Encore: Interview with Jorge Soto of Firstcut

So you talk a lot about how to prospect ad companies like LinkedIn, Salesforce, Box, I mean, basically the hottest SaaS companies on planet Earth. What is it that makes those organizations so effective? Yeah, it's tough because, you know, the question is, is it just purely the volume and the product? Because, you know, Salesforce, obviously, when they came out, they were a rocket ship and it was the SaaS thing that nobody else had, right? So it was kind of like, all right, but, you know, every company, I don't care how hot they are, they all reach this inflection point where usually like inbound lead generation, you know, marketing automation, those type of things drive the inbound leads. And then, but that only gets to a certain point.

And I call it the inflection point, where there's a point where that success drives growth. And then that growth is like, okay, now we want more growth. And what happens is, you know, quotas go up, territories get smaller, expectations go up, and now you got to go and the seed and grow approach in a lot of these companies only get you so far. So inevitably, there has to be this outbound generation piece of it where you have to start calling out and making those and it's just a different skill. And so I think the ones that do it best are the ones that recognize that inflection point before it happens. So they prepare their reps with the tools and skills and resources to get there. So it's not this hard shift.

And then they really, what I've seen is they're really honing in on their tech stack. So, you know, I'm going to pick on Salesforce for a minute here. Back when I was first working with them, they were so hot that every other SaaS company wanted to be working with Salesforce. So all these other SaaS companies would come in and say, hey, Salesforce, we'll give you our shit for free as long as we can say you're a client. And so Salesforce would say, sure, and just like throw it in. And so all their reps had all these different tools. And I remember I would be doing some training and I knew, for instance, they had inside view, right? And they'd be exposed to it during their bootcamp. And so I'd come in and I'd, you know, at the time I was like, okay, everybody now light up inside view.

And 99% of the reps in the class would look at me like, what's inside view? And I'd be like, I know you have it. It's right there. But they were so inundated. And so they just diverted to spreadsheet type activity things. So I now, I now think there's this kind of like this platform fatigue almost and there's technology fatigue. And they're saying, okay, forget about all these cool little point solutions. What's the core? Like, what are we going to use here to, to really optimize our workflow here and the ones that are making those choices and cleaning up their tech stack and also providing their reps, the skills and not just turning them into robots. I mean, that's my biggest fear right now.

And I talked about it is, you know, all these sales out of all these sales efficiency tools that are out there right now. Um, I love them, but the problem is, is that most people are using them as sales automation tools and, and I, and therefore sales replacement tools. It's almost like we're training the robots to take over our jobs. And I fundamentally do not understand why I personally would pay, like if I was a VP of sales right now coming into an organization, the first thing I do is I would say, let me see all the emails that the SDRs are sending out right now. Let me see all of them. And if they're all template bullshit emails, I'd be like, I'm going to say this company, a whole bunch of money right now.

I'm going to fire every SDR in here. I'm going to hire somebody who can optimize Marketo, Eloqua, name it. And I'm going to just crank the shit out of stuff when it comes to marketing automation. Cause what's the difference between sales automation and marketing automation? It really isn't marketing actually can do it better than us because they can split test and they'll actually look at the data to figure out what's working and what's not. Whereas a sales rep will never do that. They just use it to press play. So I think the ones that are providing the tools to the sales reps of, of them as a truly efficiency tools, but giving them the skills to put the content in those tools to, to, to elevate and the ones that are actually educating them on skills to, to have conversations, you know, to, to, to do the, I mean, right now the phone is like, uh, you know, no SDR wants to get on the phone.

I actually think the phone is going to make a raging comeback because if you, my presentation, there's artificial intelligent emails that are being sent to me that I, I couldn't have written a better email and I'm looking at it and the, as soon as it happens where you get an email from something and you think it's a person because it's customized, but you realize it's a robot. As soon as that happens, you will never trust another email that hits your inbox. And so now fast forward a year or two, nobody's going to trust email. And so I always say, what can you do that a computer can't phone? Computers still can't get phone. Right. And that's where I think a sales rep can really build. And that's, and to me, that's such a, an important skill that most sales reps are losing out on these days.

Like I'm, I actually feel very fortunate that I'm a Gen Xer and I grew up with hammering the phones, you know, old school shit because I have that skill and I can pull that skill out anytime. Um, whereas a lot of kids right now are avoiding it like the plague and they're playing around with all the technology. But the problem is that technology can replace them. And so that's where to your long winded answer to your question about what the best organizations are doing is they're, they're finding that right mix between the tech stack, cleaning it up, efficiency tools, not automation tools, and then skills. And some of those skills, not just, but actually the one thing I'll, the one other thing I'll tap into here is what's scary to me right now is I'm actually getting a lot of clients coming to me and say, Hey John, we love all the skills that you're talking about and the techniques and everything.

Um, do you have anything on, um, business writing skills and grammar? And I'm like, what? I'm like, doesn't that what college and high school is for? And the problem is, is this generation coming out, they're so used to LOL and not actually creating structurally appropriate sentences that a lot of even what they write is dog shit. And so a lot of these managers are coming to me and saying, I forget about like prospecting, John, I need help teaching my kids how to write an email that is, that doesn't have misspellings that, you know what I mean? It has good grammar to it. And I'm like, I'm the last person you want to ask for that. Like if there wasn't spell check on, on, you know, word, I wouldn't even send emails.

But, but my point is, is that I think these, these core fundamental skills are, are lacking. And that's why I think organizations need to come in and educate on those things to help some reps, uh, execute. And then those are the ones that are taken off. Quick question. How early should an organization hire a sales enablement team or just a resource internally to be able to select the right mix and then, and then empower the reps so they don't not know how to use the team? Well, that's a great question. And what I'm seeing, I think the earlier, the better, the, the, as soon as you can afford it effectively. Um, because what happens is enablement as it's, it's, it's, you know, it's funny is that if you still type enablement into word and into Microsoft word document, it's still misspells it.

It's still isn't an, it's still a misspelled word, but enablement at least is starting to become a genuine profession, right? Um, and a department that genuinely makes a difference. And it's not just training it's enablement, right? Um, and so, but the problem is it's usually a reactive thing. So it's like they reach a certain point and it's like, ah, crap, we need somebody. And then that poor person that, and I see it time and time and time again, where it's one person with, who's wearing a million hats and they get plugged in at a point where they can't succeed. And so they run around, they get no budget and they're doing everything they can to pull in vendors and train in all this tech stack and all that other stuff.

And they just get the shit kicked out of them. And then the organization says, oh, well that person's not doing a good job. We're going to need to bring somebody who's been there, done that. And that poor person then gets trumped. It's like having a VP of sales and then asking an SVP of sales. And that's effectively telling your VP of sales to go away. And so I don't think you're giving those people a chance. So if you introduce them earlier into the equation, I don't know when, you know, because I think every business is a little different, but I think as soon as you can afford it, hire it. Um, or as soon as you can find, here's another way to look at it. As soon as you find somebody within the organization, like maybe an SDR or, or, or an AE who might not be the best SDR out there or the best AE out there, but they're the ones that actually use the tool really, really well and are super efficient and have a process and like playing with all those things, instead of maybe promoting that kid to, or maybe not promoting that kid, why not offering them a job as, hey, you want to kind of be our initial enablement department and kind of help build this out from an operation standpoint.

There's always those kids out there now that are, that are kind of trying out sales. You know what I mean? They're like, Hey, I need to make money. Uh, you know, I, I've been told sales and you know, it's as hot right now. So let me get into it, but I don't want it as my career, you know, which is fine. It kind of bothers me, but it's fine. I get it. Um, so identify those kids maybe and say, okay, let me just shift you over a little bit. Let's stop paying your commissions. Let's start paying you a little bit of a higher base salary, but your job is to optimize, choose, help us make better decisions. Uh, like I said, the sooner the better, cause otherwise you're just going to slam into this wall and, and then put somebody in place to set up for failure.

And it's, it's, and it's, you're going to chug along when you could do this, if you put the right tools in place. So no problem, man. Yeah. Always good talking to you. Cool. Make it happen.