Mark Siciliano: How Old School Sales Principles Apply to Today's New School Sellers

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. This is a conversation with my good friend, Mark Sicilano. Mark's the global VP of enablement and productivity over at Sprinkler, one of the fastest growing tech companies on the planet. Mark has had an incredible career, mostly in training and enablement. He actually started at Oracle, where he eventually ran their global sales academy, and then moved to Marketo, which is where we connected. Now, after Marketo got bought by Vista Equity, he moved to Demandbase, and then Drift, and now Sprinkler.

We talked about what he's learned along the way about sales, sales enablement, and what it really takes to make a lasting impact on people's lives, both for customers and for employees. This conversation was packed full of insights around topics like the importance of business acumen, reducing risk, core values, the give-a-shit factor, leadership, and even where the industry is headed. I hope you enjoy this conversation and get as much value out of it as I did. Let's make it happen. What's happening, Make It Happen family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes.

Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere, or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar. And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Mark, my friend, how the hell have you been?

It has been too long and I am excited to have this conversation with my friend. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. I'll tell you, it's been a long time. It sounds like, seems like, what, five or six, maybe even seven years when you and I first met. I'm excited I'm finally asked. You're such a bigwig. I mean, I'm just waiting for the call, you know? Bigwig, man. I was, you know, in preparation for this. I was like, yeah, when did I meet Mark? Like, how long ago? And then I started looking through your background and I'm looking at Oracle, Marketo, Demandbase, Drift. You know, now it's Sprinklr. Like, you've got the logos without question. You've got the experience. And I think ours was Marketo, right?

Did we first start working together at Marketo? Absolutely. I knew you at Oracle, actually, but we didn't use you at that point. They had that huge Oracle Sales Academy thing that had been built. And that's when I had the opportunity to go to Marketo, which was when our paths crossed. It was, that was a lot of fun. I've been very lucky to migrate down the MarTech path to the ultimate one, which is Sprinklr today, so. Yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about Sprinklr and the rocket ship that this is. And, but I want to just, I mean, one of the things that you caught me, I think you had sent me a LinkedIn message, right? After a while, we had connected again and you had said, you know, you're going to be a grandpa here in the next.

When is it going to happen? October 22nd. Dude, that's mind-blowing to me. I mean, my daughter is 11 years old right now going into seventh grade and that kills me. But, you know, I think, you know, the perspective that it brings and some of the stuff that you talked about, like kind of from your journey, if you will, of where you are now and what you're getting joy out of and where you're seeing things. I just wanted to, I thought it'd be a great conversation just because with this podcast these days, I mean, you know me, I've grown up on tactics, right? Tactics and techniques and all that stuff. And that's all well and good. But, you know, I'm trying to evolve the conversation into stuff of like life lessons and journeys and visions and values and stuff.

Because I just think it's a much more important conversation to have because those are the stuff that those are the things that don't shouldn't change all that much and are the foundational pieces to success. So, could you walk us through your journey a little bit and kind of some of the highlights of what you learned along the way and then we'll get into some of the specifics of kind of where you are now and what, you know, what the industry is doing and where we're going. But would you mind just giving us, you know, that overview here so the audience knows a little bit more about you too? Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. You know, I started in tech more as a sales consultant and a rep than anything else.

I don't really know if a true enablement was created back when I started my career at Oracle. But as it surfaced and it became clearer that I enjoyed that, I was an educator at the university level before I got in. And I was a CPA even before I got into tech. It was much more tactical when I started. Enablement was about show them the product, show them how the demo looks, tell us the value proposition, and now let's push them out. But this idea of productivity connected to enablement was something that really wasn't defined. I almost pride myself in saying that I was the first one that asked to be for a title of productivity as opposed to enablement. Right. Because I thought it pocketed me in a place that I didn't feel right.

But at Marketo, it was a blank slate when I left Oracle. And I was very fortunate to work with some incredible people, Phil Fernandez and Steve Winter and just a host of folks that really thought it was a baby rocket ship. Right. So we went from zero to a thousand employees and really having a blank slate to say, how should people sell? And what we slowly started to develop was this sort of combination sales methodology that really was about having value-based conversations that were more about the customer than it was of you. And we all say that, but to actually do it in practice is very difficult. And to tie some metric to it that says, okay, it's worth doing it this way and being trained in a certain way or comprehension heightens and the risk of losing deals lowers.

Can I pause that right there for a second? Because that's a great point. And I'm curious how you did that. Because I'm seeing right now specifically so many companies that are stuck in a model that I think they know doesn't work, but they're afraid to make the switch. And they don't know necessarily how to transition to this new world of selling. And I'll be very direct. And people have heard me say this a lot. I personally think the predictable revenue model is broken. I think it has been broken for a long time. And I think the SDR BDRs, as it's constructed today with these kids just hammering out templated emails and cadences and sequences, I think that's going to roll all up under marketing and operations, be salaried roles, or at least they should be.

And we're going to go back to full cycle sales with true ABM and true artificial intelligence helping out with full cycle. So everybody I talk to about this understands and agrees that there's an issue. But very few are doing anything about it. So could you help me understand how you approached Marketo? I mean, granted, you were a little bit of a clean slate there. But I mean, Marketo, Salesforce, Marketo, you know what I mean? Like easily put the predictable revenue model in play and let it run. So how did you justify a different approach? Well, we used to train, we all train our sales reps to you, you connect with the level of your conversation within an organization. Right. So I always try to attach to the biggest problem.

If it's not attached to the biggest problem, you don't have those conversations. We never took a thought about that internally because enablement was generally underneath sales ops. I asked to be put under the CRO. I wanted to be connected to the salespeople and provide that insight into customer relationships, customer vocabulary, not speaking about the solution until it was time. Having that song and dance that gets people to say, OK, you've earned it right. You know my business. That whole old story of, oh, you don't know my business and you don't listen. It still holds true. And we don't position our conversations with that thought in mind first. And so I always try to tell both pre-sale and post-sale that we come in knowing we are behind the eight ball because that's the perception.

So better, we start talking about how we share the customer's vision, the due diligence on the front end. That's where you make and connect. And when you share those things with senior leadership, I think it excites them because they're looking at data and forecasts and do reviews. And I'm trying to get people prepared with the information that allows senior leadership very quickly to know where the deal stands. And that's where I train from or enable from. And then ultimately that realizes productivity. I mean, the baseline for me has always been, look, ARR is great, but I'd rather see 50% of my sales force make 100% quota than 75% of them make 75%. Now, that's unrealistic. I totally get it, but everyone needs a lofty goal, as they say in the miracle, right?

I mean, that's what I'm leading toward. And so with that in mind, I've always addressed anything we've delivered in terms of ARR, day sales outstanding, meeting your quota, reducing risk. We don't talk about reducing the risk of deals in-house as much as we should because I would never tell a rep that I know how to sell and they do not. I'm not telling them how to do their job. I'm saying you have life. It's difficult as it is in your role. It's hard to sell, super hard. Wouldn't it be worth your while to spend the time to reduce the risk and time and effort and expectation if you were able to understand something sooner rather than later? So I've pushed everything up front. It's a long-winded answer, John.

But what I try to say is if I can get people to be much more CRO-specific and speak at that level, you become your own boss in a way and it becomes your own pin-out. So with that, because I couldn't agree more, I've said this a lot to people, techniques, tactics, like what I do is great. But if there's really something that you want to do to improve results as an organization and as an individual, it's increase your business acumen. Like understand business, the language of business and understanding what different people in business actually do, what a day in the life looks like. So how do you do that with, I think, you know, somebody like you and me, we've been there, you know, we put in our 10,000 hours, we've had the conversations.

We realize that it's not about the thing and it's about the conversation and connecting, you know, all that stuff. But how do you take that in this world that we live in with the venture capital pushed down and the results, you know, everything go, go, go, go, go. How do you, how do you make that? How do you add that to the equation to the younger generation coming into sales right now? Gosh, that's, that's a loaded question. But since I've, we've been hiring pretty steady in my current role across the organization and, and what we're finding candidates are way different than when you and I came in. Not only are they much more intelligent academically, but they also have a sense of the world, meaning it's a balance of both.

And we've heard this a lot, but I'm experiencing it today and values matter. And there are treats that you see in people that connect to this value piece that only in conversation that the, I wish there was more to learning how to do appropriate interviews. I wish there was that opportunity so that it's not enablements. I'm part of the answer, but so is, you know, HR. So is that the whole panel of people that are asking these questions. And I know there's frameworks and stuff, but we found something today that at least at Sprinklr, or it's kind of a secret sauce where we ask certain questions that are, that help us unlock some of the, the virtue that, and the value that we're hoping to find.

Not just give me an example of when you found a bad situation and you help, you know, or whatever those questions seem to be. But it's very much more value centric. I mean, there's the Sprinklr way is a big deal at my company. I mean, Raji Thomas, our founder, made it an incredible significance for the company that everyone understood these and what it meant. And I mean to tell you, it is everywhere. It's rampant. And it permeates into our interviews. It permeates into our delivery of enablement. Hell, last week at my leadership conference, we led with that. What makes Sprinklr unique? We didn't say it was our solution. It was the Sprinklr way. Well, your vision, I mean, the vision is to be the world's most loved and appropriate.

Like, this is a crazy vision for a software company to be the world's most loved enterprise software company, comma, ever. Like, it's not even like to be the world's, like, no, no, no, no. We want to be the most loved ever. And your mission is to enable every organization on the planet to make their customers happier, not more productive, not more profitable, happier. So, and look, you know, we've talked about this. I've been on a journey for the past couple of years and reset on values, why, and vision, and stuff, and kind of was reminded how important that stuff was. I've always been a very core value type person, whether I knew it or not, but I was. And then when I wrote them down again and reset them again, when, for you, when did you consciously realize how important values were as part of your journey through business?

Well, I'll do a professional one and a personal one. Okay. Having a parent die very young in my life, I married very well and connected to a father-in-law that I'd never called a father-in-law and knew him over a 40-year stretch, longer than I knew my own. And he was one of those ex-marines, you know, kind of, you do what you do. He died last October at 93 years old. Just an incredible, incredible human being. So through him, by example, I understood the idea of core values and how he raised his daughters. And I grew up very quickly from an Italian household with five boys, so it was totally different. Now, professionally, it actually turned, and it's going to be strange, and I hope he's not listening, but it was at DemandBase.

The founder there, Chris Golick, was one of the first founders and CROs that I've ever met that truly showed a heart to the business, showed a heart to everyone in the business, and was so genuine that I thought, you can do that. You can be that person and still be successful from a business perspective. And so I started to do that, just my favorite saying, it's amazing what you can accomplish when no one cares who gets the credit. I live that. It's on my emails. I say it in my business meetings all the time. This guy actually meant it. And so from that moment on, I've always looked for people that had that sort of lean. And Raji, Raji Thomas really lives that life. And he's, it just has transformed me over the last, I'm going to say six years, right, that I've really turned to this, I don't want to say non-business, it's very important.

You have to understand that, but this other piece, this, this, this missing piece of empathy and value and, and, and, and dignity and, and, you know, treating you as you want to be treated yourself seems old school, but we've, you know, technology is shot so quickly ahead of us that we forget that those core things still count. And we lean into that at Springfield. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content, all of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day, $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members.

And we'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. We'll see you on the next one. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. I'm trying to figure out, you know, there's certain things that you just, you know, I think you and I are both on the same page with why we do what we do for a lot of reasons, right?

And one of the things I always say is, you know, I share my journey and I share all this stuff because I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. And my hope is, is that by listening to me or by listening to somebody like you, that whoever is listening right now can maybe skip a couple of steps on their way. And it doesn't have to be as painful, for instance, as it was, but you can't skip all the steps, right? There's no silver bullet. There's no, you know, ladder all the way to the top. But how, how can you, I guess, expedite that process of, of me knowing it early, for instance, and kind of living it, but it was because I read it and think and grow rich. And I wrote them down, you know, those sorts of things.

But I didn't, I don't think I really truly sat down and internalized it until my dad passed away and I was in a weird spot and I got a business coach to sit down and I knew I needed to recenter on all this stuff. And you said for the past six years for you. So is there a way to, to help younger professionals realize what we've realized, uh, earlier? Yes. Um, uh, and it's helped given strange response because of the last two years of being disconnected. Um, we have onboarding for new hires virtually, and it looks like an old romper room screen, you know, just, um, nobody knows what you're talking about, by the way. I know, I know, I just aged myself. Bottom line is though, um, I have a rather large team.

I'm blessed to have very good people. Um, uh, cause I own customer and sales and post sales and SCs and, and, and I go into every new hire, uh, during the first week and they have breakouts and I go into, and this is all we talk about, I go, look, you're going to learn a lot of things about process and tools and the platform and the value, but I got to tell you something, the success that you'll have is totally dependent on how you see this business and your role within it. It starts from Raji and it works all the way down. And I, it's almost like the way you speak when you come to people's offices, right? You're just straight, you're not crass, but you're real. You're, you're, you're not phony.

Uh, and you have examples that kind of prove it out. Um, maybe it's the gray hair, but we walk through those stories of, it doesn't have to be difficult. All you need to do is follow what we think will bring you success. And then tailor it to taste that that's all it is. I, I always say it's the steps between the steps that make you successful. And I just continually tell, I have office hours that new people come in all the time just to say, this is where I am. And we try to always help them. I said, look, my goal is to get you wherever you want to go. That's fine. I say the same exact thing. I don't want you to be the best SDR. I do, but I, my number one goal is to get them where they want to be.

If where they want to be is somewhere other than being an SDR, being, be a kick-ass SDR and we'll get you where you need to be. Um, knowing that, that you honestly mean that. And I let people go to other places that were really good on my team. Uh, but knowing that early is the key. I don't think we share that enough. And I don't mean from the founder alone. I'm talking about your boss's boss, your DVPs or whatever level we want you to go where you want to go. And this is the company that can take you there. I love that. Cause I, we, I have the same approach here. I tell people, look what I ask them when they said like, Hey, what, what's, what's your pursuit of happiness look like? Like, what is happiness ultimately personally, forget about the job here for a second, like macro out here, five, 10 years out.

Like, what do you want to be accomplished? Do you want to be a solo consultant? Do you want to go off on your own? Do you want to start a business? Whatever. So it was like when Morgan came to me, right? The first thing I said to him, I said, Morgan, let me ask you, what do you want to like, really, what do you want to accomplish in your life? And he was like, well, and at the time, and I love millennials, right? Uh, they all wanted to be motivation. He wants to be the number one motivational speaker in the world. Right. So, right. So, which, and to me, I always knew that sales training has a cap. Motivational speaking does not. Motivational speaking is a massive audience compared to sales training, right?

Oh, yeah. So, Morgan, look, you're on, I, I, give me three years here. Okay. Give me three years and I will teach you everything you need to know on how to run a business, how to start, how to do this. So that then you can go off on your own and do those incredible things. And just give me three years, but bleed for me, please. Like, I need you to go out there. I need you to travel. I need you to do this training, whatever. And we'll work together on this, but I'm not going to hold you back. And he did. He crushed it for me. And then guess what? He lasted four years. And, and when he came to me and I remember, you know, just recently he came to me and he, you know, they always, you know, you've had people who've left you before and they've been stressed about leaving.

And, and he came, he goes, John. And I go, Morgan, you're leaving, aren't you? And he's like, yeah, yeah, man. I just, I, I'm sorry. I'm like, don't apologize. Don't apologize, man. I'm like, you're on your journey. I go, that's my job. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm blessed to be a part of it here. And, and I, and that type of an approach, I wish more people would take realizing that it's not about getting the most out of the person for the time that you have them. It's, it's doing the most for them for the time that you have them and assuming that they're going to go off on their journey and go do something else special. And it doesn't have to be with you, right? I mean, that's why I think those values and the passion for what you do are so important.

I tell people all the time, if you want to leave your job, if you want to, if you want to be ultimate excuse to leave your job, first of all, you have, you know, if you want your second, you know, if you got an opportunity, if that opportunity is your passion, right? Genuinely your passion, then that's what you say in your exit. You say, I'm sorry, I appreciate everything, but I'm going to follow my passion. And if anybody, if any manager, any boss, any VP tries to hold you back from that, then they are a jackass. I mean, one quick example, I had this one kid who he was my marketing, you know, kid when I was my first startup, right? He was like a little stoner, right? We would get stoned and I'd throw something up on the board and we'd, you know, put the PDF together and he'd send it out the next day, right?

We had a blast and we had an awesome team, right? But this kid loved brewing beer. He loved brewing beer and he would bring in his own brewed beer every Friday and we'd drink it and we'd have a blast. We had such a fun team. One day he comes to me and he goes, John, I want to let you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be taking another position. And I was like, Mike, what are you doing, man? I'm like, what scenario could you paint that is better than this? I'm like, we're the funnest team. You're getting, I pay you really well. We're super flexible. You've got a career here that you want. And he goes, John, I'm going to go be a brewmaster at this. And I'm basically going to be taking half as much salary.

I'm going to be a brewmaster at the beer, the brewery around the corner. And I immediately stopped and I was like, son of a bitch. I was like, all right, man. I was like, I ain't going to hold you back. I go, let me just make sure you're making the right decision here. I'm like, have you asked these types of questions? That type of stuff. By the way, that's a great story because my brother-in-law has been the beer master at Coors for 37 years. He just left the business. So I love that story about being a beer master. But you're actually saying something that most companies hire out for. And you're lucky when you have it internally. And that is true examples of leadership that provide early signs to the early new people within a company that, oh, that's how you, this is how you are.

This is, I haven't had this before. This says something to me. I'm going to pay this forward. John paid it forward to me or Mark paid it forward, you know, whatever that is. But there isn't a lot, right? There's a lot on process, a lot on product. There's a lot on sales skill. But this idea of leadership, almost tech leadership, maybe. I don't want to bottle it, but in that world, there's not a lot out there. That is, there's some great things to be better leaders. Don't get me wrong here. I'm just saying in your organization where someone other than HR comes to you and says, you know, and treats you in a way that you go, man, I just, that's a lesson I just learned today. I learned something.

We try to do it as often as possible in my company, at least. Yeah, and I think that's what makes it more enjoyable, too. I mean, I don't know about you. Like, if I, I don't, you know, I'm not a numbers guy in a lot of ways. I track a lot of numbers, whatever. But, like, when it comes to the conversation with people, I could care less about, like, wherever you are in your quarter, I don't really care. I'm like, how are you doing as a person? You know what I mean? Are you enjoying this, right? Because I genuinely believe if you enjoy and you're passionate about what you do, the results are ultimately going to come, right? The business will ultimately thrive. It's just, it's such a balance, though.

And you've been in a lot of these high-growth companies. And I think you've, I mean, you've done a really good job aligning with companies that I think have extremely strong values. I mean, Marketo, I didn't know enough about in the early days. But Demandbase, Drift, I know Drift. Like, Dave Cancel, I mean, he is one of my favorite people on the planet, for crying out loud, because of how he represents himself. And now it sounds like, you know, now it sounds like sprinkling the same thing with Raji. And so, and I'm guessing that's been on purpose for you? Well, you sort of, you're attracted to those things that attract you. And I was lucky enough to have it early. I had an incredible boss at Oracle, believe it or not, who passed away young in his life that kind of established a mindset.

But really, you make your own luck. I just think when you're in that world of, you know, Cynic does a lot of good things around this, right? You know, you're not in charge of people. You know, it's the stewardship under your charge. You know, you don't squeeze the life out of your people. And he does a real good job in explaining that. But I think you and I, over the years, have had certain people in our lives that have triggered that, that just came naturally. I was a coach. You know, I, you know, professional sport. There's just things in my life that sort of, we, we all have a role to play. And, you know, if you're not, you know, in it like that, I don't know how you, I don't know how you become happy.

I mean, we all know folks with a lot of bank and they're still, you know, struggling. I'm just saying, this is fun. I love what I do. I love being able to work with new people, but now I have found I have a better appreciation for the reinforcement of the old. Yeah. Honestly, it's like, because more companies today are rebuilding their onboarding so that when it's right, they can distribute it out to the mature, you know, the seasoned people to get them back up to speed. Because, you know, it is, you set yourself in a pattern and you don't realize what, what's going on today. And so that's what Raji really wanted us to do. Let's build this up to be a world-class onboarding program across the units.

And when we think it's baked, let's move it upstream. And so, you know, best practices and workshops and all those things, all with a sense of empathy. And, you know, it's a, I think Raji actually hires on personality traits. I don't know, because he knows that I'm not him. I can't do him. I can't do Luca, Lazzarone, our CRO. I can't do Paul Olds, our new CRO now. It's just, it's, we all have a role to play. And if my profession recognized that value, business acumen, and, you know, a little leadership, then you create your own definition of what your team is. Enablement hasn't defined itself. I still believe, you know, I Google it. It'll tell you here's seven steps for proper sales enablement or six.

No, no, there's a lot. To me, enablement starts from prospecting to renewal. That's it. Well, I think you're, I think productivity is the better way of looking at it, which is, I think, like you said, you would define, you said that early. And it's funny, you know, Doug Landis, you know, he screams from the mountaintop. He's like, enablement isn't even a fucking word. It's not a word. You don't enable people, right? So, like, so his whole focus on productivity, which is real, right? Because then it makes it like, okay, like, how can I make you more productive as opposed to enable you? I think the definition of it itself is a hard one, which is why it's never truly, really been defined. You know what I mean?

Like you said, you ask 10 different people what enablement is, and you'll get 10 different answers. It goes from training all the way to some big, you know, pie in the sky thing. So, like, it is a challenge, but where do you see it going? So, like, I mean, you've been in this field for a while now, and you've seen a lot from a lot of different angles. Where do you see the quote-unquote enablement field going, and how does it fit? And also, last part of that question, which is, I'm noticing, obviously, a lot more companies invest in quote-unquote enablement earlier and earlier and earlier, because they're seeing how important it is, how it's important to attract talent and retain talent and all those different things.

So, how do you see it evolving? Here's my idea, and I hope no one takes it and runs. I think you're going to get consigliaries to the CRO. That's what a productivity or an enablement leader is going to be. That person that understands the business and recognizes what the business wigs are and can help orchestrate what that sales strategy is. And then we'll have a lot of, I don't mean disrespect, but specific players, trainers, product people, name your craft. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to have a small nucleus for productivity of leaders, strategic leaders that are up at the, I'll call it executive leadership. I don't want to say it's at the C-suite. That's asking too much.

But then you're going to have rotations of sales or revenue people. A rep in their track is coming into productivity, delivering for a year or nine months, going back after the field, SDRs who want to be in a career, come into enablement, work the nine months, go back into the field, sales consultants, part of their track is the coming in. So you bring the real life experience to bear to everyone that's new. It's not just theoretical and it's part of the comp package. There's a comp package that you get that you don't get totally screwed on the sales comp versus corporate plan. But I think there's some incredible value of taking someone out of the field just temporarily to give them the sense how the broader revenue model looks like and then goes back out.

Sprinkler, quite honestly, is willing to do that. That's why I think they found something, you know, that I just love that idea. I think it can work. We just have to find the pay structure. I think I couldn't. I love it because it's similar to my approach or I heard it from a few people and I've had them on the podcast, but the predictable going back to the predictable revenue model and how I know it's broken, but the transition is too scary for people, right? Because you can't just rip that model out and then go back to full cycle sales and whatever restruct. I mean, we got thousands of SDRs, millions of SDRs who are just sitting there. So that would be horrible, right? So instead, I love this approach, which is you go from SDR, BDR, which, you know, you cut your teeth, you make the calls, whatever it is.

But then instead of going to an AE, right, where you now have to close, right? Because it usually works if you have a big enough organization where you have SMB mid-market and enterprise. So like, it's a softer landing in SMB. It's not as scary. You learn how to close. It's a little bit more transactional and then you grow up. But most organizations don't have that structure. So you're usually taking an SDR and you're plugging them right into mid-market full cycle sales. Even with a bridge program, even with that, it doesn't happen. So go ahead. Right. So now, taking that SDR, BDR and putting them now into account management or customer success for a period of time where they work with customers, they understand use cases, they understand real world value, and they get to learn how to quote unquote close, but with cross-sell, up-sell, renewal type of stuff.

So it's a little bit softer, but it is still, they learn how to close. So then, after they go and they sit with the customer and they really understand their use cases and needs and the challenges, then they might, some of them might stay there, but then they might go to then full cycle sales and now be such more empathetic, such a much more empathetic sales rep because now they know the difference that it makes as opposed to regurgitating the pitch on that. But it goes back to both of those options are being, that kind of goes back to the business acumen conversation that we're having is that they learn what it's like without the techniques, without the tips, without any of that crap, they actually learn what really matters.

There's a, this is going to sound weird, but there's a band called Volpeck, don't know if you've heard of them before. All of them play each other's instrument and every song they just switch. Nice. And I always thought how interesting, to your point, you work your way up as a SDR, whatever lover you go, and then you kind of sit in somebody else's shoes for a while to build a little bit of appreciation and insight to what that is, and then you can come back. My idea from a productivity perspective was, wouldn't it be good to, great to kind of grab that knowledge that you lose sometimes in an individual by getting them into the place that scales the company? Because quite honestly, we want to help everyone, but I want to help the A's and the B's with the things that can scale them exponentially.

And who better? I mean, it's hard enough to get street cred when you're in enablement, but when you've been out in the field and you come in and it's your tour of duty almost, and then you go back out, I think that's going to land. You know, I haven't approached anyone with it. It's the first time I'm saying this publicly. So I hope, you know, tape, write the date down, say this was my idea. I haven't heard it from anybody. That's where I think it's going. I think you'll get more strategic folks to be able to really support a revenue effort. I know we'll battle with sales ops continuously. That's fine. Marketing's trying to figure it out still, you know, what that means. But I do think that strategic arm of productivity with lesser leveled people to kind of drive the tactical piece, but they bring in the live experience from the field.

Well, and I think it reinforces, you know, all these different departments, the marketing, you know, CROs were, my whole philosophy is CROs were brought in because VPs of sales and CMOs couldn't get along. You know what I mean? Like all of a sudden, you know, probably about 10 years ago is when the CRO title just kind of came out of nowhere. I was like, hey, what's this chief revenue officer? And it's pretty much because the CEO was sick of hearing the VP of sales yell at the VP of marketing and they needed somebody above that, right? So, but I think enablement is in a position to be that Venn diagram of all of them and be the connective tissue that hopefully gets everybody to kind of sing in that same song, if you will, and play in all those instruments.

So, I hope you're right and I hope that we continue to evolve that way because it's fun to watch, but it's also frustrating to see so many companies saying the right things, but not doing them because they're scared to make the change. Well, it's hard to. You find, again, leadership is probably the biggest piece here that we miss internally. And I hate to tell you to open up another channel, but I think that would be an incredible opportunity for your business to kind of, let's talk about this idea of leadership and sales. What is that? What, how do people learn to be better there? Because it's all different in every other, every company. Drift isn't demand-based. Demand-based isn't Sprinkler or Oracle.

You know, they're all have their own culture and it comes back now full circle, culturally, the Sprinkler way and what Raji kind of believed. So, yeah, that's, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. I appreciate it. As always, let's, let's wrap this up a little bit more, Mark. What, any place you want to send people to learn a little bit more about what you're doing? I know Sprinkler obviously is killing it. You guys are hiring like a weed right now. So anything? Yeah, well, I always love having these sort of conversations with friends. So anytime, just come to my LinkedIn page, obviously, Mark's a slander, pretty easy. Sprinkler.com is, is where it's at. But that's it. I'm not too self-promotional at all.

I'm still in Virginia. So, you know, I'm not anywhere important. I enjoy it. And I have a thank you for allowing me to have a few words with you today. I mean, thanks for, thanks for reaching out and responding and, and, and offering this up because you're right. It has, it has been a long time coming for this conversation. At least have it recorded as opposed to having it on the side. Awesome, Mark. But look, I appreciate you and everything you're doing to help elevate the profession. And, you know, in this conversation as always. So let's, let's not make it another couple of years before we have it again. All right. 100%. You have a good one to go, man. See you. All right. Thanks, Mark. And everybody else, thanks for listening as always.

I hope you got as much value out of this as I did. And it got you to think a little bit differently here. And like I always say at the end of all my podcasts here, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going, 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. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads.

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