98 - Tim Bertrand Chief Sales Officer

Thank you to our partner, LeadIQ, for giving out 100 leads, including direct dials to our listeners. Head to jbarrows.com slash leadIQ to get yours. Make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Hope you all had a fantastic weekend. I am here with a very special guest who I've been working with, what now, Tim, for maybe, shit, eight, nine years or something like that. So Tim Bertrand, he's the CSO over at Acquia, one of the fastest, hottest-growing companies out there. Tim, what's going on? Say hi to everybody. Everyone, how you doing? Yeah, and good to talk to you again too, John. Yeah, it's been a while. We've been trying to plan this forever, so I'm actually psyched we actually finally got this on place.

One hot off the plane from Dubai last night, and I told my team earlier this week that I spent 75 out of the last 96 days, including weekends on the road. 75? That actually beats me up. I had 22 sales kickoffs in Q1, but I don't know if it was 75 and 95. That's pretty damn impressive. So yeah, it's kind of like ships in the night crossing here. Tim, why don't you, if you could, just give some context here for the conversation of, you know, I mean, you've been at Acquia now for what, about 10 years, give or take? First of all, you know, what were you doing before Acquia, and what got you there, and how have you seen Acquia evolve? Because I remember when we first kind of connected, Acquia was just super cool.

The guy who started Drupal, and it was pretty easy. You guys were fighting off leads, right? Because it was basically like the founder of, who basically developed this, so sure, let's support it. And then you kind of hit that wall of, oh shit, now we have to go sell. And so you've seen a huge evolution from like flood of inbounds and then building a very successful enterprise team here. So, you know, what were you doing before Acquia, and talk us through your journey a little bit there. Yes, I've been doing this 19 years. I started off, what I like to tell people when they come in and interview with me is I've done every single role in the sales organization, maybe minus the sales engineer role.

But when you're at startups, you have to play that role too. So you have to play other roles like lawyer and contract specialists and all that as well. So my career has been like a real life MBA. It's why I never went and got one. And like I said, I've done just about every role in an organization. So I started my career as a BDR working for a company called Silverstream. It was one of David Skock, who's one of the most prolific investors now in Boston. It was his last operating role. And that company went public and rode the zero to 200 stock price and then 200 back down to three. The company was acquired by Novell. And then I did a couple of other startups. One that I landed where I really started to cut my enterprise sales teeth was a company called Systanet.

That was where I worked with Acquia's a longtime previous CEO, Tom Erickson. And I was brought in as the first sales rep. I was doing inside sales, BDR, field sales, and so on. And that was where I really started to cut my teeth in enterprise selling. So a few weeks into the job, we got a big lead from a big bank in Paris. And my COO said, hey, you have a nice suit? And I said, no. He goes, well, you better go buy one because you're in a plane two days from now to go visit this bank, Societe de General in Paris. And I went out to Brooks Brothers and bought a suit, hopped on a plane. He said, I don't want you to come back until you have a signed order. I arrived there on a Wednesday and flew home that next weekend with a signed $225,000 order.

And I figured out a lot about enterprise selling and relationships during that trip. And that was really where I started to kind of cut my teeth in large strategic selling. Then transitioned into Acquia about 10 years ago. And it was an intriguing role for me because it was a small company, only about 20 people at the time. What I liked about it was that there was this huge captive market of existing Drupal users. Drupal is an open source content management system that organizations use to build websites and digital experiences. And at that point, it was something different for me. It was all about getting in and creating an engine, both an inbound marketing engine and inside sales engine, to monetize that Drupal ecosystem.

So we did that really successfully. The first year that I was at the company, we ended up with about 10 inside sales reps. We had a few enterprise deals, but it was really around creating that machine, that kind of $30,000 to $50,000 ARR machine, working with marketing to create lots of inbound marketing strategies, whether it be webinars or whether it be meetups or whether it be content marketing or what have you. And that was how we scaled the company. We went $1,000 to $13,000,000 in the first year. So it was an unbelievable growth trajectory. What we started to see at the end of the first year, though, was that we were starting to see deals like the Verizons of the world or the MTVs or some government customers like the White House literally calling in saying, hey, we'd like you to come meet with us.

We have larger aspirations around Drupal than just a small site. And that was when I said, okay, we need to go back and start hiring some traditional field reps. And a few of the first reps that I hired, one was Todd Barnett, who's now the CRO at Confluent. Confluent's one of the hottest, fastest-growing companies in the U.S. right now. And Todd eventually ended up emerging to become our leader of the Americas before he went on to Confluent. We hired some really, really skilled enterprise sales reps that we knew. And we started taking deals that bubbled up above that $50,000 AR range. And we started sending those folks out into the field. And we had kind of a teaming model between the inside reps and the field reps.

Fast forward a couple of years, a lot of the low-hanging fruit had been picked in the Drupal community that were what I'll call the ideal customer profile for us. The board wanted to triple down on enterprise sales. I think that year, 2013 or 2014, we hired something like 40-something enterprise reps in the field that year. That was an unbelievable process just in terms of hiring and recruiting that many people in one year. I think I did something like 400 interviews. And that was already called down substantially by my team. Hired 40-something reps that year. And then what we started to learn was this whole kind of inbound inside engine, coupled with the fact that we had picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit in the Drupal market, had really started to kind of hit a plateau.

So then I happened to be at an airport with them and picked up a book called Predictable Revenue. This was back in the 2013 timeframe. I read it. And I said, geez, I wonder if this guy does consulting. So I flipped to the back of the book, figured out who he was, sent him a LinkedIn email. And he charged me far less than he charges these days because he had just started to do consulting. And he didn't know what to charge. And I didn't know what to pay. And so Aaron flew out, helped me hire a couple of BDRs. We got those folks up and running. And then fast forward a year. He said, if you guys do this right, you'll have like 20 or 30 BDRs. And then fast forward like about 18 months or so. And at that point, you know, by the beginning of 2015, we had like 35 BDRs.

And that process really started to scale. And that was how we really fed the enterprise engine at Acquia for a while. So 2015 was one of the best years ever that the company had. That was a combination of really starting to specialize and segment the sales force. So we had inside sales focused on the existing Drupal market. We had enterprise sales that were doing some self-gen. We were doing some field marketing. And then we were teaming them up with BDRs to kind of fill that funnel. We also started to evolve our channel model in that time, where channel became an accelerator, working with agency partners to mainly the enterprise model. And then fast forward a couple of years from there, we started to highly segment the sales force even more.

So we bifurcated our new logo selling in our account management teams, where new logo sellers would have the opportunity to get in, sell an account, you know, for 12 months or so. And then we kind of started moving those accounts over to a segmented expansion team that would handle renewals and upsell and so on. And that kind of brings us to where we are today, a highly segmented and highly specialized sales force that starts all the way from BDRs through inside sales reps, through mid-market reps, through enterprise reps. Then we've started to segment some of the enterprise territories into verticals. We're about a $250 million booking company now. So, you know, from zero to $250 million in the last 10 years.

And then we also started to segment and bifurcate that whole account management model as well. So reps, they handle the core accounts that might spend less than $50,000 a year with us, up to reps, they handle global accounts that might spend $5 or $6 million a year with us. And that rep may only have a couple of accounts under their belt. So that's kind of been the Acquia story for me. Certainly, I've seen just about every sales model, sales compensation plan, demand generation plan, strategy, you name it, in the last 10 years. So, Jesus. So let me, so I want to kind of hone in on that, a lot to unpack there. But the predictable revenue, let me share you with my thought process, because I think the predictable revenue was, and still is, fantastic for like the whole segmentation, right?

Yep. Well, back up a little bit, right? When you and I were growing up in sales, it was, here's your territory, here's your quota, go, right? We had to cold call, we had to meet, we had to close, we had to do everything, okay? The negative side of that was that so many people, like a lot more people that got into sales got out of sales very fast, because it was like, they realized, holy shit, I can't do this, and I'm not successful, and businesses failed because of that, right? But the benefit of that approach is, you and I, I think, evolved to a much better, well-rounded sales rep much faster. Yep, for sure. Now, with the segmentation, I feel like it's stunting the growth of sales professionals to a certain degree, because instead of spending, you know, two, three, four years, and then, yep, you got it, now you are out there, and you can put that suit on and fly out there and pretty much nail it.

Now, it's two years doing this, two years doing that, two years doing this, two years doing that. So, I think it's stunting a little bit of the growth of sales professionals, but I also think even worse, when not done right, it's actually not a very customer-centric approach to selling, because nobody likes to get handed off four times before they actually get taught, right? And so many companies that I see, they, like, the BDR to AE handoff is not smooth. The AE to bringing the SE in is not smooth. Then the transition to customer success, so it's all this kind of segmented thing where the client's almost like, what the fuck, who am I talking to at this point? Yeah. So, how do you ensure, on two different tracks, how do you ensure that this segmentation doesn't frustrate the customer?

And how do you, and what do you see as the evolution of this model here moving forward? Yeah, so that's a great question, because we woke up a couple of years ago, and we were in that position where we kind of mapped out BDR all the way through renewal. Everybody that they would touch inside of a company, they might touch a support person, a technical account manager, a sales rep, a CSM, you know, you name it, right? There was about, and we determined there was about 12 or 13 different touch points that someone would touch. So, we've worked really hard to minimize that, and also make sure that there is undeniable consistency with a couple of the resources. So, you've got your sales rep that starts the initial relationship, and in our model, they handle that selling aspect for the first 12 months.

But in our higher-end accounts, that customer is assigned to CSM, that becomes their day-to-day person that they need to call if they have a support issue, if they have, you know, something else that they need, you know, additional hardware in our model, additional hours, or what have you. That person stays consistent across the entire customer lifecycle. And we have that person play quarterback, you know, like a good football team, to make sure that they pull in the right resources as necessary versus all these handoffs of resource, right? So, we worked really hard to ensure that we could provide a consistent customer experience. And then we also tiered our accounts from the global accounts all the way down through the core accounts.

And then we mapped out customer touch points in all of those processes. From a BDR to a rep perspective, our BDRs are doing a lot of the initial calling and qualification. But the minute that there's a deep discovery call, the rep is involved, right? So, that handoff's very smooth because you have two people on the same call, right? So, they're doing that call as a team. I find that when you have the BDR doing discovery and then making an intro to the AE and what have you, you tend to drop a lot of balls there. And plus, you know, frankly, not to take anything away from our unbelievable BDRs, but I don't know if you're talking to a C-level individual if having a BDR do a deep discovery call is actually the right person to do the call.

The BDRs should be helping us stoke interest in an account and then, you know, handing that off in a very smooth fashion to an AE who then handles the whole sales cycle from beginning to end. So, I would say that's something that we've had to work really hard on. The other thing is, you know, I talked a lot about specialization and segmentation, but those align at an account level, right? So, there's only ever a BDR, an AE, and then if you're a big account, you get handed off to a global account manager, right? You don't go through any of those other resources. Or if you're a core account, you go BDR, AE, and then you get handed off to one of the core CSMs or account managers. So, there's relatively few steps in the process, but having that quarterback that owns the whole customer relationship, right?

So, the customer knows if you need something, any time of the day, week, night, month, or year, you call this person. That's helped us keep some consistency across the customer life cycle. I do want to comment, though, and I think, you know, we do see a lot of frustration these days with BDRs who want to go from BDR to quota-carrying account manager. And if they don't get that move within a year, then they tend to leave and go somewhere else, and, you know, I think it really depends, a lot of this depends on the kind of sale. So, you know, are you going to go from BDR to strategic enterprise account exec handling $250,000 to $500,000 transactions in a year? No. And I actually think that a lot of young sellers make the mistake in their career of going from BDR at an enterprise company like Acquia, where they're prospecting into Citigroup and Morgan Stanley and Walmart and JP Morgan, and then they go down the street and they go to one of these single product $10,000 ARR SaaS companies, and they might stay there for a year or two, and then they hop to some other $10,000 single product SaaS company, and then I find them a few years down the line, and I, like, look at their resume, and I'm like, okay, so you're a BDR at an enterprise company.

Then you do two single product SaaS company jobs, low ASP, and now you want to interview for an enterprise role? You don't have any of the skills to do that. So I'd much rather see, if you want to be an enterprise seller, you have to figure out a way to be patient, right? Do an enterprise BDR job. Move into inside sales if the company offers it in a company like that. Move into a mid-market role, but in a more complex sale with a more complex solution set. And that's how you get to enterprise sales before you're, you know, late 20s, early 30s, and that's where the money is, right? Those are the, I got a number of reps on the team that are making $500,000 to $800,000 a year that are, you know, right around or a little under 30 years old that went through that BDR inside sales, mid-market, and enterprise.

But I'm not going to be impressed with resumes that come across my desk of sellers that went to three or four different companies in five years that sold $10,000 products. Well, I think that's the key, right? Field sales is different than enterprise sales. Totally different. I think people mix that up, right? They think, oh, I just got to get out into the field. And if I'm out in the field, then I can eventually get to an enterprise. No, no, no, no. Enterprise is enterprise. Yeah. I mean, for me, as an example, I've actually never been a great enterprise sales rep because I've never sold an enterprise solution. I mean, my first sales job was, I mean, I kind of did with Xerox, but it really wasn't.

You know what I mean? It was, it was, it was, there was a already, you know, process in place there, you know, and then I sold SMB outsourced IT services, and then I got into sales training. And so, and you know, my, my ACV is 30, 40 Gs. You know what I mean? The biggest account that I think I've ever sold is three, $400,000. So even me, you know, my resume, if I, if my resume were to come across your table, it wouldn't be all that impressive. If I was trying to interview, if I was trying to position myself as an enterprise sales rep, my resume would not impress somebody like you for that position. Yeah. So with that, where do you see things evolving? Like, do you see this model of, of, cause I, I, cause predictable revenue, I mean, quite honestly, predictable revenue was 20 years ago.

You know what I mean, when, when Salesforce first started now, Aaron Ross wrote the book in, you know, 2013 or whatever it was, or 14, but that, but it was based on 2005. So where do you see things evolving right now with account-based marketing, right? Cause now we have this whole account-based marketing theme. Do you see it shifting at all? Do you see like the pod structure? Do you see anything changing about this model that, that, that is going to help it be more effective? Yeah. So I, um, it's interesting that you mentioned pod structures because what we've done in order to give career progression and mentorship to some of our, our, our, our model goes BDR inside sales, uh, but you're still selling a pretty complex solution set and inside sales.

Then you move into mid market and mid market is accounts under a billion, but in competitive scenarios, they're not using Drupal. So we're competing against Adobe or Sitecore or Contentful or one of those players in a mid market account. And it is field sales. It is enterprise selling. It just happens to be in accounts under a billion, right? So what we've done is we've begun to team some of those mid market seller with the inside sales folks with the mid market folks, right? So to get some mentorship, we've started to team in region, the mid market sellers with some enterprise sellers. So we have some enterprise sellers that have 30, 35 years of experience. We started to put a pod structure or pod number in place for some of those, uh, mid market sellers, teaming them with enterprise sellers because the deals, frankly, are just as complex, just a different size account, right?

So still matrix decision-making process, multiple buyers, IT and marketing buyers. Um, it's still a highly complex decision-making process. And since we've teamed those enterprise sellers with those mid market sellers, you get all of that experience and how to sell really complex enterprise deals infused into those mid market sellers. And then everybody's incented to close the deal. So we've begun experimenting with some of that about a year or so ago, this kind of whole pod structure and pod model. I would also say, um, the demand gen model has changed and it hasn't changed, right? So to me, ABM, I mean, we were doing, we were doing veto letters 19 years ago. We still do veto letters, right?

We still, we've actually found that sending a FedEx that hits someone's desk these days is more effective than it was five years ago because how much mail do I get at the office anymore? Like none. Yep. So if someone sent me a FedEx letter with a handwritten, you know, I'm a big believer in the handwritten, um, you know, return address on the FedEx letter, like who's not going to open that, right? Unless they think that I'm sending them some poison or something. Yeah. So I think it's changed, but it hasn't, you know, before we, we, we went on, on cue here, you know, I think you asked me what I'm focused on these days. And I think this is like a big circle, this industry. And a lot of what I'm focused on right now is like back to the basics, right?

Hold yourself accountable every day. We all agree at the beginning of the year. Here's the things we're going to focus on face-to-face prospect meetings, whether it be on zoom or whether it be in the field, face-to-face partner meetings and pipeline. Those are the three things that we're going to focus on. So I asked my reps, if I ask you any given week, how many face-to-face prospect meetings have you had this month? How many partner meetings have you had? And what's your pipeline coverage for the quarter? You better be able to answer those three things because we all agreed on that at the beginning of the year, right? So to me, and I learned this from a great mentor of mine, Jim Steele, who was the president of Salesforce.

And now he's running sales over at Yext. And he's been doing this forever. And, you know, he said to me, I used to have three things that I looked at with reps and I'd call like a red, yellow, green stoplight, you know, on all three of them. One was activity. And that was rep activity. And he said, I didn't care whether it came from marketing or channel or the rep making cold calls or whatever. You need to be able to show me your activity. And every year we kind of tweak the activity metrics or what have you. The second is pipeline, right? So what type of qualified pipeline are you generating? And the third is your forecast. He said, if you have red, yellow, green stoplights on all three of those things, you might have a rep that's green on activity and green on pipeline and red on forecast.

OK, that's likely a timing problem, right? That rep, the rep's doing all the right things. They just don't have a great forecast set up for this quarter. Then you might have a rep that's green on activity and red on pipeline and red on forecast. OK, we need to look a little deeper at that because they might be working their ass off in terms of activity. But are they doing the right activity? Are they executing right on activity? Why is that not turning into pipeline? And then obviously, if you don't have pipeline, it's not going to turn into forecast, right? So if you have a rep that's red, red, and red, it's like if we meet on a monthly basis or a weekly basis or whatever the cadence is, because I'm a big believer in cadence as well, if we're red more than X number of weeks in a row or if we meet once a month and we're red, you know, after I warned you last month, then we should just part ways, right?

If we're red, red, red, activity, pipeline, and forecast, then we got a big problem. Then you're just not doing your job. So I think it's a lot, a lot of new stuff, a lot of new systems and applications and processes and new funny words like ABM for something that we've really been doing for 20 years. But it all boils down to those three stoplights, right? The, you know, checkpoints, activity, pipeline, and forecast. And you can surround that with applications and artificial intelligence and all this other stuff, but nothing beats getting up every day, fulfilling your account, being accountable to the business for what you signed up for in terms of the activity that you're signing up for. I think too many companies don't place enough emphasis on rep self-gen pipeline.

You know, and you see it, right? You see it. I'm going to call all of you out out there because some of you have worked for me before. These are the reps that go like every two years, they go to a new company, right? And they just, they, they find the company that has the next huge bucket of leads that they can't call. The minute that they dry up and that we ask those reps to start doing self-gen, they go find the next company. Now, W2 wise, they might be smart, but if what happens is if you pick one or two wrong ones in there and you end up with eight jobs over 14 years, let me tell you what, your resume hits my desk, you're done. I mean, I give, I give friends of mine advice, like eight, nine jobs in 12, 13 years, you're going to be at a point soon where you are unemployable, my friend.

So that's a, you know, that, that's, that's definitely a message that I want to send out there is just do your work. And, and I think, and, and that's part of my, I guess that's part of my question about the whole segmentation and how it stunted the growth, right? Because I think you and I have an appreciation for like, I don't know about you, but if I ever have to rely on somebody else to hit my number, like, you know what I mean? Like, but, but, but because we've grown up in this, oh, now prospecting is just a thing for BDRs. And I just got to get past that so I can get to the point where I can just do the strategic selling and I can be the big baller and I don't have to do that layman shit.

Well, now all of a sudden you, you, you get that. And that's exactly that scenario, right? It's two years. The company's hot. They do inbound marketing, lead gen, all that other stuff. They set you up or a hundred percent of your book, but inevitably they hit that wall. And I call it the inflection point, right? Where inbound only gets you to this point and all of a sudden it levels off. And then all of a sudden quotas go up, territories get smaller. And now that rep who's been sitting fat, dumb and happy off of inbound. Now they, they're told, Hey, you know what? Instead of a hundred percent of your book being driven by BDRs and that type of stuff now, 80% and you have to go hit 20% of your own book.

And they sit there like a deer in headlights, like, uh, what? And, and if I'm ever, if I'm a manager, if I'm an executive and I ever hear the excuse, well, I didn't get enough leads this month. Like before that phrase even comes out of your mouth, I'm firing you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You, you and I both. Yeah. I mean, because look, my whole philosophy has always been like anything that I get from marketing and lead gen and stuff like that, that's the icing on the cake. Yeah. That should be great. That's how you get the 200% of your number, but the cake I'm baking my own fucking cake here. Yeah. Right. So I don't know. Is it, do you think it's because of, of what's happened with the segmentation and people have gotten lazy or do you think that's just like, what do you think the reason for that, that entitlement factor is of where are my leads?

Cause, cause I will, one last point on this, you know, a buddy of mine, uh, Chris Merrill, who actually came on board now as my CRO, he, a couple of companies beforehand, you know, he's the CEO of his, a few companies, you know, smaller businesses. And every time he would interview a sales rep, literally one of the first questions the sales rep would have would where my leads come from. So, so, so where do I, where do my leads come from? And he would be like, and he was, and I was, I used to be his VP of sales. Right. So for me, I never asked that question once. I always said, all right, I'm, I gotta go figure this shit out. So let me go do it. Right. So he's, he's been used to me never asking where do my leads come from?

Cause I would just, you know, and he's just like, John, every single rep is asking where do my leads come from? And to me, that's a massive red flag. So for anybody out there interviewing right now, don't ever ask an executive, where do my leads come from? Why do you think, why do you think we've gotten to that point? Well, I think it's, it's what I said before. It's because you have a lot of these momentum companies out there, right. And, and either the reps have worked for them or they hear from their friend that worked for them. Um, and you know, there's companies out there that have more leads than they can call. Right. It's like, boy, that, that's a great problem to have, but what you'll find is like 90% of the companies out there don't have that problem.

Um, and I think, you know, the way we've addressed it is we have defined very, very clear, uh, metrics that every group is accountable for. Right. So reps can have to, reps have to expect that 33% of their pipeline has to come from outbound and outbound is a combination of what they do and what their BDR does. Right. So we have metrics set up for reps on the amount of pipeline out of that 33% they have to generate. We can, we can roll that up into how many calls they have to make, how many meetings they have to do and how much pipeline they have to generate in order to get there. Then the BDRs have their metrics, right? So that's the 33%. Then marketing has to deliver 33% of the pipeline to the business, right?

So it's not 80%, it's 33%. And then the reps have to work with their channel partners. So this is also a rep self-gen thing. We have channel managers and so on who do an unbelievable job, but they might handle 20, 30 partners, right? So it's not all their responsibility to go find the pipeline. Then the reps have to work with their channel partners. And the reps have a certain number of face-to-face partner meetings that they have to do every week, whether that be on Zoom or whether that be in person, because we know that building relationships with partners drives pipeline, right? So I tell the reps, there are two things out of those three that you own and control every day. The two are, if you're not hitting your partner meeting metric, then I don't know what to tell you because you own that.

That's like, all you have to do is call partners up. All of them will be happy to meet with you. Like buy them a drink, buy them coffee, buy them dinner, whatever, right? And then the second is your own self-gen activity, your outbound, like you own those two things. Yeah, we're going to have up and down quarters with marketing. We're going to have quarters where you get the huge lead and quarters where you don't or what have you. But if you keep focused on the two that you control and then what you treat marketing as gravy on top of that, you're going to kill your numbers. And I go and I prove it every quarter. I take the top three or four reps to hit their numbers. I say, hey, send me an email with all your activity this quarter.

Did you hit your activity goals that we signed up for? Every one of them that hits their numbers hits the activity goals. No ifs, ands, or buts. I haven't even found an anomaly in the last three or four quarters. Yeah, it's funny. You know, it's the quality quantity. I used to do this when I would hire, like I came up with my equation when I was, and this was, you know, a little bit too heavy on the metric side for me, you know, but I knew, for instance, I had to make, when I was doing my first company, you know, $400 a week, got me eight meetings a month, got me four proposals, got me two pieces of clothes, an average deal size of $3,500. And I always used to say, like, and that was my equation.

I knew that, and I just ran it, right? I just ran it, and I would crush my numbers all the time from an organizational standpoint. Then when I started hiring reps, I remember being like, just first and foremost, just hit $400 a week, okay? Just do that, okay? Because as a manager, I got to figure out whether it's a quality or a quantity issue, right? And the easier one for me to knock off is the quantity. Do you have, are you putting in the effort, right? So if you made 400 aisles, right, and then two months later, you still weren't hitting the numbers that I had baseline for you. Well, now there's a discussion to have. You're making the numbers. Now, you know, obviously now I got to listen in on some of those calls, see what the quality is, maybe help you tweak your message, that type of stuff, right?

But there was reps that would come after me, you know, a month or two later and be like, John, I'm not hitting my revenue numbers. I'd be like, well, how many aisles do you make? Well, I made 250. Well, get out of my fucking office. Go make 400 aisles. Because until you hit that 400 mark, I can't, I don't know how to help you, right? So I think- When you read 400, it was the number in your case, right? I mean, it's like- Right. So do what you're saying. So I guess my, you know, my, you know, your advice and mine to reps out there is, at first, do what you're told and then come back. And then I think this is the other part of this equation, which is, I think some managers are very, are too metric driven, where they're like a hundred dials and it's, they're forcing this quantity over quality approach.

And I get reps a lot calling me because, you know, you know my training, right? It's a lot of quality veto type stuff, right? And it's, and so they're like, John, I understand that, but I'm still getting asked to make a hundred or a day or something like that. And I, what I tell them, and I'd love your feedback on this is look, do it their way for a little bit and be very focused on the metric, but then take a week and you're going to take a beating, by the way, you're probably going to get shit for this, but just, just do it and take the quality approach and come back to your boss two weeks later and say, look, I did it your way. And this was the results. I did it my way. And this was the results.

And if your results are better from a, from a quality standpoint and your, and your manager doesn't pay attention to that and still forces you, then go find another job. Cause you're just not a lot. You know what I mean? But what are your thoughts on that? That rep who's getting told make 50, make a hundred, but they know the quality is the answer here. Any suggestions on how to approach their boss or their, their job with that? I mean, first of all, in our world and in any world that I'll ever live in making up arbitrary numbers is bullshit, right? So, I mean, in our world, we sit down with the reps and the reps agree. They help set the metrics. Thank you. When I hire someone and we have to pay them on MBOs for the first three to six months because of the role or what have you, I tell the rep, why don't we do this?

Here's some really critical things that I think you need to do, right? There's like two or three that I just don't give on. And then there's like three or four that why don't you come up with them? And then you and I, you tell me what's going to make you successful. If you do these three or four things every day and every week, and then we'll set those as your MBOs provided that we can agree on. I do the same thing with metrics. Our partner meeting metric, our face-to-face prospect meeting metric, our self-gen percentages and so on were built with the reps and first line managers. So then I feel like if you don't hit those and you were responsible because you guys know what it takes to be successful and then you don't hit those, then that's your fault, right?

I just don't pick numbers out of the air like 100 or 200 or what have you. Now, in some organizations, if the manager has the data and they can show we have 100 reps and the top 20 make 200 calls a week or whatever that number is, and they know that data undeniably, then we have to follow the data, right? But I am not at all ever, ever a believer in layering in like a sales process or layering in a deal review process or layering in metrics just to go show the CEO that we have metrics, right? I'm a big believer in either taking the data that shows us exactly what we need to do to be successful, right? Or industry benchmarking with someone that's really close to us and then tweaking that for our model, you know, and or involving the most successful reps in the process to make sure that we really understand what it is that drives the business forward, right?

And I think, like you said, too many companies focus on just numbers, you know, not enough tend to focus on the right data. And many probably don't involve the reps in that process either. And I think it's a combination of all three of those things. At the beginning, in a very early stage company, you just have to put metrics out there. And I tell my teams, let's try this for a quarter. And then let's see who was most successful. And then let's align with what they did to tweak our metrics, right? How do you balance short-term results with long-term growth? Because what worries me right now, publicly traded companies and all that, like everybody is so focused on month-to-month do this, right?

And I think it breeds such bad habits. I think it breeds, you know, it breeds the end of the month discount, the sleazy sales, you know what I mean? Like the push in the client, pretending to be a challenger when you're just being an asshole. Like, how do you as a leader of an extremely fast-growing company balance the short-term results with what you know is important to do for long-term success? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, that's always hard in a business that has to be quarterly focused. But if we're missing every quarter, right, and we don't get to the annual number, then people are going to get fired. But if we're getting to the annual number, and we have lumpy quarters, I haven't met a board yet, you know, or an investor yet, that especially ones that have been operators that understand, you know, how these things work.

You can come forward with the data showing that the business is super healthy, our pipeline coverage is healthy. You know, these are MRR and ARR businesses. So whether we close a deal in reality on March 31st, or whether we close it on April 10th, if we miss a little bit in Q1, and then we overachieve in Q2, and the bookings happen, you know, if we close all of our deals on March 31st, and all of our deals on June 31st, then that creates a problem as well, right? So I tell reps, if you have a deal that slips from March 31st, let's make sure that we figure out, go hell for leather to try to figure out how to make that deal happen by April 10th. Because the company really only lost 10 days of revenue, you know, from that deal happening.

If you just take the brakes off, or put the gas off on that deal, and you, you know, let that deal slip out to June, you've actually cost the company now two more months of recurring revenue, right? So I, you know, I do think that, and we've designed comp plans that incent reps quarterly, and annually, right? So we have both of those elements in our plans. I think plans that are annual only, can cause some bad behavior. And I think plans that are quarterly only can cause some bad behavior as well. So we've got a, we've got an annual component, but it pays out as you, as you achieve, right? So it's kind of like a zero to 50% of your annual number, 50% to 100% of your annual number. And then we've got quarterly targets as well.

And if you hit every quarter, you know, and you overachieve every quarter, then you can get accelerators. And then once you get to your annual number, you can get into accelerators as well. So I think it's, it's a combination of, you know, I always believe that compensation drives motivation, right? So it's about setting the right comp plans. It's about having support from the CEO, the investors and so on to know that, you know, these businesses, especially enterprise businesses sometimes go a bit like this, but if we keep our focus, our eyes focused on the prize, which is we grow the company every year, what we signed up for, we hit the annual number and so on. I think it's a combination of those two things.

Yeah. And I, and for the leadership listening out there, you know, what you didn't say was monthly, right? You said quarterly and annually, and I believe wholeheartedly, like if I would ever start another business, you know, that was growing at that clip, it'd be a quarterly number, not a monthly number. What scares me is when I come across companies that are monthly, monthly driven, you know. It's okay when we're getting, you know, 10,000 leads a month and we know that we do this many demos and it turns into this many deals and so on. And the ASP is $10,000. You have to run those businesses monthly, weekly, and so on. But in an enterprise business, I'm a big believer in doing things like SPFs, right?

So fast start SPFs. You get to 75% of your annual number by halfway, or your quarterly number by halfway through the quarter, then you get a SPF, right? So you incent backing the deals up a bit in the quarter. But if you try to turn an enterprise business into a monthly business, you know, there's probably going to be all these experts out there that, you know, that shoot me for saying this. An enterprise business, no matter how long I've been doing it, it's not a monthly business, right? It just isn't. Well, I think this will lead to our kind of our last bit of the conversation here is, you know, picking the right company. Because I think the philosophy-wise makes a difference, right? So when these reps are out there, and you said, you know, the rep has every two years, right?

They're looking for that company. What do you look for in, like, what do you give, like, when reps, because I get this a lot, John, I'm not happy with where I am. I got to go, you know, I got to move, like, any suggestions on what you looked for? And I have my own philosophy on, on now that I'm 43 years old, and looking back on it, what you should do, but what's your approach to, to your next stage in your career? What should you be looking for in an organization that you can grow with? Do you have a structure on that? Yeah, two different ways I'll answer this. If you're at, at a job, I ask people three things usually. Are you fairly compensated? Sorry, making money. Are you having fun? And are you learning?

Typically, if the answer to any of those three things is no, then it's time to start looking for something else. Number one, you should be fairly compensated, and if you're doing a great job, that's an easily fixable thing, right? If the other two exist, right? But if all three of those things, if any one of those three of those things are grossly off and can't be fixed, then you should start looking for something else. Then when I look at new companies, I think it revolves around a few things. Number one, the people, and that's the people that you're going to be working with, working for, and that could be executives, investors, or what have you. I'm a huge believer in culture, right? I've got the, a big belief in the no asshole rule, right?

I was going to ask you on that. What's the no asshole rule? I won't work with assholes, and I won't hire them, right? So, you know, that's some, you know, it's fine to be direct. It's fine to be honest and transparent and open, but just, you know, brashness and what I'll call asshole-ism just doesn't fly with me. I mean, you spend more time working with people at work than you do with your family. So, you got to be able to get along, and you have to be open and transparent, but you got to be able to get along and have fun with people that you work with, right? So, number one is the people. Number two is the addressable market, right? So, I tend to look for companies that play in an area that have a really big addressable market, right?

I tend to not love the little niche companies focused in the little niche businesses. You can do well in those, right? But I like to focus on opportunities that have really, really big addressable market. So, what is it that the company's going after? How defensible is their technology? And what's the size of the addressable market that they're going after? So, that's the second thing. And then the third thing, it really depends upon the stage of the company that you're going for, right? So, if you're going for a company that's kind of at full flight, that's 100, 200 million in revenue, then you're going to want to start paying attention to other things, like what's the company's customer retention rates?

Are customers happy? Do the products work? And so on, you can get yourself into some bad, you know, situations there. If it's a really early stage company, I focus much more on the first two, right? Am I going to, you know, have fun working with these people? Is it a great management team? Do they have great investors? Are they going after a huge addressable market? So, those things tend to change depending upon the stage of the company that you're looking at. And, you know, you tend to weigh those things a little differently based upon the stage. Because in an early stage company, you're going to bet your career and your job on the first two things, right? Because the third thing, you know, whether the customers are happy, the product works, the customer retention, all that.

In a three or three to $5 million company, you might not know that. So, you better make sure you're working with great people and that you're going after a big addressable market. In a growth stage company, $100, $200 million type of company, the questions you should be asking are, what are the customer retention rates? Are customers happy? What's the plan to grow the product portfolio? Tell me about how the best reps that you have make their numbers. What do they do to get there, right? You know, all those kinds of questions. That would be some advice that I'd give the reps out there. Yeah, I mean, mine is that and aligns also with, I don't think enough people sit down and define their values first.

So, I think it's a really good exercise to kind of take a step back and say, what are my personal values, right? What do I, the no asshole rule, those type of things. Then, go find a product or a solution that you can potentially, and a company that you believe in, right? Because you know it as well as I do, right? Sales, if you don't believe in what you sell, you're not going to be successful selling it. Yeah, I totally believe in. You have to be able to be passionate about what you do. You know, back to the first one, you know, if you're at a company and you become not passionate about what you do anymore, then, you know, you know, it's your time. And secondly, don't go work at a company just because you think you're going to make a lot of money.

If you're not passionate about what you do, and it doesn't align with your values and what you want to do, then, you know, then you're not going to be happy doing it as well. And I'm a firm believer in this life is way too short to do something that you're not happy doing. So. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I get, I get having to pay the bills, but you know, and I think there's, I think there's building blocks. I think sometimes you got to eat a shit sandwich to be able to get to the next stage of your career. But as long as you, so the, so those three things that, and having a plan to say, okay, in five years, in 10 years, and I look at lifestyle stuff like five years out, lifestyle wise, what, what kind of lifestyle do you want to have?

Right. And I don't mean that. And look, success is a different definition to everybody, but five years out, I think five years is a good benchmark to say, okay, you know, what kind of lifestyle life, wife, car, whatever. Right. Then back in from that, based on that lifestyle, what kind of job and money do you have to make to be able to support that? And then how does, how does what you're doing now help you get to there? Right. Because I get a lot of reps who are, who are constantly like, ah, John, I'm not happy in this company. And all they're looking is, you know, and I ask them, Hey, well, what's your five-year plan? Right. And they're like, well, I don't know. I just, I'm trying to, you know, make some money and I go, look, unless you have that mapped out, you're just going to keep looking for, you know, different shit sandwiches.

You're just going to eat, look for better tasting shit sandwiches. But if you have a plan and you say, look, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll clean freaking trash cans here for the first year. If it's going to get me to this, that's going to get me to that. That's going to get me to that. Then you can eat a shit sandwich for a year. Right. I don't care. So awesome. I think we could probably have this conversation for, for quite a while on, unwrap a whole bunch of shit. Cause I think you and I see eye to eye on a lot of different things, which I appreciate about our relationship. So, but we do have to wrap it up. I like to keep it in the 30, 45 minutes. So if we don't, you know, people don't tune out, but anything, how can, you know, what should people, how can they contact you?

What should they be paying attention to? You know, if people wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way to connect? Yeah. I mean, always feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, that that's the best way to reach me. My cell phone number's on there. My personal email's on there. Personal email's really easy. It's just timothy.bertrand at gmail.com. So people can feel free to, to email me. You know, I love mentoring kind of up and coming sales reps, whether they work for me or not. I love networking. So, you know, always happy to, always happy to chat with folks. So, you know, the last piece of advice that I give people is, you know, exactly what I said, stay focused on the basics.

You know, work for great people that treat you well, you know, you work your ass stuff and you hit your numbers and stay focused on the basics and work for great people. And you'll have a great career in this business. It's like I said, it's the only business that I've ever found that you can make money like surgeons and just be like a normal dude, like you and I. So. Exactly. You don't have to be a genius either. I always tell people I'm a state school kid. I'm not that bright, but yeah, you know, but I make more than 95% of the people that I went to school with who are way smarter than me. And I enjoy what I do. So. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it.

And, uh, and, um, yeah, so hopefully we'll talk again here soon. Sounds good. Everybody out there. Thanks. Everybody out there. Go make somebody smile today. If you do nothing else, if you make somebody smile, it was a worthwhile day because there's too much negativity out there and, uh, and, uh, we need to spread a little bit more happiness around. So I'll make it a great day and make it happen. Thanks too. Bye. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.