Russell Bradley-Cook: HubSpot Partnerships, the ultimate sales multiplier when done right

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. Now, Russell Bradley Cook is the leader of HubSpot's partner program in EMEA. He has a really strong sales background and getting the most out of partnerships. I reached out to Russell because I personally have never been able to figure out the partner game. I did a great job back in my early days working with partners as an individual rep and I attribute a lot of my success to the partnerships and relationships I've developed over the years.

However, I've never been able to figure out how to fully operationalize them in a business. I've always said getting my own reps to sell our stuff is hard enough. Getting somebody else's reps to sell our stuff is 10 times as hard. So in this discussion, Russell shed some light on how to get the most out of partnerships by highlighting the characteristics of good partnerships, understanding the ecosystem, leading with giving first, and his three pillars. We then dive into how individual reps can develop their own partnerships that will help them sell through this potential recession that we're headed into. You cannot sell on an island. And I hope this discussion helps pave the way for you to think how you can leverage partnerships in your career.

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. Russell Bradley Cook. How's it going, my friend? Doing well, John. Great to join you. Yeah, thanks for joining the podcast, man. I'm really looking forward to this conversation because it's one... I'm looking to learn on this one because, man, I've been chasing partner channel sales for a long time and I am horrendous at it. And so to give some context to this, we're going to talk about partnerships for sales reps and how we can look at partnerships directly, but also as organizations.

So I think this is a really important conversation for everybody out there. But Russell, could you give us a little kind of context here and where you're coming from and what you're doing these days to set the stage for the conversation, please? Yeah, absolutely, John. Well, I'm the EME App Partner Manager for HubSpot. We actually have a couple of people in the team. And I like to frame partnerships because I come from an enterprise sales background. And I know you're a Boston guy. I'm born and raised in New York. I've lived in Europe for a long time, but I like to give a good New York analogy to it. And I think the reason why New York has so much energy is these big north-south avenues. And for me, this is like the sales channels.

It's just huge. There's just so much. It's like canyons going up and down. And then you've got cross streets. And for me, that's the marketing. And so you've got some marketing channels are bigger than others. But you got to work it. Like you can't just do sales without the marketing. You can't do marketing without the sales. Otherwise, everything ends up in the Hudson River. And for me, partnerships is Broadway. And I grew up on Broadway. And there's a huge amount of creative energy and history connected with Broadway. And the thing that's really cool about Broadway is if you look at the grid of New York, Broadway starts in the Lower East and cuts across all of it and ends up on the Upper West.

Okay. And it kind of destroys that like optimized grid space, like high velocity directions. But at the same time, like it creates a bit of magic. And for me, the magic is like best taken if you look at like these little triangular streets that when you have a diagonal that crosses this grid, you end up with this triangle and it's too small for people to build a building on. Even in New York, where they're very creative about how big they can, the space they can build on. And so you end up with a park. And like, if you're lucky, you get a fountain as well. And so you got some benches around and like people sit down and I'm from New York, but New York is a very stressful place. And you're like, if I can sit down in New York and be by trees, like this is a good thing.

I like taxis are like bombing by like buses are honking and you like see people like almost getting run over and you're like, ah, this little triangle is really nice. I'm just going to hang out here for a little while. And so for me, partnerships is, is bringing together these salespeople is bringing together the marketing people. I love, like I'm, I'm like working with the product people to be like, Hey, come check out what we're working on over here and bring in an external people. So like, I know Gong, Vidyard, Chili Piper, um, all very involved with what you're doing at JV sales and all app partners at HubSpot. And so like, bring them in to be like, Hey, look at what we're working on and get them to bring their ideas.

So that's kind of how I think about partnerships. And I would like to chop it up. I love it. Cause I've always looked at partnerships as kind of like, they're not worth it unless one plus one equals three, right? Like cause cause if you're doing like a one plus one equals two scenario, okay. But the, the idea of one to many, right? It's conceptually, if done right, you have now access to all sorts of stuff you would never have access to, as opposed to like going door to door, knocking from a sales standpoint. So let's, let's start, I think, I don't want to start this conversation. Let's start with the macro of the generic partnership term relationship, if you will. What do you think like the top characteristics of good partnerships are, whether they're individuals, you know, or, or companies or full programs, what are some of like the top characteristics that the best part where the partnerships you get the most out of them?

What would you say that those are? I mean, again, I kind of come at it from an enterprise sales perspective. And I think it's really coming at it with a good view of what is going to drive results for your partner and being clear about like, can you, can this project actually have an influence for your partner? Can you get the people involved on both sides to make that happen? And ultimately is that outcome higher than the friction or the money, if you're in sales that it takes to get there? Because coordinating all that stuff is quite challenging. That's the thing. It's like, cause I, the reason I failed at partnerships, the majority of my career, and I've had an interesting relationship. We were talking before this, you know, I, I started my career on partnerships in the sense that when I was 22 years old and a startup company with no funding, for me, I, what I, I sold it services, right?

So what I would do is I would look at all the different vendors that touched small businesses in some way, shape or form accountants, lawyers, whatever it was. And I would go develop relationships with each one of them and trade leads basically, Hey, who do you know? And we would partner on, you know, whoever their customers were, they'd help get intros. And so I built an individual partner networks that I still lean on today. But as I graduated up into from a, you know, try to operationalize it to a certain degree, I started to fail pretty miserably. And I'll give you a quick example. The one where I failed the hardest was when my company got bought by Staples. It was my job to get the Staples reps to sell our stuff.

So think about IT services. And we had a managed service model where you could scale. So it didn't matter. It wasn't people oriented. You could scale it. Staples had all these small business customers. So the theory here was they had the leads that we didn't have access to. We had a scalable solution that could run like wildfire if we did it the right way. So I flew around and I trained all these teams on how to introduce thrive, how to talk about thrive. I realized very quickly that talking IT was, was, oh my God, it was like mine would explode as soon as I would say computers to a lot of these people. Um, so I boiled it down to the basics, Russell. I said, all you have to do, watch this. All you have to do is give us a name of your client, how many computers they have, what solution they were using currently to manage those computers.

And would they be open to a phone call from their newly acquired business? They gave me those four data points. Okay. Nothing happened. No. So, and I would pay them and I would take the sales process from there. So all they had to do is make the intro and then I would run the sales call. I would close the business. And if I closed it, I would pay them more than if they had closed the account for a Staples customer. Right. So I'm thinking there's no, there's a no brainer. Like they're getting free money from me basically by giving me a name. Uh, it failed so hardcore that I mean, crickets. And what I realized was because there wasn't somebody there internally on their end asking them every week, where do you stand on the thrive networks quota and holding them accountable for that?

And if that check didn't come as part of their paycheck and as part of their quota, they didn't care because my check came from outside. My check came a separate check outside of their payroll. And it wasn't something their managers were managing them to. So I'm sitting there going like, what else can I do here? So I was kind of acting as a partner channel manager, but I was player coach scenario here. So that scenario is, has basically said, I always say now, look, getting sales reps to sell your stuff, getting your own sales reps to sell your shit hard enough to sell your shit. Sometimes it's hard. Russell, where did I go wrong? Like what, what, what did I miss with that approach? And why did I feel so hard with that?

Well, first I wouldn't say that you failed in partnerships by any means. And I don't think anybody who's a regular listener to this podcast would say that you have failed in partnerships. I would say that your vision of partnerships, like how you tried to like fit into a squared version of this ISV partnerships. If you look at the podcast on what you've built, the trust that you've built in the value that you've been able to extend out into the universe, I would say that like you've done a phenomenal job at partnerships. So for me, I would just take that first part out. And then the second part is how do you operationalize it? And it's super hard. Um, I think that there's a lot of challenges, as you said, like it's hard enough to get your own salespeople to sell your own stuff, to get them to sell other people's stuff is really hard.

And HubSpot's view is that we do not allow other companies to spiff our reps to sell their products. We don't do co-selling as an official motion period. And honestly, I'm not even against that. Like I think they, in my previous company, and the reason why I'm so excited about HubSpot is because I have seen it from exactly the seat that you were talking about. And that I was working for a SaaS company. And when we had customers who were integrated with our CRM, we would like, our main problem was how do we deal with this number of orders? Like it's like operationally, like the wheels are creaking, like I can't move this fast enough. And when we were trying to get people to order, order off of like Google sheets, we could do all the enablement sessions that we want.

And I would like, I personally would be like, like you, I'm like, I'll do this myself. Like I'm not even putting this on a BDR or somebody junior. And you're like, I want to talk to these people so that they understand this is real. And crickets. Like one or two, like three, and then like nothing. Then just like silence. And so for me, it really comes back to around integrations. And like, if you look at any SaaS company today, your value is how you are connected with your company, with your customers tech stack. You cannot sell as an island. Like that for me is like, should be banished. And I think that's kind of the challenge today. It's like, we've got this don't co-sell. And at the same point, like we all know that customers are not using just one technology.

And so how do we get those two things equal? For me, integrations is part of it, but hopefully we can dive into that in this discussion. Yeah. No, I think that's the integration piece. And so I want to talk about things that are within our control and the things that are not in our control, right? So let's start with the things that are not in our control as individual reps, as it relates to integrations, right? The not in my control is, well, you know, we play with all these. And so how do I now have a conversation with other people that can show the value here? The, the, the part that you can control is you can go talk to those people yourself, but you can't control the actual integration of them.

So let's talk about the, it from a rep standpoint here for a minute. And then we'll talk about the business side of it from like, how do you operationalize this internally? But say you're a rep right now and you're working at HubSpot, you know, and you've got all these integrations, right? You're, you're, you got all these different tools. So you're looking at it and you're not a partner manager. There's integrations everywhere. What would your approach be? So it's a really good question. And, uh, alongside me and our team, we have an enablement team who works on exactly that question is like, how do we help, how do we help HubSpot reps sell more and faster? And I think integrations is a key part of that.

And I would say specifically for HubSpot, I think the, the danger is that reps kind of think of everything as like a rip and replace. And it's like, we've got an all-in-one solution and we've got, we can, we've got some pretty awesome capabilities in-house like that is for sure. But I think there's two problems with that. One is like individual, uh, pieces, components of that stack. There's probably people out there who are better than us. Like if we were trying to do 15, 20 pieces really, really well, I'd say we can get 80% of there. But if there's somebody, Chili Piper just does calendars. Like I wouldn't want to be going out one-to-one with Chili Piper on calendars. Like Google has a free calendar.

Apple has a free calendar. HubSpot's got a free calendar and Chili Piper has built an awesome business. And you're like, this is just like what we are going to do. And we are going to be rock stars at it. Um, and so I think from a reps perspective, that rip and replace is a dangerous thing. And I think it's even more dangerous next year because buyers are going to be even more conservative than they were before. And if you were telling somebody to unplug the systems that they have, even if it's like what people in tech call legacy, even if it's a legacy thing, legacy means it works today. Like there might be problems, but like the lights turn on, bills get paid like that. And so like, you're telling me rip out all of that and then put in the stuff that you're promising me is going to do something.

And HubSpot is awesome. Like we've got great customers who like go on the mountaintop and shout about it. And so if you're a rep outside of HubSpot, like I would not be trying to persuade anybody to do rip and replace. I would be selling like, this is tell me about your integrations right now and get your BDRs to be doing discovery on that. So when you show up at the conversation, you've got insight into that and then be like, this is how we play really well with this, this, and this. Yeah. I think that like the understanding of the ecosystem is something that I don't think enough reps, they know who the players are, but they don't know how they relate. Uh, and I think they look at them a little bit black and white as far as their competitor or their, I mean, I, I, I partner with almost all of my competitors, almost all of them, because what, what we do, I tell my team, we don't lose to competition.

We lose because we were either not the right fit or we didn't sell the right, you know, we weren't good enough selling, right. We didn't uncover the need well enough. Um, and so you, but most of the times I disqualify more than I qualify in the sense that once I get in, if we're not, if it's not that square peg into that square hole or that round peg into that round hole, I'm not doing it right. Because I know we're really, really good at what we do and everything else we're okay at. So I've partnered up with all these other training, you know, quote unquote competitors. And I'll, I'll funnel people those directions all day, every day. And some of them I have formal relationships with other, as others, I have informal relationships, but it's made it for me a lot easier.

You know, and I had this mentality a while ago. I used to be so obsessed with beating my competition that, um, I realized I was focusing on beating my competition, not selling to my customer. So I stopped worrying about my competition and started focusing all my energy on selling to my customer. And to your point, trying to figure out how I can help in any way, shape or form, whether it was me or not. It's a more generous approach. Yeah. Well, and it, you know, I mean, I'm a universe guy, as far as what goes around, comes around all the shit like that. It's a long game. I think too much of us are focused on the short game here. Um, so, so let's talk about operationalizing this stuff. So say, say whether you're an organization or an individual, you've identified kind of the ecosystem, right.

Of, of everybody, quote unquote, that touches, uh, the same customers you do. And there's one approach of just going out and talking to some of the reps, you know, at those accounts and being proactive, which I recommend reps do like literally looking on LinkedIn and saying, who's one of the top reps or who's posting the most about this. Like, Hey, let me reach out to you, grab some coffee, say, what's up. Hey, you want to share some leads here. Um, but then there's a little bit more of a structured approach, whereas you kind of either operationalize itself as an individual or as a business. So what are some of the easy steps that we can do to operationalize getting the most value out of partnerships?

So I would say the challenge is even bigger than what you said. I don't think it's at the rep level that reps don't understand the ecosystem. I would say it's more holistic. I would say even sales leaders don't really understand the ecosystem. And like, they're just like laser focused on like, I got to sell this many units this month and this many next month and this many the month after. And I don't care what's happening on the left or the right of me. I got to do these numbers and my house is too big and I've got to pay these heating bills. And like, I got my kids schools to pay. And I know I got two kids. I'm like, this money adds up quick. And so I think it's really holistic. And for me, I think what sales leaders should be doing is starting with their BDRs and starting with discovery.

And again, I mean, Hey, keep bringing it back to enterprise sales, but like when I was managing enterprise sales teams, like if I see a problem at the closing stage, it's possible the person is not a really strong closer, but nine times out of 10, the problem is a discovery problem. Like there was something happening on their side that you didn't know about. And like, you just didn't ask the right question and you only found out about it the day that they were closing. You're like, here's the contract and which pen do you want to sign with? And they're like, no, that's not happening. And like, it's with fulfillment or it's with somebody else or like, uh, marketing came in and vetoed that. Like we've got a different priority on the spend.

And so that's the discovery question. And so for me, BDRs should be really, I think today you're right that they're drilling in on competitors that people are looking at like getting back to the rip and replace. They're just like, if you use an X, like rip it out and put in Y. And I think that's already like, that's not the playbook I would recommend, but at least you're looking at the tech stack a little bit. Um, and what I would take that, that discovery process is as a way to understand companies because software is the key into these companies and like, are you using these tools? Okay. Like does other teams use these tools? Is it something that you guys are really enjoying using? Like, do you use this every day or you just bought on a credit card and like, you didn't take the time to cancel because you get the points.

And so like somebody else is paying. Um, and so is this like a passive thing or is this really like your sales and marketing and finance team are using this integration, which are this, uh, software in which case, forget about it's not going anywhere. And so really doing that discovery stage at the BDR stage. So you can set up your AEs so that they can have 10, 15 minutes ahead of time to go research those solutions and understand how they match up and how they can work with those together. And AEs don't have enough time to do this on their own, to do the discovery call and in the middle of the call to then also have smart, educated answers. And so for me, it's got to funnel up from the BDRs to the AEs.

And then the sales leaders have to support it and they have to like give incentives. I have to encourage people to, to be interacting with, with other teams. And so it's super hard and there's a lot of friction to it. But I think what I see, like in terms of the best partners is a couple of different motions, but let me pause there. And no, so what do we do with that? So I like it because we do the same thing, like on a quote, we don't have SDRs or BDRs. We do full cycle sales in general, but you know, a lot of the questions revolve around the tech stack. Right. So, and, and also they're, they're actually backing up even further. The tech stack is, is, is a indicator of our ICP. So for instance, we break out down our ideal customer profile, right?

Tier one, tier two, and tier three characteristics. The tier one characteristics are stuff that are like, oh my God, like we fit perfectly with that. Tier two is like, okay, we can work with that. Tier three is that's pretty crappy. Right. And we break down actually two different sectors. One is competition because there are certain competitors that, that are, are actually very direct competitors. And if the client is using them and they're happy with them, it's literally, even though they might fit the perfect ICP for us in the general sense, if they're using one of our direct competitors and thrilled with them, it's literally not even worth me smashing my head up against that wall. But on the other hand, there's others that work with our direct competitors that we compliment really, really well, right?

For instance, you know, Salesforce, when, when I was doing the heavy lifting at Salesforce and training, there was only two outside vendors, us and sales and sales. I'm sorry, Sandler. And you would look at Sandler and I as very direct competitors, right? But the beauty is, is when Sandler got now, when I can tell that you have Sandler, like if I ask you, Hey, Russell, you know, are you guys, who else are you using? You're like, oh, we use Sandler. I said, great. I love Sandler. You know, the upfront contract, the pain funnel, the reverse question, all that stuff's fantastic. Hey, just out of curiosity, how does Sandler help you get those meetings? Cause I know they're not great on prospecting.

So I use that, but then there's other ones that are bad. Same thing with tech stack. If you're using vidyard, gong, sales loft, outreach, any one of those types of tools, we're in like, it's easy conversation. If you're not, I'm not saying it's, it's just harder. Okay. So you have this information, you've qualified it now. And, and you, you're about to talk about it, right? So now, okay, let's follow your analogy or I'm an AE now. I, I figured out the SDR figured out that they have vidyard gong and all these different tools. I got some time to prep for this. So now I have answers to your questions of how we integrate, but how does that relate to a partnership? So I think there's two sides of it.

There's like the AE side of it and there's the organizational side of it. And in a way you, I think you're right in like the underlying message of what you're saying, which is like at the AE level, you kind of have to like get on with it and do your job, regardless of what the partnership, like what the partnership and what the organization say. And so one, do your interviews well, like end up at a company that does good integrations. I think that's super important questions and things to be thinking about as you're looking at jobs. There's a lot of folks interviewing right now. Um, but assuming you're already in the role, what do you do? And I, you mentioned before, like reach out to other reps.

I think that there's like, understand what that company's go to market motion is. Is it a C and align with the one, which is similar to yours. So like, if you're in a sales led growth company, look for other sales led growth companies. Cause you're going to have a better fit. You're going to be able to tee off and be like, okay, like I'm mid market focusing on the UK or focusing on like New Jersey. It doesn't really matter. But like, there should be somebody like me in that organization and we'll tee up and like, give them lead, like start by being generous. And I said before, like you've been super generous, like be generous and give leads. Like if you want HubSpot reps to pay attention to you and you show up and you give them leads, I think they're going to pay attention.

I'd like pretty much can close my eyes and put my hand on my heart and they're going to take that call. And so I started by being generous to be like, Hey, cause the flip side is like, start with just prospecting and be like, I'm going to go after everybody using gun. I like, or I'm going to go after everybody using good video. And that's, that's a good motion. Cause you're like, it fits better. But then the next step is like, all right, how do I loop in video to this discussion? So next time video reps on the discussion, he's like, you don't do any training. Like your team sounds like a mess. You should talk to John and they tee you up. And like those kinds of warm discussions, your life is so much easier.

And that that's where like the sell more, sell faster, sell better. That that's where that comes together in a big way. Do you recommend people? Cause there's a danger in partnerships too, as far as wallet share is concerned, right? So like, do you recommend people partner up with other companies that not only sell to the same customers, same type of customers, but also to the same buyer? So for instance, I sell to VPs of sales. Should I go look for other people that sell to VPs of sales or that sell to other parts of that company? Because they might steal budget from me. Cause that's also the part of this, the tricky game with partnerships, right? Is like I, for instance, the reason I don't partner with many tech companies to support my training is because I don't want to mandate that the client buy their software to buy my stuff.

Cause now I'm selling it twice. You know, now I got to sell my stuff and I got to sell the partner's stuff. And then now all of a sudden it's double the budget and the client might only have enough for one, right? So I'm, I'm a little leery of, I want to get mine first in a sales situation and then I'll introduce my partners here. So how do you address that? So if you, if you're a smart tech partner and you want to work with John, you need to facilitate that. You need to be like, John, I want you to sign your contract first, and then I want you to make the intro. And this is the same coming into HubSpot. And I see companies that do it really well. It's a company called air call. It's a huge international presence and they respect the timeline that the HubSpot reps gives for them for the sales process.

And don't treat it as a transactional thing. Don't think like, I just need to close this deal for this ended quarter. Cause if you burn that relationship once, there's nothing I can do as a partner manager, that's ever going to get that relationship back for you. And so really think of it as a long-term thing and like respect the timeline, respect the pricing. Like just say like, Hey, listen, John, you run the show. Like you bring me in. I want to help you. I want you to be successful. I think if your customers use Gong or if your customers use Vidyard, they're going to have even more success. So like, let's work on this together, but like, this is your show. And that's really, um, I live in Paris now.

I've been in Europe for about 15 years. And in Paris, in France, they have an expression, uh, and it translates to like provide a service, but it's really like to be of service and not in a subservient way, but like to provide something that's really valuable for you. And so those partners, if they were working with you, that's how they should be planning. And so how easy do you have to make it for the partner? Right. Cause it is like the spoon feed of basically doing it all for them versus, you know, it's almost like a sales rep. You talk to a sales rep and they all want the silver bullet, but I'm not going to give it to them. I got to, you know, get them there and getting them there to do the work is actually hard.

It's the same thing with partner, right? I don't want to like, I always scratch my head at the OEM model where we're literally doing all the work. We're generating the lead. We get it all the way to close. And then we have to bring in a partner, uh, because they're going to sign it on their paperwork and they're going to do it. So they get a, you know, a cut of literally doing nothing. And I'm like that, that's absurd. I don't know how that business model even works, but you know, for me, what I used to do a quick, small example on the tactical level here is I would always go to networking events. Okay. And I'd meet somebody like you, Russell. I'd be like, oh, great. You know, HubSpot. Fantastic.

We sell a lot of the same customers here. Fantastic. Good. So Russell, why don't we do this? Um, why don't we both go back to our offices? Let's look through our databases. Let's see if we can make some introductions to each other and see, you know, and then we'll see where it goes from there. That's literally almost how every initial conversation about a partnership lands. And then inevitably they never go back. They never look at their database that they never give the referral. And I always had to be the one doing it to start it to your point. Let's start by giving first, right? What I did instead was now, and I direct my team to do this. When somebody, when you're asking for referrals, don't just ask for referrals, take one step and put together a one page document about what a good referral looks like, right?

Like as far as ICP and all that other stuff, questions to ask, things to look for. But even take it another step and put together a list. So we all, we have a top 50 list for every rep here at sell better. So now when that rep goes and meets with somebody like you, they're not just saying, Hey, Russell, could you make introductions for me? They're saying, Hey, Russell, do you know anybody on this list of 50 that, that you could make an introduction for me? Because when you give me that, well, now I'm very directly related to that. Actually, I know that when I know that when I know that it's like almost like asking for a testimonial, if I were to ask you for a testimonial, Russell, it'll take me three months to get a testimonial from you.

If I write the testimonial and send it to you and say, Hey, Russell, is this, can I use this as your testimony? And you say, yes, I'll get it tomorrow. So how easy do you have to make it for partners? And where's the line of, of giving too much and making it too easy versus reciprocity here? I mean, I think you need to understand like, who are the people that you're partnering with? And like, is this ultimately, are you convinced that this is somebody who's going to add value to you? And so HubSpot comes to this, it took this discussion with a lot of advantages. Like we have a really good SMB market, like we're expanding into mid market and moving up. And so there's a lot of potential customers to work in place.

And I think coming back to the first point about like, like exchanging a spreadsheet and nothing ever happening in the crickets, there's some really cool technology that's come on in the last year, year and a half. There's a company called Reveal. There's another company called Crossbeam that allows you to mesh the CRM data from two companies at the company level. And so you can say, we have 200 customers in common today, period. Like already starting with like our eyes closed, nobody does anything. Like, let's do a better job working on those 200. And then you can see the prospects on both sides. And so HubSpot doesn't share the company level detail in that grid, but you can see the population oversized to understand like, is this a partner that I want to work with?

Am I going to get value from this? Is it worth me like laying the ball up to be like, here, can you please like slam this down? Do I think that there's something on the backside for me? And so I think that's what companies need to do. And at a rep level, you need to make that calculation and at an organizational level, you need to make that calculation. 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.

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Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. The middle ground here of individual reps managing their own partnerships, which again, I highly recommend doing to the point where HubSpot's at, where they have somebody like you and a team. Okay. And this is, again, this is my failure as an organization. I actually turned down a ton of partnerships, all partnerships right now, because what I've realized is for us, and maybe I'm just not good enough here. For us, unless there is somebody dedicated, like you, right, as a point person to get the most out of the partnership. Okay. It ends up being an individual thing. So for instance, because like, I'm going to give a referral, I'll give you a quick example.

So like Gong, like if I'm, if I'm John Barrows here, and I'm the CEO of Sell Better, and we develop a partnership with HubSpot, you know what I mean? And I then I'm like, Hey team, we've got a partnership with HubSpot here. Make sure you share leads and send me some stuff. We can make some introductions for them. They're not going to, they wouldn't, you got a better shot at seeing God than any one of them stepping up and giving me, because they want to hold that for whatever relationship they have with their network, if you will. So without somebody dedicated full-time internally, I've kind of thrown my, my hands up being like, look, we'll give referrals when they make sense. We know the players in this space, but it's not going to be a formal thing.

Cause I, I, I feel bad sitting down with somebody like you Russell and talking about, oh yes, we're going to do all this. And then knowing it's not going to go anywhere because there's not somebody dedicated to looking at it, managing it, tracking it every single week. So what's the middle ground here that you would suggest in for, for a company like us outside of hiring a hundred and two to a hundred to $200,000 resource to do that. I think it's like, what is in it for your, your team? Like they, I a hundred percent agree with you. Like they are not going to give those relationships up because John said it and they're like, John, I like you. Like, I'm very happy working here. Like you're a cool boss, but like take a long walk off a short plank.

Yeah, I have, I think it needs like, what is in it for the rep and like specifically for HubSpot, like, can we help them? Can I bring in partners to the, cause I'm, I have the same thing on my side. I can't make my sales reps do anything that they do not want to do. Period. And the discussion, nothing. They don't report it to me. Like they don't even get a Christmas present from me. There's too many of them, like nothing. And so how can I help them sell more, better, faster with integrations than they would just selling HubSpot. And I think I can, but I've got to make them believe it. And I've got to bring them examples to be like, Hey, remember this client that you signed? They have three integrations on the backend.

Do you think that they're getting more value than this other client that's like stuck in the pipeline that has no integrations? Yes. So like when you're in the pipeline, make sure that you're asking about integrations and those deals will close faster at a higher value. And like from, from your side, like do for companies who are working with HubSpot, do your customers get more value from those integrations? And so there are partners who I know, like when they, uh, find out that a prospect is working with HubSpot, they mark that up in there for their sales revenue, their forecast by 25% because they're like, this customer is going to sign a bigger contract because the time to value is faster.

And so you just like, it has to be from the rep perspective. I can't make them do anything they don't want to do. I mean, I'm sitting in a dedicated role, but I still can't make anybody do anything they don't want to do. And so it's really like feeding them, putting them in a place to succeed. And it's like, I know you're, you're a Boston guy. You like the Red Sox. For me, one of the biggest things is like, put yourself in a position to succeed. And like, it's a lot easier to hit a 3-0 pitch than it is to hit a 0-2 pitch. And so like, make sure that you're going in at 3-0 and like, life is going to be a lot easier. And like, if you have to take a pass, you're like, I didn't like that one. Like, I'll just seem, throw me another one.

And at 0-2, you don't have that. So I think that's really how I think about it. Definitely. Yeah. Because I, because the three, tell me if I'm wrong here. The three levers I've always looked at to, to get the most out of partnerships, right, is one margin, right? So if they get, so for instance, like almost like in an OEM model, whatever, if there's like, if they are a partner driven model and you give higher margin on your sale, then all the others, they're going to sell yours for, you know, they're going to sell yours. Um, so, and that's nothing a rep can control. The other is a lead flow, right? Or either lead flow or wedge service. So for instance, or, and I would say wedge slash sticky service.

So if I can introduce something as a partner, Russell, to get you in there, um, to get me in there, for instance, and it's a small dollar figure compared to what I want to sell you. So I'm going to introduce you because that's going to get me in there to sell the other stuff I want or stickiness factor. If I introduce your partner to you, I know we're going to be stickier in there. We're going to have a longer. So those are all like stuff that, um, I look at now. The third pillar here is education and not, and I'm not talking about product knowledge or the newest release or any of that stuff. Nobody gives a shit about that. It's people use a lot of my training, for instance, to train their partner channels and they'll pay me to go train them as a, Hey, look at us.

And it's not on how to sell that product. It's how to sell. So the concept there is, Hey, they're giving value to this organization and that their organization is getting value. So they're going to think of them more often than somebody else. Would you say that those are the three pillars there? Or is there something I'm missing there from a, from a leverage standpoint to get reps and partners to sell your stuff? I mean, I think all three of those are smart moves. Like if you can get any, like you need to figure out which is the lever that works for your company and which of the partners that that is going to work with. And like, be realistic about like, is HubSpot going to make these changes that we need them to make for this to be successful?

HubSpot is not going to change our comp plan. Like, I'm not even going back for that. Like, forget about it. My life is too short. And so, but we do have the stickiness you mentioned. And so like, if we can get up to seven integrations, we know that our customers are happier. They're getting, and we know that because they stay for longer. And, and so I think those are three very, very good levers. I think the thing that changes once we've got data mapping at a company level is the account-based marketing and the account-based sales. And so like, when you're talking about the training, a hundred percent agree, like, is like the enablement piece is so hard and so complex, but like, so important, like everything, almost everything you're like, oh man, if we had better, like, we got to focus on this enablement.

Like, and, and so I think the message is better together. And so how do you do like the digital marketing side of that? So like, you're doing webinars together. How do you do the advertising piece? So you're not even selling your product. You're selling your product plus HubSpot. You're like, this is what people do with HubSpot and our product. That's going to get people to buy and vice versa for HubSpot. Like, there will be partners where we are willing to do that ourselves and say like, these two products are really good together. You should definitely do that. And then the flip side on the final piece of that is co-selling. And like, once you have that data piece and you understand like this partner gets a lot of value from me putting it into it.

And you talked about those, those three pillars, really having the data to be able to execute it, to be like, this is the rep on the other side of the phone call. Who's going to be my champion. And like, almost think about it as a sales process. And like, this is going to be my champion in the mid market team. This is going to be my champion in the SMB team. Oh, snap. Like they've got five SMB teams. All right. We got to have one champion per SMB team. Like, and it's probably not going to be the team leader. So you got to figure out, like then one step down, like, who's the person who's going to be lighting it on fire for me over there. And I'm curious from the enablement piece, like how you, you've talked about ABM a couple of times in the last few episodes.

And like, it seems like you see like things are going in that direction in a big way next year. And so how do you, how do you think about sales? Like from an ABM perspective, how does it like fit into the picture with partners or just in general? No, just in general. Yeah. I mean, look, I think technology is getting too smart right now or way smarter than us. And this stems back from 2017. I sat with Gary Vaynerchuk and did one of his 40 sessions where I could do a Q and a with him. And it was right when I saw this email come out by Shakespeare, which is no longer around that wrote this artificial intelligence email that was better than I have ever, I could ever write. And, and it only took a minute to write it.

And I almost had a heart attack. And I was basically, I was asking Gary, like Gary, where does that leave us? Like as sales reps, if I'm watching AI write emails better than I could write, I train this shit. Like, like literally, where does that leave us? And, and his answer was stuck in my head. Cause he's don't worry about the technology. You're never going to beat the technology. Let it, let the technology do all the work for you. And then right before it, and surface all the invite insights and for even write the email, right. But right before you hit send, make sure you're the last mile, make sure you humanize it because until, cause until computers buy from computers, right. Once that happens, we're screwed.

But as, as long as there's a person there, then you have to humanize whatever the technology is going to do. Cause there's just going to be something that doesn't fit. Right. Right. So I, I look at ABM, I look at the future of a sales professional being iron man or iron woman, where they sit at a dashboard, all the intent data, all the partner information, all the AI nuances, surfacing up triggers, even, you know, and, and throw lavender in there to write the email for you and grammarly to plug it in and, and, oh my God, somebody just opened up this. So alert me, John, you should reach out. But before you reach out, do a little bit of research here and then plug spec it in. So spec, it can give me a little sales tip before I make that phone call.

Like that whole dashboard is right there. And so now I'm back to full cycle sales because I got my SDRs and BDRs rolling up operations and marketing. And they're all funneling me like super highly, not just like that person went to our website three times, you know, intent, but holy shit, this person's in the space. They're perfect ICP. They just did this on social. Here's what you might want to say to them, John. Oh, by the way, crystal nose comes in here and tells me they're a disc profile. So be a little bit more direct with them than you would somebody else. Right. That's where I believe sales is going, which I think is going to wipe out probably 80% of our population. Um, and, and I think the, the, the best reps that dashboard will include the tech stack with all the partners that are in that ecosystem.

Cause I'm a little bit bummed out. Like I Sifteri, uh, used to be a great product that could tell me the tech stack of everybody for free. You know what I mean? I just put your name in there and it would say, this is what that company's using. Cause it was crowdsourced Intel on it. And then I got bought by G2. I think it was, and they ruined it. So like that to me is gold. If I can figure out your tech stack before I even talk to you, Russell, you know what I mean? And I can bring those up. And, and even if it's, even if it's indirectly, I'll be like, Oh yeah, Russell, you know, for instance, you know, a lot of clients we work with, you know, they, they use gong for instance and do call record.

Oh, you use gong. I didn't know that. You know what I mean? So like right there alone, never, nevermind calling up the gong rep on that account and being like, Hey, I'm about to have a meeting with them. I know you guys are using them. What's the adoption, right? Like, how are you guys doing in there? Is it a strong relationship as a week? Do you have a renewal coming up? How can I help, you know, that type of stuff and getting the insight from that rep to then be able to pull that into the conversation? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can't comment on the sifter thing, but I really, I'm super impressed with, with G2 and what they're doing. And I met their CEO recently in Dublin and had him on a panel.

And I like, there's just, I agree with you that there's so much that's changing. That's like faster than we can deal with. And the bigger picture, like buyers don't want to rely on salespeople to do that research. And so now we're like, kind of like reverse triangulating to see like, what is their research going on outside? And then to feed that back into the discussion. And I think for me, uh, and I don't know if this is only for ABM, but this is also like just for sales professionals as a whole to like your question about, about Gary V. My old chairman, uh, I took him out for lunch. We had, we had a, uh, an auction process where you could bid on different things. And one of them was lunch with the chairman and he had turned the company into a billion dollars and he was a prick.

There was like a lot of people who would not, it's not that they wouldn't pay to do it. It's like, they wouldn't accept money to do the lunch. And I was like, no, I want to have lunch with this guy. I want to figure out how he did it. And it was an awkward, like hour and a half. And I, like, I was still pretty young. So I'm sure like, I wish I could redo it now, but there was a couple of gems that he left me with. And for the one, which honestly really changed how I do things, as I said that Russell, all of my money comes from my customers and most of my best ideas do too. And I was like, you just like flipped it. It's like, it's not a one-way discussion. And like, if sales is just thinking like, how can I push this stuff down the pipe as fast as I can?

You are missing out on the biggest thing that's going to turn you into a billion dollar product. It's like, by pulling, like, what are you listening? What are the stories? What is the analogies? What are the pieces that you're going to give of use cases to the next person that you talk to? And I don't, I don't know if tech is going to flip that. I don't. So that's my worry here. Like, when do you think I call it, you know, macro, I call it like catching your sales groove, right? When you wake up one day, it's a little bit easier than it was the day before, that type of thing. And, you know, in, it's when you stop pitching your solutions and having conversations about your solutions. And so when you start caring more about the client needs and you do your commission check, right?

And I think that's the inflection point that you're talking about there. It's like, you kind of wake up one day and you realize it's not about you. It's not about you. Nobody gives a shit about the features and functions of your stupid fucking product. All they care about is how it can solve a problem that they are faced with. And if you turn that mentality on, all of a sudden, oddly enough, your commission checks start going through the roof and all that other stuff. So do you think there's a maturity of a sales rep that they need to get to before they kind of recognize that it's not just about them? It's not just about their numbers? Or do you think that is a inherent personality trait that people come to this profession with or without?

This is the classic John Barrows question. Nature or nurture? Sales version. For me, when I'm interviewing people, I don't have a great answer for that. But I can say that when I'm interviewing for people, what I look for is, are they better in the second interview than in the first interview? Are they better in the third interview than in the second interview? It's not only coachability. It's just like, are they willing to go out and do work? Like, did I tell them something? And then they went out and found out about it. And then they had something more to tell me the next time. Because I think that a lot of sales is like almost too obsessed with closing. And it's a little bit Hollywood's fault.

Like, I'm not going to go down that, that, like that wormhole, but like, it's not all about closing. Like my best customers are the ones who have worked with for 10 years because I call them up and they tell me exactly what I need to know. But like your pricing needs to be here. Like terms is this, like, I think you should pitch on it. Or like, even take a pass. Like, Hey, listen, like, this is not a good thing. Like, it's about to go down. Like, just like spend your time somewhere else. And like, give me a call back in six months. And so that for me, it's a longer process. I don't know. I'm lucky I've been doing it. I feel lucky to be having doing enterprise sales and not do SMB where you're just like, man, we got to pump through these numbers.

And the second piece is curiosity. And, and so how I don't, two things are connected, but like, like, are you interested in people? Like, do you actually care? Are you just here for you? Are you, like, are you actually interested in, in what's going on? And then the third one for me is also like on the grid side, like, have you done telemarketing in the past? Any, any kind of like phone experience with the public, it could even be a customer success role, but like anytime when you've got to pick up the phone a lot, ideally outbound, but even inbound, and you've got to talk to some really not very happy people is a good sign, like testament to success, like will grit to get through it all. You know, see, that's why I, I want to said, and I'm glad you brought that up.

I think I've said it recently again. Um, that people really question the value of cold calling right now. Right. And, and rightfully so, by the way, I don't care what industry you're in and what you sell connect rates are, are through the floor response, you know, just so connect rates, forget about like good results from a cold call, but like just getting somebody on the phone right now is miserable. But I will tell you right now, I genuinely think I don't care how bad cold calling gets from a results standpoint. I think it is an absolutely critical factor in a sales reps long-term success. And I do not believe you can become a great sales rep without going through some fucking pain first of getting 99 out of a hundred people to tell you to fuck off and realizing you got to come back tomorrow and do it again.

Just the grit alone, to your point, proves to me that you, cause you, what you can't hire on, you can't, I mean, well, I'm sorry, what you can't train is grit. You can't train passion. You can't train drive. You can train skills. You can train process. You train feature function, all that shit. You can't train that drive. So I agree with you that you want somebody who is as hungry as you were, for instance, and had to go through a little bit of that pain to get to where they are and has that givers gain mentality of it's not just about me. It's about helping the client. You know, what can I do for you first, as opposed to what, and without any hidden intentions, if you will, because there's so many people that give with the very direct intention of getting something in return.

And if you have that mentality, it's going to be a very frustrating career for you because you're going to be wondering why nobody's ever giving back to you. And the reason is because they saw right through your stupid fucking give in the first place. I mean, to give a perfect example of that on my side, I have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn. I have been posting almost 10 years on LinkedIn and it is a thankless, thankless company. I'm like, really, this is the best that you've got for your content creators. Like after having done this for 10 years, I saw the product. It like didn't change at all. And still, I'm like, I'm just going to put this out. Like, I'm just going to put out like, this is how to do sales in a better way.

This is how to do sales in a way that's not going to destroy your soul. You've got to be tough physically. You have to be doing exercise. You have to be training your body because getting punched, which is like taking a hard nose to the face. You need like some way to burn that energy and not just have it sit with you like personally, because it's hard. And so for me on LinkedIn, I don't know if it was maybe like seven years before I got some inbound leads from LinkedIn, I could still count on like maybe single hand, double digits max of the number of people who were like, "Hey, I saw your LinkedIn post. I'd really like to do business with you." But what I would say is when I do outreach to people, cold, like they go on my LinkedIn profile because I see, I can see them coming and they take the call.

And they're like, this is somebody who's writing about something that I'm interested in. Like, this is somebody who's committed, who knows people in common and like wants to help people. And it's not just here to like blow me off like six months later. And so that I completely agree. Like you have to not take it as a transactional thing and just be like, LinkedIn, you're not here for me. You're not my friend, but like, I'm still here. Both Morgan and I put a cherry on top of that one. Both Morgan and I were one and two, number one influencer and number two influencer on LinkedIn. We profess and we like kind of like, "Hey, you want to do a sponsor thing where maybe we work together? We do great work for sponsors." And we didn't even get a fucking email back.

Like they didn't even like, not even remotely close to being like, "Oh, sure. Because they're like, basically, why should we pay you? You're already doing it for free." I'm like, "God damn it." So anyways, that's enough. If somebody's out there and like, first step, go on LinkedIn, like start, start doing a good job. Like represent yourself, take something that your customer told you, don't attribute it to them, but like paraphrase and be like, "Hey, I heard somebody say this today. That was pretty smart." And like, share that on LinkedIn. Second step, go start a blog, go do some other content creation that is not LinkedIn because you do not own LinkedIn. LinkedIn owes you. And then the third thing is call up John and be like, "Hey, John, I want to coordinate your speakers.

I feel like you could rock this if you had somebody with the speakers. Like, could I make your life easier doing that?" And when I was in college, we organized events. We organized a spring fest. It was awesome. I volunteered to drive to pick up the bands at the airport because you get like 45 minutes with them. You're like, people are going crazy. Like there's like 10,000, like me, I'm chilling in the van. They're like in the back seat. I'm like, "What's up fellas? How are you doing?" And so if I, like you're new in sales, I would call, like find somebody who's doing a podcast that you like the guests and you're like, "Hey, I'd really like to help you do this. Like, can I volunteer?" And do it as a side hustle.

Like don't think about the side hustle from a paying perspective. Think about it from the relationships you're building. And if there was a BDR who could talk to every one of your guests, that BDR would be on fire, like on fire. They were like, "Oh man, I really liked how you handled that." Like, yeah, happy to make that introduction for you. Definitely. Awesome, man. Well, let's finish this up. I do want to wrap up with one super tactical recommendation here. I'm going to give one and then, and let's go, let's go for the reps listening to this because what my suggestion going into a down economy, going into a freak show of who the fuck knows what's going to happen next year. My recommendation is draw, draw your customer, draw the ICP, the details of it.

And then every single vendor that touches that customer that you have a relate, that you have connections to in some way, shape or form, even ones you don't, and then go out and reach out on LinkedIn and find the best rep in your territory who sells into that type of customer and ask them to meet with you on a weekly basis, something like that, just to share insights to share leads, and maybe just maybe even start your own pot or blog or podcast. And the blog could be just very simply an aggregation of sales tips, going back to educating your partners. So you could just basically, Hey, here's like five of my favorite sales tips that came up that I learned about this week, thought you might get some value out of it.

Would you be interested in me sending you a weekly email with those things just to stay top of mind? And you do that. And with the focus on giving more than getting in return, I promise you that'll bear fruit, maybe not in the short term, but long term. So Russell, what's a super tactical thing other than that, that you would suggest the reps do? Oh, man. I mean, I think our chief sales officer, Christian Kinnear, who's kind of like a very folksy sales guy, he said something with Zig Ziglar about stop selling and start helping. And so I completely agree with what you're saying. The things that I would say in terms of adding to that discussion would be like call up a rep and be like, Hey, how are you pitching this?

Like, sometimes I have customers who are deciding on that type of product. And like, I'd like to be able to mention you, like, what is the three points? And like, what is the thing that like a trap setting question that I can set for you? And then tee that up for you. Believe me, salespeople are going to be happy to give you that. And, and then show up at those calls. Exactly. Like with the leads, like, Hey, I got this, this person, like, are you talking to anybody interesting? Like, and I, I mean, I think that's, that's a great move. And really ultimately like move away from rip and replace, which I think is what a lot of people have been focusing on and focus on play nicely with others. And that this temptation of like, everybody's budgets getting cut to think like, ah, I'm going to save you a lot of money by ripping stuff out.

You're making your life really hard. And so just like play nicely with others and like work on your product team. They're like, Hey, we like, we've got these, all of our customers who are using gong. Like, can we get a gong integration work on your marketing team to be like, Hey, I want a gong use case, go to their sales rep and be like, Hey, I've got a use case of our customer who also uses gong. Do you guys want to do a use case on them? Like, maybe you got some marketing resources that I haven't got and just like, be super creative and, and stop selling and start helping. Well, awesome. And so look, I appreciate this, man. Um, what, how can people find out more about you? Where do you want to send people here?

Is it LinkedIn? I'm on LinkedIn after that, after that bomb, uh, I'm on Russell Bradley cook, uh, LinkedIn. Um, I started a, um, sub stack, rbcnyc.substack.com. And John, I hope to see you at inbound. We'll be there 2023. We'll be having the parties. We hosted Trillium this year. We had a banger party at Trillium afterwards. We pinched off of your crowd and had everybody come on over. So we'll probably do the same. And I'll probably be walking around the floor every once in a while. Oh man, you come by, you come by. I'll get you lunch. And look as, and I'm, I'm sorry to say this, but as a, I can't say it, we're making a transition, let's put it back as our friends these days. I'm a long time listener.

First time caller. I really enjoy it. And thank you very much for everything you do, John. It's an awesome show. And I really appreciate it. Appreciate the feedback and appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge here. So look, everybody, thank you all very much for listening. And hopefully you enjoyed it and got you to think a little bit differently, a little bit outside the box on this one. Most sales reps don't think about partnerships and don't really think about this as not just your company's responsibility. It's yours. It's your career. Go for it. All right. So look, like I say, at the end of all my podcasts here, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going, you make somebody smile and you know you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And we'll 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. And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram, hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you. I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses.

I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join. And it includes membership in our on-demand platform with weekly AMAs. So you can go to jbarrows.com/open to check out the details. Thanks again and have a great day.