Salespeople need to learn more than ever | The GrowthPulse Podcast Ep4 with guest Brad Austin

In the GrowthPulse Podcast longtime colleagues, collaborators, sales leaders & SAAS software experts Dan Bartels & Simon Peterson come together to bring to you some of the world's leading sales people, sales leaders, experts in Sales technology &  thought leaders in the best sales methodologies & techniques. Our goal is to share with you some of the lessons and coaching we have experienced during our careers to help you excel in your sales career.

In this episode, we interview Brad Austin. Brad started his career in recruitment but has moved across to tech sales and after stints with SAP & Salesforce has become one of the world's experts in online marketplace technology.  Brad talks about his key lessons, working with company of different cultures and how he has mastered his space.

SUMMARY
0:00 Welcome
1:14 From recruitment to tech sales
5:10 What’s the biggest difference in organisations that are doing software as a service?
9:36 Working for a big German software company.
15:17 Australians love supporting the stable, predictable choice, whereas Europeans love innovation.
19:12 How do you make sure your business is aligned with the needs of your customers?
27:42 What’s changed in the cloud software market.
33:02 How the customer master record is no longer at the centre of your CRM.
41:06 How much more salespeople need to learn today than five years ago.
44:31 What are some of the modern attributes you’re looking for in someone that you want to hire?
50:17 The challenges of being an expert in the Marketplace tech sector?
53:36 What are some of the factors that are going into the Marketplace sector?
58:43 How hard is it for an Australian tech company to keep their roots firmly in the country?

Transcript

Daniel Bartels: 0:10

Welcome to the growth pulse podcast, where we take a deep dive in the world of business to business sales. We talk to some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders, experts in sales technology and thought leaders in today's best sales skills and techniques. In this episode, we're joined by Brad Austin. But he's one of the world's leading experts in E commerce and online marketplaces. Brad started his career in recruitment before moving into the tech space from German tech giant SAP. Working his way through the ranks at SAP, he became one of their leading customer engagement commerce enterprise account executives. His next career move was join the commerce Cloud team at Salesforce, initially as their top commercial account exec, eventually leading the commerce Cloud team across Australia and New Zealand. Most recently, he joined marketplace on one of the world's leading marketplace ecommerce platforms, as the vice president for APAC and EMEA from the growth pulse team. Please welcome your host, Daniel Bartels Simon Peterson Hey, guys, how are

Brad Austin: 1:14

we? Very, very

Daniel Bartels: 1:17

well. Yeah, really good. Brad. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast.

Brad Austin: 1:22

Thanks for having me guys. It's great to be here.

Daniel Bartels: 1:24

Yeah, really excited. So how's everyone, everyone's weekend and we explained so far anything exciting going on.

Brad Austin: 1:31

nothing overly exciting at the moment as a as a dad nudging 40 most of my time is chasing the kids around to weekend sport, but it's it's been a good one. So far. The weather in Sydney has been magic. So now it's off to a reasonable start.

Simon Peterson: 1:46

That's great. Excited good waking up in the country. Minus minus one degrees when I woke up in the morning, lovely out there at Maggi.

Daniel Bartels: 1:55

It's nice a bit of winter isn't a bit a bit of briskness in the air. But the sun's back out and I my dogs been enjoying it with a couple of couple of walks in the last few days, which has been nice.

Brad Austin: 2:05

It's good Sydney, it doesn't well, over winter, it's fresh mornings, and then it's still been nice, sunny, warm days. So if it stays like this, I think we'd be well placed for an enjoyable winter after last couple of years of relentless rain. So it's off to a good start. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Daniel Bartels: 2:20

Well, Brad might look, again, thanks for joining the podcast and and we normally start talking to people about sort of their career journey. And you know, you've got an interesting one, not an uncommon one, actually, lots of lots of tech people start off in, in recruitment and migrate their way across. But looking at let's let's go back to the beginning, mate, you kicked off in recruitment? And what was the impetus to sort of move from that space into the tech world?

Brad Austin: 2:46

Yeah, look, I mean, it's it is a fairly common story. I think for a lot of folks that are in all sorts of different sales capacities as well, there's not too many harder places to cut your teeth, then, than jumping into recruitment. And being told no that many times on a daily basis, I think it builds a certain amount of resilience in individuals as well. But I think for me getting involved in the tech space like most as happen via by accident, really. And by taking advantage of, of opportunities when they present themselves, and then fairly quickly finding it's a space that is incredibly rewarding and and challenging to be a part of especially having seen so many advances and changes over the last decade. But it's certainly an exciting place to be I think with the number of changes that have that are constantly happening. It's certainly something that it's it's aligned both with my enjoyment of spending time with people as well as solving problems and general curiosity for, for understanding how things work. So for me, it was one of those happy accidents, that's now a place that's certainly felt like home for the last the last decade or so haven't looked back after a bit of an exposure to the tech world.

Simon Peterson: 3:56

Absolutely, that's a that's a great journey and tell me, obviously going from selling people to selling technology, what have you found some of the differences?

Brad Austin: 4:05

Look, I think it's in terms of what's being sold, there's there's always, there's always certain differences. But when it comes to sales, the same things are true across the board, it's about delivering value for the customers that you work with, whether it's whether it's widgets, whether it's your outcomes, whatever it happens to be, the commonalities are much, much there's more commonalities than there are differences, no matter what's being sold. So everything is about returning value to customers. One of the big, the big transitions for me, I suppose, or one of the big changes was going from from a recruitment space into selling perpetual technology, then into into the subscription technology world. So I think whether it's a one off purchase, or you're constantly having to return value to those customers that you work with, that's been that's been a really interesting shift over the last kind of decade plus of, of working in In sales as well, so everything being as a service, it's changed the way that we have to work with, or we get to work with customers and prospects in the industry as well.

Daniel Bartels: 5:10

Yeah, that's a really interesting piece. So, you know, three of us have worked in software as a service or as us for over a decade, you know, some and you're probably pretty similar. But there are still so many organisations that are yet to make that kind of transition or talk about it. It's still part of lots of the business schools talking about that as a service concept. What do you think's the biggest difference that you've seen in organisations that are that are doing that as a service piece?

Brad Austin: 5:45

Yeah, look, I think it's the best organisations are the organisations that have embraced as a service options, do it very intentionally. So I think looking at a point where you're understanding what are those areas that you can leverage. You can leverage best practice, you can leverage expertise, and incorporate that into your business. But at the same time, also understanding what it is that makes you unique as a business. So if you're in there, most of my world has been focused around supporting retailers and brands in in engaging direct to consumer business models, their differentiation is in the strength of that brand. It's not building technology, it's really around your how can they differentiate their brand in a competitive market? How can they offer better service? How can they offer a better product? And when we're looking at incorporating as many things as a service, it frees up the rest of your day to focus on what it is that makes you unique? How can you compete better? How can you better serve your customers, and drive revenue growth, and I think that's something that can be applied to a lot of industries and a lot of applications, as long as you're still retaining as much of what makes you unique and special, then then you should also be looking for how much you can really leverage the expertise and the technology that's available in market as well, without needing to shell out a huge cost. And the other advantage, as much as it's an overly simplistic answer to it is the fact that if you're subscribing to something, you can turn it off, you don't own an asset that you need strength for a long period of time as trends change, you can keep up with them more quickly. And you hold to account those suppliers that you work with on a regular basis as well.

Daniel Bartels: 7:25

Hey, important it is to work for companies to work out the like the financial model behind it. Because if I can these are different, it is a different age. Right? And then you know, you've sold perpetual? And is there's a one time you know, measure for it. And then and then you've got the got the software forever. And then the next piece that is, is really, how are we moving to this fractional position, but over a longer period of time and sort of, you know, understanding your payback time and your investment cost to actually acquire the customer. It's a really different financial calculation that organisations have to go through how important getting that right, do you think at the beginning is? Or is it something you can work out over time?

Brad Austin: 8:08

I think it constantly changes. But it's definitely critical to understand at the start, and it takes a couple of a couple of different forms, whether you're spending the time to understand financial opportunity and constraints within your customers environment, it's it's going to be critical. But one of the things that I have seen change, I think very much for the better over the last 10 years in this space is the expectation that purchases are made with quantifiable business cases across the board. So they're my, my dad was in a very similar industry, he was a in a sales professional for a very long period of time. And, you know, I remember as, as a young guy growing up, there was a lot of a lot of golf, there was a lot of relationship based selling that was really geared towards who do you know, who do you trust, and that was how a lot of business was done for a very long period of time. I think there's been a lot of macro factors that have meant that your trust is still critical. But it also has to come with a quantifiable business case at the same time, so people still buy from people that's that's not going to change. But the expectation that this comes with, with solid understanding of the financial outcomes of any purchase, is only going to continue to increase and what that then means for for sales professionals is you need to understand the language of a financial controller, you need to understand the language of a CFO, and to help those business stakeholders that you're working with, to then articulate the value of the product or the service that you're looking to deliver in that space. So you're for me on an individual basis coming from selling in recruitment space to being a BDR in a large German giant. A big part of my journey has been actively going out and trying to find ways of upskilling so I can speak the language of different tiers of business stakeholders. They're finding literature, finding podcasts, finding mentors The most important thing that can help you understand the numbers, so everybody can give a great demo. And you can come in and deliver it. Yeah, really fantastic pitch. But if you can't then translate that into, into language that a CFO and a financial concoction controller can understand, you're going to hit a point, you're gonna hit a brick wall. One of the great kind of mentors that I've had over over the time as well, I spoke about being able to strike the balance between speaking in PowerPoint and speaking in Excel. So being able to pick and choose depending on those stakeholders that you're talking to, do they consume visually do they consume through through numbers, and then being able to tailor your, your sales pitch your engagement around the way that that message needs to be consumed and related, so it's, it's only growing in importance, we spend a lot of time and in my current team and future teams, you're bouncing ideas off our own CFOs so we can then appropriately contextualise those messages for our customers as well.

Simon Peterson: 11:01

Okay, so it's interesting, you just mentioned that you started your tech career journey, working for a very large German giant, I myself had exactly the same experiences at SAP, you know, I joined them in 1994. ERP wasn't really a thing back then. But it was an incredible journey, massive growth, etc. I think you joined them in 2013. I'm interested in your thoughts and experiences working for you know, a big European business because obviously a lot of us have spent years working for us. Companies, some of us have obviously worked at European what what do you what do you find unique about working for big German software company?

Brad Austin: 11:47

Yeah, look, as I've been lucky enough to be exposed to quite a few different corporate cultures. So from from the Europeans, then on to Salesforce, and now you're really excitedly working for an Australian tech organisation to there certainly cultural nuances across the board. A lot of similarities. But certainly, you know, obviously, they're both exceptionally well run organisations. But the the focus around process is incredible. I know that it's incredibly cliche to talk about a German organisation being process oriented, but it's for an organisation to have the longevity that they've had, they're certainly on to a good thing goes there at a really interesting time. And similar to sell some, I think we pass the baton when you when you moved on, as well. But to be right there at the time, where there was the move from perpetual software to cloud computing. And to talk about things moving to subscription was a real shake up to an organisation like SAP that was so structured around profit margin of an initial sale, they're a margin driven business, to then move into a subscription economy where you're now getting a payback over a 36 month horizon, rather than, you know, a 2436 months sales cycle within one lump sum payment, and then a 20% maintenance, kind of recurring, it was a really interesting transition to see how process then followed some of those some of those changes. And then to go to Salesforce that effectively pioneered cloud CRM and really owned that subscription space and made a big point of being that almost the antithesis to old school software. Yeah, it's an exciting time to see both and I think you being able to bring that rigid process of, of, of SAP as well as the, the disruptive mindset of early Salesforce across to your young organisation, Australian organisation like marketplace, I think is, you know, it's really helped me to be able to pick and choose those pieces that I found really valuable from, from two really, really successful organisations that don't approach things in a different way. It's it feels like it's very different, obviously. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Simon Peterson: 14:05

And I guess my experience, interestingly, was, I think, at SAP being European, I got a very distinct sense of a consensus, culture and decision making. So typically, you'd have a group of people in a room, you'd debate and argue of what you wanted to go do. And then a consensus is made. And I think the upside of that is lots of stakeholders have input. The downside of that is sometimes decisions take a long time to happen. For me, when I transitioned from SAP into Salesforce into for an American culture business, it was very much a command and control type culture on your boss. Here's what you need to go do. Here are the metrics go get it done. The upside of that is decisions were made rapidly, rapidly. The downside is often consensus or an understanding of why you're doing things was a little bit different. That's my experience. I don't know whether you experienced Yeah, it's anything similar. And I guess interestingly, working for an American, an Australian company now, is that different again?

Brad Austin: 15:08

Yeah, it's, I do agree. Look, I think that's I think that's a pretty, a pretty accurate assessment. For me working for an Australian organisation. It's, it's interesting Aussies, in general, as a mindset, we're quite, quite self deprecating. But what that also means is that it feeds into this kind of tall, Poppy mentality in Australia, it's something that it's ingrained in us as much as we try and shake it off. The Americans are unashamedly the opposite. And when it comes to selling into America, working in American organisations, they love supporting the champions, they love supporting the stable, predictable choice. And it is, what that means is a disruptive organisation trying to grow into North America. And it makes that quite tough. Whereas what I've found with the Europeans and what and Australians in general is that they love finding an innovative alternative, that you've got a market leader in one category, they love looking for something that can be be a challenge, or a disruptor, to to the status quo. So as a challenger organisation cracking into new markets across North America and Europe, we've certainly found that those European consumers, European businesses, are the ones that are actively finding us online. And they're bringing us into their their ecosystems to help understand how we can potentially support them. Whereas in the US, there is very much this view that once you're in front, you're going to stay in front, and we're going to keep supporting you to be the big leaders. And you can see that in again, in the retail industry. In North America, you've got within each category, you've got some huge dominant players. If we look in Australia, if we look in, in Europe, it's a little bit more fragmented, there's more localization, there's some more specialised offerings. And that's, that's true of quite a few different industries. And so I think that relates to working in those organisations too, there's, there seems to be a lot more of a view of challenging the leaders in your outside of the US mindset, they'd love to hold up, hold up their champions and load their champions, which is, which is great. And I think we're somewhere in the middle that hopefully can pick the best of pick the best of both.

Daniel Bartels: 17:19

Absolutely. So as you've kind of transition from that, perpetual space into into, into, you know, moving into the subscription space, that gets really similar to a problem, you see all the time inside businesses run on a price changes, or your product changes, or I don't know, we're going to sunset a product or any of those things that happens so regularly, right? And you kind of look back on those experiences. What as you're going in the next thing and coaching your team, like how do you get them to think about an approach? How do they lean on on the lessons that you've had in the past? To avoid avoid that the same challenges that you went through in your in your

Brad Austin: 18:02

life? Yeah, look, it's something that I saw firsthand. And you said, you see it through acquisition, you see it through changes in, in macro trends and in opportunities. But one of the things that's been, I guess, drummed into me that I try and relate to the team as well is that now that we're in the subscription mode, you don't sell a product, we don't have products where we're subscribing services, and we're helping customers achieve outcomes. So the product is dynamic, the innovation that goes into, into what we're delivering is expected to be continual, that there needs to be this constant return of value. And I think that's something that needs to feed throughout an entire organisation from the way that you're structuring sales teams and compensation plans and Customer Success teams and all of the functions around an organisation need to understand in this economy and in this world, that we're not selling products, where we're subscribing services in where we're delivering outcomes for customers on a continual basis. And so look, I think it's, it's a very different mindset for an entire organisation. And I think you need to make sure that from the product teams right through to your finance organisation, that they understand that the way that the business needs to be aligned. So it's seeking constant feedback from customers understanding what's happening in in competitive environments, understanding the macro trends that are impacting different markets, so that you can help your customers stay in front of those either opportunities or threats that are that are going to be presenting themselves but it is it's an exciting place to be as a as a vendor as a tech vendor, it means that you can have the shiniest the shiniest toy when given moment that it can change so incredibly quickly. That means those organisations that do have longevity are constantly looking to to improve constantly looking outside pushing the boundaries of what it is that they do to return continual value back to customers. And I think that's clear of those, those businesses that have weathered, pretty dramatic shifts in technology that gets it's it's a huge move, moving from perpetual software through to subscribing a service. And, yeah, I think I think those businesses that have managed, whether it be those that are the most agile that are able to adapt very quickly to circumstances as they change.

Simon Peterson: 20:32

Absolutely, I think, as we move, you know, we're well entrenched in the SAS model. Most successful software vendors, tech vendors have discovered the service economy as a service, do you think the model is here to stay? Can you see, I guess, cracks, I guess, my own perspective here is once a assessment becomes enormously successful, it has to continue to grow and continue to grow. And it's constantly asking its customers, beyond the value that you're already delivering the per month, per year, whatever it is that you're paying, you're constantly trying to add more and more and more. Is that a sustainable model? Do you think I guess, you know, you've got the most successful SAS vendor in Salesforce has sold a lot of software, especially here in Australia. And, you know, how can they continue to grow is that SAS model is something that you see pervading the next 510 years.

Brad Austin: 21:36

Look, I think there's, there's always going to be iterations of it. And and I think within the subscription area, it's also it's also broken down into a few different segments from, you know, selling subscription applications through to platform and tools, I think they're, at a basic level to businesses want to take on more more capital intensive assets to use No, I think they're still going to look to maintain as much as as much as they can on an operational basis. But I think we're starting to see, or continuing to see so much more technical expertise within organisations themselves, that it's going to be striking a balance. So I think there'll be a lot more, a lot more composable technologies, where there will be best of breed in particular areas seems to be making more of an emergence and Simon Dan, you guys would have seen this in detail over the last decade plus around seeing the shift from best of breed operations to then having one vendor lock in. And then now I think we're in another phase of seeing that breakdown, again, where by by having more internal capability or the ability to stitch together solutions from different vendors and, and collaborative API technology. That means we're, we're now in an area again, of best of breed expectations, that, that organisations are not necessarily willing to compromise on, on capability, just because they receive one invoice rather than rather than five, I think there's internal technology teams that can now piece together the best of, of what technology has to offer to deliver a differentiating brand or employee experience or financial experience. So I think organisations that that have, that have grown threats by acquisition, the expectation on each one of those components is now going to be higher, I think the days of when our were in SAP shop or an Oracle shop, and everything is going to come from those vendors. Whether we'll go back to that at some stage in the future, but I certainly think we're at a stage at the moment with with open API frameworks and the ability to, to pull together technologies from different bases, is going to now mean that there's more more pressure on those big organisations to focus on the individual components being able to stand up value when they're under a microscope individually, rather than just because they are big, do they deserve a larger share of wallet, I think each piece is now going to have to stand on its own two feet, which is good, as far as I'm concerned in being a best of breed provider ourselves is a good place to be.

Simon Peterson: 24:12

Do you think that best of breed provider I completely agree with you? It's an interesting one that that, for me has a couple of sort of follow on effects. I think it means that the role of the CIO which 510 years ago was looking like it was going to be a declining importance probably means the CIO and by by definition, the CFO who has to pay the bills, you really need to have a better understanding of your architecture strategy, because no longer you're relying on a single platform or a single vendor just to sort it all for you. You pay the bill to Oracle or SAP or Salesforce and your whole platform is sorted and now you're looking at a I won't say hodgepodge because it's unfair, but a lot of different stakeholders in your bill Success, and you've got the best of breed and stitching those together, knowing how they can all come together and add value to what you do for your end customer, I would imagine, as a sales professional, you have to be a lot closer to advising the CIO on the right. Overall architecture.

Brad Austin: 25:18

Absolutely. Look, I think it's, it's more critical than ever that there is that there is a strategy across the board. When it comes to technology consumption and proliferation, like because of this, it's so easy to then have a fragmented system where different business units and different functions are headed in different directions and that oversee exposes in efficiencies and security holes and challenges across the board and raises a risk profile, which is really going to be the core. The core focus of this CIO as well from a tech standpoint is going to be risk mitigation as well. How do they get to a point where you're there, they're ensuring your business growth and continuity, but at the same time, you're really owning privacy security as those components as well. So look, I think it's it's critical that there is a strategy to start with, I think we're seeing more and more requirements on vendors to understand the complexity of buying environments, and to the numbers of folks that are in a room now, when you're going through. A pitch for any product is huge from technology representatives to finance and supply chain and legal and risk. There's their stakeholders from all over the business. So the expectations on vendors now trying to sell into those environments is going to continue to increase, you need to be able to understand the relationships within an organisation you need to understand those factors that are important to different different stakeholders, whether they are economic buyers, or technology buyers and business users, and really contextualise the message across that group. And it can certainly be can be dangerous to make assumptions. And they're working, whether it's around the role of a CFO or a CEO or chief supply chain officer businesses are all different in terms of the influence of different areas. So I think it's good, Dan actually put a post up on LinkedIn the other day, which I really enjoyed, which is just around the discovery process that it has to be perpetual, you always have to be listening to what your customers are going through, whether you've just sold products, whether you sold it two years ago, whether you're planning on selling it in nine months time, it's it's about listening, researching and understanding the context of the customers that either you you get the privilege to work with, or you look to get the privilege to work with.

Daniel Bartels: 27:42

I think it's also the we've evolved in expectations as a market to five, six years ago, you were okay with off the rack. And, and you know, because the jayvees go a lot faster, the tech was hard to work with. But now Now what people are looking at is, actually I need bespoke. And I'm going to choose the right pants and jacket and tie and vest. And I'm going to choose exactly what my business needs. And and I need to ensure that that happens today. And it happens in six months and happens in six years time. And I think that's the challenge of the, that's the real challenge of the the cloud software vendor is you know, if I've, if I've sold a deal, or it's if any, any organisation today, I can be a customer of a large big of Sony buy a television, but once I transact, I'm still a customer, but there's no more benefit for Sony, that benefits already happened in the past, right. Whereas my my perception, particularly in anybody delivering long term service, not just software, is that every time I transact with you, every month, quarter year, whatever it is, I'm expecting I'm going to get another chunk of value beyond what you already delivered to me. And that value is going to continue to increase and now that can be often for particularly when what we sell in software, you know, the benefit of one piece of software plus another piece of software is more than you know that the sum is more than the value of the parts. That's the whole concept. But you know, when you're when you're looking at these engagements that people are trying to define today, and it's why you've got so many stakeholders internally looking at well if we add this on to what my plans are, how does it How does the sum become more than the value of the part and or is it going to become detrimental to what I'm trying to do over here and that becomes a hard hard road for people to navigate as a salesperson right? So in the past you would just be okay with knowing your stuff. My kid know what it does and know what to changes now I need to know your kid as well. I need to know how you're thinking about everybody else's kid and and how that's going to impact you Your business, because I need to be a trusted adviser to you in all the decisions you're making, not just should you or shouldn't you buy my kit?

Brad Austin: 30:08

I think that's absolutely, yeah. And that's, for me, that's the role of a sales leader within this organisation as well. It's not just managing a forecast and managing a number, but certainly looking at at how we're continually upskilling the teams that we do we have the privilege to lead. So there we imagined it rings true in my world right now as well. If I if I look at the transition, or the the evolution of marketplace or as a business, so you have a history of owning and operating marketplaces, this goes back sort of seven years, and making the transition into becoming a SAS organisation that provides the ability for, for e commerce businesses to operate effectively as a marketplace themselves to sell third party products. As a business ourselves, we came into this sum now almost two years into the organisation and we're absolutely marketplace experts, we understood all of the factors that go into owning and operating a marketplace. What are the financial dynamics? What are the opportunities, what are the challenges, and over the last 18 to 24 months, we've certainly seen, seen that shift a little as the technology itself, or the offering itself has become more widely accepted. And we're seeing more brands embrace different versions of dropship, and endless aisle and range extension, a lot of different flavours of what we do. But what that means is our teams no longer just need to be marketplace experts, they need to be ecommerce experts, and they need to understand what's driving retail trends, what's driving the decision making processes of E commerce leader leaders and Chief Digital Officers and chief financial officers in our industry. So what that's meant, is actually what we bring in every Tuesday, at our sales meeting 50% of our sales meeting, we bring in an external representative from one of our tech ecosystem partners. So there's not necessarily integrations of ours, but we just reach out to anyone that's in the industry. So whether it's an iPad provider, an E commerce platform, and OMS platform and merchandising platform, something that is on either the wishlist or on the application desktop of our customers. And the entire goal is to get my solution engineering team or sales team and customer success team to learn more about those factors that our customers are dealing with every day. So how is AI impacting their ability to run their predictive search? What are they looking at making those decisions, and that makes us better, better vendors in terms of understanding more about what our customers are doing. So really look to, to facilitate a period that we can set aside every week that has nothing to do with us really selling more and more about us being better professionals in the E commerce space as well.

Simon Peterson: 32:54

Absolutely. So it's an interesting concept, obviously moving to more bespoke solutions. We talked about the complexity for the CIO, reflect back for a minute, when when I guess the three of us were working at Salesforce. And one of the mentors we had there was the the customer master record was at the centre of everything, and you couldn't afford to have multiple views of your customer. And I think, you know, by definition, what we're talking about here is saying, well, actually, that's no longer is the imperative, I think the importance is you've got the right bit of software to solve the right application. But I think you've got to a point now where you may have a customer master record in your CRM system, something in your marketplace is solution, you now have an ERP solution with a customer master record. You know, we could talk about the integration software that pulls it all together. But I think it's an interesting one that that dynamic has shifted. And I think that you know, the concept of data lakes and analytics, etc, that bring it all back together is probably something that's radically changing. I think, certainly the success of organisations like data, bricks and snowflake, are probably the outcome of big companies, small companies that have a lot of different best of breed solutions. But at the end of the day decision support knowing your customer certainly hasn't gone away. They each seen that sort of shift as a baseline based on the best of breed type approach.

Brad Austin: 34:30

Yeah, look, I think absolutely, I think they the ability to create that we talked about it, we talked about a single a single view being this this sort of gold that we're looking towards across the board a single view of customers, but I think what it means now is that you can have multiple different views but all access to the same piece of information so you're having the same dashboards across the business. Get certainly doesn't help anything end up with these giant dashboards. With with 600 different inputs that everybody's looking at, which then becomes noise, where it's just ensuring you're you're referencing the most up to date information, you're referencing the same point, having the flexibility to view to view your corner of the world. And the way that you want to do it is is critical. But we've just, we've gone through a process on our product side as well, where we've we're effectively underpin their entire offering with with snowflake, really driven by the idea that the customers that we were marketplace operators, the customers that we work with, we started building a whole lot of dashboards to give them access to so they could see real time supplier data, they could see all of their your real time, performance, product performance and basically running a general ledger. But over time, we saw that there were more and more stakeholders on their side that just wanted to extract the data to use the tools that they were already used to using, but still maintain that real time view of everything that's happening in the marketplace world, and then put that alongside their in store, in store results, their econ results, to get a real view of everything that their customers are doing as well. So I think what we've seen and looked at underpin our product with as a strategy is flexibility of data consumption. So being able to have the same view of the data that you need, but being able to have the autonomy within a business unit within a function in order to consume that visualise that in whichever way you need. So I think what that then does, is it continues to fuel this this best of breed approach that says it's not I don't need to have all of my applications with pre built connectors or to have them all sitting under the same underlying data step structure, because then is now the ability to leverage those those best of breed applications and yet still get the same flexibility of data consumption. So I think there's it's one of those technologies that has then bred a whole range of others that are very quickly accelerated on on top of them. And, and that's certainly true in the application space. And now even again, I think I've just come back from from a conference in in Europe or into the shop talk conference in Barcelona. And I think every, every presentation over the three days was around how AI is improving something or impacting some part of, of the business landscape. And I think we're we're only just scratching the surface. But certainly having you're now having these transferable data structures has really been an unlock to being able to then have application specific or use case specific, their AI or generative AI use cases as well. So I think now that we're do we have solved for some of those kinds of underlying data issues, it's really now kind of set fire to when that hits the application layer and gets in the hands of business users. So I think it's it's an exciting time to see those those technologies come together. Yeah,

Simon Peterson: 37:54

absolutely. I think data has become a much more liquid asset. I remember, the good old days in the 90s, you know, you'd put your data in SAP and there would say, and if you were lucky, if there was some analytics sit on top of it, if you're lucky. And you know, now I'm looking at all of these different innovative vendors. They've all got their own platforms. But it's not it's not impeding innovation, that your data has become a liquid asset that you can mash together in any way you like. And I think AI is going to be absolutely fundamental to bringing that together quickly see, can make decisions. Before it's too late.

Brad Austin: 38:42

I absolutely. Look, I think that you touched on a couple of interesting points there that I think if you were chatting about some of the things that have changed over the last decade in tech, one of the most exciting ones to me has just been the collaboration of tech vendors. So they're seeing a world like SAP where it would have been unthinkable to talk about their partnership with Microsoft, if we're going back or partnerships with with Google to now see, these businesses have have really lent into the one plus one equals three value proposition for customers, by being collaborative. And I think now having these these ecosystems where it's not just we're fighting over customers is that we're actually solving customers problems together as, as vendors has opened up much more of an opportunity to be collaborative in the vendor space to talk about how it what we do well can can really multiply what somebody else does well, and that's been that's been a really exciting thing to see change. It's meant benefits to customers. It's been taking some of the, I guess, some of the challenge out of incorporating best of breed technologies. And I think that the winners are across the board. Those those collaborations have generated just such great results in customer environments before And I think AI is certainly one of those spaces. I know, it's still very much early days, but I think you're now looking at a point where you're being able to, to see what's out there and market to collaborate with vendors that are really pushing the envelope into amazing spaces. Just it accelerates the innovation potential. So dramatically worse, rather than having to innovate in a vacuum and then try to find an application for it, it's being able to really leverage other other tech collaborators to deliver some really cool outcomes. And I think the, the more astute buyers on customer sides are starting to realise that as well, where they're starting to look to, to their vendors to be a part of their ecosystem, and not just collaborate with them as customers, but collaborate with each other on how they were kind of able to innovate with, with others in mind, and I think that's something that's, that's been a really exciting shift over over the last 10 years from you know, your blue or red or, you know, now it's done, it's this kind of sounds cliche, but it's much more of a rainbow mix, when it comes to comes to the application colours that are seeing on anyone's iPhone or on their on their desktop.

Daniel Bartels: 41:06

Like, there's also a massive ownership for you as for an on the, the employee side of salesperson side to make sure that you know how to make all this work. I mean, when I first started in my sales career, it was all about just the core of your skills in that last kind of three feet, working in retail, right, last three feet between you and the customer. But now, particularly in b2b sales, it's about you mentioned the data before right? So which data which customers should I be talking to now with which product? And what what case study should I be bringing in? And how about have I kind of delineated down into the detail of why is this customer buying now what's happening in their market? How can I learn what my colleagues are doing either, you know, the desk next to me interstate, internationally, they're all the things that customers expect from you as a as a as an entry point, not as an extension, and, you know, the job of the job of someone in, in any sales career, not just in tech today is to have mastered all of those components. Now, not at some point in the future. And so it's entering kind of watching all the different sales and leadership training courses and they focus on so much stuff at the basic level, which is which is easy, and it's easy to sell. But, you know, we know of all those people that we've seen, crushed their number and, and exceed year on year. It's all the other things that they are experts in as well. And they spent time and you mentioned before having the business acumen and understanding all about you know, your craft your product, your market, you know, what your, what your competitors are doing, what your partners are doing, you know, which si should you put into, into a delivery team delivery programme right now because they've got capacity or they've got the right person or, you know, the best project managers just joined from somebody else, like all those things, go to making great deals and one great deal leads to the next great deal to lead to four and four lead to eight and this is just that momentum that an organisation gets and I think it's it's so interesting how much more learning salespeople need to do today and what they did even five years ago to content

Brad Austin: 43:18

Yeah, it's it's definitely about this guy you see in lots of you know, business books and others when there's there's reams of detail on you know, sales processes and different things they need to do. But if you if I look at a very simplistic simplistically, for me, those that have been the most successful that I've seen around me and those that continue to be those are just love it that really enjoy being able to, to upskill themselves and invest in in their craft and really learn those those things that are going to be relevant to their customers. And you know, there's an expression in lots of different sports and areas of taking an amateur mindset, which if somehow, the amateur has been taken to mean somebody that's, that's under professional but for for me, just mean someone that's passionate about doing something, and they're not necessarily just in there to get to just because they're turning up to get paid, it's those that really enjoy being able to just spend time bettering themselves and investing in themselves and their teams to achieve those outcomes. That's especially true now I think you've you've you've got to really be be staying in front of of those things that are going to drive value for your customers. So I think when we look at technology becoming a bit more best of breed, there's almost the ability for your for for tech vendors to have their sales people kind of follow suit a little given that you now need to tap into so many other areas being spread too thin when it comes to that. That product that you're selling limits the ability for you to speak, to speak meaningfully across across to many different personas as well. So in our case, just looking at it How we can help you extend your range in econ sounds like a very small area. But within it, there's so much that's important. How does this impact operations? How does it impact supply chain and finance? How does this impact your digital teams and merchandising teams and buyers. And if we were selling retail media, if we were selling e commerce, if we were selling a whole range of other things, that exponential multiply just takes away from from my ability to really drive value around the service that we're looking to provide to customers. So I think that that sort of deeper rather than broader approach is true for technology as much as it is true for the salespeople that that represent those technology organisations as well.

Simon Peterson: 45:42

So you're saying the, you're saying the the sales guys that, you know, modern successful sales guys will have and girls will have a much broader range than just knowing how to run a sales process? You obviously started your career in real commitment. You're a sales leader. Now, you're obviously interviewing a lot of salespeople what what are some of the modern attributes you're looking for in someone that you're about to hire that you want to put into be a great salesperson for you in the future?

Brad Austin: 46:18

Yeah, it's a good question. I think there are some, some modern attributes, or certainly some classic ones. I mean, I think you're something that's that's clear coming from a recruitment background, and then into being a BDR, which which anybody that's in sales needs to go and spend some time on the floor, it's a BDR, I think it's just, yeah, the hardest, it's the hardest seat in any in any tech organisation, they do a spectacular job. But resilience is formed in those sorts of places. So in our industry, as we know, when you're running a predictable forecast, you need to have three times cover it's there's not too many other parts of an organisation where you You're, you're losing two out of three times, and yet you're doing a spectacular job to maintain that type of coverage. Like that's, that's a hard thing to get across that when you're doing your job exceptionally well. And you're closing one out of three of the opportunities you're working on, there's still two out of three that are going in other way either lost to no decision lost to a competitor. That's that means that there's the expectation on each individual to deal with that, how do you process the fact that you're putting in hundreds of hours into something that, you know, it was likely not to have an outcome two out of three times if you're doing it well. So I think your resilience is something that's very much been a key thing of those really successful sales people and leaders that I've seen, you know, having that memory of a goldfish you can do can be done. sit too long on those, those successes that you've had, and, and certainly don't dwell on on the losses, take them as learnings. But one of the things, if we're looking at those modern attributes, or more recent attributes that I really look for, it's, it's those that have developed or have the ability to develop long term relationships with customers and stakeholders. And I mean, especially in the two out of three of them that you haven't signed up as a customer. In a subscription world, everything is just another phone call away. So making sure that you're not setting fire to a to a prospect, if you miss out of an RFP, if you come in second or third, despite having it in forecast realising that this, the next time that they look to a vendor is only a short time away. So the way that you reflect your organisation, the way that you put your personal brand forward, when things aren't going your way, is a tremendous mark of if somebody's going to be successful in the long term. And I think it's there when I'm interviewing and looking at, you're bringing folks into the team and looking at how we structure the team around one to ones and development plans, is really focusing on how they react and what are some of the best learnings that have come from not getting the outcome that you had hoped for. And then you know, I have the ability over the last the last few years to look back on those those customers that you missed out on once that are then come back and being your repeat customers simply because you you acted ethically and responsibly and you're behaved with with the right attitude. And you deal with customers, partners prospects with with respect. And that's something that I think now in this subscription world, that's that's a really exciting byproduct of that it's not no longer is it 10 years until somebody is going to come back and have the opportunity for you to to then work with a brand or or a customer. It's really only any stage in the future. So thank you, those are those are the attributes moving forward that I think they are really great, really great long term salespeople, as well as just having that that curiosity how are you constantly looking to learn and looking to develop whether it's, you know, on something your customers are doing something that product teams doing and how they're how the finance team run So I think those those sorts of areas really make for a good a good recipe for for successful sales teams as well. And trying to get a mix of backgrounds and perspectives within any sales team in an organisation just makes that easier as well. Absolutely, I

Daniel Bartels: 50:17

think that whole concept of becoming an expert in your space and, and really understanding you know, what your what your market and your customers need. It never finishes, you know, your customers change and market changes, technology changes, hey, you know, AI is our own tech 10 years ago, CRM upended the sales world, right? You know, SAP was disrupted by Salesforce building and making CRM mainstream. ERP became an afterthought, how we're going to look at the evolution of what not just not just chatty PT, but tools like notion and others are going to introduce into sort of the way that we do work each day. You know, Gmail is is if Gmail sticking into and Microsoft are putting both into their, their email, the ability for to recommend how you're gonna write if emails all turn up looking the same? How do you differentiate? Do you start to have right, Paul? I don't know. I've got no idea. But you know, as salespeople, your point of, we only close one or close out of one of the three is amazing, and you're a superstar, right? But to get through that pipeline, if, if I've got to differentiate, how am I doing it now? Is it my personal brand? You know, we've we've all worked for big, either North American or German, German tech firms. And, and, you know, one of their big challenges is they don't authorise people to speak on their behalf. Unless you've gone through a whole, you know, you're at a certain level. So how do I differentiate as a salesperson? What am I putting on LinkedIn? Why am I putting out videos or, you know, what am I doing to actually get my brand out there so that when I talk to my customers, they understand that this is someone that they should talk to, and it's a challenging, it's a challenging space for the salespeople. I mean, you're quite lucky, you're in a, you're in an Australian based business. I do want to ask you about that as we start to transition to the last couple minutes here. Working for an Australian based tech firm, I have to say, I am extraordinarily jealous. It's been

Brad Austin: 52:19

a number of years,

Daniel Bartels: 52:21

I think the you know, the opportunity in the Australian tech market has never been better. So people looking to join the tech market or working out with the next career is fine. And as a company, invest your time and effort there. Make sure your dollars stay here is me flying the flag, but experience of working on a plane based company selling internationally what's different, what's been a real challenge for you?

Brad Austin: 52:45

Yeah, the the challenges rewards a massive on both sides. So for me, it was it was great timing, having the opportunity to join marketplace. So what I did and look over each other story about about sort of how it happened. But timing, timing was great work and place where a partner of Salesforce Continue, continue to be a really strong partner of Salesforce. And you're I had for a long time having worked for big organisations, you you get a corner of the world, you get a product set, you carry a bag, you get a territory, and you execute that territory, you're fed product marketing information, product details, you've got a tam that needs to be addressed. There's a huge amount of support to help you get there you either achieve the quota that's been set, or you don't on a call. I don't know. That's an overly simplistic view. But where as an Australian were quite a way removed from things like product strategy, what's the product team building? What are the factors that are going into that. And a big attraction for me in joining an Aussie company was that this is where decisions are made, where you get to sit with the the Chief Technology Officer, we get to sit with the folks that are driving product strategy, the Executive Leadership deciding what we want to be as a business what identity we want to have, and on a personal level, being involved in in huge decisions, decisions about where do we open an office? What country do we want to look at? How do we localise the product for, for the UK and Europe, it's some of the decisions that we made turned out to be, or some of the plans that we made turned out to be completely disrupted by by market forces. What What I mean is we had, if we look back sort of 1824 months, we'd set out our annual growth plans. And here's where we had quota allocated. Here's where we're going to invest our marketing dollars, huge focus around continual growth in Australia, launching the business and really accelerating the business in North America. We put a lot of work behind that arrow. And we came in, came in, in the morning and we had some inbound leads started getting more inbound leads from the UK, and we made a people sat down with the product team when we're not localise for that region. You know as yet we're, it's kind of tough for us to go after those kinds of opportunities, and happened a few more times and really noticeable global brands. We didn't have SEO to Add on in in UK, that were actively trying to find who we were and what we did and effectively inviting us to take part in RFPs, asking questions around what it is that we offered. And that dramatically changed the way that we saw the business. And I think we just by looking at that information, we could turnaround in the space of a couple of weeks, sit down with a product leadership team, sit down with our CFO, sit down with business leaders and say when we need to be in Europe, we need to be in UK, we need to localise our product for that region, we need to start putting in place a business that can support customers in that region, because the they're pulling us over there. And so to be able to be in the room, when we're making some of those decisions, and look at some of these factors and say we're gonna go after that opportunity. And if we look now, with we've got five or six full time, folks out of the UK, we've got some of the most noticeable household brands as customers that we get the privilege to work with out of the UK and out of Western Europe, and it continues to be one of our fastest growing markets. And all of that's happened without us being intentional about it. So I think yeah, it's it's been really exciting on a personal level to see your the impact that you can be a part of when we're working at at the HQ of an organisation, especially one that's in, you're very much that that startup scale up mode, we're going from your fairly small market in Australia, and then you're having the ability to execute some of the biggest the biggest brands on a global basis. It's been really, really cool. On the other side of it, you're so used to having support in big organisations, they do it so well in terms of sales operations, and deals desks and Customer Success and Support and Training and enablement. You know, the number of times that I forget out over here, in the first few months of asking the question of, you know, who's responsible for dot dot dot? And then if there's a pause of longer than three seconds, you know, that it's you, and that happen. Right, okay, I gotta do that. And so it's a how are we forming a proper sales methodology? How are we looking to build predictability into our forecasts? How are we looking to grow into these markets and show the business, you know, how we're performing, and it was, it's been and continues to be a really satisfying thing to, to be a part of feeling like you're, you're building something. And the last piece on that was, it was really driven by by a lot of the old guard at Salesforce. And both of you would know many of them that were there a long time ago. And so often, when, when networking with those colleagues, they would talk about what Salesforce was, like 15 years ago, and I had the same from SAP we saw Jim Hogg mentioned, when he retired, he came and spoke about what it's like to work at SAP and the 90s. And they're talking about how dynamic and exciting it was to grow a business like that. And similar for the folks at Salesforce that were there in the early days, I wanted the same thing, I wanted to go to an organisation where, you know, I could say, like, we were there at the start, and it wasn't all the best years were 10 years ago. And you only get a few chances like that in in your career to work for somebody that you're really excited to work for, in the Australian based organisation with a with a really clear market opportunity from a from a technology perspective, that are just all kinds of stars aligned for me on a personal level. And it's something that's been immensely challenging in lots of lots of different ways. But I certainly think for those, particularly in Australia that get a chance to work for a great leader to grow an Australian business on an international basis. It's a pretty, it's a pretty exciting and irreplaceable thing to be a part of.

Daniel Bartels: 58:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm super jealous.

Brad Austin: 58:47

It is it really is. It's

Daniel Bartels: 58:51

putting back into our own economy putting back into our people here, as you said, to be able to have the opportunity to not just be a sales office, but to be involved genuinely in you know, how are we building the product? How are we changing our go to market and also be able to put a bit of an Australian culture out there. I mean, Australian companies typically have such a great reputation in terms of the the culture we've got, I mean, there's some phenomenal Australian success stories in tech. Matty in Canberra numbers were just killing it out. There's this amazing VCs that are really supporting the the the growing Australian tech market, EVP air tree and a bunch of others who are doing just phenomenal investments, stories and tech firms that have got a huge opportunity. And it's one final question for me before we kind of wrap up quickly and close the top of the hour. You guys have almost been further in keeping your roots firmly in the country. How hard is it for an Australian tech company to not not kind of chase the opportunity in North America and think about picking up picking up the business and moving it over there. Has that been a real challenge for you guys? Yeah, look It's

Brad Austin: 1:00:00

it. It always is. It's a perpetual challenge. I look, I think with, like every organisation, you see, you see the shining, the shiny thing and you want to go after it for sure. Like it's it continues to be a challenge. But one of the things that we do, we do revert back to is, is culture. And I think it's being able to have close ties into HQ is something that's always been been a really strong so for us. So what we, one of the things that we did learn through error in the way that everybody does, is when we are launching and when we've been launching to these new regions, really being able to look to our existing internal trusted teams, understand what is ahead of them career wise, and being able to look to support that through international travel and relocation, it's amazing, you get these fantastic, you know, Ozzie professionals that would love to spend two years in London, they would love to spend some time working in the States and a lot of our leadership team now in North America, and in Europe have been trusted members of our team from here. And we didn't do that initially, the first the first move into the US some years ago, it was really around, we need local network, we need a local resource individuals and teams that have tapped into all of the business stakeholders. Whereas what we found is that we then kind of lost a bit of what made us you're really unique and special and different. So a big part of what we've looked to do is to transplant Yeah, as the US that want to go and take out our product abroad and take their families on opportunities to travel and see other parts of the world and other cultures as well. So we look around your SAP office and Salesforce office as all of you have done many times and there's accents from all over the world. So it's really great to be able to return the favour and put some Ozzy accents in Denver and in London and and you know, take our message and retain some of the culture that we have and the business culture so that was certainly a learning for us that was it's hard to just hire overseas without you know, having having a nucleus of you know, some some trusted team members to kick it all off.

Simon Peterson: 1:02:09

It's fantastic and I mentioned bread you know, having HQ here, your your forecast calls will be all about people around the world looking at what time it is in Sydney or Melbourne.

Brad Austin: 1:02:22

Being able to forecast the other way around. Forecasting in Australian dollars is awesome. It's it I know it sounds like an oddity but having spent it before euros and now being able to forecast in AUD it's, it's great.

Daniel Bartels: 1:02:38

We've got to go and write that continue. And everyone says what it's like to forecast in US dollars in the wrong time in the wrong time zone. on a Saturday. Yeah, exactly, I reckon

Simon Peterson: 1:02:55

is a workshop on how to sound intelligent at 2am. Yeah, Hey, Brad, we're coming to the top of the hour, mate. Thank you so much for your time. It's been fantastic to hear about your journey. It's been awesome to hear about working for an Australian headquartered company as well. Again, best of luck in the future. And I hope marketplace that goes from strength to strength. And thanks a lot for your time, Dan. Awesome. Chat.

Daniel Bartels: 1:03:26

Yeah, absolutely. And for everyone listening, you know, wherever you're listening is to whether it's on YouTube, Facebook, on LinkedIn, etc. Look, please do you know like the like the sessions, subscribe to the channel, share with your friends. We'd really appreciate that. And look, if you'd love to join the podcast or you've got some questions from the self, Simon or Brad, please, please ask it. We'll we'll feed those through and as an answer as we can. And we look forward to to giving you some more great content coming up shortly. Thanks so much. Great. Thanks so much. Thank you