Scott Barker: Adapting to the Changing Sales Landscape

Now, before we dive into the conversation, I have a special announcement to make. The Make It Happen Monday podcast is now part of the HubSpot podcast network. I couldn't be more excited to be on this network with such an incredible group of podcasters who I can't wait to collaborate with. And to get things started, my good friends Scott Lees and Richard Harris' Surf and Sales podcast is one of my absolute favorites. You have to check them out. Scott and Richard are about as authentic as it gets, and so are their conversations. They talk about all sorts of topics related to sales and give super actionable insights that you can usually apply immediately to your day-to-day role. One of the most recent episodes they talked about was negotiating severance as part of your hiring process.

Yeah, you heard it right. Preemptively addressing the potential of you getting laid off when you're in the interview process. Now, not a lot of people might have the guts to do this, but Scott and Richard give their insights and ways to approach this that could give you the confidence to add this to your story and might even give you a leg up in the interview process if you do it right. So make sure you listen to the Surf and Sales wherever you get your own podcast. Now, let's get into our conversation here on Make It Happen Mondays. 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 this conversation is with my good friend, Scott Parker. This was an easy conversation to have. Scott and I go back a little ways where I used to work at Sales Hacker, which is a community that provides a lot of great content to sales professionals. And then they got bought by Outreach and competed a little bit because Outreach and Sales Loft, I was kind of tied to Sales Loft. He was kind of tied to Outreach in more ways than one. And so we were frenemies in some ways, but always had a very mutual respect for each other. And now he is a partner at the GTM Fund, which I am actually an LP of. And he gets to see all sorts of small early stage companies and investors and really what it takes to be successful in today's market.

And that's what we drove into right now, which is his background in sales and how he got to where he is today and how he really focused on creativity and connectivity throughout his entire career. And we talked a lot about how the fear right now in the SaaS industry and how we've lost a lot of the fundamentals related to sales specifically. And I think we've gotten a little ahead of ourselves with all this technology and throwing money at problems and how this down economy, it's showing its ugly head. And so we talked about where things are going, a lot of what it takes to be successful in today's world and how to really focus on the science of sales versus the art and how your network is absolutely everything and playing the long game means so much more than people realize.

So I hope you got a lot of value out of this conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it and get you to think a little bit differently about what you need to do moving forward here to be successful. So I hope you enjoy the conversation and let's make it happen. Scott Barker, welcome back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How have you been? John Barrows. I'm good, my friend. It is a beautiful sunny day in Vancouver. It was a beautiful weekend. It's starting to feel like spring. So there you go. Vibes are good. Lots going on in the world, but my personal vibes are pretty good right now. Yeah, I'm right there with you. But weather here in Boston, we're about 50 degrees here. So, you know, sunny too.

So we're kind of in the same wavelength as you guys are. The problem is, is this is the time of year where everybody gets a little overexcited when it turns to like 60, 70 degrees and everybody goes out without their shirts on. They're like, ah, it's incredible. And then tomorrow it'll be negative 10 or something stupid. Like March is the worst as far as Boston is concerned. Totally. Just gets you excited and then absolutely crushes your dreams. All right. Well, we already probably made the biggest faux pas in podcast history. We started with the weather. So let's fucking get into it. Look, Scott, you and I have known each other for quite some time now, but in the audience, most of the audience should know you.

But let's back up because I think we got a lot to talk about here as far as the evolution and where things are going and where you are right now. But walk me through your background and specifically going from a BDR to now a partner at a VC fund in less than a decade. Walk us through that. And then we'll kind of talk about today's state and what you're seeing out there with all these VCs you work or with all these portfolios that you're working with. Cool, man. Yeah. Well, thanks again for having me and have appreciated your friendship and mentorship throughout the years. What I've always loved about you is you're the same person and you treated me the same way when I was like a BDR way back in the day as you do now, which is a very cool thing.

And I think a lot of people that get any sort of success in their life, that's something that they remember is how people treated them when they didn't have to treat them with the same level of respect, I guess. But I appreciate that, man. Yeah. You've always been somebody that I've aligned with for, you know, even though I think, you know, there was a competitive component to it a little while ago and everything else. But I, you know, I'm always playing the long game here. And, you know, it's always been the, you know, you treat people like the way you want to be treated. And, you know, I know there's plenty of people in my career who, you know, when I was coming up, you know, gave me a chance or at least gave me a conversation that I wasn't expecting and genuinely appreciate it.

So I always try to pay that forward. And I appreciate your support along the way as well, my friend. Hell yeah. Yeah. I look at some of the, funnily enough, some of the best business relationships I've ever had, or just like even relationships have started with like some sort of competitive element. You know, our platform director, Paul, who now works with us in the fund, it's like my rugby rival back in the day. You know, we had the whole outreach sales loft thing going on. I was talking to Udi, the former CMO of Gong last week in SF, and, you know, we had some competitive elements and if you can compete with someone and go all out and do it with like integrity, there's a lot of respect that's found that way.

No question. Yeah, man. So my background, you know, BDR to partner at that GTM fund, yeah, it's crazy that that was under a decade. I'll try and go pretty quick. But I think when I do look back and I try and dissect my story from time to time as I grow and learn new things as a person, it's fun to look back at your story and try and pull some of the red threads and make more sense of it. I think as we get older, kind of the past starts making more sense. And what really helped me through my career was kind of two things, and we'll probably talk about them a little bit later, but it was creativity and connectivity. Those were like the big, big, big red threads. And I think most people, when you think about sales, creativity isn't the first word that comes to mind.

Maybe hustle, maybe grit, maybe, you know, being outgoing, you know, able to talk the talk. But for me, it's always been a super creative endeavor. And what I loved about it was that everything was based and I was judged on the outcomes that I drove and how you got there was up to you. And so for me, that left a lot of time for creativity and kind of playing around with things. And so I'll fast forward to, or no, sorry, fly backwards to, you know, Scott at 19, who deferred going to college. And my first job was selling golf and spa packages door to door in Vancouver, Canada, ended up becoming the number one rep over a summer. And they were like, listen, we're opening an office in Australia. Do you want to come down and be a sales trainer?

I was like, 19, I played rugby. I had just played a rugby tour in Australia the year before and manifested this shit big time. Because all I wanted to do was go to Australia and play more rugby. And so I was like, hell yeah, my parents were not happy with me, but I did it and had a ton of fun. Got to like train and manage a bunch of people at a super young age. But going back to the creativity thing, I'm not trying to highlight different points of just thinking differently through different chapters of my career was that piece was they would actually drive us to a residential location, drop us off and go knock on a hundred doors. And like I did that for a while and was doing like, okay. And then, you know, I remember one night I was like, okay, golf and spa packages.

We had some restaurant ones. I was like, everyone who seems to be buying from me is like a business person. They're answering the door in like a suit or they're heading out to work or something. What happens if I snuck into like office towers instead? And instead of knocking on a bunch of doors, I could walk into an office and see if I could pitch like a whole 40 person company. So that's what I did. And, you know, just by number of baths, like I just started smoking everyone because I could do one pitch in front of 40 people, hopefully went over the receptionist, it would do it as like an office thing. And so it just thought a little bit differently. You know, after that came back, went back to university for a bit.

I actually ended up dropping out. I'm a college dropout. I kind of had seen the behind the curtain a little bit, it felt like, and I was sitting in like a macroeconomics class and this teacher hadn't started a business or been a part of a business and it really didn't make sense to me. And I was fortunate that I grew up in a time where the internet was a thing and YouTube was a thing and everything I wanted to learn, I could learn quite quickly. So I actually started a company after I dropped out. It was called Dorm VIP. Most people don't know about this chapter in my life, but it was a laundry subscription and snack service that we did just for college kids. So basically no one liked doing laundry that I knew that was going to college.

We would pick it up on a Saturday, drop it off to you on a Sunday and give you like Gatorade and snacks for your inevitable hangover. Perfect. So it was, it was a lot of fun to build. I love the sales and marketing side of it. We kind of turned each other, my partner and I into laundry men. We didn't think it out. So we ended up selling different parts of that business after about a year and a half. Had fun, created a few viral, funny videos. I then went and kind of was a bit lost. Started like bartending, doing some construction, trying to figure it out. Landed an inside sales role at a travel company. And because I had just lived in Australia, one of the things I did was I tossed out the script and just told people my story and my experience.

And so I approached it a little bit differently, became the number one rep, became a manager really quick. By the time I left, I was the GM of all of Canada, which was pretty cool. Again, I'm only 23, 24 at this time. And then that's actually when I got into tech. So I thought I was going to get like a director of sales position or something, you know, had never used Salesforce or anything, but I was like managing 15 people, like doing the P&L and Excel and all this stuff. Got laughed out of the door of most of my interviews. Someone said, hey, listen, I'll give you a shot as a BDR. And I took it, huge pay cut, but I was like, tech seems to be the way. And again, I actually became the number one BDR in my first month.

And that was due to thinking differently again. You know, we had these somewhat arbitrary lists that we would get. It was a payment processing fintech company. And then they'd like, oh, we're going after dentists today, or we're going after construction companies this week. Or, and like, there was no rhyme or reason why we would do it. So what I did on my third day was think about, okay, who needs payment processing? Well, new companies need payment processing. They need to set it up. Okay. There, where do I find lists of new companies? Type in new companies, Vancouver. There's a business registry that comes out every month. And there was about 40 people on there. And I would just call that list.

And instead of doing a hundred calls a day, I would do like 40 in a week, hyper-targeted. And I could convert like 25% of them. And so that allowed me, you know, some success. I ended up getting promoted quickly into like a partnership development role, which was super fun and then got a chance to go build up my own program at a company called Media Valet, built out my whole team process. And that was just, the reason we had so much success there was just, I was a super early adopter of sales tech. Sales tech was having this wave. I bought it out of my own pocket. And I always looked at my business unit as my own business, right? And so I'd be like, okay, my bonus is 20K. Who cares if I spend 5K of that on sales tools?

I'm still, I'm still net up. Why not? And then, you know, over time got to build a business case and offset that cost of the business, but had a really fun run there. Had no interest in leaving. Thought I would become director, then VP there. But then started doing more stuff online, sharing my knowledge, my experience. I'd always followed Sales Hacker. And then so Max Altzler made this link, infamous LinkedIn post that 400 people ended up applying to. And somehow I tumbled out the other sides and was able to be a big part in growing, growing Sales Hacker and ultimately getting acquired by outreach. And spent the last four years helping build outreach. Got to create my own role, build a lot of programs that were like organization-wide.

We had a strategic engagement program that helped us break into and win some of our largest accounts. And then, you know, spun out in January of 21, we started building GTM Fund on the side while we were still at outreach. You know, our thesis was, hey, we know some of the best C-suite operators in the world. What happens if we get some of them together? We approach VC from a first principle standpoint and we go find some badass founders and tell them all the mistakes we made. Give them all the playbooks. Help them get their first customers. Help them with strategy, hiring, everything. And we should be able to not only have good access to deals, but have a really positive impact on the chance of their success because we can help them with execution and distribution.

And so, yeah, have been full-time on the fund now for, I think it's been nine months. We're on our second fund and it's just been going incredibly well and we're fortunate to be where we're at. But that was kind of long-winded, but that's the story, man. It's a great story. And we can unpack pieces of this because there's a couple of pieces I'm curious about and I think it'll translate to our conversation about kind of the fundamentals piece. A lot of what you did was kind of, it sounds like it was pretty intuitive on your end, right? Like you were like, something's not right about this. Let me try something different. But there are some fundamentals, right, from a sales perspective that you picked up along the way.

And I'm curious from your standpoint, like, was it purely school of hard knocks on your part as far as trial and error? Was it, did you, was there certain trainings that you took that really gave you, were there certain mentors that, that really guided you from a sales perspective, right? I'm obviously it's a combination of all of them, but where do you think that the majority of your foundation was built to be successful in sales? Yeah. The first thing is nothing replaces at bat. So my first two roles, the knocking on doors and the inside sales role. So the, when I was knocking on doors, I did that job for like a year and a half and it was literally knocking on a hundred doors or having like a hundred conversations a day.

Yeah. And the breadth of people I would talk to, some were businessmen, some were restaurant owners, some were, you know, construction workers. There were just like so many different people. And this is true. I wish I could find it. But when I was in Australia, I had all these conversations and I started sort of like bucketing people. I think there was 57 different archetypes that I wrote down and I wrote this down. And every time I would interact with like a, a net new person that didn't fit one of these buckets, I would write it down and be like, here's how they respond. Here's kind of their like energy, like, you know, don't come in super hot because they like to take the lead. Um, and so I was pretty, I would pay attention to that stuff.

Um, and so a little more like analytical, uh, than, than most, just cause people kind of fascinated me. Um, and I capped out at 57. I don't know. I should pull it up and see if it's still relevant to me. There's only 57 people in the world. Um, but, uh, yeah. And so at bats, and then again, you know, talking to so many people on the phone and that inside sales role that you just start, you start learning what people respond to and what they don't. And you learn the power of storytelling and that people just want to be understood. Um, and in order to understand people, you need to be an expert. And so you need to do your homework. Um, and so I guess I kind of like learned it intuitively. And then the next stage was testing if other people were having a similar experience.

So that's when I read all of the books and I listened to all the webinars and all of the podcasts to try and like codify some of these things that kind of had come intuitively from just sheer volume. Um, and so, you know, sales acceleration formula by Mark Roberge had a big impact. It was like, wow, like you can think of sales like an engineer does. That's cool. That's cool. Um, sales development playbook by Trish Bertuzzi had a big impact on me. Um, I consumed everything truly on sales hacker. Like I would just read it all. Um, and yeah, I didn't have too much. I'm trying to think. Not a ton of like formal, uh, training. Um, I was fortunate. I've, I've always listened to the best reps. That was one of the things I've always done wherever I've been.

I've made sure I've sat beside like the number one rep and bottom lunch, bottom dinner or her dinner, um, and listen to their calls. Uh, a lot of it was by kind of osmosis. That second role I had at that fintech company was working directly under the VP of sales. And I would like, even if I was involved in the call, I'd be like, Hey, can I just like jump in the boardroom with you and, and listen. So I was able to like up-level my conversation. So like an executive level conversation super quickly. And that was just like tone and, and how they presented themselves and like making sure you coming across as like an equal and you're not. Yeah. I don't know. I, I, I, I remember the moment when I could, I switched from just like speaking to get to an outcome to pausing and I'm pausing on this conversation all the time and thinking in real time and processing the, the information that's coming to me, having a second to think about it and then saying what I'm going to say.

And that was a, that was a big, a big change for me. Those, those are different ways of communicating. No question. Thinking about what you're going to say. Well, especially if you're an A type personality, right. Where you're just like, ah, you know, uh, we just want to answer the question. And it's funny because when you learn to pause, you realize that half the time, whatever they said is not exactly what they said. So to clarify it and get them to, you know, really codify exactly what they meant or what the objection was. Nine times I always joke with reps that they're called, you know, the layering questions. Like, tell me more about that. Could you clarify for me how those types of things were, those are techniques that I learned, but I didn't realize how important they were until I started to apply them and then shut the hell up when I would say that, because I remember I would say, you know, somebody would ask me a question and I would be like, oh, I got this right.

And I would just rip into an answer. And after about two or three minutes of what I thought was a fantastic answer to whatever their question was, you get the, well, what I meant to say was, and you're like, fuck, you know, like I should, like I had an assumption because I had this conversation that, but there was some techniques that I had to learn along the way. You, I mean, I think you and I are similar in the sense that it was just a lot of trial by error. I mean, I can't tell you when I first started my career, like I didn't know anything about anything. And so I just, activity was it. I would go to as many networking groups as I could go to. I could make, I would make as many sales calls as I could.

I would meet as many people as I possibly could. But the difference I think between you, you know, with you and I, and a lot of others that I'm a little worried about right now is I think a lot of people are going through the motions. So they might be doing these activities, but they're not thinking about these activities. They're not, they're not analyzing and gaining value out of those conversations because they're so focused on the outcome. So how do you, you know, and, and we'll get to again, how, how this is impacting where we are today in today's market right now. But how do you suggest that reps who are doing the activities, like take a step back so they can learn from these activities?

Because that's what I don't think a lot of people are doing right now. And the shame is, is that they're doing the activities anyways. And the fact that we're not learning from them is pretty, pretty frustrating in a lot of ways because you keep going through the same thing over and over again, right? Like the, the definition of insanity here. So how do you suggest reps start to pay attention to these activities and learn from them that might not have the intuitive ability like you did to kind of self-select and say, wait a minute, this is, this isn't, I don't want to keep doing everything like everybody else is doing right now. I need to learn from these conversations. Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is just a reframe.

Like the activities that you're doing are giving you more data points. That's all it is. You're just every call you make, every email you send, every discovery call you do, every demo you do, every close one. Those are just data points. And if you're just moving forward and you're just doing more activity and never looking at the data, that's just all wasted, except for like the one out of 10,000 activities that you did across the whole sales process that, you know, closed. You need to look at the rest and understand the lessons that are in the data, right? It's like, okay, well, I'm actually really good at booking meetings, but every time I have a meeting, it's not becoming an opportunity. Well, you know, that is your area of focus.

That's where you need to focus. Um, you know, maybe you always do great demos, but you can't close like you, the activities are just more, more data points that you get to, to analyze. And, you know, I always blocked about like roughly 15% of my week to run experiments. And, you know, I think running your own experiments are a luxury. So I always suggest master your process first, you know, make sure you're hitting quota, you're above quota. Uh, but then that, that gives you a right in my eyes to play around with things and tweak things and not follow the process to a T. Like maybe you do the last bit of your demo a little bit different, or maybe you open it a little bit different. Um, but if you're just running experiments and never analyzing the results, then it's complete waste of time.

Um, and so I would think of yourself as a scientist, you know, you're a little scientist who's getting all these different data points and you're there to analyze it. And that's how you get better. I mean, you know, Ray Dalio has great, uh, books and information on this. So, you know, he's been an incredible investor for, you know, two decades. And he's just like, I just A, B test and split test every decision I've ever made. And over time I've become a way better decision maker. And now I use AI to like everything from, oh, I had coffee this morning and I didn't have coffee yesterday. Oh, coffee made me more impulsive. Like, let's cut back on coffee. Like that's a simple example, but like there's a billion things we do every day, um, that affect our, our outcome and you need to be analyzing those.

Yeah. And I think that's the misconception a lot of people have about sales is that they think it's this art form, right? Like you either have it or you don't. And I think the best sales reps I've ever come across are the scientists, the ones who are analytical. They have the art form. Don't get me wrong. Because if you combine the two, then it's, that it's magic, but I'd actually rather the scientist because the scientist is somebody I can look at and say, okay, now I know where to help, you know, as a management or as a leader or something like that. If you analyze your process and look at it, I can say, okay, here we go. But if you're an artist, I tell artists all the time, I'm like, if you're an artist and you're just paying your own pictures here, you better hit your fucking quota every single month because the quarter that you miss and then you come to me and I have no data to help from an executive standpoint, from a leadership standpoint, that's the quarter I got to let you go because I can't replicate what you do.

So if you want to be the lone wolf, be the lone wolf, but you better be a really good lone wolf for your entire career if that's the way you're going to play it. And you'll just be a lone wolf sales rep. You'll never get to management. You'll never get to leadership if you can't treat sales more analytical in that way. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And there is those lone wolves out there and they exist. And there's certainly been times in my career where I'd probably fit that archetype better, but you're right. That's like a huge burden. You can be a lone wolf. I think the two that will survive all of this, the AI revolution and all this automation is one, there will be the one in 100 lone wolf pure artists that like, who knows how they do it, but let them keep doing it.

And then there'll be the creative scientists who are a quarterback of technology. They're building new systems and process all the time and they're optimizing. And then there's going to be this big middle pack of folks who were taught, put your head down, follow the process that we outlined for you and that's it. And those ones, as soon as you make a process, you can automate that process, right? And I do this in my personal life. If there's something that I'm doing again and again and again, I'll write a Google doc out of it and build a process and be like, can I automate this? Is there a tool for it? Can I use a VA? I can. And so if you're just running a very predictable process, that's not nuanced, that you're not being creative, that you're not testing things, that you're not adapting, that's a scary world.

Hey, I hate to interrupt the conversation. I hope you guys are enjoying it so far, but we got to pay the bills here. And I got to tell you about the HubSpot CRM. Look, a ton of companies right now are on a ton of pressure to get things done and implement things faster and easier than ever. And long, complex implementation processes or, you know, tools that they don't really need are getting in the way more often than not. CRM should help you do your job more efficiently, not get in the way of it. And that's what HubSpot's done. We've actually just recently switched over to the HubSpot CRM. And I can't tell you how awesome it was. So easy to implement. So intuitive. You didn't even really need to be a technician to figure any of this out or an admin.

I mean, you can drag and drop stuff. You can create cadences for your prospecting efforts. You can set up forecast reviews. You name it, you can do it with this tool. There isn't one thing that I found that this thing can't do. And it combines everything. Sales, marketing, customer success. You name it, it's got it in there. And it gives you deep insights so that you can really figure out where your best clients are and how to approach them. And then how to drive them through the sales process with ease. So you got to check out HubSpot CRM if you haven't used it already. To get started, go to HubSpot.com and you can sign up for free. Now let's get back to the conversation. Well, and I think it's evident right now with what's going on.

This is my fear right now of what's happening in the sales world. And we talked about this in the prep is that, you know, I think for the past 10 years, especially in SaaS, it hasn't exactly been that hard to sell. And you've been able to get away with, you know, blasting out some templated sequences or cadences, you know, setting up piece of shit demos, asking questions, drawing through PowerPoint presentations, bringing your SE in to do the majority of the work, throwing a proposal out the window, and then massive discounting to get the deal closed. And in a growth economy where all the money is grow at all costs, you know, it didn't matter as much the fundamentals and the skills of sales, right?

Because we were throwing technology and people at the problem and in a market where people didn't necessarily, ROI wasn't really that big of a deal, right? Like you could have solutions that overlapped each other. And now that we're in this down economy and everything's going back to the platform and these point solutions aren't really all that, you know, needed anymore or critical, you now have reps who have skipped a lot of the fundamentals for the past 10 years, not really been taught them. And they're also in this remote world now where they don't get the benefit of sitting in the bullpen. They don't get the benefit of going out to events and engaging with people to read body language and everything like that.

So you have these reps who thought they were good too. That's the other part of this is that kind of inflated their egos as far as how good they were. Now we're in a down economy. They don't have the skills and now they're selling products that people don't want or are trying to get rid of and consolidate down to. And there's a slaughter. I mean, the reps who are acting like what you just mentioned, the reps who are acting like robots are literally in front of us getting replaced by robots. And so where does that leave us? I mean, are we headed to, from your perspective, are we headed to, um, to your point, one sales rep out, you know, maybe one SDR these days with the right tools could probably do the work of 30 or 40 of them with, you know, with the old processes.

So are we headed to a mass amount of sales reps being irrelevant in your, in, in, in your view? I think the way, like the mid market SAS rep, the way it's done right now, where you flip open your laptop, you do six, seven demos a day, you send a canned, uh, follow-up that enablement made for you and you send that. And then you make a task to automatically follow up with them in a week, even though maybe they said three days or whatever, and you're just following the same thing, uh, that I don't think will exist for very long, or we won't need very many of them. Um, but I think both the AE function and the STR function, uh, will, will evolve. Um, you know, the, the BDR role plays a huge important role as an entry level, entry point into these technology companies to be our future business leaders.

Um, you know, if you don't have, if you can't code or you can't build, like that's your way in. And so we need that role. We need to protect that role in my eyes. Uh, now I think we're going to start seeing almost different and maybe it's not even called an SDR, but different entry-level roles be created. Um, I think a future SDR might be more inclined to create their own content, show up in communities, build media assets, and kind of be like, turn themselves into little beacons of distribution, uh, that can drive more inbound, can make outbound more effective. And again, it's going to bring that creativity back into the role. He will probably look a little bit more like a, a marketer. Um, and yeah, that, that's kind of where I see that going.

And then, you know, AEs, I think we're going to see a big swing back to remembering what a salesperson is. A salesperson is an expert. We got away from that. We got obsessed with learn the process and that makes you a good salesperson. No, learn your buyer, learn the world that they live in, learn the challenges that you solve better than they know them. Can you be as knowledgeable as a CMO's problems as a CMO? You know, like the AEs of the future will be like consultants where you'll get off a demo and like, man, I would have paid 1500 bucks just for that call. Cause I learned so much. It was cool that technology they were selling, but man, John, he knew so much. Like I got to talk to John again.

Let's, let's have a chat. And then the technology sell kind of just becomes like a proxy or a leave, but like just a leave behind, uh, where it's like, Hey, like I can't chat with you every week, but like, yeah, this is what our, our technology solves for is a lot of this stuff I talk about, you know? Um, and that's, I used to play that mind game personally as myself. It's like, could I, whenever I'm selling, could I get this person to a place where they, they would pay for the time we have? Somebody actually told me that early in my career, like that's the mentality you want at the end of the conversation, good or bad. You want to be able to ask the person, Hey, just out of curiosity, regardless of what we do here, would you have paid for this?

You know, would you, even if it was a few bucks, right? Cause that, and that mentality is values. Like how do I bring as much value as I possibly can, regardless of my solution, regardless of, of what I have to sell here. Right. That's why I'd say probably four out of five of the conversations that I have, I end up referring to somebody else. And it might be a direct competitor of mine because I just know that I could be good at solving whatever their issue is, but I'm not that great. I wouldn't be great at it. And they need that thing. And I, you know, so I'd rather have you go someplace else and how that's come back around over the years. And that's the other thing here is like, it, it, it goes like a lot of this is a top down, um, approach here because I think we've lost the patience, um, to learn that stuff, have to care about that stuff.

Cause we're, you know, churning territories every six months, you're getting flipped, you're getting moved to this next role. You might not even be in the company for the next year or so. So it's like, we have this short sighted short-term mentality. And for me, my whole career has been built off of the long game, right? Yeah. I try to obviously just, you know, sell on the short term. That's why you have to do so much activity to find those short term needs and those short term things you can sell. But the long play, right? I mean, you and me wouldn't be talking right now if I, if I took a short term mindset to selling and everything else. Cause I would have been like, oh, fuck Scott. You know, he's outreach.

I don't want to talk to that kid. You know what I mean? That type of thing. Whereas because I'm like infinite game, you know what, you're better fit than I am or whatever it might be. Now we can have this conversation. Now I get people calling me back. Hey, John, you helped me out about two, three years ago and now. So how do we address that scenario in this hyper growth? I mean, I know we're in a downtick right now, but I don't think it's going to stop VCs stuffing money down, you know, company's throats and saying grow fast so I can get my 10X multiplier. How do we, how do we slow things down so that we can develop sales the right way? Yeah. It's a good, it's a good question. Um, and I think people underestimate the impact of just compounding effects, you know, every good thing in your life is usually a compounding effect, whether it's a relationship, a friendship, your work, um, and you know, you don't even have to slow down.

It's just about not jumping to new things all the time. And I used to give the advice of, you know, pick a category and stick with that category for a decade. And the compounding effects of your knowledge over time, you can just do what you do, but every year you're just going to get so much better, so much more knowledgeable, your network's going to expand. And I think now, um, being kind of on the VC side of the house and seeing how quickly categories evolve and new emerging technology comes out, I think I would kind of switch that advice to pick a buyer, you know, pick a buyer and then you can, you know, you can jump if you need to at different technologies, new exciting opportunities come up, that's okay.

But try and sell to the same buyer if you can, because then that knowledge goes with you. I feel like right now, a lot of sellers, sure, maybe you've been selling for 15 years, but you've sold five different technologies. And so for me, you've actually been only selling for three years and you've right. Like sales isn't like, think of back in the day, you know, when there was like door to door people selling like pens and watches and things like if there was a watch salesman and you said, Oh, you know, can you go sell cars? But no, I sell watches. I've spent 15 years learning about watches and I have all of this knowledge. It's not going to transfer over if I go sell cars. Um, you know, you, you probably get to transfer over 40% of it.

And so you're losing 60%. Um, so that's something just like tactically, I would, I would urge leaders. I would urge sellers, um, to think about, um, because the compounding effects are, are massive. Totally. And I think that's the, you know, the whole $10,000, whether that's been debunked or not, whatever, but it is true. It's like you, you do it. I forget how old are you again? 31. Yeah. Fucker. Um, but, but what's interesting to me is like, I've stuck in sales majority of my life. Right. And, and I've sold mostly to sales people and sales and marketing. And what's funny is, you know, if you bucket things in, in category or in decades, if you will, right. In your twenties, you have no fucking idea what you're doing.

Right. So you just try to have as many conversations, do whatever. Right. In your thirties, you tend to pick a lane and you start to really hone in on what you're good at. And then in your forties, what happens is, you know, you end up waking up. And I've talked to multiple people about this where, you know, you always have imposter syndrome, right? Cause like, you know, twenties, you're always looking up and thirties, you're kind of looking up and you're still think you're 20, you know, you're kind of cool in your twenties and your forties, you're kind of a pseudo arrived, but you still are kind of like, what am I doing here? Yeah. And the funny thing is, is when you start, if you've been in a certain industry for a long enough, you start having conversations with people in their twenties who are just getting in.

And as you talk about stuff that is really in your head, just basic sales one, like, or whatever one-on-one from your perspective, you get people going, whoa, wait, what is that? Say that again? Like, how do you do that? And it's like, wait a minute. And it all of a sudden dawns on you that you know what the fuck you're talking about. And so you just kind of, you're like, oh shit. And you evolve to that point, but you have to stay focused in a certain area. Because to your point, if you bounce around all over the place, and this is why I'm a little worried about all the side hustles that people have. And I would actually translate the side hustle to side hustle in context of what you talked about.

For instance, you said, do your job, right? Like, so follow the process that you're being told. But if you think there's a better way, then instead of your side hustle being something that you're trying to do, you know, completely different than what your day-to-day job is, make your side hustle proving an alternative to what you're being asked to do. And so, you know, to your point of like, you know, maybe ask that last question. Well, for instance, if you're being told to make 50 dials a day or 100 cadences or whatever it might be, well then, and you think the quality approach is better, well then from five to six, pick 10 accounts and just go deep on them. And then come back with data to your boss and say, hey boss, I've done it your way.

And this is my results, but I've done it my way. And this is the results. And my way is a little bit better. You mind if I keep doing this? Right. That's the way that you can start to evolve a lot faster than I think a lot of people, because right now I think everybody's schizophrenic. People are just going towards the coolest, newest thing, whatever it is, and trying to chase the easy money, if you will, when they're not building that foundation, they're not building that understanding of what their skill set should be. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more on the side hustle should directly, not just be complimentary, but like improve your role. Like that's, if you want to create a side hustle, go for it, but you have to make the case like, no, this is, this is helpful in my role.

Well, let's talk into that for a second. Cause I mean, you, you had the side hustle, right? I mean, GTM fund was to a certain degree, your side hustle. Now, obviously outreach outreach had bought sales hacker and you were now part of outreach. So you spent a few years working through that. And I want to get back to the strategic engagement thing that you came up with early too, but you know, with your side hustle, talk about how GTM was helped you, even though it wasn't directly relevant to, uh, outreach, it was relevant to what you were doing and where you were going. So going back to that, you know, getting really good at what you do. So talk to us about like how, how that married up with each other.

Yeah, for sure. And so it was incredibly helpful. So the way we, the fund is, is set up and you can go, you go check it out, but all of our limited partners, so all of our investors are active, you know, C-suite operators at some of the fastest growing, you know, tech companies on the planet. So Xero of Square, XCMO of Tableau, Cero of Procore, uh, former head of revenue at Shopify. Well, those were all people that outreach wanted to sell into. And so if we built this community that were investing together and we had a Slack channel and we did dinners and we did retreats, there never needed to be a hard pitch on outreach. We would just build an authentic relationship with them and we'd be like, oh, what's going on at Square?

And they would tell us and they'd say, what's going on at outreach? Oh, that sounds interesting. Maybe our team should talk. Um, so it was super accretive to everything we were doing at, at outreach. Uh, so we were able to bring those dinners. A lot of them were sponsored by outreach back in the day. Um, and yeah, I started a newsletter called the forecast back in the day where I would just write about sales tips and tricks, you know, that turned into the GTM newsletter, which we have now that's helped me, you know, gain access to people. And, you know, again, it, it's kind of like a beacon for interesting problems and interesting people to find me. A lot of the content I produce led itself to advisory roles, um, you know, have meaningful equity in a lot of different tech companies.

And that was, you know, above and beyond just the knowledge I bring and the hustle I bring. Yeah. It's twice as valuable because I bring the knowledge and the hustle, but I also bring distribution and that is really important. And I would just hammer that home to anyone listening is like, it's never too early to start building up your distribution and building networks, community media assets that will drive your future buyers to you. And, you know, I think again, like the future AEs will be experts and master network builders. And, you know, in this hyper-connected world, everyone, especially if you've been in tech for even like five years, you are one connection away from that CRO you need to sell to, from that CEO you need to sell for, to that VP of engineering you need to sell for.

I promise if you do the homework and you're like, oh, I used to work with Sydney. I haven't talked to Sydney in a while, but she's connected to this person. Like let's play the long game. Let's build a relationship with Sydney again in an authentic manner, see if I can help her out and then ask for that intro. Like we're able to see now through LinkedIn and tools like Cabal. I built out a program like this at outreach. It was super manual, like scraping LinkedIn connections, but people who understand networks and how to get to your buyer, like it's not going to be cold emails. It's going to be walking to the door. And, you know, in my GTM fund now, like I use, I'm selling all the time. And one of those is fundraising.

And the way venture capital is, if you have to send a cold email, like you're dead in the water. It just doesn't work. People are investing lots of money. It's all an insider's game. You need an introduction. It's not like a nice to have, it's a need. And so having been in this world now and learning about fundraising, it's changed my perception of sales. I'm like, it kind of all is that. And if you get walked to the door, which you can, maybe not first two years of your career, but if you've had five-year career, like you can do the, do the work and, and you can get literally walked into the door and your, you know, close rate's going to go up by like 50% easily. And I think that's the other thing.

It's like, you know, you spend a long time. What I've realized is you spend a long time, again, playing the long game, not expecting, there was not, not expecting anything in return in the sense that you do really just put yourself out there to help as many people as you possibly can. And, and just based on the pure activity, things will come your way. But then fast forward when you need it, like when you need that network, you can lean on it. And, you know, you know, I'm a prime example of that literally right now, you know what I mean? Like things are not easy right now as it relates to business and trying to get things moving in the right direction. So I'm like, all right, I got to get back to work.

And in January, I kind of took my CEO hat on and put my sales hat back on and fucking went to work. And I generated 49 meetings in February, 49 meetings in February, right? Like sales meetings. And the majority, very little of that was from pure cold outreach. And if it was cold outreach, it was relevant cold outreach to like people that, for instance, like VPs of sales, you used to work at Salesforce, right? Like I did run that list and then put a quote unquote mass email out, but it wasn't, you know, it was like 20 at a time, 30 at a time. And it was like, Hey, you used to work at Salesforce. Now I see you're a VP of sales at X company, you know, any interest in some training that we're doing right now?

And people, oh yeah, John, I remember going through your training, that type of thing. But, but the majority of it was, hey, Scott, hey, so-and-so, like, do you know anybody out there? I'm back on the, you know, back trying to get some things going for my business. Any, any chance you can make some introductions for me? Yeah, John, sure. No problem. Here you go. Here you go. I remember you helped me out back then. Let's take it, let's take care of it. And there was no, you know, it was an almost like a, an overwhelming level of support for, from people based on all the work that I had done in the previous years, not expecting anything in return, but it's weird how once you do that, if you don't expect anything in return, how much things come back to you, the whole, what goes around comes around has been proven to me about a million times over.

And it's, it's, it's something I wish more people had the foresight or the long side for, if you will. Kind of nice is like one of the most selfish things you can do, funnily enough. It is. It's weird, right? It truly is. Like, like it comes from a genuine place. But like, when I look back at my career, like that was the best ROI ever, you know, and business karma is, is super real. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty cool. And I, I, I think we're very blessed to live in the age that we do where everything, everyone's hyper-connected and things are more visible. Like capitalism didn't always work that way for sure. Yeah. Um, but, uh, it's, it's a pretty cool and also fundamental shift that, uh, I think we all kind of take for granted, but, uh, good actors are, are rewarded much more than bad actors these days.

You know, let's, let's keep, let's hope it keeps moving in that direction. Um, one more question for you, cause I'm, I'm curious cause you see it more than most. I think technology is moving so fast right now that engineers, I always cringe when I see engineers, you know, have this, like, look at sales as almost like a necessary evil, right? Cause I think the product is so good that it should sell itself or whatever. And especially with this PLG motion, right? Like, Hey, look, everybody's going viral, but the ones that I see, I've never seen a product fail. The majority of time I see a product slash company fail isn't because it's not their product market fit isn't because of time, you know, timing is definitely an issue, but a lot of it is because they just can't fucking sell it.

Like they might have a great product, great product market fit, but they can't get out of their own fucking way and sell it. And they look at sales as this, like I said, necessary evil. So, so, I mean, I think the, the reason that you have a 50 50 split because that's the role that you play, you've helped ground these engineers with, Hey, you have to treat sales as a priority, but how much do you think a sales should be like an organization should be aligned from a sales perspective all the way from the top down? And how critical do you think that is? Beyond critical. It's why we exist as a fund. It's why we had the success we've had is, you know, product is great. It's 10% of the battle. It's, it is execution and distribution.

Uh, Justin Kahn, that the founder of Twitch has a great, uh, tweet that went viral that says first time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution and that's it. And I would, I would say distribution slash execution. Um, and yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's everything, you know, it's not build it and they will come. Uh, it's, it's really not, uh, it never has been in maybe 1% of situations. Um, but no, it's, it's building the right go to market strategy from the very beginning. And you should be as maniacally focused on that as you are building your, your product. And if you're not from, from the jump, then, uh, you're going to, you know, get yourself into some scary waters, particularly in this client.

And I think going back to like Gong for instance, we were talking about you, it's like that their, their nexus, if you will, is it doesn't matter what you sell. It matters how you sell into the future. Right. Cause, cause that, if you're selling features and functions and that type of thing, you might have the best features and functions right now, but tomorrow you're not going to. And, and if that's the race, you're going to be exhausted trying to keep up with, with the evolution. But if, but how you sell and how you go to market and how you distribute, that's the critical factor. You know, going back to your point of building networks, building communities that, that, that build trust that you can sell into all that stuff is going to be like influencer marketing or influencer selling is, is just going to be the norm moving forward here.

Because to your point, the cold outreach of anything is pretty much going to be handled by marketing. I mean, my, I have this whole thesis that, you know, you see all these, you know, you think about why do we hate spam? Right. Well, the reason we hate spam is because it's irrelevant. Like most of it is completely irrelevant to anything I'd be possibly interested in. Right. So, so I delete it all. But if I look at Instagram, like Instagram has gotten to the point where it knows me. Right. Cause I've, I've like, yeah, I don't like that ad and this is why or whatever. And I click on certain things. I spend time on certain things. So it knows me really well. So now every ad that I get on Instagram is like, Ooh, I want that.

Ooh, that's, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, holy shit. Right. And so if you've take that to the macro of, of, of B2B, well, there's enough information out there right now between my LinkedIn profile, between my social profile and all these other things for tools very easily to figure out who I am and what I like. And all you have to do is unleash those tools and then tie them to some solution that is relevant. And all of a sudden my inbox in the future, I think is actually going to be filled with extremely personalized and extremely relevant messaging. And quite frankly, I don't give a shit whether that comes from a sales rep or a robot. And so all these reps who are still going through generic, like, yeah, marketing, thanks for my cadence here.

And let me push play there again. They're there. We're watching them become irrelevant. And so I think this just circles back to all of this, as far as fundamentals, giving a shit business acumen, those are the curiosity relationships. I hope that we can find some way of slowing things down right now so we can recenter on that stuff. Because otherwise I think we're moving towards what you said is, you know, I believe a lot of these SDRs are going to move under operations and marketing. And it's not necessarily going to be the feeder system for sales anymore. It's going to be a marketing operations role. And I don't know where the future sales reps are going to come from, because we do have to go back to full cycle sales that give a shit about the client through the entire cycle and actually care about the different, you know, engaging with them and helping them through and becoming those experts again.

So I don't know, man, I don't, I'm trying my best to stay optimistic here. And I am optimistic for the ones who give a shit, for the care, for the reps who care like you, like you were in the ones who take that mentality. I think the sky's the limit as far as what they're going to be able to do. But all those other reps, and I hope some of them are listening here to wake up a little bit, because all those other reps, I think are in some really, really big trouble right now. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm hopeful too. I mean, we've been selling things since we were cavemen, right? Things will, we'll always need to sell things. It will constantly evolve. We will get better. We will get worse. We will get better.

We'll get worse. But I think on that, on the whole, we're, we're slowly getting better. And so, but yeah, I love this idea of back to the fundamentals, you know, focus on building networks, learn technology. Don't put your head in the sand, you know, think more creatively, create content, build distribution, you know, and sell something you're passionate about. Don't just go after like, everyone got obsessed with like their salary and their title and equity. Like, you know how you're going to make money? Sell something you really fucking love. That's how you can make money. And it's not going to feel like work. No, that's, and that's, to me, I was, that, that is the number one thing I think you need to be genuinely successful in success in sales is, is a belief in what you sell.

Because if you do not believe in what you sell, and if you're just there for a commission check, then fuck you. Because you're the one who's given this industry a bad name. You're the one just trying to screw people over just so that you can get paid. But man, when you believe it, when you know, when you believe in your soul that what you're doing is makes a difference to the right client, to your point, it's not, it's not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but shit, man, it's a lot easier and way more fulfilling. And you will ultimately make money by that. Right. Yeah. Best job in the world when done right. Worst job in the world when done wrong. As you know, my friend. Yes, indeed. Awesome, Scott.

Well, look, we could keep talking sales and investments all day long, and I could probably use some investment advice on the next time we get together. So, but tell people where you want to learn a little bit more about GTM Fund and some of the other cool shit that you're doing. For sure. You can check us out at gtmfund.com. And we launched a podcast called the GTM Podcast. I host it every week. We dive into real stories from go-to-market executives and founders. And then I write a weekly newsletter as well, the GTM newsletter. I can check it out on Substack. Absolutely. And for those of you out there, I am also a GTM Fund member. And if you are out there, if you're a sales leader or CRO or somebody like that looking to invest in a cool fund and get access to some really cool companies, then I would highly recommend checking it out.

And if you're a founder looking for some funding early, it's before- Precede to A. Precede to A, right? So it's not B or anything like that. It's real early funds, kind of runs the gamut of tech, mostly SaaS tech oriented. Mostly B2B SaaS. Focus on B2B SaaS, but not exclusive. Yeah. So, but, uh, but yeah, I love it. I remember, um, Max telling me about this idea, probably about 10 years ago. One day, like, I forget, we were in some basement of some sales hacker thing. He's like, I got this idea of like, I was like, man, fantastic. Yeah. And you know, 10 years later, you put it together with yourself. Love what you guys are doing and always love and appreciate, uh, you guys support and friendship as well, Scott.

So thanks for coming on board, man. I appreciate it. Thanks brother. We love having you as an LP and thanks for having me. That was, uh, a super fun conversation. Appreciate you, man. Always. All right, everybody. So hopefully, hopefully this conversation got you to think a little bit for those of you out there who are going through the motions, maybe hopefully you're not, but if you are, wake up a little bit, wake up a little bit. Cause you're going to get smoked. For those of you who see the opportunity, go get it, go get it, but be that expert. Don't, don't go through the motions anymore. And, um, look, as I always say on all these podcasts, no matter how bad your day is going, or you think it's, whether you think it went, go out there and make somebody smile today.

Cause no matter how bad your day goes, make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. 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 at www.johnm.barrows.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 and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and let's make this happen together.