I mean, there are people that make 40, 50 grand a year and they have a nice family and a nice house and they come up and they work a nine to five job and they come home and they go to their kid's soccer game and that's happiness to them. And if that is happiness to you, then you win. Like you absolutely win. But if you're the person that's always like, oh, I wish I had that. Oh, I don't like my situation, but you're not willing to do anything about it. You're a B player. Who's a B player. Who's a talker. You know what I mean?

And that, those are the people that are like, yeah, like, I don't have a lot of time for it. So I love the mentality. Um, one more question. You said when you were pro, I love the, I, the fact that you applied your, your SDR skills to looking for a new job, right? So you were looking and you are, I, but you said something important there, which I think more, a lot of people aren't doing, but they should, which is the value alignment you were looking, you weren't, you weren't looking for a job. You were looking for a company that you could align with based on, you know, this, like the, the, the values that they had. So how did you, first of all, how did you identify, how do you, how have you identified your core values?

And then how did you look for them when you were looking for that company to, to, you know, create the next part of your career with? Yeah. I think it's all about communication style. So they got to speak your language, whatever language that is, you know, if you are an outgoing person and you like to you like to have a manager who's less, maybe less outgoing, and then you can contribute to them by being social. So you can really make a difference for this company because they're small and every person counts. And that's what I was looking for. I was looking for a company that doesn't have me. So I'm the only woman there that does sales. Okay, nice. And for me, that was big. Yeah. And, and, and did that.

And when you were interviewing, and again, I think there's a mindset, you know, younger mindset and a little bit more experienced mindset, the younger mindset on interviewing is I'm interviewing for this job. So, you know, whatever you want to hear from me, I'll tell you whatever you want, blah, blah, blah. Right. Is you get a little bit more experience? You start interviewing them? Yes. So was that your whole approach here? It was like you, you kind of, it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily I'm interviewing for this job. Your mindset was I'm actually interviewing you for my career. Exactly. That's, that's what it was. I asked them really thoughtful questions. And, um, through the process, they told me you're hired on the second meeting, but I said, wait a minute, I'm at Google.

I want to check that you're actually a good fit for me. Can I talk to more people on your team? Can I talk to your investors? Love it. Can I ask more questions? I actually sent the CEO a list of questions and beforehand. And then when we talked about it, then I asked him these questions during the meeting and he told me, you know, I think you can figure things out here because you're good at asking questions. So, um, I trust that you would figure it out. And he still tells me till this day. He's like, I know you're going to figure it out because you're just good at asking questions. Go do it. I'll let you do, um, the way you do. I like it. And we, we just aligned. He let, he let me do that. So my way of communication was aligned with his way of, um, communication.

And I think that's, that's what it's all about. You gotta like each other. Well, yeah. And you gotta, and I think that that it's, it's also, you know, you can put, you can transition that to customers as well. Right. I, I mean, I, I kind of, I mean, look, small business, you, you can, if you're a rep in a huge organization, you kind of, unfortunately have to do a lot of what you're told, but when you start in, in startups and in that world, you can be pretty selective of your customers, right? Because, you know, you, you, a lot of people will take revenue from anybody wrong. You know, you want to take revenue, you want to take money from the right clients that you can do the right work with.

And so you almost, that goes back to our conversation about disqualifying versus qualifying. Like, I'm going to dis, I'm going to try to disqualify you. I'm going to find all the reasons why you shouldn't do business with me. But if all those reasons aren't there and, and I've identified that you, like, we can make a difference. Now I'm going to lean in. Now I'm going to challenge your sale. Now I'm going to push you because it's for the right reasons and more the right fit. And it's the same thing with the client with, you know, it's funny. You brought up, like I, I work at Google. Like, why would I make this switch? Yeah. Same thing happened to me. Right. Like Jack Welsh. I had the opportunity.

I was running my own little company. It was Kensei partners back before I was doing this. And I get this offer to go interview with Jack King Welsh. Wow. Right. Like my all time business idol, Jack and Susie. Cause they had, they had done a startup and it was a startup for an online MBA program. And I remember vividly being enamored with Jack Welsh because he's my absolute, he was my absolute business hero at the time. But I flipped my mindset into, wait a minute, this is a career thing for me. I have a company that I'm, you know, we were doing about 2 million. I was running my own business. I was doing whatever we needed to do. And so I was just like, Jack, like, I love you. I love you. But I got this going on here, man.

And what you're working on here, a lot of risk. There's a lot of things you don't even know. So help me understand here. Why should I, and thankfully what we did, instead of me dumping my company, moving to Florida and being with Jack Welsh, I did a consultancy for two months and we, we determined after that we weren't a good fit. Neither one of us, it wasn't a good fit for me and it, and I wasn't a good fit for them. Yeah. And, and, and I mean, look, could have gone different if I had gone full-time and then met, you know, I'm been with Jack. Sure. Probably my career would have been a lot different, but it, it put me in a position to be, I, you know, I own this. And so just to finish up, because we're coming up on the hour, um, what are some, any, any things that you have advice for people that are on their kind of career journey that, because we talked about aligning values.

We talked about disqualifying more than qualifying. We talked about, you know, um, mastering your craft before you go to that next step. Anything else that, that you want to kind of share with the audience here that were a learning lesson for you along the way? Yes. I think it's important to communicate with your current manager because the situation was when, um, I, I was leaving Google, but I was there for five years with, with the company I started at, and I knew these people for a long time. We had relationships. So, um, they, they didn't tell me, but they were working on a promotion for me and they wanted me to become a manager there and to, uh, to give me a, um, 65% raise, 65%. So this is something that was big, but when I came in, I was like, Hey, I already signed.

And then they were like, Oh, um, what we're working on is like, yeah, but I wish you told me. So you gotta have that communication with, with the people you're, um, working with and, and make sure they know what you're up to, um, and make sure that they help you. They can help you with your journey. So it didn't happen. And I went to the new company and now I have no regrets, but I still think it's good to communicate whether you're a manager or you're an individual contributor. I think it's important to communicate these things, um, about promotions and, uh, um, and, and just make each other successful. There you go. I love it. Awesome. Alice. Well, look, thank you so much. I love, I love success stories, right.

Where, where you see somebody's journey. And like you said, like, uh, I'm not taking zero credit for where you are, but that, that light bulb that went off whenever we had that, you know, two, three, three or four years ago, you know, again, that's, that's why like these conversations is why I continue to do what I do. So first of all, just thank you, uh, for being in that, you know, top 10 or that upper end of the 60%, like wherever your journey is, is bringing you there. Um, because the, the people that care are the ones that, that I care about. And, you know, you talked a lot about that managers caring, if you rep cares, like it can't be a one-sided thing here. And, um, so I just appreciate, uh, appreciate the journey and, and really excited to see where you're going to take it next.

Thank you. Thank you for helping me make it happen. Alice, where, where can people find out more information about you or where do you want to LinkedIn? Yeah. Alice Schaaf. Talk to me on LinkedIn. I'm there all day making magic happen. Love it. And just for everybody listening, it's S H A F F. So Alice Schaaf. And, uh, it's and Juna, right? A N J U N A. Correct. Perfect. Awesome. Well, Alice, thank you so much. And everybody out there, hopefully you, uh, got some stuff out of this one that made you think a little bit differently based on your career path and everything else. Um, and like I say all the time, you know, go out there and no matter how bad your day is, all right, go out there and make somebody smile today.

Cause, uh, no matter how bad your day is, if you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that these days. So thank you all for listening. And I'll see you on the other side. Make it happen. Cheers. All right, y'all. This was a fantastic episode with a lot of great takeaways. As always, we strive to bring you the best guests with value that you can learn from. We never like to close our show without giving you a chance to become a member at JB sales, invest in yourself and start learning the tactics and strategies that you need to become the versed and effective sales professional that you deserve to be gain access to all of our training, all of our content, tips, and techniques at join JB sales.com that URL again, join JB sales.com.

And we look forward to getting you on the path to sales excellence. Have a great week, everyone get out there and make it happen.