Ryan Barretto: The Future of Sales and Product Led Growth

All right, you know it and we know it. Next year is creeping up on us fast. Now, if you want to really hit your revenue targets in 2024, you need the tech that puts you in the pilot seat. So collaborate on every inch of the customer journey inside the new HubSpot Sales Hub. With a comprehensive prospecting workspace and powerful sales analytic tools, data is connected across teams so leads never slip through the cracks. HubSpot Sales Hub lets you accelerate every facet of your sales operation with precision. And with over 1400 integrations, there are tons of ways to mix in new features. So finish out Q4 strong and gear up for the new year with HubSpot Sales Hub. Learn more at HubSpot.com slash sales.

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. And boy, do we have a special one for you today. I just had a great conversation with Ryan Barreto. And Ryan is the president of Sprout Social, where he oversees the sales, success, and marketing organizations. And before Sprout, he was the VP of global sales at Pardot, a Salesforce company. And that's where we actually met probably about 15 years ago at this point. He keeps busy watching the Raptors games and working with his daughters too.

We have a lot of connections. He actually has my book, I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up. And at the end of this, he tells me how much his daughters loved it, which warms my heart. So he's just a wealth of information and also just an incredible ethos of a person. And we walked through his origin story about where he got his drive, his work ethic, and his ethos from his parents who were immigrants and how he grew up in Canada and was introduced to sales, you know, kind of like I was. I mean, there was a lot of similarities in our backgrounds as far as how he got into sales. He went into marketing, so did I, and then got into sales. His dad is the one who told him how to get into sales and he should.

And what that did for him from a perspective standpoint and how that made him a better leader, how it made him, you know, his experience in sales gave him a different perspective that allows him to lead organizations now. And so we got into, you know, his experience at Salesforce, what he learned there, and now what he's doing over at Sprout, which is one of the hottest companies out there. And we talked about his guiding principles for high growth, which is really having that sales foundation as a company and really listening to the voice of the customer. And then we got tactical with how to address the shift that we're all seeing in sales with a lot of product-led growth, PLG, and how sales reps need to be mini marketers and also customer success and what that means for the profession.

And also what young sales professionals need to be thinking about and how they evolve because the game's changed, quite frankly. And obviously we delve into AI. His platform is one that I personally use to engage with a lot of the stuff that I put out there and how I engage with everybody who posts on my channels, but they are neck deep in AI. And we talked about the pros and cons of that and how to look at it. So this was just a great conversation with a great individual. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Ryan Barreto. What's going on, my friend? I am so excited for this conversation. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. Great to be here. Yeah, it was good. It was great seeing you at Dreamforce too.

And what you guys are doing is fantastic. And we got so much to talk about. We've known each other for a while. Let's give the audience a little bit of a background though. And not just the work background here for you, Ryan, because I always love to know people's origin stories, like parents, grow up, those types of things. Because it's always interesting to me kind of where the leadership bug hit, where the entrepreneurship bug came from, and the nature and nurture side of the house. So give people a little context of where you're coming from and what you're up to these days. And then we're going to dive into a whole bunch of fun topics here. So yeah, love it. This is full circle. It's been, I think it's got to be like 10, 15 years ago.

Much younger. Yeah. Going back to the origin story. I mean, I think the first thing that I'd highlight is just something that's a core part of my DNA is being a first generation Canadian. So I grew up in Canada, born in Toronto, raised just north of the city. My parents had moved to Canada for a better life originally from Kenya, Africa, East Indian descent, and they moved Canada for a better job, a better opportunity. I didn't really have much of a network, but wanted to build a life there. And I share that because, you know, I think that immigrant work ethic and drive and ambition is a huge part of, of who I am and my personality and my character. It's something that I'm trying to embed in the way that we raise our kids, which is a little bit harder because my experience is gonna be very different from theirs.

Um, but that, that was the starting part for us. And my, my parents just going into what they did, you know, when they moved, um, they, they both really didn't have a plan for Canada. They came for a better life. My dad really wanted to get into technology, but when you move to the country and you don't have a lot of the academic background that they look for in the technical skills and certifications from Canada, it's a lot harder. Um, he was bussing tables when he first started and then he ended up working in the server room of a bank and he stayed at that bank for 35 years, I believe. And so watching him grind for 35 years was pretty amazing. He was, you know, it was back in the day of his first job was working the server room on the night shift, making sure they didn't crash.

Uh, and then carrying the major around, you know, on the evenings and weekends and having a drive an hour, if anything happened to get in. And so you saw that work ethic firsthand. And, you know, he's the, he's the type of person who's very type a and, and driven. It's like, if, if you were coming on with anything less than an a, you better leave, come back with something better. Uh, it was the type of person that was handing me CIO magazine when I was a teenager. Nice. Um, and then my mom was early childhood education. She actually ran a daycare in the house. She's, uh, you know, very empathetic person, someone who's really dialed in on, on, on people and has great, um, emotional intelligence.

And she's the type of person still today. Like she calls me and she doesn't care about work or what I'm doing. She wants to know if I'm happy, if the kids are good, if I'm taking care of myself, that's all she's focused in on. So I feel like the yin and yang of my mom and dad was really important. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it's funny. You have a, it's a very similar back. I mean, I don't have the immigration side of it, but my dad was an engineer and my mom was an artist. So my mom had the emotional connection. My dad was the grinder, you know what I mean? Like super, super smart. Um, but like he was a, an electrical engineer and a PhD, the whole thing. And I had that same experience. Like my mom actually, when I was born, she, uh, quit her job at Wang laboratories, which at the time was like Salesforce, like really, really big.

And, and to, to raise me, but she started a, um, she started a consulting service to help people find jobs. So when I went home from school, like our living room, it was her office and then the TV. So I was, even though I didn't know I had the DNA of entrepreneurship in me, like it, that's where it came from. Cause both of them worked out of the house. Both of them kind of made their own schedules. They both worked really, really, you know, hard, but I just, that was normal to me. Right. So me getting into an office setting was like, actually it didn't feel right out of the gate. And I didn't know why. And it was cause if I really reflect back on it, it's that's, that's the reason. Wow. They're ahead of their time.

That's what it looks like today. Yeah. So I mean, the entrepreneurship wasn't even a thing back then, you know what I mean? Like, it was like, like you were crazy to go off and do your own thing. So it was, it's been cool, but yeah, I love that duality of the, you know, the empathy, right. To give you that human perspective before you get on going, I do want to ask you, cause you brought it up with your daughters. I struggle with the same thing, right? Like we were, we were okay growing up. Like we weren't rich, but we, my parents did okay. But now we're, you know, I'm in a different position than my parents were. And how do you, in the position you're in, right? Obviously IPO, you have a great exit.

You worked at Salesforce and all these different things too. So obviously your lifestyle is a lot different than your parents was and you're, you're growing up. How do you instill a lot of that, that grit and that grind that naturally comes from parents like you had to kind of giving your kids some perspective? Cause that's what I struggle with with my daughter quite a bit. It's like, we go on really nice vacations and, and she doesn't have a real true perspective of like, this isn't how most people go on vacations, right? So what do you do like daily or, or, or how do you approach your kids to make sure that they don't take things for granted and, and they do instill some of those work ethic things that, that you were instilled just because you were around your parents?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I struggle with that. I think about it a ton. Maya, my wife and I talk about it a lot. Um, she, she also, her, her father was from Croatia, moved here when he was, uh, just going in to be a teenager, I believe. And, and so, you know, she had kind of a similar upbringing in the city and around a lot of immigrants and the same sort of thing. And we, we struggle with this and we think about it a lot. Um, I don't know that I have a perfect answer that the things that we have focused in on, um, one is gratitude, spend a lot of time talking about gratitude. We do gratitude exercises every day. Um, that's how we end our day prayers and gratitude, uh, talking about the appreciation of the things that we, we are lucky and fortunate to have, um, work ethic is a huge part of it.

We really spent a lot of time focusing in on the fact that the, the sacrifices that you make along the way. And, and I was actually sharing the story with my daughters yesterday morning. I was taking the school is just, you know, my dad's worked really hard through his career. Um, he started saving money for them for their education fund. And I shared with them yesterday as I was driving to school that grandpa has been doing this for them. And it, it, it was trying to instill with them, like, this is years of work that's gone into putting you in a better spot. And the opportunities that we have today have come from grandpa and the opportunities that will create from you have come from the work that we're doing.

And so trying to do that. And I'll give you one like very tactical thing that I did. I'm, I'm on the board of a, a not-for-profit called rework training at a Chicago and, you know, rework it. Yeah. They do a great job taking people who are, um, typically young professionals that are oftentimes in retail or just haven't had the same opportunity to get into tech. They go through a 10 week training program and then we help them find awesome starting roles. SDRs, usually BDRs in tech. And when we were in Chicago, um, I've taken my daughter a number of times to go speak to the, the candidates at rework training and then they meet on the weekends, right? We're meeting on Saturday in the loop in Chicago.

These are folks who have full-time jobs that are working hard every day and they're going in on Saturdays to create opportunity. And so I used to take my daughter with me and make her sit at the back of the class and she was young and I'm not sure she totally got it, but I would talk to her about the fact that these folks here are grinding to create more opportunity for themselves. And that's what it takes. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving to close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process.

And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. You try and do some of those things, but I mean, I worry about it. Yeah. Same thing. Like I put my daughter into like, she, you know, my wife got her into like modeling and that type of stuff. And no joke, like she's gotten a couple like gigs and she has like 10 grand in the bank. She's 13 years old and she has $10,000 in the bank and literally money she earned.

Like I didn't give her this money. And so now it's like, oh no, you can't have that. She's like, well, I'll just buy it. I'm like, well, oh shit. I'm like, no, I'm like, that's not, yes, you do have the money to do it, but like, come on. So it's, it's a challenge, but I appreciate the whole time. So keep going. So, so you grow up in Canada with immigrant parents and you kind of learn the work ethic there. And then you went to school for marketing, didn't you? I did. I did. Yeah. I ended up, um, you know, I actually, it was one of those things where, uh, my dad was my mentor still has influenced me a ton. I went into business school, came into business school, didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Um, I loved marketing. I love the advertising, the creative side of things. I wasn't quite sure what was next. And so I figured more education was probably a good investment. And my parents were definitely not the type of parents who were cool with me going to take a year backpacking around the world. Like that was not, that was not on the list of things that I could do. But what my hack was, maybe I could go do school somewhere else. There you go. And so I ended up going to Glasgow. I went to Scotland and I did a degree in marketing and really, really enjoyed it. It was an international program, 70 students representing 35 countries. Um, and it was just, it was a great global experience for me to get to spend time with these folks from all over the world.

And, and then I came back, came back to Canada, um, intended to get into marketing. And my dad called me, I had a job lined up with SAP and marketing. Okay. And, um, my dad called me right before I was going to sign the offer. And he said, um, I know you have this job and it pays pretty well. It's like a good starting salary for tech job. SAP is a great company. If I were you, I wouldn't take this job and I would go find a job in sales. No way. And his, and his feedback was, as I look around at all the executives that I work with, all of them have some experience in sales. They have some experience in front of customers. And my belief is if you go and you do this marketing role, you'll never get into sales.

But if you get into sales, you can always go back to marketing. Oh, absolutely. And so, you know, take the advice or not, but that would be my suggestion. And, you know, he, I really obviously respect his opinion and point of view. I kept thinking to myself, why didn't he tell me this before I went and did a master's degree in marketing. Wouldn't it be nice to know, but I took his advice and I turned down the job and I went out and got a sales job that was probably 50% of the money that I would've got at SAP. And, um, that was kind of the starting point of the career. Cause you, you, you either love it or you hate it. And I fell in love with it because I saw that my effort directly translated into my outcomes and my results and my opportunity.

And it felt like the closest thing winning did felt like the closest thing to being in sports. And I played basketball and hockey growing up and felt like I got a little bit of that, that competitive energy and juice, um, and hustle, all those things. So I absolutely fell in love with it. And that's, that's kind of how it all started for me. I love it, man. I, again, similar stories, you know, I went to school for marketing, got my degree in marketing where I got out was like, I don't know if I want to do this. And then I was fortunate that I, I kind of got a job with DeWalt and it was under the positioning of, of, of sales, but it was really more event marketing. So it wasn't like a hardcore sales job, cold calling or anything like that.

I just had to drive around and evangelize the DeWalt power tools, which was pretty cool. And then kind of graduated to, uh, Home Depot where I had to take, you know, it was now it was a little bit more sales cause I had to take that $10,000 order and turn it into a 50 or a hundred thousand dollar order. And then after that I got Xerox and that's where I got punched in the face with real sales. So that's, that's where I got my sales education, but I totally agree with you. I think there was a stat I saw one time that like something like 60, 70% of the global CEOs have sales as a background. Um, cause it gives you that perspective of every role in the organization. Cause we have to figure out how to work with every role within the organization, right?

Finance. We can get commissions and deals done marketing so that we can figure out how the air cover, you know, accountings, you know, all these different roles, but we don't have to be experts. We just need to know how to get along with everybody, which obviously as a president and CEO now, you know, it gives you a lot of, you know, insights if you will, into the business. So where did Salesforce come in? Like what was the decision to go to Salesforce? Yeah. Salesforce was a really lucky thing. So, um, maybe a little bit similar to you. I always had an entrepreneurial bug in me from the time I was young. I mean, I wish I had a modeling gig like your daughter, Greg, I was, I was doing things like, and, and my team knows as I've shared these stories, but, uh, I had a bunch of things that I was trying.

We, we used to run, um, basketball tournaments and try and raise money in basketball tournaments and make money off of, of people signing up. I sold fireworks with my family. I'd smuggle fireworks back. Then I'd break them up and sell them individually. People used to show up at my door buying fireworks. Um, and yes, I did a bunch of that stuff. And, and I always had this entrepreneurial bug and, um, I'd written a business plan when I was in doing my, my master's degree, had this idea of a online travel company specifically catered for, for guys. And it seemed like a great idea at the time. And I had a lot of fun writing it. And then I decided after my first sales job that I was, I was going to go try and do it.

Um, and so I just bootstrapped this thing, taught myself along with a partner, uh, how to build a website, um, went up, built partnerships with some big travel agencies and went out and just started to do it. And it was like everybody who's got a failed business. It was lots of lessons learned along the way. Um, but I, I, after about a year and a half, I'd run through all of my savings. Uh, I really had nothing to show for it other than, you know, some good experience along the way. Hadn't, hadn't taken my now wife out for dinner in probably a year and it was time for a paycheck. And I actually ended up bumping into, uh, a friend, um, Daryl Mason, actually, I think, you know, Daryl, uh, he had just, he actually, he was in the copier game for a while too.

He worked at, um, Pitney Bowes and, uh, and he ended up going from Pitney Bowes to ADP to Salesforce. And he, he said, Hey, listen, this, the Salesforce thing just opened up in Toronto. Um, sounds like they're paying salespeople a lot of money if you can sell. And, um, I had no idea what Salesforce was. I had no idea what CRM was. And I just, it sounded like a good opportunity and paycheck. And he, he was a smart guy and a hustler and he went over there and that was it. I just, I got into the right time. The company at that point was about 800 employees, but a year after going public sub 200 million and they had just opened up the Toronto office. I think I walked in there and they had this huge floor that had seating for a few hundred.

And I think there was 20 or 30 people on there. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's bananas. Right. Cause you, cause again, it was, what year did you start with them? I, I started January 06. 06. Yeah. So I think I started working with Salesforce around like 08 or 09 or something like that. And it was, I remember vividly, it's like when the, the, the market crashed and everything was crap and Basho, my training company kind of went belly up. Me and three other trainers were divvying up the clients. Right. And there was SAP, there was Gartner, there was all these big names on there and there was Salesforce and Salesforce wasn't Salesforce yet. Right. At that time. And I just remember being like, Hmm, that's the one I want.

I'm like, these other ones are dinosaurs. They're all old. They're all boring. That's the one I want. And thankfully I got, I got lucky similar in the kind of hitched myself to that. And then rode that rocket ship right up to the top. So what were some of the things that, I mean, you didn't know anything about Salesforce. Um, you got in there. Benioff obviously has a really good ethos the way he started with his one, one, one and everything else. What were some of your big takeaways from what you learned from that meteor? Like that, that, that ride must've been insane as far as the growth was concerned and everything else. And to control that chaos. Right. I mean, there's stages of business, right?

You go, you know, zero to five, five or 10 million, then 10 to 50 million, then 50 million to whatever, and then go from there. So like, what were some of your big takeaways and like that made you where you are today as a leader that you learned from Salesforce, um, that, you know, other entrepreneurs or people looking for jobs should be kind of keeping an eye out for. Yeah. Um, I was very fortunate early on in the journey to get into leadership and it wasn't something I actually was, I've been looking for, but, um, there was a great leader and a great friend, Mike Wolf, who actually was moving up, got promoted and his role was opening up to lead the emerging small business team. And he, he pushed me to say, Hey, you should do this.

I see these leadership attributes in you. I know you like being an individual contributor. You should go do this. I share that because what that allowed me to do was very early on when the company was tiny, tiny relative to where they are today, I got invited to the management meetings that Mark Benioff was hosting and running. And so, you know, I'm, I'm probably one of the youngest people in the room, you know, that is just getting started in leadership. And I got a chance to sit there and watch him. And, and even up until I left when you'd head to those meetings, what was fascinating to me was just watching how much Mark and the other senior executives ran the meetings and ran the room and drove the agenda, how engaged they were.

And there was so much that I learned along the way. A few things that I'd highlight. One, I think Salesforce did an amazing job of making the customer, the hero. And so much, even if their marketing was the customer story and really putting the customer at the center of their success and focusing in on how they were making those customers, those individuals, not just even the brands they worked for, but those individuals incredibly successful in their roles. Um, that, that was a major thing. And, you know, we think about it a lot as, as we're at Sprout, we talk a lot about this idea of being a joy to do business with, but this customer centricity and focusing on making the customer the center of the business.

Um, I think Salesforce is just an incredible sales machine. Yeah. Just Mark is clearly the best salesperson, but every person coming in was just so driven and ambitious and focused in on excellence. And there was, it was just in the culture. It was in the DNA. You were there to win. Right. And that, that was the expectation. Um, top performance was expected and people were just driven. I just, every day you'd show up to work and you felt like you were surrounded by all these people who wanted to win and, um, it made you better every day. And that, that culture and that energy was infectious. How do you, so that's, it's one of the things I tell sales reps, right? When they're looking for jobs, I say, you know, look for sales leadership.

Like, and I mean that from the top down, CEO down, because there's always been a challenge I've seen with engineering leaders. And I'd love your take on this because a lot of engineering leaders, I wrote a blog post a while ago called the founder's dilemma, which is typically based on engineers, right? An engineer starts a business. And, and even if they're an introvert, right, they, they, I always say that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, right? So if you believe in what you do, then, so they're going to go out and talk to their friends, families, and fools, like a pretty close network about their product. And they're going to talk very passionately about it. They're going to get two or three people to, to probably buy some stuff.

And then they go, oh, this shit's easy, man. Let's, let's hire a VP of sales and let's go. And then that VP of sales doesn't have the passion, doesn't have the structure, doesn't have the insights and inevitably fails miserably. And then the engineer's like, ah, you know, I knew sales was a pain in the ass. Let's go all in on marketing and inbound and that type of thing. And then they reach to a point. So it's almost like the engineer founder, my experience is they almost look at sales as a necessary evil. And when I see that, I get concerned for the organization because I just, if they, if you think the products, what's going to win the day these days, you're out of your mind. So how do you, two sides of this, if you're a sales rep looking for a job, what do you look for in that type of a cultural thing from an outsider's perspective, right?

Cause you can't be in there yet. And then also if you're, if you're an engineering founder right now, how do you alleviate the, the disdain, if you will, that almost some of them are born with when it comes to sales, because the friction has always been pretty strong between the two roles. Yeah. So on the, on the first part, I would definitely, if I was starting, I'd definitely be looking for a place that had a tremendous amount of respect for the, the craft of sales and a tremendous amount of respect for the folks that are driving revenue for the organization, the go-to-market organization. And that's, you know, this combination of sales and success and marketing is this uniform team that's going out and, and bringing the products to the market, helping customers, um, find these products and then become successful, successful on them.

I would look for something where there was a deeper amount of respect for it. And you, to your point, like, I think you can actually see those in the sales leaders and the executives that are part of that team. It becomes pretty clear on how important they view sales and success and marketing to the success of the organization, you can feel it in the DNA. And you know that today, like, even when you look around, you know, that the companies that don't really believe in sales and, you know, oftentimes they're wrapped up in this wrapper of PLG. Um, but even in PLG, we know that the best performing companies have a mix of PLG and a mix of sales led. Right. And, and, and actually when they come together, it becomes really dangerous.

Um, so I think, I think you, that, that is really important on the beginning side from an engineering leadership perspective. It's, it's sort of the same thing that I think you have to have a deep amount of respect for the fact that you're probably spending the majority of your time thinking about how to build. And ideally you're spending a lot of time with customers, really understanding the problems that you're solving and how you can uniquely solve them for your customer better than anybody else. But you also probably need to be self-aware and knowing that you're, while you might be the most passionate about building this and solving the problem, you're going to need a partner and a set of partners who can help go tell your story, who can amplify your voice, who can take all the things that you've done as a founder and enable a army of folks who can support getting your message and your products into the marketplace.

And I feel very fortunate actually Sprout is founded by four folks, um, two engineers, uh, uh, a, a chief creative officer designer background. And then Justin, our CEO is his actually, he started his career in sales. He, uh, he, he's, he's kind of one of those really interesting characters though, because now he came up and he was, uh, coding video games and he was super into tech and he, he's our head of product. So, but he's got a tremendous amount of respect and passion and admiration for sales. Cause he's done it. He's got empathy because he's been in the seat. And so I felt like that was a great starting point. And so when I walked in the door and had a chance to spend time with them, I knew right away that he respected the craft because he's being in my seat.

Yep. That's, it was like, and that's such a refreshing thing to, you know, feel quite frankly. Cause my first job was, was it serve. Like my first company was it services. I was one sales guy within 50 engineers and I, and it was just like, and then I was just, I was trying not to make too many waves or whatever. Um, and I always kind of fit into their, you know, what they were trying to do. Whereas when I went to Basho, I remember the CTO came to me, like the CEO was all sales all the time, but the CTO even came to me and our conversations were sales. And he was like, how, what can I do to support you? And from a sale? And I'm like, wait, what? I'm like, I just, you want to talk to me about how you can help me from a sales standpoint and be, I'm like, and it was like this breath of fresh air that almost everybody started speaking my real language.

You know what I mean? Where I wasn't really speaking the same language as engineers were. I all of a sudden got into this environment. Everybody talks sales all the time. And it was like the, the energy that you could feel in the alignment around that was just something that really woke me up to, to look for that in, in opportunities moving forward. What you said also just, um, rings true for me. And I think it's this, I think it's mutual admiration and respect and also understanding that there's things that I cannot do that people like Justin or Aaron, who's our CTO can. And I'm, I'm in awe of the things that they can do. And I know that I could never do those things. And I, I need them to be able to be the best at what they do for us to be a successful company.

And, and that's reciprocated. And I think that's such an important, important thing for organizations that collective respect and admiration. Quick break here to mention the HubSpot podcast network and promote some of the other fantastic podcasts that are on this network, including the sales evangelist hosted by Donald Kelly. Now, Donald interviews some of the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. Some of the folks these interviewed include Jeffrey Gittermer, Joe Conrath, Guy Kawasaki, and myself. We actually had a really cool conversation recently about the direction where sales is headed. Uh, some of the interesting things that are happening with AI and we got super tactical, but it also got really philosophical as well.

So go listen to sales evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Let's make it happen. Well, let's, let's talk about, you brought up PLG. And so now that you're at Sprout, right? I mean, it's social, I mean, I use Sprout, I love Sprout, you know, it's really made my life really a lot easier to engage. Um, but you know, there's a PLG component to this and, and you do the sales side of it and we're moving. You hear a lot about that PLG, right? And I'm, I'm seeing this trends of sales. I'm wondering where marketing sales and CS kind of, uh, there's a shift here because I feel like sales needs to be a little bit like marketing because they need to do their personal brands and all that other stuff, but they also need to be with PLG stuff.

They need to, I don't want to say be product experts, but they need to at least be able to answer some questions without always having to pull an engineer in and guide the customer through on how to use it and get the most value out of it and then kind of engage and add value through other ways. So where, where does sales fit in, in where we're in, and we'll talk about AI in a second here, but we being a CRO or being president and, and seeing across all the different departments here, how do these all fit together at this point? Because there's always siloed and everybody talks about, you know, marketing is always siloed against sales and then CS is over here. And I, you know, I just did this presentation at Revcon about how we've broken this whole system, this whole predictable revenue mess that we've got in, right?

So where are we now? Let's talk about where are we now as far as the relationship with marketing and sales and CS, as it relates to maybe the PLG shift here and customers first mentality. Yeah. I think not everybody's on the same journey. So I'll give you a very biased perspective on what I see at SPRO, but, but we are seeing a lot of these models in the marketplace today from really hot startups to really, um, strong performing public companies. The way that we've thought about it is that our product is our best salesperson. And in the P the way we think about PLG, we, we talk a lot about getting people's hands on the keyboard. We believe that the, the best way for customers to be able to determine if a company, a product, a technology team is the right fit for them is to actually be able to engage with all of those things before they sign a contract.

And so we've got a trial based model. We want customers to spend time in the product. Um, and, and if I think about how our teams overlap on that, well, one, you have to have a great product. That's actually going to be intuitive and elegant and approachable and have the ability for people to get into it and use it for us inbound is such a big part of that. From a marketing perspective, our marketing team's done a great job with things like SEO and content and creating a lot of awareness and driving demand through trials and demos to get people in the product. And then when you talk about the sales team, the bar has raised in terms of what sales expected is expected to do. You know, in the past, when I was getting started in my career, people often talked about this idea that sales needs to be consultative and it made sense.

I think at this stage, you absolutely need to be consultative from the perspective that you need to understand the business you're selling to as good as they know themselves. You also need to know your products even better than the customer because oftentimes when our team gets engaged with the customer, they're already in Sprout, they're using it. So your baseline information isn't going to be good enough. You need to be an expert in the product. You also need to be an expert in the industry because what you want to bring is insights to these folks on what some of the best companies in the world are doing with social. And that same approach applies into customer success as well. So I think that the bar is just raised in terms of what a sales rep needs to be able to do to really engage with the customer today.

So where does that leave? And I think that for like you, me, people who've been in the industry for 20 years and especially ideally in a role or at least in a specific industry selling a type of solution that's similar right across the board. I think that's, we've earned it, right? And we know it. Like you and I can have this conversation. You've been doing it for a while. You can tell me the details and the nuances. Where does that leave the younger generation? Because I'm really, I think the predictable revenue model right now is broken and I think it always has. It's never been customer-centric, right? I mean, it made sense for us as organizations to grow because we could take cheap labor effectively, bring them in, beat them up, turn them into AEs.

And if they stayed in that role forever or for five, six, seven years, you got your ROI out of it and the segmentation of roles. But now I'm seeing a shift back to full cycle sales. A lot of people are reassessing their SDR and BDR organizations right now as far as the value is concerned. And that means, okay, I like back to full cycle sales, being empowered by tools like Sprout and being, you know, hey, John, intent data and all these different things, go talk to these people. Where does that leave the younger generation of sales as far as an entree into this, right? Because they're not going to have the business acumen at 22 years old. They're not going to have the product knowledge at 22 years old.

So if you skip ahead and say, yeah, 30 year old and plus, and they've been in the industry, I'm there. But what does this mean for the younger generation? Mm-hmm. So I actually think that there becomes a much larger onus on sales enablement and sales enablement teams and coaching from a leadership perspective. I think there's a bigger onus on young folks getting in to their first roles to know that they actually need to be at a different spot to be able to excel in this world. And so if I think about myself and some of the folks I spent time with investing in those SDRs, thinking about how to help them really understand the products quickly, how to make sure that you're enabling them to give them some of that business acumen that they don't necessarily have from experience yet.

And so some of it's going to be theoretical until they get enough cycles under their belt where, you know, spoken to a lot of people who are in social media management or spoken to a lot of marketing leaders. But at the beginning, it's a lot of, how do we, you know, how do we get you in things like gong or other call recording tools so you can start to learn quickly? You're watching game film. How do we make sure that we're giving you a lot of at-bats and getting you a chance to get in front of these customers? So I think the bar is just raised, but there's still opportunity for these folks. But companies are going to need to invest a lot more in coaching and sales enablement. And young folks have a higher bar in terms of being effective as they jump in.

So how's the profile changed for you? Like, I mean, you've obviously hired a ton of people over your career, like, you know, in the different roles, or at least been part of the hiring process to a lot of people. How, what is the profile of a rep different now than it was five or six years ago, as far as what you look for in a sales professional? I think we've weighted things a little bit differently now today than what we did before. One of the biggest things that I care about is curiosity. And I call it a FOMO for learning, but I want someone who's just so curious and self-aware that they don't know all the answers and are willing to do the work to go get them. And those folks I find are, are, have the shortest ramp times because they're out there.

They're, they're listening to more gone calls than anybody else. They're making more attempts to get on the phone with customers. They're testing things out in their messaging. They're relentless in, in both their learning and their effort. That, that for me are, are two things that, that really stand out more than anything else. I think in the past, you used to look for people with presence and maybe a little bravado and the, you know, the ability that, that they could come in and do the job. I think that's less important than someone who's truly curious and really wants to understand both the customer and wants to learn the space, the industry, the technology. Can you coach, um, curiosity or do you think that's a natural, is that a nature or a nature thing?

I, I think you can coach curiosity. I mean, I think what you, uh, I think what you can't coach is someone's ambition and drive. I think that they, they either have it or they don't. And if they have an ambition and drive, I think you can guide them to share with them that the approaches that they're taking in wanting to speak more or present more versus listening and just doing discovery and digging in need to evolve for them to be successful. And I think if you have the, the type of people who are willing to put in the work and the effort, um, you can, you can teach them a better way to do it. And I think curiosity aligns with that. Yeah. I agree. I, I, I've always said, I think you, you kind of naturally born curious or you're not, but I think we can enable curiosity by kind of leading them down a path.

And I always say like, you know, the preparation actually creates curiosity. So if you do a decent amount of prep for a meeting, for instance, and you just do enough where you're looking at the website, you're doing some research, you're looking at somebody's profile. Well, now you can, you can ask those second, third layer questions as opposed to just being lazy and be like, tell me about your business. Tell me how you got to where you are and everything. And, and I think that if you catch that bug of, to your point, like I want to know more, right? How do you identify that though in the, in the interview process, right? Because there's a lot of professional interviews out there, man, that, that no curiosity is good.

And I can tell you how how curious I am, but is there a way that you, is there something you look for or examples that you asked that of people to really uncover? Like, ah, yep. That person's curious. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's the obvious ones in the interview and just how many questions are they asking you about you, your business, your market, other AEs, the process, your customer base. I actually think that the, um, the one that's harder to fake is when you give people homework assignments, right? When you ask them to go back and work on something and then you, you get an understanding of what, and then this ties to work ethic and curiosity. How much effort will they put into doing it?

How deep will they go? How well will they, uh, how well will they understand a specific topic and come back to you? We'll tell you a lot about, are they really curious that like, was there an intensity around them wanting to understand something? Um, so, and I do this even with an executive interviews. Oftentimes, you know, I'll, I'll tell them I'm, I'm dealing with a problem and I'm really interested to see what kind of questions they ask and what they want to know before they start telling me how to solve it. Um, did they spend a lot of time and energy trying to understand it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like, you know, sales, right? I mean, that's why the interview process reflects the sales process, right?

If you're going to, if you're not going to be curious during the interview process, you're not going to be curious in the sales process. And therefore I don't want you on my team. Let's talk about the AI factor here, right? Because obviously what happened in Q1 and with the release of chat GPT kind of threw a bomb into this whole process, right? I think we were in some trouble anyways with the economy and all that other stuff and things were kind of shifting. You know, I I've said that the past 10 years in sales has been like the golden age of sales because we've been able to get away with just basically blasting out template emails, making generic cold calls, you know, bank questions, droning through demos and offering discounts.

And now that sales is hard, there's, you know, we got to get back to some basics and some fundamentals, but you throw AI on top of this and it's a, it's a bit of a mess. And I'm, I'm really, like I said earlier, a little bit concerned on the profession of sales because it feels like, you know, there's this over automation process and the soul of sales is, is getting ripped out, right? Because everybody's looking for the easy button. Everybody's looking for, you know, you know, how fast can I do something without having to put in the effort? And they're not using it the right, in my opinion, the right way. So with what Sprout's doing, I mean, you guys have integrated into your platform. You're using it day to day.

What's the line and what's your philosophy on AI and how it should be used versus, you know, some areas where you think it's, it's, you should not use it in that direction. I'm curious from your perspective, what you're seeing. I'll start maybe with a product perspective and then maybe we can dive into some of the sales perspective as well. I mean, I'm fascinated by AI. I'm, I'm personally using it, um, in my own work, both Bard and ChatGPT. Um, I'm, I'm really interested to see how the software that we use every day is going to continue to evolve and add value from a Sprout perspective. The way we thought about it is we want this to be something that makes our customers smarter, faster, and more knowledgeable.

And it's still, especially in social, it's still matters that you're authentic. Whenever we do our Sprout social index and we look for feedback from customers, when they are talking about the brands that they interact with, one of the things that always ends up the highest on the list is authenticity. And so for us, it's, it's, you know, if I think about it from a customer success perspective, I want to make sure that we can help agents figure out who they're talking to faster. We want to make sure that we're giving them a head start in the type of content that they should be sharing. But we also want to make sure that they own the personalization of the message that actually goes out to that customer.

Um, same thing from a marketing perspective, you know, there's a lot out there around the value of content creation. Well, we hope that this is going to help you figure out the types of content that your audience wants to hear faster. Um, the types of things that will add more value, but also it needs to be in your authentic boy voice as a brand. Right. And so if everything sounds the same, it's not authentic and it's, it's not really going to differentiate your brand and it's not going to land with your, your customers. And then the last piece I'll just highlight that I get really excited about from a product perspective is, you know, we've got trillions of data points that exist on social and what we've seen from, from a customer perspective is the most challenging thing is there's so much data.

I don't even know what to ask of the data, let alone what to do with the answers. And so we're going to constantly be looking for ways to make it much easier for the questions to, to, um, be prompted for you and for us to be able to help with the analysis of that data so that you can get to insights quicker so that you can take action faster. And so I think that's just a huge unlock for any organization that has large amounts of data where insights are hidden and you, you may not have the, the skillset or the, the time to be able to get at it. But if you did, you could unlock really big upside. And now this might be asking, uh, a little bit behind the curtains here, but, um, do you like sprout, do you have your own LLM?

Do you have your own vector? Like those, like, or are you using some of the, cause I think that's the big challenge for a lot of organizations right now. The reason most big companies are not adopting AI is because the risk factor and it's not their data and they don't want to tie into their data because it's a public thing and where they, if they have their own LLM, they can unlock that and have it actually give them insights into their data. So how is sprout approaching that from a public and a private standpoint? Yeah, it's, it's kind of a combo. So, I mean, we've been, and this is, this is also the funny thing where AI has been around for a long time. I know it became in vogue this year, but we, we have been doing this for a while.

I think about our viral post technology. It's existed for years and it's specific to the brand that we're working with, where it will know based on your past posts, what is the best time for you to post for your audience? That's specific to your data. It's not just combing everybody's data. It's about your brand and when your audience is paying attention. And so we've got this combination of our own data that we're leveraging that's specific to sprout into the brands. And then we've got a partnership with open AI that can take advantage of some of the other things. So, but both are being contemplated, but I think at the end of the day where the differentiation is going to happen is one that the unique data sets that you have, and then being able to curate them for the specific brands so that they can, they can speak in their own voice and leverage their own data to make better decisions.

And then the way that this is all wrapped around your process and the way that you work, right? This, in a future state, all of this should just work without you even know, knowing that you're using AI just makes you smarter, faster, better at your job. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I mean, the possibilities are mind blowing to me, but it's the automation that scares me, right? Yeah. I mean, we were talking before we kicked this off, you know, about how I did that post and I saw like five comments on LinkedIn that were very similar and it was obvious that they were AI generated and they were auto comment. And I, and I said, look, this is actually going to ruin LinkedIn because authenticity to your point, I always say that, you know, people say people buy from people they trust.

I actually disagree with that. I'm sorry. People buy from people they like. I disagree with that. I, I agree that they, they buy from people they trust. And so the point of engaging on social is that authenticity, is that connection, is that trust that this is a human making a comment that is meaningful and thoughtful versus, you know, in-mail, whatever, that's been ruined a long time ago. Nobody cares about that. But, but the, but the actual post, if you're automating that now, and if I get a, even if I get a whiff, I mean, what was really interesting to me, if you look at that post, there was a bunch of people kind of joking around, blah, blah, you know, haha. But I also noticed that the AI bot were commenting on the post that I started ranting about AI on and P and then I would call them out.

I'm like, stop using the AI bot to auto comment here. And they would give, oh, that wasn't AI. I was just joking. I'm like, now, guess what? I don't believe you. You could literally say whatever you want. You could put your picture in there and say, it's me. I'm a human being. I'm not going to believe that your original post. And if I don't believe your original post was authentic, then that email that you send me, I'm not going to believe that was an actual person. And that phone call that I get now with air AI now making AI phone calls for crying out loud and sounding like humans, I'm not even going to believe that. Yep. So, I'm nervous. I'm excited about AI, obviously. I'm all in on it. But I'm also nervous that too many reps are going to try to use the easy button here.

So, how are you as a leader coaching your, I mean, let's take Sprout's technology out of the equation here right now. And you're in a company that doesn't have a ton of AI, but you know AI is out there. How are you working with your team to learn how to use AI the right way with some of these tools? What would be an approach that you would use that don't have Sprout, don't have that integrated into your system? Yeah. I mean, I will say, like everybody, we're probably still learning and refining. My advice to the teams today is there's fantastic benefit in research, in speeding up the amount of research that you can do about an organization. I love using, especially now because the data sets are being updated in something like ChatGPT and Bards got it in there.

But I love doing research on executives before I get on a call with them. I love being able to rip through annual reports or past posts or press releases, or even to get a better understanding of what it is that they do, leveraging AI. And that allows me to cultivate a much more powerful message. I'm not asking it to write my email or the conversation. I'm asking it to help me understand more about this person and this company. And for me to then use that to come up with a better point of view around how I can add value. And so for our team right now, that's a lot of the advice that I'm giving in terms of the uses that I want to see is I want to see us leveraging it to get faster and deeper on the research that we're doing with companies and to give us a better point of view around how we can help them.

I think that's where it is. Because as you know, everybody's rushing towards automating the outbound process and these emails and this cadence tools. And I think the cadence stuff is, you know, it's the same thing. I look at these cadence tools and they're great if used the right way. But if they're used as spam engines, then what's the point, right? It's just like Pardot, Marquette, you know what I mean? Pick one of those. It's the same thing as sales loft or outreach if you use it that way. It's the same thing with this AI. It's like it is, if you use it to stoke your curiosity and as a learning mechanism to expedite that, fantastic. But if you're looking for it to actually write the email, write the post, write the thing, like, what are you doing?

Because I don't need you if you figure that. But like, say you figure it out. Say you figure out the perfect cadence that just automatically goes, well, then I don't need to pay you $150,000 to push that button anymore. You got a team of sales bots. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I'll give you one other example. So one of the things where I do want a team to invest more time is if we can now do faster research on these companies, understand their products, services, business models, individuals better, faster, it gives us more time to actually go in and find better insights. And so for us, one of the best prospecting tools we have is using our own social listening. And so one of my asks for the team is when we're reaching out to executives, we have the power of social listening in our back pocket.

So how can you surface an insight that that executive does not have about their own business, their industry, their competitor? And because we know their business from the research that we did, we know the hot buttons. And now all of a sudden, if I can show you a listening report that shows you, hey, did you know that the sentiment within your brand has changed the last 30 days? And it's specifically around this topic. And here's, by the way, 10 posts that came up that you were not at mentioned in, but it did mention your company. So you don't even know that these things happened. How can we help you transform the way that you're being viewed in the marketplace? And so that's the area where you can't fake that.

That can't be done by AI. It requires expertise and insight from a salesperson. And by the way, when you do that, and you know this from being on the other side, that's when you get attention. That's when people feel like this is someone who actually knows my business and can actually teach me something I didn't know or out of value that I didn't have before. And so that's where I really want to see our team spending time. Love it. And I think that's where the getting that perspective, I'm actually doing a workshop tomorrow with Doug Landis on his perspective. So he calls it hypothesis selling, right? So his whole thesis is traditional discovery is dead. If you're not coming with a perspective or a point of view, I'm not going to listen to you.

You asking me a litany of just qualification questions and then positioning whatever your solution is. But if you're not bringing insight to the table for me, especially if I'm an executive, then I have no interest in having a conversation with you. So I love that, man. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. And Doug's cool anyways. Right. So, um, but let's talk about that. Let's finish up with what are you, what's, what are you most excited about with Sprout? Um, because you guys are, you, you've, you know, I've followed you for a while, man. And, and your ethos is fantastic. The culture is great. You know, I remember coming back in there, um, you know, and doing that training in Chicago in the, in the auditorium with the crew.

Right. And, um, and now using Sprout, right. So I genuinely made my life a lot easier and allowed me to be more genuine and interactive with my audience. And you, you know, a couple of acquisitions coming up here, you know, that you've had recently too. So I guess for you as in the position that you're in right now, what excites you most about the next 12 to 24 months at Sprout specifically? Uh, there's a few things. One, I would say our, our partnership with Salesforce has been something that's been incredibly exciting. Um, we're closing in now on almost two years. I think this partnership has come by fast. Um, but specifically around the work that we're doing to help Salesforce customers have the full 360 view.

And so with social now embedded in things like the service cloud and the service cloud console, it gives companies a true ability to, to manage omni channel, including social. So we're really stoked about the work there. And we're just seeing so many more consumers, customers going to social as the first place that they interact with the brand. They're not picking up the one 800 or emailing at they're going to social because it's the fastest place to get a response. And, uh, for brands, it's either a huge risk or a huge competitive advantage. And so we want to help brands be even faster, even more knowledgeable, even more helpful to their customers. So that, that partnership that we've had with Salesforce and the work that we're doing with Salesforce customers has been incredible.

Um, we talked a little bit about social listening, but we still see this massive opportunity to make sure that these trillions of data points that are on social, which we, we think about not just being the voice of the customer, but the voice of culture need to be sitting alongside of the rest of the data that you're utilizing to make business decisions. And so we want to make sure that we're making it even easier for companies to be able to get at the data and leverage it to make decisions on how they want to market, how they want to differentiate, what markets they want to go into, how they might want to evolve their own products or services. And the answer is exist in social. Most companies aren't using that data.

Uh, and then the last piece is we acquired an influencer marketing company in August, uh, called Tiger media. And we just, for the last probably year plus have been seeing so many of our customers trying to figure out how to understand, build a strategy around, and then, um, really capture the value of influencer marketing. And that's an area that we think that there's just so much upside to help brands on how to discover who the right influencers are. And I'm not talking about just celebrities, but micro influencers and people who have really authentic followings where they have great overlap with your brand and thinking about how those folks can make a bigger impact on you, amplifying your, your voice and, and sharing more about the work that you're doing.

Um, and so that's, that's the next piece that's going to be really exciting and rounding it, the suite of products that we have. Very cool. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm constantly impressed with the pushing the envelope and I think it's, it's just cool to be in the space of, you know, listening to all this data and, you know, helping people make decisions on this data. Cause I think that was the problem with BI a while back, right? It's like, okay, you're going to put this, this, this business and tell it, you know, on this data set and it's going to help you ask, answer questions that you didn't even know you had, but it really didn't. Right. AI is actually, you can now interact with it like a normal human being and ask it real questions and, and get real answers.

So I'm, I'm, I love it. So. Cool, man. Well, look, uh, tell people, I mean, again, I think you and I could talk sales all day long about a million different topics here. So, um, talk to people about where, you know, where they can find out more information about you is about hiring. Like, where do you want to point people in what direction? Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. We, we are definitely hiring, um, across pretty much all roles, especially in sales. So we're looking for great folks for closing out on key four here, and they're going to be hiring folks as we end the year and ramp up for a massive 2024. And you can, you can find me on LinkedIn. Yeah. Easy enough. Right. And for those of you listening, I'll put in the show notes, but it's Ryan, uh, Barretto, B-A-R-R-E-T-T-O.

So look them up on, it's not going to be hard to find, but, uh, just to make sure that people do. So, uh, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on, man. It's been great catching up and I, and I genuinely appreciate the partnership, man. It's been a fun ride. Always, always great spending time with you. Thank you. Likewise. All right, everybody, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did here. And like I always 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, 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'll see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website, jbarrows.com, where you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content, and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are. And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology.

So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.