Coaching the Coaches in Sales with Saif Khan

Hey, real quick before we get into the conversation. Look, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while now, you know I don't have sponsors. And it's mainly because I know most people, including myself, skip right through them and I just don't want to annoy my audience with 10 minutes of sponsor spots every single week. However, it also means I don't get paid to do this. So the way I help fund my ability to provide free content and really interesting conversations like the one you're about to hear is through my sales training and coaching services. So if you've gotten value out of some of these conversations on this podcast and you're looking to level up your sales game, do me a favor and go to jbarrows.com and check out the training tab on the top nav bar.

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Now let's get on with the show. The first 10 seconds earns you the right for the next 30 seconds. Then the next 30 seconds then earn you the conversation. That first 10 seconds, the best SDRs are the best there. Because without that, none of the rest matters. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Ooh, and today's conversation is a good one. It's with Saif Khan, the regional VP of EMEA and APAC for Seamrush, a leading SaaS platform for digital marketing professionals, helping companies drive online visibility through tools for SEO, content marketing, competitive research and so much more.

In this conversation, it was his journey. You know, you know, you know, I always do the origin story and his is really cool. He grew up in a council estate in West London and then grew all the way up to building super high performing sales teams and coaching cultures across two continents. And he shared a story of how a single ride along with his uncle in medical sales when he was a kid sparked a lifelong love for selling and why five years in retail taught him more about psychology than any sales methodology or program ever could. And we dove into a bunch more stuff about why emotional intelligence is the real differentiator in sales and how to actually coach to it because it's brutal to try to do that these days and how burnout creeps up even when you're quote unquote successful.

And it's actually why he had to put a pause on his career and just take a solo trip through Southeast Asia because he just kind of reached his breaking point and needed some time. And so I think a lot of us can relate to this. And we talked also about how frontline managers and how we're failing them as an industry in general and, you know, the whole coaching and allowing them to coach or giving them tools to coach and how we just don't do that. And then finally, obviously, you know, we dove into AI and that fine line between AI augmentation and AI dependency and really what it means for the future of sales leaders. So whether you're an SDR, a VP or somewhere in between, I promise you this conversation is packed with super cool insights and real stories and some seriously refreshing takes on what it means to lead in today's sales world.

So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Saif Khan, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Yeah, very well. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's an honor and a pleasure. How are you getting on? I'm doing well, man. I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to it. You said you're we were talking before and you're out in Dubai and I am looking forward to getting back out there in January. So what drove that you said the move was made just from a business standpoint to be a little bit more centralized in APEC? Yeah, I think a couple of things. 29 years in the UK gray and rain as it takes its toll on a person after a little while.

I'm a fan of the heat and the sunshine. So that was one aspect. But also just with all of the teams that I've got across APEC and in the area, it just made a ton of sense to be to be in the middle of everything. We're seeing a massive increase in the amount of face to face workshops and events, especially in this part of the world, which is really exciting. So just being out here and close to all the action is definitely part of the appeal as well. Yeah, I've just heard nothing but positives as far as the energy and the ecosystem out there for entrepreneurs and business. And people are just flooding to Dubai at this point for that reason. So it's very tempting to like if I didn't have a family or kids personally, I'd be like, yep, I'm headed out there.

But I kind of locked in for another couple of years here. Schooling system's great. I think there's more American schools than the Emirati schools. So I don't think the transition would be too difficult. But it wouldn't be for me. My daughter would probably go crazy, though. The true decision maker. She's like 15, right? So she's that kid right in the teenage years. So I try to stay away from the drama as much as I can. You know, it's very wise, very wise. Awesome. Well, look, let's let's back up here. We're going to I mean, you got a lot of cool stuff to talk about here, especially even recently with the acquisition from the announcement with Adobe and everything else. But let's back up. Like I always do.

You know, your your origin story. You said you're from England. I know you went to a university of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, which is a very tiny little town in England. Is that where is that where you grew up or where did you talk to us a little bit about family growing up influences, mom, dad, those type of things that kind of shaped your where you are today? Yeah, it's a great question. It's oddly more often than not. I especially when we hire SDRs. I talk about this part of my journey a lot because it's all the formative years have a have a very kind of big impact in a lot of the decisions that you make. Right. So to answer your question directly, I grew up in a place called Shepard's Butch, which is in West London.

For those that know it, didn't really come from, you know, well means per se. Grew up on Council Estate, which is kind of similar to the projects per se, over in the States. However, it came from a family of entrepreneurs. So grandfather was a business owner. My uncle worked in medical sales. And I'll get to that in just a second as it played a big part. My mom and dad run their own business. My dad's an optician. So an eye doctor runs with them in practice with my mom. Very wholesome. They get to work together. They leave together. Need a couple of hours off in separate rooms before they make dinner together. But generally, on the whole, by and large, kind of very wholesome. And then moved out, moved more towards kind of the suburbs when I was 15 or 16.

And I've got two younger brothers. Just wanted to give them a little bit more safety and everything. And then my uncle was probably the most impactful person in terms of where I ended up. I always tell this story. I was 17, 18 years old. Went out on a sales run. So medical sales is very kind of face-to-face. And speaking to pharmacy, pharmacy, the doctors. And I remember just sitting there. He told me to be quiet. Don't say anything. Let him do his thing. See if I learned anything. And he walked in. And I remember very vividly, a pharmacist literally said, I love you, but I'm not buying anything from you today. And he's like, well, let's just have a chat. Let's just have a look at the catalog.

Let's see if there's anything that piques your interest for three or four months down the line from now. And just over a course of a conversation, a very kind of natural discovery, as we like to call it these days, he went from no to maybe to actually signing up to a big order there and then over the course of the meeting. And I remember leaving and I was just like, you get paid to do that? And he's like, yeah, I get paid commission on some level. Commission on top of me, get paid a salary to talk to people. And I just remember being mesmerized by it. And I then went into retail sales during my college and university life where, you know, broadband, mobile phones, things like that. And, you know, kind of kept that going throughout college and university because he wants to be a broke uni student.

Right. And then graduated in computing and programming and realized very quickly that I was not anywhere near intelligent enough to hang out with these coders coming out of some of the best schools in the world and saw an advertisement that quite literally said by a lady called Tara Jackson, who I have a lot of respect for. Do you like tech and do you like sales? If so, I might have the opportunity for you. And this is two weeks before my graduation, reached out to her. And then two weeks later, I joined Cognizant as an SDR, not knowing what it was, what it did. No way. Yeah, literally. And then, you know, the rest is history, as they say. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs at jbarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off the individual packages.

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Thanks for your support. Now let's get back to the show. What? There was a, was the retail job the Christmas, like the holiday thing that kind of got you the bug? Like what, what was, so your, your uncle kind of got you that, wait a minute, you get paid for this mentality. Right. Then the retail, like how did that compound itself? Was that like another itch that you scratched? Like, wait a minute, I can do this. Like, how did that evolve? My mom and dad said, you're 17 years old. We're not giving you any money anymore. If you want to go outside and hang out with your friends, go and get a job. It's Christmas time. There's a lot of temporary jobs out there. Go and do something for yourself. And I thought, okay, you know what?

Fair enough. And then just by just a natural process of applications, I saw this Christmas sales associate job and I thought, perfect. I need to go back and study come January. Um, you know, I kind of like sales. I remember going on this thing with my uncle and that seemed cool. Let me see if I enjoy it for myself. So I joined, um, and you know, I was kind of standing around cleaning up and then a customer came in. There was nobody else around and he was like, I really need something quite quickly. I was like, all right, take a seat. Let me see if I can get this thing well. Uh, and that person bought there and then, and again, just had a conversation with the guy and tried to connect with him on a human level, just have a chat and see where it went.

And I had very little expectations. I just, just, I just remember loving it. I just remember really, really enjoying it. And that then led to kind of a more permanent role and a similar company during my university time. I then joined a company called Arids, um, through a university that is, you know, for those that know, kind of like your Bloomingdale's and Macy's equivalent in London, very kind of high end department store. Um, and then I did that through till I graduated. But by that point I had five years under my belt and people always ask me like, what, you know, where did you learn sales? How were you able to accelerate your career? I don't think that I've achieved anything in my career, but I can understand why people would say that.

Um, and honestly, I think those five years were the formative years for two things. I think one, just the absolute love of sales as a whole, like the psychology of being able to talk to someone and getting them to see a point of view. I just find it to this day, extremely fascinating to the point where my friends get quite bored of me talking about it because I love it so much. And, um, and I think the second thing that it taught me was if you can connect with a normal average person on the street that maybe has, I don't know, a $50 a month budget and you can connect with them and get them to spend $70, $80 of their hard earned money to them. You know, to us, it might seem like an insignificant amount of money, but that ability to be emotionally intelligent to read between the lines, read facial cues and expressions.

The very best B2B sellers to this day that I have met have a very similar background because you learn how to connect and sell at a human level before medic or spin or anything else comes into play. And I think that that is something that I still see in a lot of the SDRs that we bring on board. If you've got some form of retail hospitality face-to-face kind of background, they typically are better interactors with other humans. And I think that really rings true, um, from an art perspective so that the science-y part of sales adds on to that as opposed to fills the void, which I think is, you know, super fascinating and something that I preach to my teams quite a lot. That is a very undervalued, under explored aspect of sales because it's inquantifiable to a large degree.

It's, it's, it's very, it's very about feel. It's very about, you know, things that you kind of sense in the moment. It's very difficult to teach emotional intelligence, but rather try and teach someone how to be smart or try and teach them a product or a book than teach them how to be able to read between the lines. I'm often, I've, I really struggle with that as, as a leader, actually teaching that emotional side of the game. So, um, to answer your question and in a long, your spot is spot on. I mean, I think that's, I had a real early learning lesson in my career about like passion and drive when, you know, I, I was first startup and we were all driven and everything. And then like 50 people later, like, um, you just didn't have the drive.

And I, I remember asking Jack, Jack Welsh, who, uh, I used, I worked for it for a little bit, actually. Um, but before that I asked him at a conference, like, Hey, how do you teach passion? Right. And he basically called me an idiot and he's like, you can't, he's like, you, you got to hire it. And that's what I'm, that's what I'm a little worried about right now. So that, that background that you have, right. That gave you that, that ability to read people and the facial recognition and all that other stuff. And just body language, same thing on my end. Like I was out there knocking on doors, going to events and, and like the face-to-face component to it. And since COVID, we've kind of ripped that away from the development of sales professionals and they all grow up in this kind of transactional world, which makes the relationship transactional.

How in lieu, in lieu of hiring, right, which is really critical of like background and everything else, how do you help this, this digital, this virtual sales rep develop those types of skills or can you? Really hard. Um, it's really, really hard. Um, I think, I think there's a couple of things. I think that the SDR role gets bashed a lot. I think the SDR role is looked at at a spreadsheet level and people just look at the unit economics of it and yeah, I get it. Margins are getting tighter and, and, and everything else that comes with it. But if you can connect with someone on the phone and the best SDRs I think do that, the best SDRs I've ever met have been, have been phone first. Um, they, it's not because they crank out the most activity.

It's not because they crank out the most personalization. It's not because they even crank out the best relevance. And there's a lot of personalization versus relevance. And I know you've talked about it a few times as well. I think they are just the best connectors of humans on the phone, right? We talk about the first and we teach this at an SDR level, like the first 10 seconds earns you the right for the next 30 seconds, right? And that's all about tone connection, then the next 30 seconds through your relevance and personalization, then only the conversation. And then through the merits of the conversation, you need to qualify in or out. But that first 10 seconds, the best SDRs are the best of that because without that, none of the rest of it matters.

And then what I find is that that then transends very well into the virtual sales rep that is doing it over Google Meets because they've built that foundational part of them, but they can connect with someone based on tone. They get good at being able to pick up queues. They can pick up when there's a little bit of hesitance, right? And I really like that part of the SDR role because it is just through sheer volume where the stakes are a lot lower that you can actually kind of build that muscle, right? So I think that's one area. There's another thing that we do that when we hire AEs externally or we promote them from SDR studies, and even my enterprise sellers today do this. There's so much made about call recordings, right?

Listen back to your calls. Listen back to other people's calls. It's the intentionality of that exercise that actually makes the difference. So when we talk about this in the context of your specific question around the connection from a human to human level, one thing that we do is we get the reps always or, you know, the budding rep or whatever to pause at the end of what a prospect or customer has just said. We pause and then we ask them, what are you taking away from what that customer has just said? What have you learned based on the actual words that they've used, based on facial cues or the way that they said it, or the tonality that they use when they said it? What are you picking up on?

Is it something that's, you know, tied maybe to more of an emotional driver than a business driver? Can you identify that? If so, how do we then pivot the conversation to layer on that first before we talk about just the KPI? Something as simple as, I think, you know, I think it's going to be really tough for us to get to 80% this year. Okay. On the surface, on a transcript, you may want to dig into the 80%, but it's actually, the reps that turn around and be like, really tough. Like, tell me a little bit more about really tough. How does that actually, what does that mean for you? How does that show up? You know, how is that impacting your next YZ? It's a very simple analogy that is very kind of tough to take them out of context.

But the point that I'm trying to get to is you can build it. You can build it virtually, but through very kind of intentional coaching activities. And I really like role plays. And I really like taking live calls and watching them back and asking them, what have you learned from that? Pressing play, seeing how the rep approached it. How did the way that they did it differ to how you would have done it? Which one do you think is more effective than why? And just helping people on that journey of the how, I think is really impactful. So you're, this is funny. There was a post this morning of a kid who posted something like 500 cold calls and not one response, right? Like got hung up on every time.

And it was a takeaway from him that I genuinely appreciate, which again, the SDR role is a brutal role and it doesn't get, it gets crapped on all the time. But I think it's, it's one of not just the hardest, but one of the most critical roles be not necessarily because of the results, but because of the grit, because of the, the, the emotional, the, the taking that kind of rejection. If you can't do that, then you're not cut out for sales period. And, but if you can do that, I always say like, stop rushing through the SDR role, because if you master that role, you will never go hungry again. I mean, I have an, I have the example you probably heard, like when 2023 hit and it crashed and I went from 6 million to zero, it like, I, you know, and I always sell, but I'm, you know, I've been in business for a while.

I got inbound referral, those types of things. And, and I still do a little bit of prospecting every day, but I had to get back to work. And so I hit the phones, right? And I hadn't done cold calls in years, but I had like hardcore cold calling when I was cold calling, I was emailing all this other stuff. And basically if I didn't have those skills, I probably wouldn't be here right now because I, I effectively forced myself back into existence. And that's why I tell him like, stop trying to rush through that. First of all, your career is going to be 30, 40, 50 years. So spending more than a year in the SDR role is going to bear fruit for forever. And, and so I'm trying to get them to calm down, but on the other side, that the organizational push is brutal.

And the coaching is what I want to get to with you because I, I, I've been in doing this for 30 years. I've been hearing the struggle to get managers to coach for 30 years. And I almost want to give up on the idea of a manager coaching because usually the best sales rep gets promoted to be managers and, and the manager doesn't get any training on how to coach. They don't know how to coach. They typically just share what they worked for them, which doesn't work for everybody else. So for, with your growth through every organization that you've had, how do you structure a manager's role to give them the time to coach the right way? Because, you know, I use this analogy of great gong, fantastic, love it.

Right. But if you want to really coach the right way, you have to do what you do. Right. So say I've got a 30 minute call from a rep. Well, they're like, oh, we'll just skip to pricing. No, because what you said at minute five might've dictated how that response came in at minute 15 about price or, oh no, listen to it on two X. No, because tonality and inflection and all that stuff matters. So realistically, in order for me to genuinely coach the right way, I got to listen to all 30 minutes and then I got to spend at least 15 some odd minutes dissecting that, giving feedback, going back and forth like you did. So how do you give managers who have three, four, five, 10 reps, 10 calls a week, how do you give them the time to actually coach the right way?

Great question. There's no one silver bullet. And the reason why I say that is, I think SMB taking emerging reps on first times a little bit different than your more kind of seasoned strategic enterprise sellers, et cetera. I think it comes down to two things. One is recognizing that tools and instruments are purely that without strategy and intention behind them. Right. And I think so often we, I've seen over and over so many orgs with so many blip bloated tech stacks, but no strategy of how to be using them. Right. Um, I think that's fun. And I think too, and you're, you're hitting the nail on the head cause I've been preaching about this for years. There's so much about self-enablement, SCR enablement, AE enablement, manager enablement is so lacking.

Like where is it? It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. Kevin Dorsey is the only one that I know that has a program that Kevin Dorsey is the only one that I know that has a, like how to be a frontline manager training that I, that I think is good. I've seen other stuff and I'm like, as of whatever, that's old school crap. Katie's, he's the only one that I've seen that has that program for frontline managers. Yeah. I think it's because the way in which we record success for managers is incorrect. Comp plans and targets reinforce the behavior and the focuses that these, these guys put in data out. If you were to say to, and again, if my CR is listening to the call, I'm not recommending this, but if you were to say 25% of your comp plan will come from your reps being incrementally better at this account mapping, discovery, validation, negotiation, and procurement cycles, and getting from C to A in each of those different categories, you'll radically see a difference in focus.

But what do we actually focus on? Win rate, average contract value, revenue, all revenue numbers. But what happens then is that managers, especially first-time leaders become super reps. Yeah. They do all chase, right? They spend all of their time on deals and very little time on things that move the needle from an input perspective. And I say this to my managers all the time. The sign of you guys actually doing a good job is not taking you out of the organization and it falls flat on its face because you're super important. It's the other way around. If I take you out of the organization, you take six weeks off for your honeymoon if you need to. And again, if I'm listening to this, please don't take six weeks PTO right now.

We've got a couple weeks ago in the year. But if you were to be out of the organization for six weeks, you've built the skill set to the point where the machine runs without you. That's the greatest indicator that you've done a good job. So then, so firstly, it's about selling that machine, right? What does actually a good job look like six to 12 months from now, right? So if you want to be a second line leader, then a third line leader. It's all about building the system and the engine. So we agree now on that's what a good system and a good engine looks like. Now the question then becomes, how do we divvy up your time in order to ensure that you're hitting all of the different elements that you need to hit?

And that's where I think an operating rhythm or an operating cadence becomes super important. So I've got one with each of my regional directors that are brought up into me and then the leaders under them where we've got allocated time that then goes into team coaching. So they're learning from each other, individual coaching, one-to-one pipelines, and then customer calls. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say, we follow it like the Bible. It's always like, as the quarter progresses, priorities change, priorities shift, but by and large, we stick to that, right? But again, that's still only an instrument because you still need the intentionality behind it. So then the question then becomes, what informs the content?

And I think what informs the content comes from two things. One, we run PDPs, so personal development plans at the start. So we'll be running these in January. The personal development plans are at a rep level. Where do you see your career going? Where do you want to be six to 12 months from now? Let's understand from a quantitative perspective, what is going to be important for you to qualify for that type of opportunity, but qualitatively, what do you need to improve on, right? So that could be things like upwards communication. That could be their bottom-top forecasting. That could be a number of different areas, how they build relationships internally. But making sure that we are fully aware of the all-around skills development that need to be worked upon, not just the quantitative side of the game.

Because they actually coincide, right? I don't think good revenue generators make good colleagues as people, but I think good people as colleagues actually help revenue attainment. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Like the two things feed into each other. So I think that's one. And then what we then do is say, okay, if we then from the PDP understand where you're going in your career, we then know that from a coaching perspective, we're going to have to focus on X, Y, Z areas. Then what we can then do is look at something like Salesforce, where we can track your conversion rates through the funnel, where one of your reps may have a big problem with top of funnel creation, but they're actually pretty good once they're in funnel and they're converting it, right?

Or you may have someone that is great at top of funnel on the surface, but they can't actually get it through the validation stages. Let's understand what those metrics look like. Let's understand what good looks like. And then let's at least use the first month or two to focus on those areas, give you some actionable, digestible takeaways, implement those changes, and then slowly build the house. I think, again, what happens so often is that first-time leaders often try to become kind of Superman or Superwoman, and they try and fix every rep of all different facets, all at the same time. And what happens is then you're paralyzed by an overload of information. When naturally, if you can have that slightly longer-term view, this is long-term what we're working towards.

Here's in chunks how we're going to get there. And then within those chunks, here's how that's going to feed into our coaching model. And then these are the metrics that we're going to use to measure success, and we'll have to feedback and make sure the incrementality is happening. That, for me, is a scalable way of implementing coaching that then gives managers direction of exactly how they can do that on a rep-by-rep level. Because again, one of the biggest problems that first-time leaders have is they try and coach everyone the same thing. Yeah, no, disaster. So it's all about taking a little bit of time out, making sure that you're actually aligned. And it really helps with rapid involuntary attrition, right?

Because they actually feel like their managers are invested in where they want to get to. They care. And it just makes our overall experience better. So again, it's not the perfect system. I'm sure there's a better way of doing it, but that's just the way that I've seen it work well. What do you think about AI coaching? And the reason I'm asking this is because of all the applications of AI, cadences, I think there's a fool's errand on the top end of the funnel, quite frankly, where I'm seeing if done implemented right, like the AI coaching actually could be a layer and I think might be the most impactful use case of AI in sales. And the reason is, is because right now there's just this disconnect.

And I will talk in generalities here in far as generationally, this generation doesn't seem to take feedback very well, right? In general, there's some who want it, you know, always, right? But in general, there's almost like this allergic reaction to feedback, especially if it's negative and even if it's constructive. And so, and subjective, subjectivity is always the, the, the devil at the end of the day, when it comes to feedback, because if I don't think that my boss likes me, regardless of what feedback I get, coaching I get, I'm not, I'm going to discredit it. I'm like, he just doesn't like me. Right. Um, and so managers are a little bit hesitant to give real direct feedback that would help.

I mean, I remember, you know, Morgan Ingram, right? I remember when I was started, cause I'm Boston, I'm in your face. Like I cut through the shit. Like I don't, you know, and I remember when I was talking to him and giving him feedback one time, it wasn't even that hard. Like I was watching him on zoom and like his face started crinkling up and he started retracting back in his chair. And I literally, I stopped the, I was like, are you, are you okay? And he's like, what, what? No, I'm fine. I'm like, dude, like, did, like, is some, like, what was, did you just eat a lemon? Like what happened? And he's, I'm like, it looks like you're like, you're about to die here. He's like, no, no, I'm good.

I'm like, dude, do you just not like feedback? He's like, no, I love it. I'm like, no, you don't. No, you don't. And so I, the way I look at it is AI is, is, you know, we can all say whatever, but, but objective, if you will. Cause we can put the criteria of band and all those things or medic or whatever we want. It gives immediate feedback and it's objective in the reps mind. And so it's like, oh, cool. I'm getting immediate feedback in a safe environment. And then that AI rolls it up to the management layer to do exactly what you said. So now I know exactly what, uh, Sarah needs and I know exactly what Jim needs. So have you seen that? Do you, are you seeing that trend? Do you have, um, faith slash confidence in the AI coaching side of the house?

I think for the quantitative areas that are related to coaching. So for example, as we look at opportunity, qualification, deal management, it's these things exist for you to be able to qualify whether this is a real deal versus it doesn't. We look at, um, uh, conversion rates through the funnel. There are clear things that are either missing or they're present. And I think AI is very good at being able to discern fact versus fiction from that regard, where I feel that it's got challenges and it's coming back to the topic that we talked about at the top of the call is the ability, the emotionally, the EQ side of things. And I think, and you know what? I don't want that to change because I don't want it to change.

And the reason why I don't want it to change is I think we are at real risk of breeding AI dependent leaders and sellers. I love the fact that I love the fact in our profession that you can leverage AI all you want, but AI can't help you tell a story. It can't help you connect with someone. It can't help you use everything that you've learned. Yeah. And you've saved hours. And I love the efficiency gains that come from AI, but this is still a performance sport. Right. And I love that. And I don't want that to change. And the same thing with leaders. I want my leaders to be able to use AI, like even our forecasting and identifying risks in our deals. And I love that. And I think it has a big part to play in that regard because it can pluck just information, important bits of information at scale.

But I wouldn't want it as a primary driver of coaching because there are still things in our game and our sport that we learn through experience. And it's very tough to quantify. It's impossible to quantify. It's just reps. And we talked about the face-to-face sales that you did, the knocking on doors and everything. That how do you teach AI to be gritty and determined? You can't, right? It's just being told to go away and having your door shut on your face that just makes a leader competent to a rep. And that really gets them to buy in because AI can't, AI is great. But I think coaching is often about the validation that what a rep is experiencing is valid and it's just part of the journey.

You don't always need to be in solution mode, right? So I think managers that leverage AI, the supplement that will win. And I think managers and leaders that use it to be dependent on AI to fill that void for them will fail. And I see the chasm opening up quite quickly, actually. I agree. There's too much of a reliance on it. And that's why I always say with AI, it's augmentation, not automation, right? Exactly. Do not automate this. Don't take the human element. At least be the last mile. But, you know, for you, like one of the things I noticed, you know, with your growth in some of the other organizations, I think, I forget, it was Cognizant, where you took four new and experienced AEs from PIP to 100% and 20% of quota.

I've always kind of had this, like, roll my eyes at PIPs. Because PIPs is basically, in most corporate, that means you're getting fired. Like, you might as well give up because very few people get out of a PIP. Because not only is it like, you know, oh, you're probably not performing and therefore, but it also puts a stigma on you, right? Because now the rest of the organization knows that you were on PIP and so now leadership. So, how are you able to take, and again, going to EQ versus IQ or results versus EQ, with those four people that you took from underperforming and had to be on PIP, was it more of a EQ thing, like a motivational thing, like they just hadn't connected yet? Or was it a skills thing that you had to work on with them to get them out of that?

I mean, obviously both, but which one do you think made the bigger difference taking them from where they were to where you got them? Was it connecting with them as the human being and what their goals were and getting that piece to click? Or was it your skills suck, I need to train you on this, and let's go? That is an awesome question. I think I had, I think I had the benefit, because that cognizant, around 88% of all of our AEs were SDRs first, all the way up to our CRO. Everyone started as an SDR. And I think that really helped with understanding the why. And I think most people that land on PIPs, performance is not where they need to be, especially if they've been hired externally or they haven't been working with that leader for a while.

I often find that reps working with leaders exponentially have a higher attainment rate than those that don't really know each other, because you can't tap into the why. Like, the emotional and the personal drivers are like a big part of it. I think I had the benefit with those guys of having a lot more of a head start on the why. So it became more skills, because just organically, that was just the bigger area for concern than the drivers. However, with that being said, with one of them, they, I think they just, they just lost enjoyment of the game. And that happens. That's what I'm getting at, right? You can't coach someone out of that. Right? And I start PIPs off very differently when I'm a first-time leader.

I don't go to the numbers. I don't go to the conversion metrics. I honestly think that there's so much value in a leader just shutting up, joining a few calls, and just sending back a listener. See how they prepped. See how they approached the call. See how they're interacting. Because I think that tells you a lot about where they are, in terms of how they are, coming into the call. Because calls can be won or lost based on your mindset going into it. More often than you win them. And I think just sitting back and listening and seeing how they're going about their business is really impactful. And seeing that live on the call is great. And then over the rest of the call, then it becomes naturally more about the skills elements of it.

Right? So I think the answer to your question is, sure, what was it with those four? I think it was just listening to you, the very cliche term. But just taking the time to not going in with a preconceived notion as to what their problem was. Being okay with not knowing what the answer was. Just giving it, you know, a few days just to kind of figure out based on the experience and what you're seeing. And having a POV and a hypothesis on, hey, like, historically I've known you to be really efficient at X, Y, and Z. I've seen that change. Why might that be the case? And just having those types of conversations first. But then layering on metrics and very kind of clear accountability. And again, I think this comes back to inputs less than outputs.

For me, revenue is an output of a really well set and defined set of inputs at every stage of being in the sales cycle. That can be activity. That can be on minimum standards, like calendar invitations going out on the call, not negotiating by the email. You know, all of the little micro elements that we know really successful sellers do well. And I think it's being cognizant of the EQ side of the fence as well as the IQ side of the fence. Or then also maintaining and reaffirming the line in terms of the smaller elements of the sales cycles that then make revenue and output. And during my pitch, I don't focus on revenue as an output. Yeah, it's part of the defined deliverables that they need to do by the end of it over the one, two, three months, whatever it is.

But it's a hyper focus on the inputs. Every stage of the sales cycle from create to convert. So the close then becomes an organic outcome of the improvement in the first two stages. And I think to your point, if you land on a pip and you get exited, I think it's typically because, and I don't blame leaders for it because they haven't been shown how to use pips effectively. But I think it's often a case of this rep's been at 70%. If they don't get to 100% by three months, let's just get them out. But it's like, okay, like a seller knows that. Like a seller knows. Which sell weight meet in the direction of a seller that wants to miss their number? Right. Like who wants to miss their number? But what sellers really crave is the how.

And I think that's where great leavers separate themselves because they break down the sell cycle into the different elements that make it up. And they have a hyper focus on just sharpening them up on the areas, the micro areas of the sell cycle to make the biggest difference. And then just make sure that they're incrementally improving those skills based on a similar system to what I talked about earlier. And I think just trusting that process got them to where they wanted to get to. And don't get me wrong. A number of people didn't make it. But those guys did. You said something in there that I'm looking at from a development standpoint, but also more on the sales side of the house. Listening versus hypothesis.

Right. So there's the solution selling where you just ask a bunch of questions, you listen to what they say, and then you kind of give them the answer. But a lot of times client doesn't know what they need. And it kind of feels like an interrogation. Whereas now I kind of with all the tools that we have right now, it's I got a hypothesis. So let's parse this into two parts. How does that play your hypothesis? Do you do you listen in order to develop your hypothesis when coaching somebody? Or do you do some homework beforehand to your point, just like sitting back and looking at how they do things, whatever it is, and then create your hypothesis? Like because there's a fine line there of telling somebody like you, I know what your problem is, or I think I know what your problem is versus understanding from them what they see.

Their problem is definitely the latter. Definitely the latter. I think coming ill prepared into that conversation, you then become at the mercy of could be a victim mindset. It could be, you know, part of a leader's job is not to build a great center, but I think there's a lot of sellers that are great. It's just, you think of like a bowling alley, right? I think of great leaders as bumpers. Just getting the ball back going towards the pin, right? Like that's what great leaders do. And I think having, coming with a POV and a hypothesis and, and it can be baked in numbers, right? I expect my leaders to know their guys as numbers for those types of conversations, because typically if, typically if, if they know the numbers, they typically have a pretty good idea of what kind of movie they've seen before that is similar to this.

They can detect patterns and they can expedite that process. Whereas if they don't know and they're coming completely blank, um, I think it becomes, it becomes difficult to, to not control the conversation, but I think to navigate this, the, the, the conversation to be productive. Because it then ends up just being a rant, uh, like a bit of a rant around things that are unverifiable, um, that you have to then go away and validate and just becomes a little bit like a therapy session, which is okay. Like that's part of the gig, right? Like sometimes people just need to vent. Um, but I think for those types of conversations, leaders come in prepared with, Hey, look, I know what the numbers say, right?

You know what the numbers say, because we both come prepared with it. What I want is the white, what I want is your commentary around what we're seeing. If something's in the red, why is it in the red? And I think when both sides come prepared to that, um, they both do their, their road, a little bit of investigative digging, a little bit of context. And I think it expedites the conversation to going into solution mode as opposed to just spending so much time in discovery what's going wrong, wrong mode. So I think it definitely does help from a foundational standpoint. Yeah, I like that. And I think there's, you know, there's the psychology component of anchoring, right? Like even, even with coaching, it's like, Hey, here's my hunch based on what I've seen you do.

And you know, we all know the numbers, but I've noticed a dip and you know, this, whatever. So my hunch is this and somebody desire to correct you or elaborate is much greater than it is to answer that open-ended question. And so like, I try to, even if I'm wrong, you know what I mean? And I even say that a lot inside, like, Hey, I might be wrong here, but based on my research, what I've seen this, that, and the other thing. And some of the things I've seen around the office, my hunch is you're struggling here and it's not to do with this. It has something else. Like, why, what's going on? Because a lot of times it's a personal thing in a lot of people's, right? Like you look at like their home life or something like something's going on behind the scenes.

And that's why I always had from a value standpoint, you know, family was always the high, you know, number one value for me personally. But even when I was running an org and it wasn't the cheesy, we're all a family. I think that's bullshit because we're not, you know, I don't fire my family. But my, my spin on it was your family, because if your family isn't right, if you are not right at home, you're not going to bring your best self to work. So my, my, I had a month like thing, my organization where I don't give a shit. If, if somebody just signed a hundred thousand dollar contract and you were on a flight to Dubai today and something happened in your family, I don't care. Like cancel the flight, cancel the training.

If the client's pissed, it sucks, but go handle whatever that was. Because inevitably for me and all my coaching career, nine times out of 10, the results were due to something foundationally going on in their lives. That wasn't right either. They weren't clicking with the, they, they lost their passion for it, or there was something going on that was distracting them. And so I think that, that why behind it is so critical. I completely agree. It's like, I compare, I compare it to, to athlete sports a lot. Right. And it's, I'm a big American football fan. Ironically. I'm a Saints guy. Saints. All right. Nice. Yeah. Gone through some tumultuous few years here, but they're right. I'm, I'm just a fantasy football player for, for the next two years until we make it out of the slump.

I'm hoping we tanked for a little bit. Um, but, um, I compare it a lot to that. Like if you've got someone with a high ankle sprain and you roll them out every week, expecting that high ankle sprain to get better. What are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, what are you doing? And that's what your fan, like, if you, if your family life's not right, or one of your personal drivers are not right. The moment you turn on your laptop, you've got a high ankle sprain and you're at 71%. That is not going to get better until you address the root cause. And I think we need, we need to take a moment to take a step back to acknowledge that as well. So I think it's, it's a super important and poignant point.

Let's, let's finish up on this. Cause I think this is, is it ties to this and you have a break in your career for three months where you went to travel with Southeast Asia. And you talk about how on the surface, a lot of, you know, you look successful, right? Numbers were great. Everything was good, but internally you were like starting to fall apart. Could you walk us through that breaking point for you? And, and what drove you to just say, fuck it. I got to stop because I had a similar one early in my career when I was like 23, 24, oddly enough, like way too early. But I was working 17 hours a day, seven days a week for this startup. And I was just like, and I, and I literally just got to a point where like, I have to go.

I'm like, I have to leave. And my, my executives are like, well, you want a week off? I go, no, I'm leaving. And if you guys are cool with me coming back, then I will come back. But if you're not, I'm gone. I, and I just literally got my car and I drove out West. And I was like, I have to get away. Cause otherwise I'm going to lose my fucking mind. Could you walk us through kind of the perception of success for you? And you talk a lot about that with your dad who doesn't make a hundred grand and his success, right? All that fun stuff. And then how it got you to the point where you just said, I, I have to stop. Could you walk us through that? Because I think there's a lot of people right now who are struggling with burnout, with stress, with all the heavy weight that's happening out there in the world right now.

And, and I want to talk about how we can kind of prevent the breaking point. I'm glad we're finishing up here because I'm extremely passionate about this. I think the one number one thing that anyone listening to this, I hope that they feel it's okay to absolutely love your job and do what you do. But it's also okay to acknowledge that you're burning out at the same time. And I think people often conflate the two. Like I'm not, I'm not burning out. Like I love my job, but it can be both, right? Like you love your job until you burn the candle too brightly at both ends. And then it's like overnight, I'm just out. And you can still love what you do, but you are just mentally shot. What was the breaking point for me?

There was a couple. End of 2024, had our kind of end of year kind of party where we were just kind of talking about, I'm looking back on everything that we achieved in the last year and it was amazing. And we were talking about, you know, what, what are we going to do next? Right. I just remember sitting there and thinking, I don't know if I really want to do the last year again. Like it was a lot, like it was, it was great. But I put on a little bit of weight. I stopped playing sports. I got injured. I never really got back into it because, you know, there's never a good time in sales to go away. Like Q1, start the year strong. Q2's end of H1. Got to make sure that finishes strong. Q3, Q3 is foundational for Q4.

And then Q4 hits and it's like, are you crazy? You're not going anywhere. You know, it's like, you just fall into the game, right? Yeah. What have you done for me lately? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What have you done for me lately? Exactly that. So I think that kind of planted the seed. And then I had, my cousin got married in January, flew out on New Year's Day. So I'm South Asian by nature. Indian and Pakistani is my heritage. And I flew out there for my cousin's wedding. I had never been there before. All of my cousins are there. Loads of my family are there. Never made it out there. Badly got a funny story. I was meant to go out there in 2007. But the prime minister got assassinated on the day of my flight.

So yeah. Jesus. The whole place is right. So we never made the plan. We never met. Yeah. Anyway. Interesting segue. But never made it. Like, you know, family is a little bit superficial. Like, God did not want us to go on this day. So we're not making the plan anytime soon. But also, I had never been there before. And getting the whole family there is a big expense. It's a big palada. So we just never made it out there. And I didn't feel comfortable going on my own. But I got out there January 2nd, surrounded by all my friends and family. All my cousins that I had been speaking to on FaceTime and Facebook growing up. I actually got to meet face to face. And over the course of, and I was only meant to be there for a week and a half, two weeks.

For the wedding. Asian weddings are massive. They go on every night for 15 days. Yeah. So there's a lot of time to talk about things. It's like Indian weddings. Like, there's like a three week. Like, I got invited to them. And I thought it was like one day. And they're like, no, it's a two week thing. I'm like, I can't take two weeks off of work to go to your wedding. Yep. Yep. It is exactly that. It's exactly that. It's in the back garden, converted into like a canopy. And we were there every night. I was speaking to my cousins. And I remember that they sat there and they asked me, you know, you're from UK. You've got one of the strongest passports in the world. You can go anywhere at any time.

You know, like, where have you been? Like, since you've been working so successful, like, what have you done? Like, what have you gone and seen? I promise you not, JB. I sat there and all I could recall was quotas. 150% presidents club this and numbers I did and the amount of ARR I did then and whatever it was. And I just sat there. I was like, I've actually not done anything. Like, the last place I'd actually been was to America to go and study abroad when I was down in Charleston about eight years before that. And I just sat there and I had a moment. I was like, I'm actually not that interesting. I've actually got very little worldly value to add to any of these conversations. And I was speaking to my cousins and their friends that are a lot less fortunate than me that had, you know, traveled around, gone and see things.

And I was like, I would trade everything that I had for that in that moment. And it works both ways, right? Like, there's a lot of things that I have and I don't mean to come across as, you know, unthankful. But I just had a moment there. I was just like, this can't carry on. And if I'm ever going to take a break, this is the time to do it. Because got to the end of a really nice kind of journey and a story here. Kicked off the new year. I've not got any kind of family commitments from that regard. And, you know, that could change. Not the way that my luck's going, but that could change. But, you know, it's pretty brutal, pretty brutal right now. Yeah. So I just took a plunge. I booked a flight, one-way flight to Thailand.

And I was, and I just said, whatever happens, happens. I'm going to take it from there. And during the final leg of my trip as the second to last country, I was in Turkey at the time. That's when my current boss, Wayne Murphy, reached out to me on LinkedIn and saying, you know, I've got potential availability. Are you done gallivanting and being a university student? I was like, you know what? It's time to be a grown-up. I've got some good stories to tell. Let's get back into it. But crucially, it's also meant that I've come back with a refreshed and a renewed sense of, you know, one thing that I do now. Yeah, what do I do this for? And also, by the end of the year, what do I need to have done for myself?

So I'll box, golf, you know, set aside time to go see your family and all of those sorts of things. And that now has allowed me to find the balance between running at 100 million miles an hour, but not completely losing myself in the process. And sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to rebuild yourself back up. And that's the scary part, right? A lot of times life makes the decision for us, right? Whether either we get fired or something drastic happens to our health or whatever. And I'm really searching to find ways to prevent that, right? Prevent the breaking point. But sometimes, unfortunately, it does need to punch you square in the mouth. And whether it's a question somebody asks you and you sit there and reflect on it, you're like, fuck, man, I am not interesting.

I haven't done shit. I've done a lot of stuff. I haven't done shit, right? And that's a tough realization, right? 100%. Awesome, man. Well, look, we didn't even get into like Zoom Info and the rise there and the acquisition of Adobe with what you guys are doing over. I mean, it's so I think we're going to have to have a part two on this one. Slow down. But save. Tell us where team can find out more because you're hiring a lot right now. You've got a great coaching environment. You've got tons of upside right now with Adobe. I'm sure you're fired up about that. Where can people find out more information about what you're doing, where you're working on and everything else? Yeah, feel free to connect, follow me, LinkedIn, our SEMrush page as a marketing tech company puts out excellent content.

So feel free, if you're a big fan of the memes and the gifs, to give SEMrush company page a follow. And again, always happy to connect and meet new people. So feel free to drop me a message. I'm always available to jump on a quick call and expand the network. I love it, man. And for those SDRs out there who are looking for a leader who gets it and who's been in the role and understands, you might want to check them out because that makes a difference. Right. When you know the role and you have the appreciation for the role and you can still do it, probably, right? Get on those calls. I love doing it. I love doing it. Again, CRO, if you're listening to this, turn away. I hate spreadsheets. Yeah, same here.

I just love getting on calls and getting on the front line with the guys. It's the most fun part of my job. So yeah, 100%. Awesome. I really appreciate the conversation, man. This has been fun. Thanks, man. Thanks, JB. I appreciate you, man. Thanks. Absolutely. And everybody else, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I said in all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.

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