Unlock the secret symphony of sales success with Dan Bogner, a maestro in the tech sales arena with a storied career at Salesforce, DocuSign, and HubSpot. This episode is a masterclass in the transformative power of Solution Engineering, a vital yet often unseen engine in the B2B sales process. Experience firsthand how sales leaders, akin to conductors, deftly harmonize their teams to resonate with customer needs, with Dan providing a backstage pass into the strategic maneuvers that make a winning sales narrative.
Embark on a journey through the evolving landscape of Solution Engineering, where we chart the course from passive product demonstrations to strategic partnerships that shape the sales story. Witness the delicate dance between sales engineers and sales teams, as Dan dissects the friction and fusion of their roles, advocating for the early and essential involvement of Solution Engineers in the discovery phase. It's not just about selling; it's about building trust, tailoring solutions, and the disciplined 'glass half empty' approach to due diligence that culminates in robust deals.
To cap off our exploration, we traverse the intricate relationship dynamics between Account Executives and Solution Engineers, emphasizing the respect and trust that propel these partnerships to new heights. Dan offers a candid glimpse into the leap from engineering solutions to leading sales, underscoring the pivotal mindset shift and collaboration required for such a transition. Through the lens of effective deal review strategies, we underscore the collective efforts needed to orchestrate a successful sales close—ensuring every note of the process contributes to the grand finale of a successful deal.
Unlock the secret symphony of sales success with Dan Bogner, a maestro in the tech sales arena with a storied career at Salesforce, DocuSign, and HubSpot. This episode is a masterclass in the transformative power of Solution Engineering, a vital yet often unseen engine in the B2B sales process. Experience firsthand how sales leaders, akin to conductors, deftly harmonize their teams to resonate with customer needs, with Dan providing a backstage pass into the strategic maneuvers that make a winning sales narrative.
Embark on a journey through the evolving landscape of Solution Engineering, where we chart the course from passive product demonstrations to strategic partnerships that shape the sales story. Witness the delicate dance between sales engineers and sales teams, as Dan dissects the friction and fusion of their roles, advocating for the early and essential involvement of Solution Engineers in the discovery phase. It's not just about selling; it's about building trust, tailoring solutions, and the disciplined 'glass half empty' approach to due diligence that culminates in robust deals.
To cap off our exploration, we traverse the intricate relationship dynamics between Account Executives and Solution Engineers, emphasizing the respect and trust that propel these partnerships to new heights. Dan offers a candid glimpse into the leap from engineering solutions to leading sales, underscoring the pivotal mindset shift and collaboration required for such a transition. Through the lens of effective deal review strategies, we underscore the collective efforts needed to orchestrate a successful sales close—ensuring every note of the process contributes to the grand finale of a successful deal.
Great salespeople or sales leaders get really comfortable with my role in this. Engagement looks like this your role is to be a trusted advisor and solution.
Speaker 2:The analogy that I always think about is a good salesperson, to your point is almost like a conductor of an orchestra, right, like they're bringing in the violin at the right time and bringing in the drum, they're orchestrating the way this is going to unfold for the customer.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode, we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses.
Speaker 1:Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and press that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople, and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome back to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, dan Bartels, here as always, with my great co-host, simon Peterson. Mate, welcome back. Thanks, buddy. I'm one of your co-hosts, dan Bartels here as always, with my great co-host, simon Peterson Mate.
Speaker 3:Welcome back, thanks buddy, I'm excited to be here. I've got two Dans on the podcast today. It'll be interesting.
Speaker 1:Two Dans, absolutely two Dans. We've been hunting down our great friend, dan Bogner for a number of weeks now, and just I'm overwhelmed to have you on the show. Mate Dan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I was just thinking, Dan. Actually it's not just two Dan Simon, it's two Dan Bs on the call as well. Yeah, we're going to make this challenging for you, Excellent.
Speaker 1:So for everyone who hasn't met you before, dan, look, we've all worked together for many years and as colleagues, competitors, in different environments. I want to make sure I give your resume that it's due credit. But you've spent time at Salesforce DocuSign. You're now at HubSpot. But give us the 10 cent tour of kind of the tour of Dan, because you've done a whole heap of stuff in a bunch of different roles and one of those areas we want to delve into today. But give us the tour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity, simon, dan. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I feel a bit tired and old listening to your description of me, but yeah, look, I've had a varied background. What I would say is I started off my career in consulting at PwC, which I did for about 10 years, and then, if I age myself, for a second, the dot-com boom was happening in the early 2000s and so I jumped ship and joined this startup company called Siebel, which was one of the pioneers of CRM, and spent 10 years at Siebel, which was one of the pioneers of CRM, and spent 10 years at Siebel. And then we got acquired by Oracle and then 10 years at Salesforce. Post that In between, a couple of years in the States at an AI startup and DocuSign for a few years, and now just turned over my first anniversary at HubSpot. So, yeah, it's been a long career.
Speaker 1:Mate. That's a lot of very exciting businesses that have grown very quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look, I feel really fortunate as I've reflected on my career. I've had the opportunity to work with a number of incredible technologies, some incredible leaders, been inspired by the teams and people I've worked with. So, yeah, I'm feeling very grateful and appreciative of everything that's happened over my career, of everything that's happened over my career.
Speaker 1:Now I know part of what we wanted to talk about today, which is a little bit of a different topic to what we focus on across many of the episodes of the podcast. In my early experience and exposure to yourself was at Salesforce and you were at the time leading I think we're heading up the SE, the solution engineering team at Salesforce at the time and it was definitely a piece for me as a junior salesperson learning how to understand A what is solution engineering and it's a technical sale piece for those who aren't in software and that's different but really how to understand how to use that tool within the organization, within your deals, and it really is a skill in itself to really work with that colleague and work well. So, just for the benefit of everybody, do you want to give the listeners a bit of an overview of what is an SE, what's that solution engineering piece and how do you guys think about a sales?
Speaker 2:process. Sure, happy to, dan. Look, it's an interesting question you've asked, because I think that, if we're honest with each other, no one really grows up wanting to be an SE. Right, you don't know about it. There's no university course to go on where you can leave with a credential to be an SE.
Speaker 2:And as I reflect upon my own career, I'll be honest and say I fell into it almost by chance.
Speaker 2:My first SE job was actually at Siebel Systems back in the day and I had no idea what an SE role did.
Speaker 2:It was only once I got into it that I realized wow, this is actually an incredible job and probably one of the best kept secrets in the IT industry, because you get to work on some really complex challenges. You get to partner with a sales organization, you're largely customer facing and you get to be really creative when it comes to solutioning what it is the customer ends up buying. So it's almost, in some respects, almost like a consulting type role. The difference is you're not there to deliver projects. You're there really to understand what the customer's pain is and then attribute your solution and the value from your solution to that pain. Some companies call it sales consulting, solution consulting, solution engineering, pre-sales. But that's really the discipline and ultimately what you're there to do is the job of an SE is to get to a point in the sales cycle where vendor of choice has been identified and then, generally speaking, at that point the SE kind of disengages and the sales process continues through to negotiate and close the deal.
Speaker 3:So Dan, my experience with solution engineers is different companies have different cultures and I think I left big German ERP company one way of doing solution engineering and I moved into Salesforce. What was quite different to me was the power of the SEs and what they were given in the sales cycle. Very early in a deal there was an assessment Are we a good technical fit? Is it a go no go? Is our technology actually going to solve the problem? Very different for me from what I was used to many years ago in the 90s. How's the SE role in your career evolved? Because I imagine it's quite different today than it was when you first started in that role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Look, I think that's true, Simon. Maybe if I just share with you my own thoughts of it. I remember when I started in the SE world. One of the things that frustrated me was we were perceived as the demo dollies to use that expression right Like we were.
Speaker 2:When a salesperson wanted a demo, they'd reach out to their trustee SE and the SE would come in and they'd do some magic around the keyboard and then they'd disengage. And when I became an SE maybe because of my consulting background or what have you I just thought there's much more that the SE could bring to the table than just being the demo guy. The demo is important, absolutely, but it's not the be-all and end-all. And so when I started leading SE teams I'm not your classic SE leader in so far as I'm not particularly technical. I can fake it if you like, and I can have an exec level conversation where I can talk about the value of technology, but I'm not a deep technical person but I always felt that if an SE navigated in the right way and if they viewed themselves as a partner of the sales organization rather than a service provider to the sales organization, then we could have a very different conversation. And if I explain what I mean, I think if an SE sees themselves as a service provider, then they're really passive, they're reactive, they wait for the salesperson to come in and say, okay, we've got a demo next Tuesday, and then the SE asks a bunch of questions to try and understand what the heck they should be demoing. Somebody that views themselves as a partner is somebody that is going to front a customer call with the salesperson. They're going to be very proactive. They're going to hopefully own some relationships in the account that is independent of the salesperson. They're going to be thinking about how do I attribute business value to what it is we're selling. And the demo is really, at the end of the day, just one step in the process and it's really just. I always think of it as like a piece of theater that we do just to be able to show that this thing exists and it's real and you can touch it and feel it. But what the SE does and the way they engage, if they're truly a partner, it's just a different proposition.
Speaker 2:And so when I was able to lead SE teams at Salesforce, that was the approach we took.
Speaker 2:We said right from the get-go we're not the demo guys, we're the partner of the sales organization, and so that changed how we engaged. It changed a lot around our brand inside the company and it was definitely a big transition for a lot of the SEs to go through. An exciting one, I would imagine yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It was exciting. It was scary for a lot of people, if I'm honest, because I think that there were certainly a bunch of SEs that were just comfortable acting in that mode of when you want something, you come and grab me and I'll deliver it to you, and so we were asking them to do things up until that point was quite unnatural for them, and so we really had to invest a lot in enablement and just resetting expectations, and we brought a lot of talent in from the outside for that reason to try and reset the bar. But we were just able to have a very different relationship with a sales organization because of that that's outstanding and I think it's interesting in every sales cycle.
Speaker 3:There's one word that occurs to me when I think of SEs and successful sales cycles, and that's trust. One of the things that I often see in sales cycles is, regardless of how good the sales person is, it's difficult for them to really build genuine trust with some of their prospects. And you engage with a really good SE and they're very much focused on the outcome and the problem that we're trying to solve with our technology they build trust. It's an incredible thing to see when an SE is on their game, building trust with the prospect. Everything is possible once that happens. I guess you see that everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's a really strange thing, simon, that you touched on, because I came out of consulting and I spent 10 years at PwC and you would walk into a room and you would just say you were from PwC and there was just implicit trust that you knew what you were doing and that brand translated into I trust what you say to me, I trust the advice you're giving to me. When I switched from a consultant to being on the vendor side, that trust went away immediately. It was like now I was a software vendor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sales guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct, and so nothing changed. I was still the same person. It's just the way in which I was perceived changed. Then you have this other challenge, which you spoke about, which is once you're in sales, and now being in sales, I've noticed that different again.
Speaker 2:Sc is the one person in that relationship that can get away with the fact that, yes, they're there ultimately to sell something, but they're perceived as independent. Yeah, because they're not commissioned. The same way, they don't have sales in their title. And so the SC is in this really unique position that when they say something, the customer does listen and it can almost be verbatim the same thing that the salesperson says, but it just has a different element of trust associated with it. So I agree with you, simon. I think if the SE is smart about how they position themselves, that trust can really be leveraged very heavily. And that's part of the reason, simon, why it was so important for me when I managed SE teams that I wanted SEs owning relationships right. I wanted them to align themselves to the head of architecture or the head of technology, because they can play a really influential role in a way that a salesperson can't necessarily.
Speaker 1:Yep, totally agree in a way that a salesperson can't necessarily Yep, totally agree, dan. I remember learning a lot of that process, whether directly from you or from different sort of people in your team, about how to really leverage. It's very rare in a B2B model that you're just selling to a singular person. Yes, their sign-up has got multiple people, their decision-making process has got multiple people. Even just everyone getting okay for the investment of time and effort to talk to you has multiple influences on.
Speaker 1:Should you even be worrying about this as a priority and all this stuff to do? Yes, and then leveraging that S-A relationship. You've got to say, hey, listen, this is a person who is not quoted on closing this deal. There's never that conception of the fact that this person is fundamentally getting paid to sell me something. And so then, actually pairing up the right person, finding that right individual and it may not always be the right, the title you think it would be, but finding that person who is the technical owner, or the often that's technical is the wrong term actually yes, the solution owner who actually really understands this problem on the business side.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I did learn in that process, though, was and I use this and we talk about this on the podcast all the time is focus on the problem you're trying to solve, not the technology, not the widget you think you've got in your bag to solve. And it's that the ability for an SE to actually bring out that conversation, but sometimes to educate the customer on how to even think about the problem in the first place, because often they've come to you with hey listen, I want to buy a CRM or I want to buy an ERP or I want to buy some FX, and okay, but that's not the problem you've got.
Speaker 1:The problem you've got looks like this why do you think an SE other than what we've just spoken about? But in fact they're not quoted what's in their approach that allows them to have a different conversation with the customer than what typically most salespeople?
Speaker 2:have. Yeah, look, it's so interesting, dan, because listening to you I was thinking the crazy reality or dirty secret of this industry is the SEs are absolutely paid on the same as the salesperson. They don't earn commission in the same way. They're typically bonused rather than commissioned, but absolutely their success is tied to the sales success. So you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I think the difference is in the approach. The SE is positioned as the expert between the customer and the salesperson. So their job is as an SE, you know the product intimately and what you're trying to do is you're trying to identify pain on the customer side. And you're absolutely right that sometimes what a customer feels, that pain, is actually not a pain. It might be a symptom, but the cause of the pain is something else. And so what the SE is really good at is continuing to dig in with the customer through a discovery process to really uncover what are the different types of pain, who owns that pain, who really feels the consequence of that pain.
Speaker 2:And if they do it well, then what they do is almost to the point you were making. They're able to influence the buyer in a way that they uncover pain that the buyer doesn't necessarily know they had before Competitively. What they can also do is, if they shift the emphasis to almost like adjacent areas of pain, they can broaden the scope of a deal. And then the other side of it is they can start to create a narrative for different stakeholders in the deal. The narrative to the technical buyer is going to be different to the business buyer and so forth, and so I think SA's we generally train them to be very consultative in the way they engage, and that consultative approach is, through various frameworks and so forth is really designed to help map what are we hearing from the customer against the solution capabilities and how do we broaden that to the extent possible?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So I've got a question here for the three of us actually, because we're all now sales leaders and we'll leave you talking. First, give you a little preface about the difference between SEs and sales, but I think there are also some cardinal sins here that salespeople commit on a regular basis. Yes, when either bringing SEs in or engaging with SEs. And I want to pause three sales heads now. Give some tips for our listeners around how to not engage with an SE, or if you engage this way, you will get a bad outcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's some really good lessons, I reckon you've got some great stories.
Speaker 2:It's so funny, dan, because in my role as an SE leader I would always be in the sales forecast and I was always the guy I was the pain in the room asking these really tough questions about how well qualified is this, and did we really know the decision process, and is that decision maker really the decision maker, and have we triangulated it? And so it's really easy to ask all those questions on the SE side. When you become on the sales side, you realize, geez, I must have been such a bloody pain, because that's the stuff that as a salesperson, you're desperately trying to find out. And it's obvious I get it SE, but it's hard. So look, it's a funny world. But I think the answer to your question is an SE doesn't want to be the doom in the room.
Speaker 2:So I would say SEs are naturally half glass empty kind of guys, is my view. I think if we weren't, we'd probably be sales leaders or salespeople. I think it's that innate nature of an SE's personality, which is that they tend to be half glass empty. They tend to focus on the things that are missing. They're not there to just to attribute blame, but what they're trying to do is to say, look, there are these elements that are missing, right, and we need to get a plan to be able to resolve it.
Speaker 2:But I know that what an SE always hates is and it happens all the time is a salesperson that says, look, I've just done discovery with a customer. They want a demo next week of Sales Hub. I've locked it in for Wednesday at two o'clock and you'd be ready. And the SE is sitting there and go hang on, what do you mean? You've done discovery, I haven't asked any questions. Well, what do you want me to show them? Oh, don't worry, you don't need to do discovery. And it's like the SE is going hang on, you've just missed a real opportunity for me to sell that credibility and build that trust that we talked about earlier. So, yeah, that's definitely a pain point, but it's so funny because I noticed, as a sales leader, I now do that to the SEs and everything goes around full circle.
Speaker 1:I think on that point, dan and this is a piece that I've lent on in leading teams over the last kind even if you used to be an SE and even if the notes you've got you recorded the session, I don't know you stuck it through chat, gpt and it's got the best structured notes ever on the face of the planet that process of having an SE in the room or having that session is not for you as the salesperson and it's not for the SE. Yes, for the customer, for the customer 100%.
Speaker 2:And it's not for the SE, yes For the customer, for the customer, 100%.
Speaker 1:And even if all you end up doing is a replay of the first call process and the same pain points are brought up in the same meeting, if you structure it well, the customer never walks out of that with hold on. I've told you all this information. Yes, how did you not get it out of the first call? And that's a bit of a catch-all for the SEs as well. Right, walk in. Okay, if that meeting's already happened, read the freaking notes. Walk in and say to the customer I've read your notes, here's the bullet points, but do you mind if we revisit those Because I've got some different way? I want to go to the process it's about. I've got a problem I want to solve and you guys are here to help me solve the problem. That's the process, and when you do that, this process working between a sales person and SE becomes this match made in heaven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely agreed. I think generally what I would say and I know it's a generalization but generally customers want to feel heard. They want to feel understood. They don't always have the answers. They want to know about other customers that have faced similar challenges to them. They want to know about what does best practice look like, they want to know the stories and tribulations from customers and the learning other customers have had. And that's the thing that I think the SE brings. And so in the conversation you're absolutely right Like a salesperson and SE, even listening to the answer that the customer gives, they'll interpret things slightly differently and they'll ask qualifying questions based on their level of expertise, and so the conversation can go down multiple paths, but I think you're right. For the customer, it's the benefit of you've explored my pain, you've understood me, you've heard what I've had to say, you've got my interests in mind, and that's really powerful. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I think that the next step often doesn't end up becoming let's come back and demo or show you the product, or whatever it may be. There's a whole bunch of steps between okay, how do we solve it? What are we actually dealing with here? What's the real problem? What's the diagnosis? And quite often, it's one of the best deals I've done. You almost get to the end and they go. Have we seen the product yet? Yeah, have we seen the demo? It's a funny thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's really funny because I would say that to the SEs a lot and they would look at me like I was from another world. But I would say to them you should look for ways to not do a demo. Right, we don't have to do a demo. You can sell on value, you can sell on references, you can sell on best practices. You can do a range of things. The demo at the end of the day, is just a proof point. That's all it is. It's I've heard you, I've got this capability. Here's what it is. But you're absolutely right, you don't need to do it.
Speaker 2:But I think that one of the mistakes that a lot of us have made in our past is rushing to demo too soon. And I think the mistake if you do that is it's almost the opposite of everything we've just been talking about. Which is you come across as generic. You haven't understood the customer. Just been talking about which is you come across as generic. You haven't understood the customer. You don't really understand that pain. So it's almost.
Speaker 2:There was this very famous Bob Dylan film clip back in the days where he's standing there and he's got these cardboard signs and he's just showing one word after another. It's almost like that. It's like I've got this feature, is it you interested? No, okay, I've got another one. Is you interested in that? Okay, I've got this other one. Because you just don't know what the customer's lens is, and so I think the mistake is rushing too early. I think it's far better to take a little longer, really dig in and understand the customer, build that trust, and then, when you do come back and demo, you're showing something that highlights that you've really understood them and you're showing them just a snippet of what their world is going to look like in the future. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've seen thousands of demos, engagements with salespeople, ses over time. What are some of your top tips on how to work through this relationship?
Speaker 3:Look, I think the number one thing I think between an SE and a salesperson is mutual respect. One thing I think between an SE and a salesperson is mutual respect. If there's a mutual respect for the role you have in the deal, magic happens. We've all met the AE that thinks he or she is God's gift to the world and the best salesperson, and they treat everybody on their team like servants that need to come in and demo next week. That rapport isn't there. Customers smell that a mile away. You don't build trust. So I think the best salespeople allow SEs to go and do their job and they don't have to be the smartest person in the room. They don't have to say all of the things during those initial discovery meetings. And the crux of that is mutual trust and respect. And I think if you've got an SE that you genuinely respect and a sales engagement, you don't have to speak over the top of them. You don't have to tell your prospect that you're just as smart as the SE. So I think you build it based on that sort of mutual respect and I think allow the SE to go do their job.
Speaker 3:I've met some awesome SEs over my time and the best ones are genuinely curious. They love the technology. They're constantly pushing the boundaries of what's possible with whatever technology you're trying to sell. Allow them to go create that magic and that excitement with the prospect. And I think the flip side of that to your point, dan, is the thing that used to drive me absolutely nuts about the ses was the ones that used to interrogate me on is there a budget, is there a need, is there authority, is there timing? I go, dude, that's my job. Let me do my job. I'll let you job so that, to answer your question, dan bartels, it's mutual respect. Allow the se to go do their job and trust them to be bloody good at what they do.
Speaker 3:But the flip side also works and I've had some fascinating blowups in sales teams and most of the time when there's angst between an SE and an AE, it's typically when one or the others started to encroach on the other's role and what they're good at. I've had an SE basically run a forecast with an AE and it drives them absolutely nuts. Are you sure they've got the need, authority and timing? And the flip side is an AE saying on a Friday afternoon mate, I've just done the discovery call, I've booked us in for a demo on Monday. That's a lack of respect because you're not going to do your best job.
Speaker 3:So I think mutual respect for me is a big one, but it's an interesting one because I look back at my own career and, like you, dan, I spent 10 years in consulting and I started working with some awesome salespeople in the mid to late 90s and I loved working with those guys because they actually respected my understanding and knowledge of where the customer wanted to go. And that's how I got into the SE world basically through just loving, showing how I could solve a problem for their prospects and, as a result, those two individuals loved my work and we got on really well, mutual respect, et cetera. It was when, I think, ian Hodge bought me a carton of beer to say thank you for my help on one of the deals I went. There's probably more to this. I probably need to move into sales and actually get paid to do this.
Speaker 3:So I guess an interesting segue. I see some brilliant SEs and they look across the fence and they see what they perceive is the salespeople making all the money, doing all the lovely dinners and lunches, et cetera. Yes, I want to go do that job. It's interesting and I know your career has followed an interesting journey. What do you see as some of the best and worst of solution engineers that are at the top of their game. They look across the fence and they're like I want to be a sales guy, that's easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that goes back to what you were saying, simon, around the word mutual in mutual respect, because I've just as much seen the other side of this, which is the SE that looks at the sales guy and go, mate, you've got the easiest job. You wine and dine some people, you negotiate some pricing. I'm the one doing all the work because I'm doing the discovery and the solutioning and the demo. What are you doing? You're arranging the meeting and bringing the coffee, and I think in those relationships that's where we butt heads, and so it does have to cut both ways. That respect I absolutely agree.
Speaker 2:I think the reality, though, for many SEs and I even struggled with this myself when I was thinking of making the transition is, as an SC, you actually don't carry a lot of risk, right? Because, generally speaking, like when you look at an SC's complaint, rather, their OT is largely base heavy and the variable portion of it or the at-risk portion of it is generally a pretty small percentage and, as we talked about earlier, it's a bonus based on how the team performs. So the risk element of it for me as an individual is actually really small. When you flip across onto the sales side, you're generally on a 50-50 or a 60-40 plan and success is now up to you. Right, you're in the driver's seat, but you carry the risk, and I think for a lot of SEs it's that reality of moving from one comp plan to another is the thing that scares them, because they don't carry the risk. Today, good SEs get paid really well and if I'm going to move across it to sales, chances are, even though my ITE might be the same, my base salary goes down and my at-risk component goes up. So it's a tough decision for a lot of SEs.
Speaker 2:I think the other side of it is you also don't know, as an SE, how you're going to feel carrying quota, and that's a really big thing to think about because as an SE, you don't carry it in the same way as a salesperson.
Speaker 2:As a salesperson, you carry the number when things are tough. You feel that, and as an SE, you don't carry it in the same way. And the thing that's hard to predict as an SE is how are you going to feel in that moment when you're sitting on the other side of the table and now the reality of my quota and having to hit a number every month or every quarter, and so for many SEs, that can be really scary, and yeah, look, it's a tough one. I think that SEs will reach a point in their career where they start to have to make some decisions. It's either they specialize in the SE realm that they're in and they go into architecture or industry specialization, or they go into leadership, or the reality is they will go into sales. And I actually encourage SEs to go into sales because I think the good salespeople are the ones that have been in both worlds and they have that appreciation for both.
Speaker 2:They have the mutual respect for both and I think I've seen many SEs that have gone on to have incredibly successful sales careers because of that curiosity and customer understanding that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I was going to say I'm an SE. I've been in the role for five, six, seven years. I'm successful. And I look to myself and I say, look, I want to go be a salesperson. I've observed what they do. I'm prepared to take the risk.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that you need to leave behind when you leave the SE ranks? The fact that you're no longer the expert and you shouldn't be the expert, and the fact that what? That you don't have to be the guy or the or that smart person in the room that's advising and driving, and it's almost like you have to accept that just changing titles is going to mean that the level of trust you have is going to be eroded. It's just the nature of it, and you have to feel comfortable with that, and it's not easy, but you have to go into it knowing that's going to happen. I think, though, it's important to have the right sort of career and coaching conversations with people to make sure that you really understand their motivation for wanting to go into sales, because it can't just be about the money. There has to be something more to it, and you have to feel challenged and motivated to want to take on that responsibility. I know that, even in my own career, like, there were many times I thought about it and just felt I just wasn't ready for it. I wasn't sure how I would react to carrying the quota. I wasn't sure how I'd react to the change in comp, but I think I was really lucky. So if I share a vulnerable story with you, my last role at Salesforce, I actually transitioned out of the SE world and went into operations, so I had an operational role, and the reason I chose to do that is, ultimately, I always felt that at some point I wanted to be an MD of a software company at a regional level, and so what was interesting in my conversations with anyone I spoke to was like Dan, no one is going to take you seriously unless you've carried a bag. That was what I heard all the time and I was like what do you mean carry a bag? Ultimately, if you're going to be an MD, you need to have run the sales team, and carried a bag means you carry a quota, and that was a really tough lesson and I think it still is true today. By the way, I think that for most MD roles in this industry, we value sales acumen, we value people that carry quota. I was really, if I tell, the vulnerable side of the story. So after 10 years at Salesforce, I was made redundant and it was a really tough pill to swallow because I was pretty senior in the company. I'd given everything to the company and all of a sudden I was redundant and I remember the head of HR at the time, as we were having the conversation, she said to me Dan, you don't feel it now, but I promise you this will be the best thing for your career. And I just didn't get what she was saying at that time at all.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. So many sales people in my organization, I've got so many AVPs and RVPs. I actually don't need another salesperson. What I need is somebody that can help me build strategy, that can help us think about direct and indirect sales motions. What I need is somebody that can align the various parts of the organization together between sales, pre-sales, success, marketing. And so I was really fortunate, and particularly with DocuSign when I started, which was the people I was interviewing with valued me, not because of my sales background but because of everything else that I had in my kit bag and that really allowed me to make that transition. But I think it's rare, would be my point. I think nine times out of 10, or in my case, seven out of 10, it's you got to have carried a bag before wise words.
Speaker 1:I know we've had this conversation before. Actually, last time the three of us were together up in Cairns. We've had this conversation before and I think it's a really interesting viewpoint of what's critical in that role of being a salesperson or a sales leader. That, I think, then differentiates you between the supporting team less important than you are on a team or on an account and then, as a result, what are the roles that everyone fulfills. So back to the question Simon asked a moment ago around what's the different skill sets of that approach to transitioning from being an SE to being an AE or carrying a bag? It is that accountability of A finding the customer because you're going to have the conversation in the first place. That's hard. That's a whole process that, if you're an SE, you probably haven't experienced, that You've never had to do. You've never had to do it right. But why would everyone want to talk to me about this great product that we've got? It solves all these things, and look at all the list of features and stuff. Hold on, but that's a conversation for later. Deal with that process of knocking on doors, making the phone calls, developing the relationships, building credibility, without a whole bunch of knowledge and conversations. Yes, that piece is critical.
Speaker 1:As a salesperson, and then being able to step into certain roles and great salespeople or sales leaders get really comfortable with my role in this engagement looks like this your role is to be the trusted advisor and solution. My boss's role is to, when I need you to come in and talk to this guy, and your conversation can only go this far and I want you to step out there. And why? Because we're not closing yet, we're just establishing relationship and then we're going to do all these mate, assign those roles and get really clear as to what it is. And that's the strategy that I think SEs are great at and I think every SE has the capacity to do this if they can accept that risk. And you're right, the 50-50 split or 60-40, when you're packaged, it's hard. It's hard and you want it's a real. But hey, with that difficulty comes great reward and that's the upside.
Speaker 2:So you get the upside too right, exactly, but I think the point you've touched on, dan, is so important because the analogy that I always think about is a good salesperson to your point is almost like a conductor of an orchestra they're bringing in the violin at the right time and bringing in the drum.
Speaker 2:They're orchestrating the way this is going to unfold for the customer, and a good salesperson knows that they don't have to be in the limelight. If you think about a conductor, sometimes you don't even see the conductor. It's got back to the audience. No one really cares. But the magic of it happens in the way in which everyone plays their instrument in time, and I think the good salespeople are the ones that know that's the secret, and what they're good at is understanding who are the individuals that I can count on at the right time and when do I bring them in, and what is it that they're going to do that's going to advance the sale without me being front and center of it. And so you've almost got to leave your ego at the door to a large extent, because, as a conductor, it's not about you. It's about the musicians and the team that you're working with. I couldn't agree more with that.
Speaker 3:It's about the musicians and the team that you're working with. I couldn't agree more with that. Yeah, and it's an interesting one. It's about the music that you make, really, yeah. Yeah, if the audience loves the music, you're doing a great job. It's an interesting one. So we've seen solution engineers or SEs move into sales roles and, to be honest with you, in my career I've seen it work and I've seen it fall over spectacularly. It In my career, I've seen it work and I've seen it fall over spectacularly. It's an interesting one.
Speaker 3:I tend to when it's not working, I've seen one of two reactions. I've seen the sales leader go they should never have moved into a sales role and write them off. The successful, the better sales leaders. When you sponsor an SE moving and changing roles and hey, you've got to think about prospecting, you've got to carry a bag, you own the risk, et cetera there's a lot of support that's necessary for somebody making that career transition. And where I've seen that support lacking, failure often follows. Where a leader genuinely leans in and says do you know what? You're not going to get this right first time, but I see your potential, I'm going to help you and I'm going to coach you. Tell me a little bit about that, dan. I think what's best practice in terms of what you've seen moving into that sales role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I think you're right, simon. I think you do have to help somebody make that transition. You know, the thing I think about a lot in the sales role and I think it's partly why salespeople are successful is because a couple of things happen. One is you have to feel comfortable that you're going to hear no more than you hear. Yes, you really do. And I think it goes to your point, dan, which is I'm going to make a bunch of outbound calls here and most of the time I'm going to get rejected, and that's okay. But if you're not comfortable with that and if, as an SE, you've never experienced that, that can be really unsettling to people, because they're used to people relying on the information they're giving them and all of a sudden no one wants to talk to you. So helping people deal with that rejection, I think is important. The other thing is you've got to help that individual understand that their role has shifted. Now they're no longer the expert, they're no longer the center of it, they are the conductor of it, and it's a different set of skills. And then the other side of it is, as you get closer to the close stage of a deal is that you've got to understand the contracts, you've got to understand legality, you've got to understand negotiation. These are all things that an SE hasn't necessarily been exposed to before. There's a lot of assistance.
Speaker 2:I think an SE needs to make that transition. Having said that, I think the more mature SEs, if they've gone about their role the right way, then they hopefully have already been exposed to a bunch of these things anyway, because they've been partnering with a salesperson already on a proactive basis and shared some of that risk. But to the point that you're making, I absolutely agree. I think you've got to make space for the support that individual is going to need, the coaching they're going to need, the role-playing assistance they're going to need, and just that psychological support of yeah, I get it, it's been a tough day, you've been rejected a bunch of times, but we're going to keep going. Here's all the opportunity. Let's keep going.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think I want to give a tip here for anyone listening going okay, yeah, but how do I? I'm an SE and I think I want to be in sales and what do I do from here? And I reckon I've had this conversation with five or six SEs in my career and the bit they miss is that self-starting aspect of a salesperson. And I do this the same as if I get a referral from someone that says hey, listen, I want to join your business or I might be a good. I've got a person who I think I want to refer across to them. My answer to that is always great share my phone number, share my email. I'm not phoning them.
Speaker 1:Yes, they can't have the mouse to make that first outreach. Or I've seen a role. I'm going to find you on LinkedIn, I'll connect or I'll text you and I will organize that engagement, Same as if it's internal. It doesn't matter if it's internal or not. If you can't prove it, you can't sell yourself in the first instance. I agree, You're not going to be able to make that transition. You're not cut out for it. Yeah, and that's okay, and it's perfectly okay. You can have a great career and we'll support you. But if you can't, so if you're an SE or someone in a supporting role who wants to step into a sales role, you've got to be able to have that uncomfortable conversation with yourself and make that outreach work. Yep, If that doesn't happen, the rest of the engagement won't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely. It's almost like that scene in the movie where they go sell me this pen. If you can't do that and if you can't deal with that discomfort of knowing that I have to do this and my livelihood and my earnings depend on my ability to do that If you're uncomfortable with that, then it's not for you and it's even in that piece of okay, you might've seen a role advertised internally.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's a sales run. I want to put my hand up and it's actually approaching it saying I am going to get this role and what are the roadblocks I will remove in front of me to get this role? Every sales leader in the world will take that person every day, and twice on Sundays. Yes, who just removes all the roadblocks? Yes, who just removes all the roadblocks? Yes, and if you do that, I can teach you the rest, I can coach you, I can give you the skill and give you all the time in the world, but if you can't do that for yourself, it won't get out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree. Spot on, it's an interesting one.
Speaker 3:Dan. So I've used the analogy. I said imagine you're George Clooney and you're on Tinder. You've never experienced rejection. That's not what sales is about. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:It's exactly right you have to feel comfortable with it. It is interesting, though, simon, because one of the things that I've observed in my own sales leadership is I really value the SE voice, and so even in the forecast like when we're doing a forecast or we're doing a deal review it's almost like there's a set of questions I ask the sales people in how effectively have we done discovery? To what extent have we validated the solution? To what extent does the customer understand the value of what we're selling? And if I can marry what the salesperson is saying with what the SE is telling me, then I feel much more comfortable about the deal, and so it's interesting. As I've moved into sale, it's almost like I haven't let go of the SE side of me, and, if anything, I think it's helped me be an effective sales leader.
Speaker 3:I completely agree. It's an interesting one. It's a weird thing To your point before about the glass half empty and half full, etc. Sales people by their nature have got happy years right. They'll hear a tiny little thing in a conversation where a prospect will come running back and say guess what, dan, they're going to sign, they love our software, et cetera. And in that instance you look across to the SE, you just see the look in their eye and you go all right, I've got to do a little bit more digging here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think salespeople need to have those happy years. It's a tough job if you don't have that optimism or if you don't have that gumption that you were talking about, dan, to get up and go. Salespeople God bless them. They need that. I think the good ones have that. And if we can balance it with the other side of the way the SE works, that's the magic. Right, that partnership and that combination, that's the magic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really good segue. I know, dan, one of the items we wanted to talk about at the top of this as well was moving into that kind of deal review process, whether it's live in a deal or a deal win or a deal loss. I've been in so many of these sessions where, all of a sudden, it's a bunch of salespeople talking about all the positives of this deal that they won and all the things that went their way. Or you're halfway through a deal and you're trying to make your way to the end and it seems to all be a sales conversation. And I know, having talked to a number of people who've worked for you over time, that's not how you bring the team together and have those conversations. How do you, having lived in these two worlds, how do you approach that that you think is different to what people who just got either that sales view or that SE view? How do you approach that that you think is different to what people who just got into that sales view or that se view?
Speaker 2:how do you think it's different, as, yeah, look, I think I think, down the way, I'd answer that a couple of ways actually, I think. The first is I like to encourage the ses to build what I call an se scorecard and what that is. It's a set of questions that the ses look at in terms of have they met the key technical buyer? Have they done the appropriate discovery? Have we got sign-off on the solution? Does the customer understand our value? Do we know how we're going to integrate with all the range of disparate technology that exists? So a series of questions that the SE answers that result in a score that tells me the health of the opportunity from the SE perspective. The other thing that I've increasingly done over the years is I've actually asked SEs for a forecast, so I get them to commit a deal to me, in the same way that I ask a salesperson to commit a deal and I say, if you were the sales guy, are you committing this? Do you feel like you've done enough SE work to feel comfortable that this deal is going to close? And then, with my sale, the SE managers, I then ask them for to close. And then, with my sale, the SE managers, I then ask them for a forecast, and all I'm trying to do is marry up the information I'm receiving, and so I think that's helped me to get a pretty accurate assessment of where the business is at, because I am hearing it from both perspectives and I'm leveraging both personalities to my advantage.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, it's almost like a loss review before you've actually lost the deal, but what I'm trying to uncover is what's the risk that we're not talking about, that we haven't seen yet, and how do I kind of surface that?
Speaker 2:And then, ultimately, what you want to drive is you want to drive a series of actions off the back of that to say, okay, let's proactively mitigate some of those things.
Speaker 2:I definitely do that. So I use the kind of the SEME to get back to the glass half empty kind of questions a bit to really to make sure that we're covering all bases, because I think the one thing that I learned throughout my career and the Paul Athelbees of the world, simon, to your point taught me that is selling is as much an art as it is a science, and the science part of it is how do I get control and how do I get comfort across all of the dimensions of the sale, and I think that the good sale people are the ones that do that. Well, and that's what I'm always trying to manage is to wrestle control, to think through all of the various permutations of how this deal is going to flow, and the paranoia is how do I get control of those things before my competitor does? And yeah, that's definitely what I've learned over the years.
Speaker 1:I think something you just mentioned in that deal review process that I think almost goes all the way back to the start of this conversation, which was potential conflict between AEs and SEs or just people in that team, right, it's.
Speaker 1:How do you have that? And I think the deal review process is so important and critical in any sales team. But when you come to that deal review, everyone often has a very different voice than in a forecast or in a review, right, and the voice becomes much more collaborative and it's let's all look at this problem together and note the issues and note we're going to move and change, whereas when you have that conversation between AEs and SEs and the SEs asking questions about the deal of the AE, the answer is we haven't done a bunch of these things. I don't have a close plan yet. No, I don't know yet who the actual decision maker here is. It's on the list of shit to go and do. I'm going to work it out, but we'll move on.
Speaker 1:And I think it's that piece of being able to have that voice between those two people saying hey, I see, have you been able to work out what the core problem the customer's got? No, I don't, but I think steps look like this from here Okay, great, let's organize those meetings, let's get those answers, let's get that engagement. Yes, right, this is the list of all the stuff that I need to go and do, and I think this kind of leans on. Another thing that I think is a massive issue that needs a better name Close plan is the worst name in the world for the thing that sits in that drives the deal, because it's not about the close, it's about the decision plan or it's to get to the end of it. You may never get to the end of it, or the decision might be. You're not the right partner, great, please don't buy our stuff If you're not the right partner?
Speaker 3:please don't buy it.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be in a red call for the next three years with you. Buy it. I don't want to be in a ridicule for the next three years with you, but it's getting that piece and getting that. Just what are the jobs to be done? Who's going to own them? Who's going to go ahead from here and work with each other to get it done? I think it's so crucial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I definitely agree, dan. I've been in deal reviews in the past as an SE, where it was a really high stress, negative, almost like an interrogation, like the sales leader was beating the poor account executive to almost ridicule them for everything about the deal that they didn't know. And as somebody that sat in the room for all those years, what I realized is actually the best deal reviews are where you create that safe space where different people can have a different perspective and it's not an interrogation, it's like team. We're going to leverage each other's experience and understanding to get ourselves to a better place, and success of this deal review looks like coming up with five or six actions that we didn't have before. That helps us get control. That's what we're here to do and I think, as a sales leader, that's really been an interesting journey for me because when I joined HubSpot, as an example, what I found is deal reviews had a very negative connotation.
Speaker 2:It was okay, the big boss wants to interrogate you on the deal, and I also noticed that a bunch of AEs started to produce incredible sets of content, presentations and plans and stuff solely for the purpose of getting through the deal review, not because they needed it to navigate the deal.
Speaker 2:It was because they felt like I needed it, and so it was interesting when I said to them guys, here's what this is not. It's not a witch hunt. I'm not here to interrogate you. I'm not here to poke holes in your deals. I'm here to help you and everyone that's invited on this call. Their main objective is to take ownership of some actions to help you be successful. That's what we're going to do, and what was fascinating is, within weeks, it started to spread across the organization, where, all of a sudden, ae started asking I want to do a deal review with Dan, because there was this shift from interrogation to I'm going to help you be successful. And I think that's ultimately the secret here around these deal reviews is to create that safe space where we can come together and work out how we're going to move this thing forward.
Speaker 3:Mutual respect. Again Exactly.
Speaker 1:Simon, it's exactly right Exactly On that front down, I think it's. And look, we've all lived in BRP and CRM for our careers. But if you have to bill any piece of paper in order to do a deal review, it means you don't already have the tools in place to win the deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have a plan.
Speaker 1:You don't have a plan. You should be able to, and sure, there's a mental preparation piece which I'll give you some time for. But if I walk into the morning, any salesperson should be in the scenario where, for whatever reason, something happened into the morning. Any salesperson should be in the scenario where, for whatever reason, something happened on the call with the customer or just internally. Someone more senior has suggested I think we should all get together this afternoon and do a deal review. You don't have all the components to be able to say to everyone hey, head of the meeting, here's the three-point things you need to know. I've shared the documents. That is what we're working from right now. If you can't do a deal review like that, then you actually need to take a step back and look at your own process and say, okay, what am I not operating with every single day that I should have to make this successful and normally it's a plan. You haven't got a plan.
Speaker 2:You haven't got a plan, absolutely. I actually think it's even more fundamental than that, particularly when you're selling CRM, which is, if that information is not in HubSpot, then you're like how the hell are you selling this thing to customers? You're not even using it for the purpose it's intended. So, to your point, the only thing we open up is HubSpot and we look at the deal record and that's what we use to do a deal review. There's nothing else, and the good salespeople are the ones that know how to use it.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, absolutely hey. Guys, we're getting to the top of the hour and at the end of the session, dan, what we do is we ask for your. We've covered a bunch of areas here transitioning from your journey, people who are transitioning from SE to AE or vice versa, and, obviously, deal review. But out of today, I think the most valuable piece was your couple of top tips for probably the SE community. I think so. If you are wanting to transition or expand your career as an SE, whether you want to be an AE or not, what are the top three tips? You'd leave people with.
Speaker 2:I think you've got to be clear on your motivation. As I said earlier, I fundamentally think it's got to be more than it's because of the money. I think you've got to feel comfortable that you understand what you're taking on and be motivated by that. I think it's about being comfortable with rejection and really, as much as you can, understanding what that's going to feel like beforehand. And the third thing I would say is don't be silent about it. Talk to people that have made the transition. Talk to them about make sure your manager understands what you want to do. You're leveraging your network as much as possible To the point we were talking about earlier. You've got to make it happen for yourself. So don't just sit on it. Do something about it.
Speaker 1:Dan amazing tips, mate.
Speaker 2:Thank you so?
Speaker 1:much for joining the podcast, simon. As always, mate, thank you for your time as well. Everyone, thank you for listening to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, you're listening on either Apple or Spotify. Press the plus button. If you're watching us on YouTube, click down below. Press subscribe. Give us a comment. Please share us on LinkedIn as well, guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:We look forward to talking to you next time. Thanks, guys, thank you.