Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Join Rick Smolen and other seasoned B2B sales leaders on the quest for defining great sales leadership. Learn the pillars of successful leadership, hear stories about what works and what doesn’t, lessons learned, and come away with specific tactics you can apply to your job or career right now.
Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Sean Munafo on Hiring Better, Building Culture, and Leading with Authenticity
We trade super-rep heroics for scalable leadership with CRO Sean Munafo, unpacking credible swagger, the 1-3-1 framework, and how AI is splitting teams into catalysts and crutches. We share the systems, signals, and sincerity that sustain performance in hybrid work.
• credible swagger as preparation, belief, and feedback loops
• hiring to close your gaps, not mirror your strengths
• shift from dependency to a team of leaders
• remote culture: personal drivers, 1:1s as their time
• escaping super-rep mode with 1-3-1 decisions
• rollout that sticks: inspect what you expect
• leading vs lagging indicators for scale
• cross-functional mesh over rigid org charts
• AI as catalyst or crutch; raising the quality bar
Music by Ben Cina & Ayler Young
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Pillar Talk where we build the foundations of sales leadership success and attempt to create clarity in terms of what good looks like for current and aspiring sales leaders. Before we jump in, I like to quickly review what the six pillars that I've developed for successful sales leadership. We have talent identification and attraction. Even in a world of AI, this is still critical. We have the operating rhythm, the environment that fosters motivation, engagement, and accountability, business planning, which is about our cross-functional partnerships on how we play offense to plan for the future rather than defense reacting to the things that are happening to us, mastering the craft, which helps our teams win. And then finally, communication and ownership. Today we are lucky to have as a guest Sean Munafo. Sean is the chief revenue officer at Lutera. He leads global sales marketing CS, driving growth for one of the leading software providers in the legal tech space. Sean has over 15 years of leadership experience. He's held senior roles at companies like iSIMs. He's scaled teams, he's entered new markets, he's shaped a high performance culture and go-to-market strategies. I've seen Sean on LinkedIn sharing candid reflections of his own leadership journey. I've seen him talk about global expansion and his global travels, defining best in class and celebrating the wins of his team around the world. Sean, thank you for joining Pillar Talk.
SPEAKER_01:Happy to be here, Rick. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Sean, when I think about our past interactions, I think about what's made you successful, and we haven't worked closely together, but I've seen great confidence and great swagger. Swagger was the word that came to mind when I was thinking about preparing for this episode. How has that helped shape your career?
SPEAKER_01:So it's it's so interesting. Um what's what's at the root of a lot of swagger is often tremendous insecurity. Um I would argue uh imposter syndrome is something that riddles majority of the great salespeople that I've worked with, uh great CEOs I've worked with, CROs that I've learned from. Um to me, swagger is a byproduct of preparation and confidence through experience and frankly hard lessons. Um but it one thing that's I think so important to me in terms of gaining credible swagger is really believing what you're talking about. I think when you're when you're working for any kind of organization, or it doesn't even have to be for work, if you're representing a cause, if it's something for philanthropy or a group that you represent or a topic that you're passionate about, if it's true to cause and you believe it, if if you're educated on it and if you really uh are going to own that message, I think swagger is a natural byproduct of that. I think it's even more so in the case of folks like me who has struggled an entire career with imposter syndrome, where um I don't ever believe there's a call that I'm prepared enough for, or there's a meeting that I'm prepared enough for, or no matter how many incredible opportunities I've had to take the stage and present, I never get off and I'm like mic drop, nail that. Uh it's always getting off. And my first question is, how could I have done better? And that's even right now, right? I we have we have all hands call coming up tomorrow. I guarantee you the first call I make after that is to my CEO saying, what could I do better? What did I miss? How do you think it landed? So I think for me, swagger is just a form of confidence built on education and passion.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think there's, you know, one of the things that comes to mind for me when I hear you sort of mention that is just having a high bar and then doing the work to try to first self-exceed that bar and then create the environment for those around you to do the same.
SPEAKER_01:Agreed. I I think it's it's again, uh servant leadership is one of those things where it it can be a double-edged sword, right? It's it's good to a level, but I think, and I think for the majority of your of your call here today, Rick, and and you're thinking about maybe folks that are thinking about that next stage of progression in leadership and sales, like the whole servant leadership idea, it never goes away. But there is a time where you also hire for talent and you hire for confidence and you hire for experience. And while servant leadership is great, there's also putting people around yourself that are frankly better than you are in some instances. And if you you're hiring for people that are closing gaps, you really can't lead by example there, right? You're you're depending on these people to close those gaps for you. So I do think it's important to set the bar of what good looks like. But I also think it's really, really important to identify what are the areas that you as a professional are always going to struggle with and grapple with. And then how do you work through that and have the confidence to hire people that are better than you in those gaps? And that's why, like one of my biggest lessons in leadership and senior leadership is ego is not your amigo. Um, if if there's a if there's concern or challenge when you're going through an interview that, oh my God, this guy's better than I am, if that's a concern for you, then you're probably going down the wrong track. Um, you should be thriving to find people that are smarter than you are. And then everyone kind of continues to go up together. No one's going to be perfect at everything, Rick. No one's going to be. I have plenty of gaps. I have a longer list of gaps than I do things that I'm great at. What I think I've specialized in is finding people who can help me get better in those areas and areas that I'm just a lost cause. I make sure that they got the best strength to pick me up.
SPEAKER_00:Is that just like a self-awareness around, all right, I know what I'm good at, I know the things. Now I know the things that I'm not as strong at, and I'm going to focus my, you know, particular energy in filling those.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's right. Yeah. And again, I don't think you have to be great at everything. I think you need to be good in the core functions of things. You need to, you know, depending on what your role is and what kind of organization you're working for. I think there are things that are the non-tan, like the non-negotiables, right? You have to have transparency, you have to have a proper work ethic, you need to have empathy towards people and a deeper understanding of what motivates individuals. But you can, you can, you can learn a lot of things. Like, like most of us have the proper IQ and EQ if we're already in sales, right? You can learn product, you can learn sales methodology, you can learn an industry. I just transitioned into an entire new market with extremely high intellect, going from more of an HR, TA background into legal, which is super high IQ, very complex, and it's it's really hard, right? But again, as long as you have the basic aptitude, you can learn those things. What you can't change in a year is what someone's parents couldn't in 40. If someone's uh not ethically strong or doesn't have a strong moral compass, right? Those are things that I can't change that. Like you are who you are. I can I can work around it, but those are not the people that you can really anchor to to help go the whole distance, not to mention bring up the organization with you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, for better or for worse, you and I have both been in leadership roles for a long time. And I feel like the world has changed a lot from the time that we started in this, you know, like elevating from individual contributor to first line management. Um, and so some things have changed quite a bit, and other things just haven't changed that much at all. How do you sort of think about um how your leadership style or leadership effectiveness has evolved over these last 15 years? If you take how you think about things today versus maybe when you started?
SPEAKER_01:Man, that's a really awesome question. I think one of the biggest lessons is when I think back, and I'm going back now 15 years, right? When I when I got into my first big leadership role, owning a pretty large swath of territory, the whole Northeast of a of a of a public company, I had this like, I guess it was part ego, or maybe it was still part of that imposture syndrome where I felt so proud to be able to say, oh, if I go away for a vacation, like everything's gonna fall apart, right? That's how important I am to this business. This business needs me, Rick. If I go away, we're we're done. And it was like this this badge of honor. And what I quickly learned, probably in a matter of about two years, was what what I thought was a badge of honor was actually like a scarlet letter. Um, it is not good to be that dependent on uh to have that success if you're there, right? It's you want to be there, you want to be important, you want to be the pulse, the heartbeat, the driver. But if if you've created an environment where things fall apart when you're not around, then you're not building an environment of leaders, right? You're you're probably a glorified super salesperson. They're depending on you for everything. You're not getting scale, that you have to always be the one that rings the bell and rides the deal in. And the reality is that's not how you're gonna scale a multi-million or billion-dollar business. It's not how you're gonna create a succession plan or successor. So I think one hard lesson is build it, build a team of leaders, right? Like create an environment where you can trust people to ask for forgiveness and not permission. I think that was definitely one of the earlier lessons I learned that has carried me a pretty long way. I would say another lesson is um, you know, COVID was pretty interesting, right? Going into, you could probably tell energy-wise, and you and me are saying we we we run on a pretty high frequency, for better or for worse. Um, not being able to have that energy in a room is hard. Um, not being able to read authentic body language is hard. It was it was fun at first, right? You got to know people more differently, right? They're home, their spouse comes in, or the dog jumps on the kind on the camera, or a kid runs in and knocks something over. And at first it was cute. And then, like a year into it, people were like, I'm not turning my camera on. And now we're just staring at this void of emptiness. So for me, it's it's been how do you balance this culture of what will never be fully in person, right? We're never coming in five days a week again, putting a suit on. I don't think we're always going to be home in shorts and Crocs, but there'll be some probably blend in the middle. But the other big lesson I think that I had is you know, getting to know the more personal drivers of what motivates people, that is how you really drive, in my opinion, culture and retention. Because in a world where most people are operating remotely, it's hard to be as inclusive in culture when that's the case. It just is. When you could close your laptop and you're now in your home and you're off taking the kids to soccer or you're taking the dog for a walk, it's it's harder to stay connected to that fabric of culture. So if if I would say another thing that's super important, it's really, really tapping into your team's why. What motivates them? How do you motivate them? Um, are you getting to understand what's going on with them as a human being and as an individual to really tap into that frequency? And I think that helps close some of the gap of not having that in-office support system where I believe is the true definition of work-life balance. It's not like, oh, I work eight hours a day and then I'm off. Work-life balance is you have a really strong home system that when that's you know going really well, it helps pick up for when you have really crappy days in sales, which it's gonna be the case. And when you have a hard time at home or when things are not great, you have your work family that's gonna pick you up. It's not ours. It's you have a you you've you've reached homeostasis where both things are working really well. So I think that's a second lesson I think that I would learn. And I think um probably the third one is you know, I've I've really changed over the last decade my hiring type. I think, and and this isn't just because, you know, I think the emergence of DEI being a priority for all businesses, which is something that everyone should be passionate about. I think me coming from the family that didn't have the connections or you know, second generation Italian, and we we didn't, I didn't have any of the people in the right places. I didn't have the Ivy League school on my resume, I didn't have the the friends from Cornell to help get my resume to the top. So I think I've always really had a drive and passion for overrepresenting, underrepresented. But we still, as human beings, I think, feel like we're we get more attracted to hiring types that are like us. So they come from a similar background, they've worked at similar companies, they've held similar titles, they went to the similar school, right? Beyond the traditional view of that, I've gone out of my way of hiring individuals that bring something very different, life experience. Like if I have two candidates and one of them spent two years abroad working at a company in Singapore, or they spent six months abroad doing a, you know, opening an office in Sydney or Melbourne, those life experiences, that adaptability that you need to go through that, man, are those really important. And I've learned those, those intangible experiences for me are so valuable because it brings a totally different perspective that you or me have had. And I think that's where a lot of things have been lost in the backwash is like those life experiences are everything. If they've, you know, where where they came from, like what kind of family they grew up in, what kind of challenges have they had. And that goes back to like the why. Like building a culture of people that actually give a shit, pardon the French, about about one another on a personal and a professional level for me. Like that is the future of where we're going. It has nothing to do with a generational thing. It's like a simple expectation. Like you need more than just the work every day.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yep. Um, I so you gave sort of a few different um really interesting points. Maybe I'll dive into sort of each one just to go a little one click deeper. The first thing you talked about is something that I think so many leaders have fallen into in the early stages of their career, which is that super rep syndrome where you run around and you basically fill in the gaps for the people on your team by doing the work for them and they build a dependency on you, and you you get into that situation where now you're working around the clock because you're doing seven jobs instead of one. Um, how did you spot that that was happening and how does one get out of that?
SPEAKER_01:I think you spot when it happens when you do try to take a vacation, number one, and you're like, oh my God, everything's falling apart, we're not gonna hit our number. I think you you fall, you you have it fall apart when people are constantly bringing you problems and they're not bringing you solutions.
SPEAKER_00:Um and that's I mean, do you have any recollections of stories from your own experience where there was like a light bulb moment for you, or something when you realized that, like, hey, I got to change tact here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think I mean many of us have had quarters where like every deal it feels like is going off the rails, and oftentimes it's because you tried to pull back or you had other priorities or you had someone that you were hiring. And you know, I could just from working in private equity for I've been in private equity companies now for almost you know 10 years. You know, the the every quarter is the most important quarter. It's just how it goes in private equity. Um, and there was probably one particular quarter that was extremely challenging, and this was actually uh during COVID. It was it was in 2020, it was in the thick of it all. And, you know, at the time I was at an organization where hospitality and retail were really, really important. And unfortunately, that market was really starting to get strained, right? Like tons and tons of layoffs, restaurants were closing down, hotels were closing down. And I'll never forget, you know, what what was our best case and upside now became the primary path to the deals. And going to the team and asking the hard question, like, hey, how are we gonna backfill these three deals and having the like the oh shit moment come up? And I realized I'm gonna have to figure out what we're gonna do here. Um, and it was a moment of extreme disappointment, and not in the team, in me, of like, how did I let us get to a point where number one, I was so confident in these deals happening and I didn't create a plan B. And then the second part was like, even when I did have the plan B, the plan B needed to be, I was a plan B. Um and what what I started to really do some soul searching after that. And look, by by by having a really strong team, which I did, and I've I'm fortunate to have had that, we we got through that and we were able to come up with deals. And there was also understanding of the market at that time that conditions were changing. But shortly thereafter, Rick, I embraced a methodology that's been really helpful for me. You probably have heard of it, the 131 approach to scaling and leadership. And if you haven't heard of it, it's it's a pretty simple concept. When any given rep, any given manager, anyone, even in your personal life, they come to you and there's like all this noise, right? And we all know that every deal has a narrative, and the narrative is like it could be five volumes worth. But at the end of the day, whatever's happening, you can usually isolate it to a problem. Like, what is the problem statement? And one of the things I always like, my mantra is just work the problem. Like, if if any of my former teams hear that, they probably get the chill on the back of their neck. Because what I always say, like, just work the damn problem. Like, forget about all the other noise, let's work the problem. But the one of the hardest things for an individual sometimes is just blocking out all that peripheral noise and narrowing in on one problem. So, step one of the one three one, give me the problem we're trying to solve. Is it pricing? Is it timing? Is it access to uh the actual decision maker? What is the problem we're really trying to solve? The next thing is I have them give me three potential paths to solve the problem. Doesn't have to be 10, doesn't have to be one. Give me three. Like, Rick, we found out that the person that we thought was going to make the decision in this process isn't the person. They had, they, they overextended what they said they could approve. It's not them. We have to go to someone else. These are the three things I think we can do. We can go to their boss, we can go to the board, or we can call in a favor through a partner and try to get it that way. So now that you got the three that they recommend, the next final thing, the last one, is what's the one you recommend, Rick, that we go forward with? Right? So one, three, one, what's the problem? Give me three potential solutions, and what's the one that you want to bet your butt on? What's so great about that is number one, it gets people to start thinking for themselves. And as a leader, often when this gets deployed, you start never hearing from people after the number, after they start thinking about the self-solving, right? Because they're solving it on their own. But where it helps for me is it starts to help me identify where do they actually have competency gaps? If every time in the 131, the final thing is we need to lower our price, we have a value realization problem. If every time instead the product sucks, then we probably have something else broken around enablement. And are they really focusing on what the outcomes are or feature functions? So as a leader, the hardest job isn't the coaching, it's identifying what do you have to coach? Like what's the gap? What's the opportunity? So again, I always try to you know look through the half glass full. Despite the fact that that was a tough quarter, it actually changed the trajectory of my career because it forced me to skill myself. And you know, through that hard quarter, changed my ability to get better skill.
SPEAKER_00:So I love this concept of the one three one. I love frameworks like this that people can apply. How does one bring in this framework into a new organization? So if we take Latera as an example, how do you bring in this concept and roll out the like, hey, here's how we're gonna, when you bring things or escalate things, here's the way in which we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01:So when I joined the business last September, I was very uh fortunate in timing that all of my direct reports, so all of my VPs of sales, my head of operations for revenue operations, our partner leadership, everyone was actually gonna be in office that week that I was starting. So I took the time to put together kind of a playbook. Um, and and one of my really, really strong mentors, uh, the guy's name is Tom Martin, uh Kurt, he's he's now retired, but he became a really um, really important role in my life in terms of coaching and development of what it means to set the right example out of the gate. He had his what he called like his CRO principle book that he would lay out for us. And after coaching with him for as long as I did, I created my version of that. And part of that was that first 30 minutes, it's like, here's what's important to me, like here's what we're gonna, what we're gonna represent, what we're gonna stand for as a revenue leadership team moving forward, right? Like, here's what we care about. It's authenticity, it's leading through empathy, but it's holding the business tremendously accountable. And here's how we're gonna do that. And introducing that one three-one as the example, what's really dangerous, Rick, and this is where I think a lot of leaders go wrong, is they use that opener as the Tony Robbins moment that everyone goes into the weekend thinking it's great, and then by Monday they're doing the same crap they've always done. So for me, it's out of the gate, you set the expectation and you inspect what you expect. So in our first one-on-ones, I see this as a problem, what's your one-three one? In the second meeting, second one-on-one, what's your one-three-one? And you know it's starting to stick when you hear their reps talking about it. So when it starts to cascade, that's when you know that it's hooked. But for me, it's it's not just deploying it, it's it's being accountable to it and making it a part of your everyday rhythm, just like reporting. There's no point in having CRM for it.
SPEAKER_00:Or is there like reading that you assign out?
SPEAKER_01:If it's reading, you've lost the you've already lost a lot.
SPEAKER_00:All right, fair enough.
SPEAKER_01:Right? And it it's it's gotta be quick.
SPEAKER_00:You you talked about the CRO principle book, and you said you sort of open up with things that are important to you. What else is in there?
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot. Um, and I'm happy to walk through it at a later date. But at the end of the day, number one, it's it's the things that I value, like my pillars of success, right? Like I value a blue car work ethic. Um, not in terms of like a rankless hierarchy, but I do believe that we need to be able to zoom out and zoom in. Um, I believe in fixing leading indicators and not focusing on lagging outcomes. Um, I think that's something that a lot of people do wrong. They're they're always fixing symptoms and they're not healing the problem. So uh I'm really curious and tuned in on how I was one of the first questions I ask in my first one one one-on-one with managers is how do you differentiate a leading indicator from a lagging outcome? And give me examples of how that's represented in your business. And that's right out of the gate, you'll know it's not that they're gonna be a fit or not, it's just where do I need to focus on them? And I don't think a lot of leaders talk like that to their team. It's just what's your number? Are you gonna hit it? What's the risk? And they hang up with it.
SPEAKER_00:What deals are you committing? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's like, that's not gonna make people better, right? Like our job as leaders is to leave people better than we found them. And if if if you're not delivering this stuff and using what how we talk, that's how we get talked to. When I go to a board meeting, the first question they're asking is how are the leading indicators? Do we have green shoots or is it not looking good? So if we're gonna prepare them to be our successors, if we're creating the next lineup, why are we not applying the same philosophies that we're answering in the boardroom? They should be thinking about that in the terms of their world. It's gonna make that transition so much easier as they move up.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's funny, just in the public markets, I mean, the leading indicators is the thing that your stocks valued on. It's not necessarily what you just did in the quarter, it's what your you know go forward forecast is that you're based on, not necessarily the past. So great analogy uh to that. Um, so you talked about um personal drivers of what motivates people. And I want to dig into this a little bit because I gotta admit, like, and I'm sure this is uh was a learning for you. It is so easy for me, Sean, to just go into a meeting and get right to the business. Like, okay, let's talk about whatever the deal is. Okay, let's talk about whatever the subject of this call is, like, let's dive in because we got work to do. And I actually find it difficult to balance the like work we need to get done with like the questions I need to ask in order to get to know the individual better, in order to identify those personal drivers, and then change my management style in order to create or align to the why, which could be an organizational why, it could be their why. Like it's a lot beyond. And so those are very easy words to say that like finding people's personal drivers, finding what motivates them. Like, I hear that and I'm like, yeah, yeah, people should do that. But man, for me, it's a like the road to doing that well feels really unclear. What is some of the things that you've learned along the way to be more effective at that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. By the way, like we're gonna have weeks and months and quarters that we're great at it, and there's gonna be ones that we just suck. And I'm always working on it. Um but what I will say is would you agree that you likely touch base with your managers every day to talk about deals and progress? Would you say that's a safe statement?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So if you're gonna dedicate another 30 or 50 or hour block to talk about deals again for a one-on-one, that seems a bit ridiculous. So the first thing for me is, you know, one-on-one time, it's not for us. That's for them. That's their time. That's their dedicated time for us as the leadership team who are managing a million things from PL to doing a forecast through 2030 to you know, talking about customer escalations to all the things. So the first, I would say, priority is saving space for the individual, whether it's a rep, a manager, it doesn't matter. That's their time. And that that that time should be used as a sacred space to share about best practices, whether they need more help, are they getting what they need from you? Have they had any conflicts? I think that'll give an organic way where they know this is my time. Now, look, if they come and they're just fogging up a mirror, then you and I both know we're gonna go to the deals. But as long as they know that that's the expectation, that that's gonna be their time and their space, I think that's the first thing. I think the second piece is like acting with integrity. I I and I'll give you a really good example. I won't I won't say where, but there are places in my org where I was fortunate enough to bring over some talent into my organization from another department. And within the first like two days, I met one of this, one of these folks, and they were talking about their daughter and that they were they were doing some stuff together. And three days later, I I asked and followed up, like, hey, how did that go? Like, I know you said you had XYZ with with that with your daughter. And it was this moment of like shock of like, I didn't know you were you were listening. And then I was like, and what I didn't realize is their former leader, like on 10 different occasions, asked them if they had any kids, let alone doubling down on a question about the kid, the name, the activity. So back to like my first statement, like CRO playbook, like authenticity. And that's the thing again, it's like not a coachable thing. And I'm not doing it to fill air, I actually care. Like, what's I make it a priority to get to know my team and and what's going on with their life. And I think that's a big part of like how you do it is actually meaning it. Um and it and don't fake it. And by the way, if you don't have the time or the capacity, like my team knows, like I'll give them a shot across the bow. Like, guys, this is gonna be an aggressive week. I gotta get our forecast in, I got a board meeting, so I might be brief. It's not you, it's me. Like, give me, give me this, like, save some space for me to have that ability to be a little bit short. We'll pick back up next week. So having that open transparency, I think, Rick, is it's important. Every day is not gonna be a good one. Um, and then I I would say like the last piece is like do check-ins, right? Like, uh, I don't know if you read the book um from uh from from Ted Mat Dixon uh Jolt Effect, but they talk about when you're going through a sales cycle, you want to do these pings with your client to like check how they're doing. Why are we not doing that with our salespeople or with our leadership team? It's like Rick, I know we've been running really hard this quarter. How are you doing? Like, do you feel like we're communicating well? Am I coming in too hot? Am I being too analog? Am I getting too personal? Like, what's what's going on? Just ping. Just do like that's a 30-second commitment of time that can save you attrition, hiring someone else that may or may not suck, onboarding them, time to value, all the things from a 30-second question. How hard is that really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I find myself often asking, hey, what should I be doing that I'm not doing currently? Just to random people, just to see if there's any ideas that I can kind of get out of there to get a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01:Here's what I'll say, which has been an interesting lesson for me too. I think we think offering help is a way to build trust. So I go to my my my product officer and I say, hey, so-and-so, you know, I see you guys are getting ramped up on this product. How can I help? Right? And you may think that's a oh and it is. To some people, it is. What I've found is that deeper levels of trust are actually built when you ask for help. When you ask for help, it's coming from a place of vulnerability and it's giving credit to them that I I'm in I'm trusting you to help me do something. And especially if you're someone that's more senior than there, you're like, wow, like he's asking me for my opinion or he's asking me for my help. Even though we have zero, we don't think about ourselves like that, right? We're going any other room, we're gonna watch a Chappelle show and laugh like an idiot. So we don't have that ego. But for other staff levels, they think that we have all the answers. What they don't know, and what was another big lesson I learned like everyone thinks that in this boardroom, this mysterious boardroom, everyone is in there. They're the keepers of all the information. Yeah, they got all the answers. No one knows shit. We're all trying to figure it out. Like we're all we're all doing the best we can with the data we have on a given day. And a set group of examples and experiences. That is the reality. Everyone's putting their pants on at the same time. They're going home and they're getting screamed at by loved ones or kids. They're cleaning up after their dog and they're just trying to get through the week. That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00:I love that reflection. It's like a lot of times that people think, hey, the offering help or offering support is showing a sign that you care, is showing a sign that you want to help and that will foster a stronger bond. When the counterintuitive reflection is like, sure, that's good. Don't, it's not, you're not saying don't do that, but you're saying the real moments of trust and the real uh relationship establishment comes when you are the one that asks for help, that's showing the vulnerability that you don't have all the answers. And when people feel like they're contributing to helping you, that's a stronger bond. That's a pretty counterintuitive and interesting insight.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's helped. It's helped. And again, for me, and you know, and you've known this, Rick, from the minute we met, like I there's not a lot of, I don't want to say there's not a lot of layers to me, but like I'm a WYSIWYG. Like what you see is what you get. That's just been my style. Um, my team knows if I'm if I'm going up and I'm gonna talk about something, I'm gonna present something, I'm not looking at confidence monitors. Like, I if I don't believe it, I'm not gonna say it. That's also my career decisions and aspirations. I need to believe. The reason I'm I'm where I am at Laterra is I believe in what we're doing. I believe in our mission, I believe in our product, I believe in our customers. And like you have to have that belief that transcends everything, but it all comes back to authenticity, right? Authenticity in what you're asking for, in the depth of relationships you're building. Are they surface level? Are they are they one inch deep and 20 feet wide? All of that stuff is what builds a team of people that will run through walls for you. Um, and that's what we're all trying to build. We all want to do that.
SPEAKER_00:And that's what I was I was gonna segue that to motivation. So it's like, hey, it's a one on the one hand, like uh getting to know the people beyond their role is a big unlock and is a differentiator in leadership, just of what the example you had where somebody's asking somebody if they have kids 10 times, it's like you don't listen. Um, are there any other connect points of when you do sort of get to know people? Is it the showing, is it the getting to know them and caring as the way to foster motivation, or is there another step on that bridge?
SPEAKER_01:I think the other step is, and this is going to be obvious. So for for you and for for all your subscribers, I hope this isn't obvious. You shouldn't be just reaching out when you need something, for God's sakes. And I think that's the other thing. I always save time in my calendar every day to reach out to cross-functional folks just to check in. Like, how are you? What's going on? Like, how's your department going? How's this person doing? Giving accolades, particularly those that are in hard jobs, like customer support, customer success, or marketing. Like, there's so many parts of the business that are dealing with crap every day. And I think they're used to only people coming to them when they need something. How nice is it when you get a pingrick and someone's just reaching out to say, hey, like, how are you doing? Like, tell me what's going on, like, how's your team? Again, like maybe here's here's something I could really use your opinion on. What do you think about this? I know you worked at this company for a while. I know you you spent you know six months working in Paris, and you know, we're working this deal where we're just worried we may not be fitting the lexicon right in terms of how we're positioning the deal and the relationship. Just going out and creating those connective tissues, it shouldn't be, and I can't remember the name of the book right now, but I actually saw it at an event I was at with HG uh later part of last year, but it was uh it was um it was formerly, I think, Obama's chief secretary um of the military, and he was talking about how if you look at an org chart, so fascinating, if you look at an org chart, like the beginning of the org chart was like back at General Mills and then all the forward motor companies. And it as amazing as that is to create a structure, in the military as an example, it doesn't work because if you have the SEALs here and you have the army here and you got the you know the Air Force over here and no one's communicating, it it creates a breakdown in how they can possibly be collaborating. And what you really want to do is create this network. You want to create this intramesh network where all of these connection points are talking to each other. It doesn't mean, again, we're not trying to get rid of layers, although I do think hierarchy can become more of a problematic, particularly in large companies. But at the end of the day, you want to create these cross-functional signals that are really communicating at a constant level, and that's what I encourage my managers to do. So my managers and my VPs in leadership and in revenue, I'm always encouraging them to spend time with product. Go spend time with help desk support, um, with marketing, with the finance team. When you create that connective tissue, it just makes for a much more collaborative environment, hands down. And people learn. Like you little, you learn things you don't know. I wouldn't know a damn thing about Ebada and PL and how to manage my expenses and expense managers if I didn't get really nerdy with one of my other mentors, Valerini, who's my former CFO, and now my current CFO. If you don't spend time with those people, even though they don't do what we do every day, right? This goes back to hiring people that have different experience than you. You never know what someone's superpower is. And there's so much that you can learn from someone, regardless of what swim lane they're in. So blurring that line for me, even though it's provocative and you're supposed to stay in your swim lane, for me, blurring that line has been tremendously impactful because it's made me capable of having productive conversations cross-functionally, where I'm not just the sales guy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I've I've I've been trying to do the same thing. It's hard to break out of the silo that you're in. It's very easy to stay in the silo because there's tons to do right within there, and it's all in your face. It takes proactive effort to sort of go out, but the returns on that, especially as you get higher in your level of responsibility, are also very high. Um, Sean, what's one thing that you've been either like recently learning or been thinking about um just to further your own leadership journey?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I hate to do this, but I'm gonna use two of the favorite vowels right now in the market, which is AI. So I'm sorry in advance.
SPEAKER_02:That's okay.
SPEAKER_01:Look, I I've I was never resistant to it. I wasn't because I anything that can make me smarter and work faster, I love. But I think there's a very real topic right now that no one's talking about, and I am, and I think it's really important, and it's a little bit of that leaning into the empathy moment again, that as more and more companies adopt AI, which they will and they should, because it's freaking awesome, even though it's a little bit terrifying. Every business has, well, let me ask you the question first. Would you agree that in your in your business, any of the businesses you've worked in, you have a set of overperformers that are always the first in, last out, and always go above and beyond to do the work? Would you say that there's those people?
SPEAKER_00:The needle movers exist in every organization.
SPEAKER_01:Needles movers exist in every organization. Now, again, low contrary. Can you agree that there's also those that are doing the bare minimum, that are trying to fly below radar? We all love that phrase, and do exactly what they need to do to do the job and leave. Do you would you agree that there's those folks as well?
SPEAKER_00:Core performers are also in every organization.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Here's where the challenge lies. A overperformer might see AI and say, wow, this is gonna help me send 100 more curated emails. It's gonna help me get in touch with 15 more prospects. I'm gonna close$2 million more in revenue, and I'm gonna go do XYZ more, right? So they're gonna think of this as a holy cow, this is a force multiplier that I'm gonna do 10x more of what I'm already doing. On the other side, if you're of the more reserved, I'm gonna do the bare minimum, they may see this as a shortcut. So I'm kind of phrasing it, are segments using it as a catalyst or a crutch? And the problem is there's always this tension between these two groups of people, right? It's almost like the Roman Angela, you got the capulets and the other group. You always got this group that are very good in their own right, but the Montagues are always pushing back a little bit on the capulets and it's creating this really big tension. What AI is doing, Rick, is it's widening and accelerating that gap exponentially and creating tension within organizations and with people. And what we have to decide as leaders is how do we bridge the gap? Do we use this as an opportunity to say, as an underperformer or as a crutch performer, the fact that you're not seeing this as a chance to accelerate your performance may mean that you're just not fit for purpose for what we're trying to build as a fast moving organization? Or does it mean that we're gonna redistribute the time that they're saving and to do other things? Maybe that could be a two. But someone's got to talk about it because it's real, it exists, and the quality of work can be in question. If I mean, how many times have you read an email that you've gotten prospected to, Rick, that has that three double dash at the bottom that you know came out of GPT? It's like, come on, BDR, you can't just hit back, back, back, comma. Like it's that hard.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it is not that hard.
SPEAKER_01:It's not that hard, but that's what I'm talking about. Like that, me as a as a as a as someone who is a seller and a picturer of software, if I see that hit my LinkedIn email or I see that hit my inbox, you're done. You're dead to me. I'm not gonna pick up your phone. Because it's okay if you use AI, but it should be to make your work better. It should be to make you work smart.
SPEAKER_00:And making it more impactful.
SPEAKER_01:Are we on an exciting? I've never been more pumped up about what we do because the access to information and having productive conversations with doesn't matter the executive, doesn't matter the industry. You go into perplexity, you type in what the conversation is that you want to have, boom. You're uh you just got off your podcast, you heard me talk about Jolt Effect, you've never read it, you go get the PDF version, you drop it into Notebook LLM, and you got a 15-minute podcast on the way to go out and pick up your Chick-fil-A. Like the the pace of learning and enablement and just work velocity, my God. Like me and you aren't gonna even be able to keep up. Like, thank God we're at the end of this because both of us have way too much gray hair.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, part of this is uh, you're right, man. There's not that much time left for us. We'll see what happens to the rest. Um, but part of the reason I do this is to so foster the human connection. I mean, we do live in a world uh to doing that. You bring a ton of energy, uh, Sean. So thank you for joining today. We covered a lot of ground from just like being the super rep and dealing with that, the 131 framework to how to develop the team, the to leverage an AI. I couldn't appreciate it. You bring a ton of energy. I'm energized just by the conversation. Um, if people want to find you, is LinkedIn the best way to do it?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Happy to chat. Anytime.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining, Sean. We'll talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Rick.
SPEAKER_02:Just be honest, Joker.
SPEAKER_00:Reflecting on the conversation we had with Sean Munafo, I just love the energy and passion that Sean has. I think one of the reasons that we get along so well is that we have a similar profile and a similar approach to our sales leadership journey. And what's funny about that is Sean talked about purposefully making an effort to not hire for that same kind of profile. And when you have a global team, or even if you just have a large team, that's an important learning that comes through experience because we are naturally more attracted to people that are more like ourselves. But if we're going to succeed in a large organization, we need a diversity of talent and perspective. And Sean learned that I'm not sure if I could get a position in Sean's organization. Um the second thing, Sean talked about the risks of being a super rep. Um, the risk of as an early manager having forming a dependency on your AEs, on yourself, because you know every opportunity in the pipeline, you're helping the team close, you foster a level of effort that forces a dependency on you as the sales leader. Sean talked about not being able to go on vacation as an early sales leader and doing that as a badge of honor and learning along the way that the way to form a high performing team is not to build that dependency, but rather to enable and expect high performance on the team. We've talked on a pillar talk in the past about expectation setting as a way to deal with this, for example. And Sean uh described his one-three one framework as his approach to uh you know mitigating that dependency. Uh so the one in the one-three-one was you know identifying the signal from the noise in the problem that is existing in the deal or in the situation. Um if you can actually focus in on the actual problem, now we can work with that. But then bringing three potential paths to solve the problem, and just that forces thinking, it forces problem solving. I view those things as like a muscle that needs to be trained. So a forcing mechanism of coming up with various ideas is really good. And then finally, of course, making a recommendation and instilling this throughout the organization is a great way to reduce that dependency on the leader and build problem solving and thinking into the team. It was really interesting to learn that. And I think just a final takeaway, you know, Sean's thinking about AI and the impact on rep performance, making super reps even more super and core performers even more core. And so the distance between you know good and great seems to be widening. And that's uh something we all could potentially think about, how that'll impact our go-to-market moving forward. Thank you to Sean. Really appreciate Sean joining. I want to thank Ari Smolin for producing, Sons of Summer for the tunes, and thank you, listener. We'll see you next time on Public.
SPEAKER_02:Just be honest, in me like a joke, I can't shake, I can't quit.