Jonathan Lister: Building Billion-Dollar Organizations with Curiosity

To me, I think sales cycles today have to be really close to perfect. Your product has to be perfect. Your process has to be perfect. Your personality, the bar is incredibly high. You've got to think about this all the time. 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. Today's conversation is with Jonathan Lister. He's the COO at Vidyard and is a product-oriented global B2B go-to-market executive with deep experience in SaaS and digital media. He has helped build and run multiple billion-dollar organizations, including LinkedIn, where he was the VP of global sales solutions for over a decade.

And so this was a great conversation on a lot of different levels. Business acumen-wise, you're all going to learn something here, right? As the COO of Vidyard, I actually started with his background, but also give us a little insight on what a COO does. And he broke it down on a couple of different levels. He's an actual GTM COO. And for those of you who don't know, there are different types of COOs out there and what they do. So we explained that a little bit. So any of you are going after COOs, you're going to get some insight here. Also, we talked about what he actually responds to from a prospecting standpoint and how to get things with him, but then dove into the whole AI conversation because Vidyard, for those of you who don't know, is a video platform where you can send videos and prospecting to your existing customers and that new ones.

And they just released back in March, I think it was an AI avatar where you can send it out at scale, super personalized. And I have my pros and cons of AI these days, as far as avatars and pretending to be human and those types of things. So we dug into that. And he talked about the line of where AI should be used and where the human needs to be involved, which I think is a really important conversation. He also talked about from a hiring standpoint, what he looks for and how curiosity is the key factor here. And I think I violently agree with him that you have to be curious right now. You have to be willing to try new things and you have to evolve or else you're going to get run over by this stuff.

But he has a very optimistic view of the future as it relates to sales and AI and everything else. So I think you'll get a lot out of this one. I really enjoyed this conversation. So I hope you enjoyed as much as I do. Let's make it happen. Jonathan Lister, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, man. I'm super excited to be here. Longtime fan, longtime fan of selling, of course, and longtime fan of the show and you. So yeah, man, thrilled to be here. Appreciate it. Likewise, my friend. I've been a long time fan of Vidyard and looking forward to seeing where you guys are going in the future because I haven't been paying all that much attention for the past maybe year or so.

And I know you've done a lot of cool stuff in the past year. So we'll get into that stuff. But like I start all these podcasts with, give us your origin story, my friend. Growing up, where'd you grow up? How'd you catch the bug of being an entrepreneur in sales and all that fun stuff so people get a little bit of context on you? I grew up in Toronto and Canada, Toronto native, Canadian native. Come from a family of three, grew up kind of in a working-class neighborhood. My dad was a teacher. My mom was a teacher too. Oh, no. No way. Really? Cool. Yeah. As a result, I was taught independence at an early age. If I wanted something, I had to pay for it. It was no, I didn't gain nothing handed to me.

And so I would put money that I've had more jobs, certainly before the age of, you know, 21 than almost anybody else. I had a constant stream of jobs, constant working. Some of those were entrepreneurial, but lots weren't. They were just, look, I need to make money. So I did what I could to make money. Tons and tons of jobs all the way through like high school from very early age, right through to college, put myself through college. And that kind of just led to, you know, an independent streak. And, you know, I didn't actually start out as a seller. My first, my first sort of professional job was actually as an editor in university. I was a, like a textbook editor and I had. That sounds fun.

Eric. Yeah, very, exactly. Right. Couldn't be worried, but I had a very kind and interesting, compassionate, uh, sort of mentor who was the, um, the publisher. And she came to me one day and she said, you know what, uh, Jonathan, you probably would make a great salesperson. And that was like the greatest sort of, uh, piece of criticism, backhanded or helpful piece of criticism. I don't know if she was saying you're a terrible editor or actually, but that's really what led me to kind of consider sales and started selling for that, uh, uh, that press, that publishing company. And that led to a career in sales. And you know, I'll end this by saying, look, I've spent now 25 years, uh, in B2B tech go to market sales.

And I characterized my entire career as, uh, you know, trying to sort of give sales a better reputation, but, but frankly, just help create more value. Like from the very early days, you know, I was a high street seller knocking on doors, carrying a bag. And I was, you know, like, there has to be a better way. I spent my career trying to create that better way for sellers, but really for buyers, right? How do we create a better buying experience? So I'm, I know we'll get into that, but that's really like how I define my career. It's why I've worked with the companies that I've worked at. And they're all companies that, you know, create better buying experiences and create tons of value for buyers.

What do you like? So when you, when you joined Vidyard, why, like, why did you join Vidyard? Yeah. A lot of people, I always ask people like, not how long have you worked here, but like, why'd you choose? Right. And, and there's a lot of different reasons. Why'd you choose Vidyard? Just to make sure. I love that question. I love that question. Cause I, I'm, you know, I get asked that question a lot and I also mentor and try to help lots of sellers. I'm at an, I'm at an age where, I don't know, again, again, I think I have lots of these applications. Um, yeah, very thoughtfully, I tried to work at Google. I'd worked at LinkedIn for a long time. I ran sales navigator for, for a number of years.

Uh, after that, I really want to do something different. Number one, I wanted to build something. So I wanted to go back to kind of building. I had built businesses and products kind of earlier on in my career, uh, but mostly I wanted a product that users love. I wanted a product that the end user really loved. Uh, of course I wanted, you know, a great company, great leadership team and all that stuff. But we started with the product. Was the product great? Was the product something users really got excited about? And therefore we could build a business around. And, you know, the story of Vidyard, you know, with, with video messaging, there is a, it's interesting company and product in that there are rabid fans.

There are like people who just cannot get enough of using this tool. And for me, that was really like the cornerstone from this. Like we can create a great company already was a good company, great company. Like you can create a great long-term business out of, you know, a product like this, that users love. And if you think about it, it's less about the company. For me, you know, you don't have to be incredibly bright or incredibly insightful to realize that video is going to play, you know, a massive role in business, but in selling and buying going forward. I mean, just demographics alone will tell you like video is going to play a much different role, two years, four years, whatever, whatever that looks like is going to play a much larger role.

And so we're, we're still in the early innings or early stages. And I think it's fascinating, but that's largely the reason I joined. I like it. Yeah. I always tell reps, you know, in order to be successful in sales, you got to believe in what you sell, right? If you, if you don't believe in it, don't do it. It's going to be hard. And in B2B, like, look, I've been in B2B my whole career. Uh, it's, you know, like, it's harder to find B2B products that users love. And so I've spent a lot of time thinking about like, what are those products that, and there are, but there are, there are lots of products that users love. Uh, I, this meant a lot to me. And for me, you're right. I, like I'm passionate about it and I'm personally passionate about it because I think it's going to play a role, big role in sort of the workplace and how people do business conform.

Small sidebar here on, on your role at Vidyard, um, COO, you know, so the audience here listening is probably, you know, 50, 60% individual contributors, right? And what I'm trying to do is in a lot of ways is up business acumen and help, help them talk to the different roles. Could you just enlighten us a little bit on, on kind of what your role looks like as COO of Vidyard versus like a VP of sales versus, you know, that type of stuff? It's a great question. There are multiple kinds of COOs. They're usually, I mean, they have three kinds of COOs, right? There are product COOs, there are administrative COOs, and there are go-to-market COOs. I'm the third. I'm a go-to-market COO. I run selling, marketing, customer success.

That all rolls to me. Uh, you know, we're a 180 person company. Uh, so, you know, that's the kind of size of our business, but I run all sales, marketing, uh, customer success. And so, you know, this is relevant because I'm a buyer for, you know, any, I mean, I get like, like many people, I get tons of outreach, uh, trying to sell me products. And so I have a fascinating role and I have for a long time, but it's very meta, right? Where I get to sell a product that is designed for sellers to help them sell better, but I'm also a buyer. And so when I'm talking to my team and I'm talking to my customers, I have like wealth of experience of being a buyer of lots and lots of different products, hearing lots of process, lots of approaches, theme products, as well as, you know, being in market, telling my own sales product to sellers to help them sell better.

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Now let's get back to the conversation. What was the last time, um, somebody reached out to you to sell you something and you actually responded and it, and it led to, it doesn't even have to lead to a sale, but where, where you got that outreach and you were like, shit, I'll respond to this, you know, cause, cause I think there's a perception that executives don't respond to anything out there these days. And you know, why even bother, but I'm curious if you like, if you can think of a time where It actually led to a purchase, uh... It doesn't have to lead to a purchase. Something caught your attention, like a prospecting, anything. Let me start with response. First of all, I'm probably a little bit different.

I'll respond to people for a variety of reasons. I'll respond to sometimes people who are really bad and I'll say, look, this was really terrible. Let me help you. Like, do you want me to help you? If you want me to help you, I'll give you a couple of tips. So I've done that as recently as like right before the holidays, a month ago, some guy reached out and he had this pitch and I was like, dude, like, that's just like, it could be great. It's so close to being great, but it's like kind of terrible. So, you know, like this, this, and so I'll do that sometimes. Um, I won't respond to anything that's like generic or, you know, just, you know, whatever, like a placeholders and all that, which you get, you know, that's like 30 to 40% of what I get.

Uh, what I especially respond to and what I coach my team on responding to is really is the, is some kind of referral, right. It's like, uh, this person said this about you and it made me think of you, or we have this person in common. I, I talk to them about you. Like that, by the way, especially, you know, the superpower is someone inside your company, someone inside your company thought you might be interested in this thing. And yeah, ideally, you know, you've copied them on it, but if not, like you're, you're at least referring what person in common. Like that, that internal referral is a super juice to superpower. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, that still holds true. Right. The internal referral, I think because it's coming from a trusted source and I, that what we're trying to do is get reps to build their brand and in a way that they're almost a trusted source when they do reach out to this.

So, so there's some familiarity to it, but the referral from somebody else is usually the easiest way to go. Well, but, but, but, but it's also like the, the thing for a sales rep, like that establishes, it raises the bar for them. If I'm a salesperson, like it, you know, it, it put my, it kind of makes, it puts my reputation on the line that I will, that I, that I've gone and found somebody, their reputation's on the line, my reputation's on the line. Like we created this, like there's a real bond around trust. If you get really good referral. But, and that's what I hate about LinkedIn these days is like, I don't know about you, but I can't tell you how many people I get. People, Hey John, I see you're one connected to so-and-so make the, you know, could you make the intro?

I'm like, uh, no, like I'm, I'm not going to put my reputation. I don't know you. You're like, you could be an ax murderer for all I know. Like, I'm not going to put my name on you. You're out of your mind. Yeah. It's just cause it's easy. It doesn't mean you should do it. I mean, I worked at LinkedIn for a long time. We had, you know, internally. Like, unless you, unless my bar, my bar was always like, unless I know you well enough to refer you, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to you, uh, kind of the same as in real life, right? It's not that different. Repetition matters. So let's, let's talk into video here. Cause I, you know, that we're in such an interesting spot, man. Like I just, I did it right before the holidays.

I did a Hey Jen video of me. Like that just was like, Oh, like, and with, with, with very limited, you know, information, I was like, click, click, click. And then I spoke perfect Spanish. I spoke, you know, Japanese and it looked like I was doing it. And I know that you just reached you video, just released their avatar piece of this. Okay. I need your help with the line between reality and AI at this point, when it comes to authenticity, when it comes to client engagement and those types of things. So let's start with your kind of overall philosophy or approach of using AI in the sales process and where that ends and where the human begins, regardless of vidyard as like what you sell, but help me understand, like, where's your thoughts on the AI version of me versus me?

Sure. Sure. But can I start with like the problem we're trying to solve? Like, like the reason, you know, we didn't, so, so vidyard came out with AI avatars back in March, and we were ostensibly kind of first to market by design. We wanted to like test and learn, we wanted to kind of, you know, talk to prospects and customers about use cases and design around use cases. But I said, look, the problem we were trying to solve is the problem you are familiar with. Everyone was called for me. Like buying and selling is fundamentally broken and it's gotten more broken as the, certainly as the economy a harder, it got more broken. Like we all know these issues, like outreach is harder, standing out is harder.

But it's as hard to buy as it is to sell. Buyers have to sell internally. They don't want to talk to reps. They wish automation. So all this, buying and selling is not working particularly well. And, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about like, how does AI, and in our case, video, but how does AI and video help create personalization at scale? And I know personalization at scale is this sort of loaded term that people have thrown around for a long time. It's been loaded. And again, I started by saying like the, you know, my objective for my career for years and years and years has been to create more value and to help sellers become better sellers and to help create the, you know, effectively like give sales a better reputation.

Personalization at scale plays a large role in that. Like technology so far, largely, you know, it's kind of not, hasn't fulfilled that promise because it's largely mostly gone to quantity. Like we use technology to drive more quantities. We haven't really used technology to drive better quality or even the same quality at scale. My view, our view is that AI will start to allow us to do that. And if you want, they'll start to allow the capability of personalization at scale. So the problem is, you know, buying and selling is broken. Our view is that AI and video can start to help solve that problem through personalization at scale. And maybe the easiest way to think about this, if you're on this call, my view is that, you know, we can start to make average sellers perform more like top performers through the use of avatars.

And this will get to your questions. We'll get to like the line between in real life, the line between, you know, human recorded videos versus AI. But you start with like, how do I want to create value? Like, what do I do for a living? Like, how do I create that? Everyone's got a different sales cycle, different customer set. So you guys start with like, I want to create more value for my prospects, my customers. Now I have to do it at scale because, you know, I've got BDRs and salespeople who have hundreds of prospects and potentially thousands of contacts and the same thing for account managers, right? How do you, how do you manage an account base when you've got, you know, 80 customers and, you know, dozens and dozens of contacts?

Well, you can't do it. You can't do a good job, uh, doing it in person. You can't do a good job of doing it, you know, um, all analog or all, you know, yourself, subscale. So the view is like, this is a product that helps you do this at scale, done the right way. Avatars. And you think about this, there, there are lots of use cases. There are prospecting use cases. There are nurturing use cases. There are deal closing use cases where it's a really great compliment to the signal cycle, right? I can't talk. I wish I could talk to like 30 contacts at a company. I can only talk to two of them, but I can compliment that by with avatars that go out to the rest of them that either repeat the story or share a thing or do a feature update or, you know, X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z, right?

So all those things are, I think that you've got to think through how you want to use it within your, your sales cycle and your, you know, the way you use the way you want to create value for your customer set. And when you have that, then that will start to tell you which parts of your sales cycle should be done in person, which parts of your sales cycle be done using other mediums in which, where video plays, uh, you know, uh, the perfect role. Like we know, we know video performs better. So where is it, you said done the right way, right? Um, where are some common use cases where it's, where you don't think it's appropriate? Well, I think those high value moments, like I can use avatars in a high value moment, at least not yet.

Like a, you know, when, again, those mean different things to different people, but when, you know, there's a, like, there's a moment that you have to spend a fair bit of time convincing somebody of something and getting to a specific, so I would say broadly the high value moments right now, you know, we're seeing it being used successfully in outreach, like getting attention, getting response rates. So right now, response rates on avatars aren't that different than response rates on, uh, recorded videos. Uh, scale is dramatically different. And so we're getting, we're getting like those kinds of outcomes. Um, like outreach, think about things like, um, you know, one of the biggest things you hear from BDRs is like no shows at meetings, right?

So you do like meeting reminders, you do avatar meeting reminders, you can do it as a scale, super easy to do. Meeting confirmation, right? And we can plug these into workflows. So they're trigger-based. So, um, those things work really well. I would say it's mostly like, again, these like high value moments where you, of course you'd want to either be in person or you'd want to be like, you know, uh, you know, across the VC. So where's the line for you then let's go back to that, you know, reality versus the avatar piece and say, you know, cause my, my take on this, and I'd love to hear thoughts is, you know, if I know it's an avatar, if I know it's AIs and here's the example, you don't remember drift, right?

Remember drift came out with the chatbots, right? So when the chatbots first came out, actually even before drift, they were very, um, they, they, they were super responsive, right? So I'd be on a website and be like, holy shit, this is like the most responsive customer service person I've ever come across. But after like the third or fourth chat, it was like, wait a minute, this isn't a person, right? And then for me, at least in a lot of people, I know that just feeling pseudo duped made the experience devalued the experience to me. But, but then drift came out and said, Hey, we're a chatbot. Like this, we're a robot. I just want to let you know. So let's engage. And then once you get to a point where you need a human, I'll hand you over to human.

Then the experience was fantastic. I do the same thing on videos. If I see a video and I, and I sniff that it's, and it's pretending to be real, right? Like a lot of these TikTok videos and all these influencers are putting this stuff out there. And I sniff that it's real or the, or I'm sorry, it presents itself that it's real, but then I sniff that it's AI. I don't care what the, I don't care what they're saying in that video. I'm like, nevermind. See you later. And I know that's just me, but I do also know it's a lot of other people. So what's your, what's your thought process on the dupe factor, right? Like pretending it's actually a human versus an AI bot. Yeah. I bring it down this, bring this down a little bit.

Like what, what I really care about, what we really care about is first of all, privacy. We want to make sure that we're not contravening it or privacy implications. And like, and so the way we've built the product is the, first of all, the product is, um, you know, is a, is a likeness of the seller. It's a likeness of an individual. Like it's not, it's not, it's not your likeness that I'm purporting that I'm using. And so, so we've built in sort of security, uh, and sort of, um, you know, that's, that's built into the product feature. No question though. Look, first of all, it's super fascinating. I love building new products where the vanguard of like a new, um, you know, clearly like a new, um, era in communication.

I don't have the answer. What I, what I know is that when I talk to customers, they all feel differently. Some feel like you, some care less. And I, and by the way, I've been a little bit surprised about who cares about, um, presenting the product or presenting as a, as a, as a human versus an avatar. I've, I'm working with like fairly traditional, um, you know, FinServe companies who, what they care about is frankly, like digitizing or helping their sales team become more digital. And they've got like an older, um, you know, older, more mature sales force and they really want them to adopt this. They don't, they don't seem to care as much. Um, others do. And I think, look, you know, the answer is going to come through in the response rates.

The answer is going to come through in like, how do you do customers and do buyers respond or do they not respond? That will tell us a lot. We're not building the product one way or the other. We, we, like we're letting customers decide how they want to use it. They want to identify this as an avatar. And look, some of this is also just problem sets. Like maybe in an outreach, I'm a BDR. I don't, I don't care as much because the bar for quality is a little bit lower. If it's my customer base, and certainly if it's my, the first time I'm talking to my customer using an avatar, sure. I want to let them know, Hey, this is my avatar. Um, the, the last thing I'll say on this is like, you, you probably know this from like lots of change cycles is like humans adapt fairly quickly to change.

If it's a change that is beneficial change or, or, or they believe is beneficial. Right. And so we'll see if that happens here, we'll see how stuck on people, you know, needing to know that something, especially in business, business is different to personal too, right? This is expert. We're transacting, we're doing a deal. It's not like that you aren't dating and I'm not like important, you know? So I think the business piece potentially is different as well. Commercial piece is different than business. The, so with this, right? So we talked like clients like it, you know, using it and they don't care, you know, but from a buyer experience, how have you seen the buyer expectation change? Forget about video for a second, but with where we are right now, especially now we're about two years into this chaos of AI, right.

Where it just got dumped on everybody and from a real world standpoint. And so I think there's, you know, I've been preaching the book Jolt Effect that talks about indecision, right? Because it's like, there's so much going on and it's moving so fast that I'm just going to throw out my hands. And even though I know I need to make a choice, I'm not going to. So how do you think the, the buyer's expectations have changed over the course of the past two years and what they expect from sales reps themselves? Yeah. I mean, it's, I can kind of break this down. You asked about AI as well. So there's, there's buyers, I think there's sort of buyer perspectives in general and perspective to sales and then there's buyer.

Yeah. Let's talk about in general, just from what you're, from where you see it. Yeah. Um, someone I know, uh, a wise person once said like 2010, 2022 is the golden age for selling. Um, I agree with that. I think that was, that was where a lot of models were created and a lot of, um, you know, a lot of sort of the superpowers for quantity were created and people got used to that and all that stuff. The last couple of years have been super interesting. I would characterize the last couple of years as the bar for value went up dramatically, dramatically. And that's just the perfect, the bar for kind of everything. And so I hate to say it, but I do say it like to me, I think sales cycles today have to be really close to perfect.

Your product has to be perfect. Your process has to be perfect. Your personality, like go, you have, the bar is incredibly high. And if I was a seller and I coach my team, like, you've got to think about this all the time. Don't just, you can't just lob something out there. Um, you really have to think about like, am I presenting in the right kind of way? You know, buyer again, like, you know, the, yeah, so the, the, the commercial bar is higher. So they're, you know, um, but, but, but the bar for product quality is super high. But the thing I've noticed too, in the last couple of years is like also implementation, like people got burned and customers got burned on implementing projects and programs from out like a year later.

And they don't even, they don't even know the cost of that. Like the, you know, the actual cost, the hard cost and soft cost of like dropping something in and ripping it out 18 months. Massive. So I would say there's like, there's some, there's some, you know, a little bit of PTSD around, not just buy, but the implementation. So you've got to not just make that bar higher, but you've got to make your implementation like dead easy. And if you, if you have a product that's like hard to implement or heavy, you got to really think about like, like how you, like what's this going to look like going forward? Because, you know, you know, products that are much easier to replace commercial models, models that are like, you know, easy to transact on those things are getting more and more attention.

So that, that, those bars have all gone up and you have to train yourself into it. Well, and that's actually part of the reason of, you know, and it sounds like you've read Jolt Effect, right? Um, I don't necessarily know if I love their answer to the problem, but they nailed the problem. And, and it's, and that's that thing. It's like, yeah, I've committed. Now I know I need to make a change, but now, as soon as I make that commitment, every bad decision, every bad implementation is rushing into my head. So one of the things about Jolt Effect, it talks about, oh, we'll de-risk it, right? Buy your money back guarantees and those. I'm like, reps don't have access, like they can't do that. So how do you, how would you de-risk an implementation to a skeptical buyer who's been through some pain before and knows they like, hey, I want to jump into this AI world here, but they're about to make it a bigger investment.

What can you do to de-risk that situation for them? I don't know if I have a generic answer, but like, and we're in the new product business, we're in the, we're in the early stages of building a category, right? And so like we're, we want customers to trial the products. We do a lot of work around trials and get like, some reps can do that, some reps can't. But I would actually reframe this a little bit. Like I understand the de-risking. You have to de-risk where you can't. Every company has to think about how to de-risk. But like, it's still true. And it's, in my opinion, still more important that the value creates really kind of like the value to risk, right? It's the upside to downside. And so you got to present your best case for upside.

And you know, again, we're in a new, new product, new category. And so we think a lot about how to create that upside. Like where are the places? And this is why, this is why I said when we, when we launched the product, we thought about like, let's go to customers and find the use cases that create the more value, the most value, the first, and let's build a product to like, you know, work and create value in those use cases. So we have this hot, so we have this like really compelling productivity story. So, but, so I'll push back a little bit because I don't necessarily know if people believe in the future anymore, right? Because it's been so f***ed up. So there's that whole idea of like the impact of the problem that you're facing right now compared to the ROI of what I could show to you in the future.

So where do you, how do you balance that? Well, it is balance. And I, I, again, I don't know that I have a great answer, but I, I know that in our case, you know, we are, uh, where we like, we believe passionately this, this, that AI, the one video and two video AI video is going to play a much more meaningful role. And so a lot of our conversations are with the C-suite around, like, tell us, you know, like, let's talk about what, where your business is going to be two years from now. Let's talk about your business. Cause we're building, we're really designing for that. Like what role is AI and video going to play in your business two years from now? And we want to build to that moment, right?

It's not. Can you look out two years? Like, like real question, can, like with how fast things are moving right now, can you, as a COO look out two years and have confidence in where things are going to be? Well, it's really clear. We got to prove value every step of the way. I'm not saying we're not going to prove value two years. I'm saying let's design for like, you know, like, let's design for a 10 X productivity improvement and kind of work backwards from there. Right. You know, so we want to prove value today, the first 30 days, first six months. And we're, we're, we're, we're SAS product. So we're, you know, we're, we're, and I'm going to go like, just with you personally, like for vid your yourself as the COO, you know, I, I, I look maybe six months out.

I can kind of like this year, I think I got my hands around what's going to happen this year, whatever it is. But I look at two years from now and how fast this AI stuff is moving and learning. And then you'd see the compound stuff with, you know, Google's new chip and all this different things. It's like, holy shit, this stuff is moving at a clip that I couldn't honestly give you any predictions for what's going to happen two years from now. So how do you look at the future without really knowing? Cause I think that's where we're at right now. We're in a broken model. Everybody knows the predictable revenue models just grow. We're all living in a legacy model period. We, and we're all transitioning to this new one.

We just have no idea what this new one is. So how do you bridge that gap? Totally. Look, I picked two years somewhat arbitrarily, but the point is, it's not like 30 days from now. If you're a CIO or you're a C, certainly a CEO, but even a CRO, you're not thinking about like, I mean, next quarter's done, two quarters out, you've got to be planning for like, you know, a year out. And so that's the, the design principle is really like, you know, what role is AI going to play in your business? Again, two years or a year from now, not like, cause, cause there, there isn't a scenario where it's not playing a role. We just need to like figure out like what that role is and what you want it to be, right?

Where, where we play in the application layer. And so we have a product that's off the shelf in the application layer that we can deploy today. And the question is like, what, you know, what do you think your sales team is going to need? What sales behaviors are you trying to change? What problems do you have that they are going to be persistent for the next year? And there's those conversations are resonating, right? There's very few, you know, there's very few, there's a zero C-suite who aren't thinking this through pretty deeply. Oh, if they aren't, they're already, I think they're already irrelevant. But so, so with that, from a business standpoint, from a rep, what are some of the recommendations you give to reps right now?

Cause I do think, well, there's two pieces, right? One is the company. I think there is honestly, you know, and there's a lot of nervousness out there from a sales standpoint of what's going to happen. Where's my job going to go? Because there is a genuine argument to be had for rip and replace, you know what I mean? Like, you know what? We got ourselves into this mess. Let's burn this down. Let's start with AI native reps and AI of native tech and let's go. I'm not saying that's the right answer. I'm just saying there's an argument to have for it. There is. Yes. So how, so, and then there's the rep who's like, some of them are all in on this stuff and I'm seeing them leapfrog reps who've been in the industry for 20 years using this stuff, right?

But then there's the ones who are kind of like, ah, so what recommendations you have for reps right now to say, Hey, like, how do you, I don't want to say future-proof yourself because you can't ever future-proof yourself, but what should reps be focusing on right now as it relates to AI understanding sales fundamentals and those types of things? Where does those sales rep fall in this equation and what can they do to prepare? For sure. I mean, I think one point in this conversation I said, like, like we believe that AI and AI video, you know, can give the average rep the ability to become, you know, a top performing rep. So I would like taking that perspective. One of the things we've observed too, you asked about sort of landscape is like, it's fewer and fewer reps are hitting quote, like it's harder to hit quote.

Or another way to say is like a fewer percentage of reps are carrying like a greater percentage of the revenue for organizations, right? And so there's this real, if I'm a rep, man, it's harder than ever to be in that top portion. But I really want, if I'm there, I've got an outsized chance of being noticed, getting recognized, getting promoted, getting the dollars, all that stuff. And so it's, I'm focused on the cohort of reps who want to get into that top court. And I know you've talked about this and I look, I fundamentally agree. There are these sort of eagle sales reps, like the, you know, they're kind of unique. We're not trying to like, they're, they're kind of in their own category. They're the top, very small percentage.

You know, what I think that AI can do is give call the, uh, you know, the top kind of the second quartile, basically the chance to get into the top quartile or the top decile. Right. And so if I'm a seller, that's the way I want to think about this is what do I need to do to get into that top decile? And to me, like more broadly, the answer is you've got to be more curious than ever. You've got to be trying. This is, this has been true for a long time. So it's, this is not like new news, but it probably has, it's all resonance with, with AI. You've got to be trying everything. You've got to be trying it sort of in your, even if your company doesn't, uh, and, uh, use the product, you've got to be trying it.

This is your profession. This is your brand. Assuming you're in that, that sort of, that second quartile, that means you're like, you know, you want, this is your career. Like you want this to be your career. You're building, you're building a long-term book of business. You're building your reputation. You've got to be trying these answers. You're going to be building your process. You've got to be trying to create value with them. You've got to be experimenting with them. And I like, that's what I would do. And I think that the, you know, using them in those lower risk opportunities initially, so you can like test and learn and test and learn. Like so much of this is about reps, right? Like just meaning, meaning getting repetition, right?

Like do some thing. If it doesn't like these things have a learning curve, right? Like you're not going to get it right the first time, the second time, the third time you have to stick with it. You have to get reps, whether it's using chat GPT, and all the prompt stuff or any of the tools, right? You really have to be like just leaning in, getting reps, getting repetitions, using them in like all these scenarios with real clients, with real live clients. You'll whiff on some of them and some you'll learn. And those learnings, you know, you pack away and you build on them. And I think if we do that, I, you know, I do not know what happens sort of two years out. I have no idea, but I can say with like some relatively high degree of conviction that those reps who figured this out and create like a great compliment to their, their behaviors today, we'll move into that sort of higher performing core talent, right?

But you've got to be, you've got to be trying these things. You cannot be like not curious, not passionate. And you've got to do with the view of creating value for your prospects and customers. I think that's where the, actually that's where the AI stuff, I think that the line for me is it's actually, if you are curious, it's one of the best tools you've ever come across. Cause it, like you just feed your curiosity. You just keep going down. Now the reps who are looking for it as the answer, like to give them the answer, right? Write the perfect email for me, whatever it is, I think that's a fool's errand. But if you're looking for it for business acumen, education, and curiosity, this stuff is, is gas on a fire right now.

And, and like my business acumen has gone from here to here just simply because I can click a button now and know everything about you and scan it in five seconds and be like, okay, cool. Now I know what their business is doing, what their prompts, you know, all these different things. And I can now use that information as the last mile when we have the conversation. So those are the reps that I'm seeing Excel are to your point, the curious ones. But let me ask you this on that. Do you think curiosity can be taught? Broadly? No. Like you got to hire for curiosity. It's one of the things when I hire for like, you know, I hire for passion, I hire for curiosity, um, you hire for energy. That's right.

I hire for, uh, uh, compassion, energy, um, curiosity. Compassion. Meaning the, the interest in the willingness to, to help. Right. Okay. Nice. How do you, how do you pull that out of an interview? Uh, behavioral questions like tell me about a time you, you know, like tell me an engagement you have the customer where they had a problem and you solve the problem. Uh, the answer to that question will sound either like I sold them something or I really dug in and understood what they're, what, what they were going through and how my product would help them. And it'll be much more closely mapped to like a solution. That's, that's compassion, right? That's like, I really, I understand you have a problem and I really care about it and I can solve it for you.

So how do you break a rep from, from that barrier? Cause I think what you hit on here is what I firmly believe in, which is forget about what I'm selling here as a sales professional. I'm a problem solver period. And my goal is to figure out what your problem is. And if I got something that can actually solve that problem, then we're going to talk about it. But if I don't, I'm probably going to refer you to somebody else or like, cause that, right. I mean, at the cost of, I'm going to say as quickly as I can, we're going to move on. Yeah. So how do you break? Cause reps are so, we're still in this like, you know, monthly quotas, quarterly stuff. We got to get things done. And so the, the, the problem solving is, is a challenge when a rep sees an opportunity that like, looks like a duck, smells like a duck.

Let me go sell my duck versus, but that might, there might be a root cause to that issue that this is just lipstick on a pig right here, but I'm going to sell this lipstick because that's where I get my commissions. How do you help your team and coach your team on breaking through that barrier of don't just try to think of selling vidyard here, try to think of solving the problem. I mean, it's like, it's an ongoing sort of process. It's built into our training. Like we, you know, we are all, it goes back to like value. We want to find the customers who have the biggest problems that we can solve. So one is sort of, it's a, it's account identification, which is done a fair bit of time doing in our rev ops team, finding the right kind of prospects and accounts who have these, uh, have these problems and line them up.

You know, when, when a sales rep has a book, you've got your A accounts, B accounts, like it's always the case, right? And so they're always going to be accounts that like, just, they're just not a great fit. And your job is, and so, and so the A accounts and the B accounts probably really easy to figure out. They have a problem. We can solve the problem. We're a good match. Like organize your account that way. Prioritize your time. I'm a big, big, big fan of prioritization too. Like reps who come to me and like, if they haven't prioritized their book, we're going to start there. I'm going to start with like, what's the 80, 20, all that stuff. Uh, those C accounts though, look, some you're going to try and some are going to say no to, and there's a good number of those C accounts.

You should, you're way better off saying no to, and spending the time on the B and A accounts. And you've got to figure that out, but you can't just relentlessly. I mean, there's grit. And then there's like, you know, banging your head against the wall against the deal. And you've got to figure out the difference, right? And that's, I mean, that, that, that can be coached. I think a fair bit of that, like that, like how to recognize something that is a, uh, high quality or higher quality opportunity, a lower one that can be coached. Yeah. And that's a, that's what I'm trying. Cause again, we've gotten into this world of just the average, you know, the golden age of sales of just everything was so easy.

And it was just like, I could show up and run my demo and, you know, people would buy it. I could offer a massive discount and everybody's happy. Right. That type of thing. And now it's just, if I'm not getting value out of this conversation, this conversation's over, it's over. And I think that that's my piece on 2025 is I think 2025 is the year that the no value conversation of not even conversation, the no value interaction between sales and customer is over because when I can get more value out of going into chat GPT and asking a questions about your business, then I can get out of a sales rep. What's the point of talking to the sales rep? Yeah, I agree. And one of the things we've done with avatars and again, we, you know, we don't prescribe, you know, we build the, we build the product, we build the platform and people create the content.

One of the things we did though, the average recorded video time on video is about a minute. And so we created avatars, we created, it's actually a character limit, but it's about a minute. And that forces this really interesting being concise and, and ideally accuracy. And so we're seeing messages go out with a high, because you only have a minute. And so you've got to be, in order to get a response rate, you've got to be concise, you've got to be accurate. So I think, especially when you combine this, by the way, with, you know, right now we're doing like keyword replace on scripts, you can customize them. We're playing around with actually auto generator AI generated scripts, but you, when you can pull in, you know, firmographic data and create really high quality scripts, you'll get to like very concise messages in AI and avatar, likely more concise than reps do on the fly.

And so I think, I think you're right about like, one of the problems we're trying to solve is that buyers don't want to talk to a rep, but when they do talk to a rep, they want that rep to tell them something really important, really fast. And so this medium both allows for that and the technology allows for it. And hopefully it allows for the rep to be able to, that's the funny thing. Like I've seen reps right now. I don't, like, do you, do you have your own, just as Vidyard as a business, do you have your own like chat bot internally that reps can ask questions about Vidyard for like, to help them sell for instance? Cause I'm seeing some companies like have their own LLM on their own system.

So when the client, cause I don't think the answer of, Hey, I don't know that answer. Let me get back to you is valid anymore. It's okay. Let me light this up. And actually, you know, I don't know, but here's two seconds to do your reps use it that way. Or do you have that? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I think there's a, yes, there's a dynamic piece to this. And that's why I think, look, avatars play a really interesting compliment in the sales cycle right now. Cause you know, they're structured, you create it and you send it. So they're not, you know, they're not dynamic. Um, or they're not like to it. Um, but it allows for that very concise and accurate information up front. But yeah, you've got to compliment it with like, you know, when you have those moments, those higher value moments, when you're getting a question, you've got to be able to answer outspot.

So there's a lot of, you know, doom and gloom people, you know, could talk about where things are going. What's, what, what, what are you most optimistic about? I think, and, or most excited about moving forward here as it relates to AI integration and sales and the elevation of the profession. Cause you and I are both on the same page that that's actually my why is to elevate the people and professional sales here. So what are you most excited about or, or, or think that's going to be the biggest impact? Look, I remain very excited about video. I remain excited about AI, but what I, what I like is like, I use the product myself all the time and I'm not, I'm not the ICP, but you know, every, every C-suite, every executive gets asked to do videos.

Sometimes they're internal, sometimes they're, and, and honestly, for people who are above a certain age, videos historically have been like the, the, the horror moment. Like I know people who say I had like a half a day on Friday to do their videos. Right. And it's like, well, cause you backload the week and then there's all this pressure to do these videos and they, you probably, they bring in the lights and the whatever went over and it's like a huge thing. This, what it's worth like that all in a way. And so I do all the time. I, I've sent three or four avatars today, uh, temple of recording. So it really is, you know, one it's, it's a pretty interesting game changer. So it's just, it's sort of changed the way that I work, which is interesting, but I've seen the, the side of like the high quality, like the, the happy side of this.

I've seen like customers and prospects be like thrilled with the response. It's like they're, they're, there's a real penny drop moment. Um, when these work, right. When you, when it works for you as a seller and it works for you as a buyer and it's really interesting to see. Right. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about what I think we can accomplish, uh, with videos. I'm excited about like what I, I think this can do for sellers. Like what I think again, moving sellers from that second quartile to that top decile. Uh, look, I'm optimistic. I'm excited. Um, I'm also like, like, I like to build things. And so this is, this is like a, you know, if you step back and you zoom way out, we are at this incredible moment in time and I'm of a certain age where I've been through, you know, four or five of these, you know, everything from, you know, everything from the internet browser, you know, mobile search cloud, all that stuff.

And, and this is fascinating. This is like an, right. And so I, like some of it, I just love to step back and look at like what we're trying to do. We're trying to create the value. I think we can create like just, you know, the good we can do. And like, we're trying to do good. Uh, and I say that like full light of day and, and everything else. Like, I think there's a lot that we can do that's really exciting and really good. And you have to be mindful of that. Yeah. And I think to your point, it's the ones that I have my whole talk trick of 10, 60, 30, right? 10% of you, like those are the Eagles, right? They're going to be the ones you don't have to worry about them. The 60% you're going to do something different because it's easy to make sense.

And 30% you're going to do shit different, but it's that, it's that top end of that 60%, the ones who are willing to get after it, the willing to put in the work, the willing to try things and test and fail and screw up and whoever, those are the ones that I think are going to be like helped to move up to that next stage. Unfortunately for me, I think that the bottom hand of that 50% is, is in a lot of trouble and that 30% is already irrelevant. So the question is, is what can you do as a seller to move yourself into the position where you want to get better? And I think to your point, it goes back to just the drive, the passion, the compassion, and those types of things. If you have that, you're going to survive and you're going to thrive quite frankly.

But if you don't have the curiosity, if you don't have the drive, if you don't have those things, this stuff's coming to run you over pretty damn quick. Yeah, I agree. And I think for those who want to, this, this, like I, this really can be a superpower. I'm seeing it on my own team. I'm seeing it in the customers who've tried it out. Like it really can be. And I agree, you know, it'll be challenging for not just sales, for lots of functions. We, you know, the bottom again, quartile or whatever is this folks who don't want to be there, who isn't there like passion. Look, it'll be, it's going to be challenging. And I think it'll be like super exciting for those who lean in, who want it, who can, who you're willing to take chances and, um, yeah, kind of embrace it.

And frankly, have some fun with it too. Cause in the day, a lot of the stuff is just, it is fun. Well, that's the thing that I, you brought up an interesting point. I, I think we have lost the fun of sales. Like it's like people think it's like this chore and this thing it's like, no sales is actually like, if you're really solving real problems and you're playing around with cool stuff, sales should be to a certain degree, relatively fun, but everybody's got this stress and holy shit and doomsday stuff. It's like, no, no, no, no. We got to get back to enjoying and having passion for this. I do. And it's like, I also think getting, getting back to like the right balance of in real life, uh, whether it's like, you know, trade shows or conferences or shelves or whatever else is super helpful.

I mean, you know, we, we have the right balance of those. Like there was a time, by the way, we had way too many of those, um, like too much to be, to help be efficient. We need to get to a place where, again, we have the right balance of like, you know, great, great, uh, technology and great AI and great avatars. And you balance it out was like, we're, you know, there's really important times to do an EBR or it's really important to look horse. Right. So don't forget about the balance. Well, the in real life thing, that's actually a big fear that I have, especially after COVID is you've got a whole group of sales professionals who've grown up in a virtual world, then they've moved right into a virtual world.

And the ability to actually commute, like connect with people is just not there. You know, you go to an event and they're like super awkward and they don't know how to carry a conversation. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, go to a couple of events every night. I don't care if it's not even in your industry. Just go learn how to talk to people because this is, is a fake environment at the end of the day. I mean, this is a digital representation of you. I can't really read your body language, you know, those types of things. But in person, I mean, that's where I know I learned like at networking events, I would come in hardcore and shake my hand, start pitching you. And I'd watch you be like, all right, dude, I'm out of here.

Right. And I'd feel that. And I think feeling that is necessary so that when you can come on a conversation, like, you, you, you know, what's happening. No, I agree. I don't know that I've seen it be as much of a challenge. I mean, maybe it may be the world I'm looking at, but you know, we, we do lots of in real life calling with sellers. And, uh, I think they've, for the most part, they want to be, you know, calling in real life and we're just trying to do it in the right way, sort of in the right cadence. Uh, but I, it could, it could be true. There could be a whole cohort of folks for whom it may be slightly different, but I think it'll, you know, again, I'm, I'm a huge proponent of the role that video will play.

So I know that video is going to play a bigger role in the sales cycle. Um, but like, you know, we're, you know, when I was, when I was earlier in my career, you know, same, same kind of thing, you know, we, we did things like Toastmasters and whatever else to, to kind of learn to speak and learn to, and I think that's still critical, right? Like you just have to find ways to do this. I mean, we do a lot of like, uh, you know, coaching and we do a lot of role-playing, um, you know, but like, and when you do role-playing, by the way, don't do the fake kind of bullshit role-playing, like do the hardcore role-playing, really meaningful role-playing. Make it as hard as possible. Make it as harder than any sales coach.

Uh, we try to do that. And I think that, uh, that helps folks get into like their position to do stuff in real life. Cool. Last question. I'm going to start to introduce these into my, uh, into my, uh, podcast moving forward here, because I think we learned far more from our failures than our, than our successes. So what's one of your biggest kind of, what you would consider quote unquote failure that you've learned the most from throughout your career? Yeah. Um, yeah, I'll use one that I, I, you know, I think people talk a lot about, there's a lot of burnout and there's the sort of juxtaposed against do people have grid or do not have grid or whatever it is. But like my, there was a time in my life when I actually quit a job because I felt like, uh, I guess I was feeling burnout, but I was probably feeling like I was a little bit of like under attack.

We were too much going on. It felt really personal. I actually quit a job. And I thought, I've never forgotten that. I think about it like many days. Uh, and then what I've learned from that is I taught myself post that really that like none of these things were personal that, you know, this was, this was, we're solving business problems and you need to like in those moments when things feel personal, feel personal, you know, pull back and really think about like the business question at hand. Uh, and I think like I do that many, many days because, you know, like to your point, things seem like they're going faster and faster than ever. There's more and more pressure to get things done. It's not personal, right?

We were trying to solve business problems together. In my case, I've got a great team. We're all pulling together. We're trying to, you know, and so there's moments when things feel personal, pull back, you know, assess the kind of where you are, realize, or think about like the business problem we're trying to solve and really like turn it back to business. And I found that's like incredibly helpful. Um, I regret that moment and I've learned from it ever since. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, like I said, like, you know, the success is okay, fine. But man, the amount of failures I got lined up right now, I've learned a lot. So I think having the perspective of patience, not personal, those types of things are key for people.

Cause I think a lot of people do take things a lot to your point, uh, very personal in business. And sometimes it really just isn't, it is business. I, you know, if you look at the NBA, you look at the NFL, you hear that all the time, you got players who everybody loves and it's like, sorry, man, that guy's got to go. Cause we need to fill it with a better slot. And then they always say, look, we were, you gotta, you gotta remember this is a business and that's what it is. It's part of why it sort of led me to what I said about sort of compassion and really kind of thinking about like, uh, the problems that people are having day to day and sitting across the table from somebody, right? Like a customer or a prospect, like really thinking through like, what kind of day are they having?

Like they could be having the worst possible day. And I'm coming in with this, like, you know, if I don't get this right, it's going to be so tone deaf and they're having this terribly, like, how do I hold that? So really working hard, like understand the place that people are in. Uh, and, and if they have a problem, like help them solve the problem, like, you know, stop meetings, stop a meeting and make sure you're like going in the right direction and helping somebody solve a problem. Yeah. I call it the give a shit factor, man. It's as simple as that. It's like, do you care? And I mean that like, do you care about me as like a person of my problems or do you just care about selling something?

Because if you care about selling something, I can smell that a million miles away. And you know, if your product's great and the price fine, but if you actually, if I can feel that you actually give a shit about me as a person in my role and the fact that, you know, my kid threw up this morning and I had to do this and all these other things and I got a million other things going on right now, you know, that empathy is actually critical. And again, that's a hard thing to teach. Empathy is a really hard thing to teach, but experience I think gives you empathy because you've been in enough positions to be like, yeah, okay, I get it. Um, but it's, uh, it's, it's something that I think more people need to have.

So. Awesome, man. Well, look, sounds like, uh, the future's bright over at Vidyard and, uh, I'm guessing you guys hiring, like they talk, talk to me about where, uh, where people can find out more information about you, about Vidyard and all the fun stuff that you guys are doing. I mean, vidyard.com, we post all our jobs. Uh, we're hiring actively for a bunch of different roles. Um, again, you've heard about the kind of people we love to have here, you know, curious, compassionate, energetic, problem solvers, like bring it on. I want that stuff like all day long. Love it, man. Well, hopefully enough people hear that out there. Cause there are all the people going, going back to believing in what you sell, right?

I think you're, if you're in a position where you want, you want to give a shit and you want a cool product and believe in what you sell, Vidyard sounds like a pretty fun place to explore that opportunity. Like, you know, like, you got to like groundbreaking, you got to like building new things. You've got to like, you know, building the future and, and frankly, helping people understand where the future is and where, you know, where we think the, uh, you know, where we think the particularly go to market and buying and selling is going. And if that's all, that's all interesting to you, then yeah, that's a great place. Awesome, man. Well, I've been a fan. I will continue to be, and hopefully we can do some cool stuff in the future together.

But, uh, with that, any last words for the audience here before we sign off? Uh, only last words are like, be curious, you know, I think like do yourself a favor, like try new products, try these products, help yourself be a better seller, help yourself get in that, you know, top decile. Um, but like a lot of it's on you, a lot of it's on sellers right now to do that and everything's available, everything's available to do it. So get after it. Exactly. And it's out there for you just as. Just chat GPT. The answer's there. Anyways, thanks so much for coming on again. I appreciate it. Appreciate the work you do. Appreciate coaching. Appreciate the work you're doing. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

And, uh, hopefully everybody else enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts here, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, yeah, 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 with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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