Kelly Wright on Driving Sales Success with Culture Driven Sales

Welcome to the Dear Future CRO Podcast powered by GrowthQ. In today's enlightening session with Kelly Breslin Wright, we dove deep into the heart of transformative sales and the power of a people-first approach. Kelly's journey, from door-to-door book sales to the pinnacle of tech industry disruption, highlights the essential blend of passion, perseverance, and people skills needed to excel in this ever-changing landscape. By championing a culture-driven sales strategy, Kelly reminds us that aligning with a company's mission and vision isn't just good practice, it's imperative for success. 

Stay tuned, reach out, and remember—the story we sell is as crucial as the product itself. Connect, inspire, and lead with belief. See you at the top, future CROs!

If you want to connect with Kelly after the podcast, you can find her at culturedrivensales.com and on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/kellybreslinwright.

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Transcript

0:39

GrowthQ community. You know exactly why we're here. I am so excited for this next guest. We have the incredible Kelly Breslin right with us. Kelly has had a tremendous career that spans more than just go to market, from getting her start very early, selling door to door, from being the first hire at tableau and starting out as like the 10th employee I read, and then growing the company to close to a billion dollars in revenue and leading 50% of the company's employees, then going and doing board work for several companies, many of them, you know, fastly. We could name a ton of the companies here then saying, you know what, I'm not done. We're gonna jump back in and became CEO and president of Gong. She is a professor. She's had time in management consulting. Kelly, I could keep going, we could keep going on this list here, but I'm just so grateful that you joined to spend this time with our growth queue sales community. Thank you, Kelly, for taking the time with us. I'm so excited to be able to have this conversation with you and also to be joining this whole community. So thank you for the invitation. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And, you know, for the growthkeep community, it is so important that we see representation of women leading in technology sales, growing companies, being the first in and growing to build strong, go to market organizations. And so I'm so glad you're able to share your career journey with us. We've got to start from the beginning. So I shared my, like, everything you can find online on you, but you've got to take us all the way from the beginning. Why on earth would you spend your four summers selling door to door? How did you even get here? And then why did you stay? So walk us through your entire career journey, if you don't mind. That's true. What I find funny is people are always fascinated by how did you do this at the beginning? So just to wind the clock all the way back, I was always interested in sales. I was the one selling the cookies and the candy bars. And then when I was in college, my cousin had done this job where he made a lot of money. He felt like he was having a positive impact, and he worked for this company called the southwestern company that employed college kids, thousands of college kids, to run their own business, going to a different place and selling educational books door to door. So I decided, hey, I'm interested in sales. I want to be independent. I want to do something entrepreneurial. So that's what I did. So I ended up doing it for my four summers in Stanford, and each summer I ended up selling in the northeast. And over the course of those four summers, I actually sat down with about 12,000 different families to talk to them about their kids and education. And there were a lot of things that were very interesting in that when you're seeing that many families, you see the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that can happen within a household. But the most important part was I really got very firm, even when I was 18 to 21, with what my base goals were in my career. One is I knew I wanted to do something that involved sales, and that was entrepreneurial. That was the first. The second was I wanted to be able to do something that had a very strong impact because we were talking to families about their kids in education. And three, whatever I did, and this is one that I've kind of struggled with, but I wanted to make sure that whatever I was doing in my career, I was able to carve out the appropriate balance to be present and engaged with my family and my kids, where in the future. That's when I had them. And those three goals have really helped to shape a lot of my career. The other part, though, is selling books. Door to door is the hardest job I've ever done in my life. It is character building, because when you go knock on a door, you are not the most welcome person that the person answering it wants to see. So there's many doors slammed in my face, many police officers that were called on me, many dogs chasing and nipping at my ankles. And, you know, I was carrying. Everything wasn't electronic then. I was carrying a 25 pound bag. Walking much of the time from house to house, whether it was pouring rain or crazy hot, and just learning how to deal with failure, how to pick yourself back up, how to have resiliency, how to have tenacity and perseverance, are all these character building foundational skills that have really helped me throughout my career. Gosh, you know, I gotta tell you, the thing that stands out the most about that unique story and that experience of going door to door and having police called on you, even, is how to handle rejection. How did you navigate that at such a young age and keep coming back every year? Yeah, you know, Esther, that's a great question, because I think when you think about sales, because this is dear future CRO, many people are so that they're just so fearful of rejection, and they don't know how to handle it. And early on, it taught very young, when I was talking to at least 30 families a day and you only had to have a few customers a day. The way that your mindset has to work back in selling books door to door was each no isn't just a rejection, each no because it was a law of averages. You talk to enough people when, you know, you believe in the product, you're inspired about the product, you're passionate about what you're doing, and, you know, based on all the stats of everyone else, people do buy them. That my mentality was really every no, that I got me closer to it yes. And so actually you turn on, instead of being knocked down by the nose, it's almost like, wow, I just got eleven no's in a row. There is a yes coming at some door very soon, just by the law of averages. And so much of sales is about the metric and it needs to be about how do you help teach people all those metrics and think about what you can control. So the first was being able to deal with the rejection, knowing you're closer to a yes, which is a basis for sales. But the last part, which is a very foundational skill, is being able to really learn and embrace. You can only control what you can control. You can't control the others. If a family was scared that, you know, this young girl walking the streets with a book bag was going to be some criminal, and they called the police officers on me, and I spent an hour trying to deal with someone that was, you know, trying to understand why I'm in the neighborhood. I can't control that. If someone slams the door on my face and they scream at me, I can't control it. And the interesting part, which is very true to sales, but with door to door, you knock on a door, the next door, it's only, it's less than a minute away, you walk next door. And so when they open the door, they don't care about all the baggage of what happened to you on the rest of the street. You literally have 20 seconds when they open the door to be able to establish a connection and have that first impression. And so you have to leave everything else behind and know how to bring your best self forward every time you're showing up. And that, and the rejection and control what you can control all morph together to be really foundational skills, to be. Successful in sales, especially in sales, especially now, you to double click a little bit on your career journey. You spent a short bit in management consulting at that in your career as well. Context, why I'd love for us to dig into this question around how did that experience also contribute to your career? Is you look across our community, we've got a lot of career pivoters in the growth Q community. Lawyers that have pivoted into sales consultants that have pivoted into go to market people from across industries now coming into their industry of specialty and selling that think being in healthcare and then selling to healthcare clients. Can you talk a little bit about how stepping out of go to market helped you in your career as a chief revenue officer? Yeah, actually, I think that chapter was really important for my overall career, and I'll explain why. So, I started selling books. Then after I sold books when I finished college, and I sold a lot of books, I ended up working for Dale Carnegie training, and I sold sales training, and I learned public speaking and taught public speaking training. Then one of my clients was bank of America. And so then I went to bank of America, and I sold residential mortgages. So I had sold books. I had sold training. I had sold mortgages and financial services. And then I realized, if I ever want to be an entrepreneur or do something that's more entrepreneurial, I have to have a better rounded understanding of all the other components of business. And I was so heavy on the qualitative and the people side and the sales. I knew about communication and connecting with people. I'm not. You can always get better with that. But I wasn't as well schooled. I had majored in political science on all of the other facets of running a business. So I decided to choose the most quantitative business school that I could find, which is why I went to Wharton. Very quantitative. Ended up majoring in entrepreneurial studies and entrepreneurial management. There's. And then I thought the best way for me to actually get exposure to different industries, different problems, different facets of a business is to go into strategic management consulting, where you're working with the key executives in whatever company to be able to solve really key strategy issues. And so I worked for McKinsey in my summer when I was at Wharton. And then when I graduated from Wharton, I went to work for urbana companies. So those are two strategic strategy consultings that really help to think about how to frame problems, how to do all of the different research that you need to know, how to synthesize ideas, how to be very data centric. Strategy consulting is very data centric. And I, after a very short time, I knew that wasn't my career path. I am too much of an operator at heart. I loved being in the sales part. That's what I always wanted to do. So then when I went back into sales. So what happened is I was at Bain. I wasn't there that long. And then the Internet boom happened, and everyone was talking about this Internet thing was going to happen, and it was so early. And I thought, you know what? I want to be part of something really disruptive. I want to be part of something transformative. And I I like the strategy, but I like being on the front lines where I can talk to people, understand their story, be able to have more of a direct impact by understanding what's really important to them, being able to connect with them and push that forward. So while I was in consulting, I thought, you know what? I'm going to jump back out into this technology world, try to do something very transformative with what's happening with the whole Internet boom, and find companies where I could have a really meaningful impact of helping them build the company, but doing something I was passionate about and something that I was making a positive impact not only on the people I was working with who were customers, but also whoever was inside the company. And that now I'm doing culture driven sales. It all really goes all the way back to these three goals that I made when I was selling books, which is amazing to me. I didn't know what was happening at that time, but now I can see there's, it's not a linear path, but each of the steps helped to get me to a place where helping to build companies, helping to bring up how important sales is and do it at companies that are having real meaningful impact. On the world, a consistent theme throughout that entire thing, passion and impact. Absolutely. I love that. I love that. So now in your day to day, so now you are leading this movement, culture driven sales. What does your day to day typically look like now in this stage of your career? It has changed a lot because when you think about when you're a Croatian or you're a sales leader, you're spending most of your time inside with the team. You're spending a lot of time with customers and partners and customer conferences. You're spending a lot of time building strategy. And then actually, at that time, I was spending a huge amount of time interviewing because you're always trying to get the best people in. So that was what a day often looked like as a CRO. After I finished my time at tableau and before I joined gong full time, that stage, which I had kind of called retirement 1.0 for me, which was not retirement at all because I was teaching a class, I was doing a lot of speaking, I think I was sitting on five corporate boards. I was advising four or five companies at a time and I was doing a whole bunch with women in diversity on boards. I was on a handful of not for profit boards. It's very busy and it was very fun. Lots of context switching and interesting to learn the difference between being an operator and then being more of a advisor, mentor, strategy coach, which is very different. That was extremely hard for me for someone that, you know, I like to get my hands dirty and I'm very detail oriented. So that was phase two. I think right now this phase is even more different because I don't have a whole handful of boards and all of these different things that I'm doing, I'm really spending more of my time on culture driven sales. And in that I developed a whole course. I looked at all of the business schools in the United States to see how they were teaching sales. And there's very few courses at the graduate level about sales. But more importantly, the sales classes that they do have, there's negotiation, there's some sales ops, there's some sales planning. But how to actually tie the go to market and sales strategy to the corporate and company strategy and how important mission and vision and core values and to r to be able to craft the unique sales value proposition and how you're going to engage with customers and partners and even your employees. There was nothing on that. So I developed all that content. I teach an MBA class at University of Washington in the fall. I'm going to teach a class in North Carolina as well at NC State. And that's where I spend my time now in writing articles, helping companies to think about this, really how to have a more strategic and holistic approach to how driving company results through their go to market and sales team. Because most companies, Esther, what they do is they have their company and product strategy. They spend so much time on that and then they just throw it over the fence to sales and marketing and say go. And then people wonder why is sales and marketing marching in a different direction than product? Or why are all the different groups of a company not aligned? And it's because there's not enough intentionality with thinking through how the culture and the mission of the company and the whole company strategy needs to permeate through all those go to market pieces. And so that's where I'm spending my time now. And it's really fun. Oh my goodness, I love that. Also cannot wait to participate in culture driven sales because it's so important to remember, anywhere you sit within an organization, whether you're a founder or you're in sales or you're in product, you're anywhere. Everyone wears a sales hat. Everyone is an ambassador of the company. And so to your point, having everything around the culture and the mission and the vision feed through the entire company, it's incredibly important. And it can always be a skill that is further developed. Right. It's always. Because I think the interesting thing is many companies think, we have our product, we have our processes, we have all of our operational pieces, we have our metrics, and then there's the cultural part of it, which is like off in the side. It's something HR does. And when things get busy, that's what gets overlooked. And my approach is a lot of that. The best companies actually completely reverse that. It's like the saying, when people say, what comes first, strategy or culture? And now people are saying culture can actually eat strategy for breakfast. It's true. But most companies, they don't operate that way. So it's a whole shift of how can you engage everyone in your company and get the best results from your sales team? By making sure people are aligned on who you as a company are. What are you about? What is most important? How can you rally all of your employees around this unified purpose and mission? So they're inspired and motivated to go. And when they're inspired and motivated and want to go have a positive impact, it makes a very big difference to the prospects and the customers because they believe more in what you're doing and they're riding this whole journey with you. And many companies are so about product and the what and the how that all that emotion falls out of it. But the really interesting part, esther, and there's tons of research and knowledge about this, is people want to know the facts. I'm about as data driven as someone can be. I worked at Tableau and Gong and I was a management consultant. People make decisions based on emotion. They do. It's proof. And so what are we doing as salespeople and as companies to emotionally connect with our prospects, to be able to truly understand their story and where they're coming from so that we can help them and those individuals personally, rather than just pushing our wares of here's our product, here's our service. Because then it's much harder to differentiate, especially in this world where everyone has tons of customers and people buy for very different reasons than often how companies sell. Yeah, so true. So true. Let's stay on this a little bit and go into our next question, can you share across your entire career, maybe it's a story that you experienced or you observed in someone on your team, a pivotal moment where. A pivotal moment in your career where maybe that wasn't aligned. Where it wasn't aligned. Yeah. Where was it? There. Yeah. So actually this has a lot to do with the impetus and the start of culture driven sales. So when I finished at tableau, I did a twelve year journey at tableau, went from basically zero in revenue to about 850 million in revenue. So many different stages. And when I actually stepped down from tableau because I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job on that third goal that I talked about way back at the beginning of being present and engaged for my kids. And I didn't want to wake up one day and be 80 and I had missed everything. And so I decided in this next step, I still want to help companies to build and grow. I want to help others on their journey with sales and I want to be able to make a positive impact. But I wasn't sure what the right way to do that was. So I decided to meet with a whole bunch of hyper growth founders and CEO's, predominantly in tech companies. So afterwards people were calling saying, hey, could you join our company? Would you mind coming doing some advising? I was doing a lot of panels, venture capitalists and PE, private equity panels on top, how to go build a company effectively or CEO panels. So as a result of that, I had the opportunity to meet with many founders. In fact, in that first year I met with about 85 hyper growth tech CEO's and founders. And I asked them all, because I knew I wanted to teach. I asked them all, what is the biggest issue that you're facing? And many of them had said to me, hey Kelly, how do we get marketing and sales aligned? Or how do we get go to market to be doing the same thing and be on the same page as product? This was so common. Everyone was asking me this question. So I decided to ask everyone some really basic key questions. So every time I had a meeting, I would say to them, even if they didn't bring up this alignment issue, one of my first questions, I'd say, hey, CEO or co founder or head of sales, what is your company mission? First thing that was pretty surprising. Many didn't have a mission, even if they were far along. And some had, hey, our mission is to get 60% market share or we want to have profitability in three years. And I'd say that's not a mission that's a KPI. I had some major heated discussions with some of these CEO's of, no, Kelly, this is a mission. This is how I'm motivating my team every day is to be 60% market share in three years. And I said, that's not a mission. So that was kind of the first thing. The second thing I would say, you know, can you tell me what your company story is? What is the essence? Why do you exist? So if they didn't have a mission, that would be very hard. But even if they did have a mission, they would tell me their story, and then I'd say, okay, let me talk to the co founder. Or if I talk to the CEO, let me talk to the head of sales, or let me talk to the CMO. And what was crazy to me is almost all companies like a very sizable big majority. If I asked multiple executives on the team what their mission is and what their purpose and what their reason for why they all had different answers. Wow. And sometimes, Esther, it would be in the same category, but they articulated it differently. And I thought to myself, oh, aha, this is so obvious. Of course, if the sales leader is saying, the point of the company and what we're trying to do is articulated differently than the product leader, is articulated differently than the CEO, even if they're in the same genre, there's not going to be alignment. And I realized, you know what? Companies are not spending enough time on this. And this is where I decided that I was going to teach this culture driven sales. I went and looked. There's very few books written on this. There's almost no, I didn't find any other courses at the graduate school level or undergraduate. And so I built my own curriculum. I decided to teach the course. The course was pretty popular. And then I had companies saying, hey, Kelly, we heard you taught this. Teach this course. Can you come help us to do this internally? And that was actually one of the things that I brought to the boardroom or when I was advising. I could do the board work on the metrics and the sales operations and the process and the strategy, but I also could bring this whole thing thinking around. How do we actually drive corporate strategy to empower the go to market strategy where everyone's aligned? It's more about storytelling. It's more inspiring. It's more about having everyone march around the same unified mission, vision, and purpose. And that is how it put me on the path to where I am now. Oh, my goodness. It's impressive to hear, and I think everyone will take a ton out of those two key things that you should ask any company walking in and see if they're different. One, what is the company mission? And two, what is the company story and why do they exist? Which I think is, yeah, and this. Is actually, people should use this when they're interviewing too. So anytime they're joining a company, and then can you as a candidate, be excited and passionate about whatever that mission is? So if a CEO tells you our mission is to get 60% market share or whatever it is, then one, that's not a mission for everyone here in the audit, listening, the audience, it's not a mission. But can you be passionate and excited about what they're doing? That's the first. The second is, if you are going to be a sales leader or a CRO, what can you do in your enablement and in your training to make sure that everyone in the company and all of your sales team are communicating the story in the same way so they are. Like at tableau and at gong, the first slide in every slide deck was the mission statement. The first slide in at tableau, in every investor pitch, in every customer conference, in every meeting, at our board directors meeting, at our board meeting, we always start with the mission to remind everyone this is what we're here about. And then spend time to make sure everyone can tell the company's story in the same way. And so you have the mission, but then how you're coaching or putting that all together in a story. So when you go to the about page, that's what it should say is your company's story, not just what and how you do it. And you can see companies that do this really well have an about page and you go read it and you want to be part of it. It sounds really inspiring. Oh my goodness, so many nuggets. We will be taking some of those for growth queue as well. For our listeners. As you know, this is dear future CRO, but it's clearly dear future CRO. So the people listening to this are aspiring, experienced, individual contributors, ambitious sales leaders, or ones that are looking at one to two levels above them, eventually becoming a CRO. Let's take it back to you're getting ready to hire some of these folks. What are you expecting out of them in their 1st 90 days? I'm flipping this question a little bit. In the first 90 days. I think oftentimes in an interview question, one of the questions that is useful to ask is what will you do in your 1st 30, 60, 90 or even in your 1st 90 and then your first year, and oftentimes what candidates come is they come with this whole list of things that they're going to go accomplish. They're going to do this, they're going to go fix that, they're going to do all of these things. And actually, this is something that I had to be really careful of at gong. I think I had a few fits and starts because I was so excited. I could see all these things that were going on. But if you go in hard charging too fast, then one you don't. You need to focus on getting everyone's trust and confidence, and also each situation is very different. And so you need to understand what is going to happen. So here's a very tactical thing that people can do. Most people say they're going to go on a listening tour. It always amazes me because when people define what their listening tour is, they're going to go talk to all the executives, they're going to go talk to the board directors. If they have access, they're going to talk to the people they report to, they're going to talk to their peers, and maybe they're going to talk to their direct reports. But then the listening tour is very top heavy and you don't necessarily hear everything. So, for instance, when I was on the board at gong and when I came off the board to join as president and COo, it was very bullish. I think there were something around 400 employees on my team at the time. But then even in the month from when I accepted to when I joined, it got to be even bigger than that. So it was like hundreds and hundreds of people. And my goal was I wanted to do a listening tour with 100% of the people on my tour, and no one had ever heard of a listening tour that much. I got through most of the group. But the interesting part is I asked everyone three questions. It was only 15 minutes. Some of my direct reports, I might have had a half hour, an hour, but those three questions were very specific. I asked, number one, tell me why you're so excited about the company. This might be why you came here in the first place or why you're passionate about being here. And that taught me a lot about the culture. Culture. And I could see the patterns of what was working so well. The second question was, if you were me, what would be if you were me? Or even if you were CEO of the company, what would be the top three? Only three strategic priorities you think the company needs to work on. And this was very interesting because different departments and different groups had different strategic thoughts. And then you could also see which groups were thinking really strategically and which groups were thinking very tactically. Were the strategic priorities pretty aligned? Were there any big strategic gaps as a company we were missing that was coming up all over. So that was the second question. Third question was, what is it that you need? I said, tell me three to five things that if you had, you could do your job more successfully. What is it that you need? Are there any tools you're missing? Processes, anything that would help you be more successful with your job? And what that helped is that helped me to, one, meet people, two, to help people feel like I cared. And I was really hearing and listening, but I got so much information that sometimes the challenge with companies is when new people come in and they do the listening tour only at the top level. Sometimes the top level doesn't know what the front line is struggling with. And so you have to make sure you're talking to enough of the feet on the street that you understand what it is that they want, what it is that they need. Where are those gaps? So that would definitely be something I would say people should do in their 1st 90 days. Incredibly powerful and instructional. I love the going in and asking 100% of your team three very specific questions. It's incredible. I feel like that's inside that book, the advantage by Patrick Lezioni, who talks about this, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is it in practice. It's amazing. I love this. We're coming to the end of the list of questions and I gotta ask you this one. What if you looked across your career, are you incredibly proud of? That's actually a pretty easy answer for me. What I'm most proud of is all the people seeing what people have worked with me or for me, what amazing things that they are doing. What I talk about all the time is, whether it's with culture driven sales or how to best build a company, is it's all about the people. Always. For me, everyone's heard this. My top three priorities are always people. And being able to spend time not just about building a company and having it be profitable and getting a good return for investors, all that is fun. But the most rewarding part is seeing what the people are able to do. So I have. There's so many people who worked at tableau or gong or at companies where I was on the board or helped mentor and their chief revenue officers. They are heads of sales, they're CEO's, they founded their own company. I mean, look at Esther. You did your thing and now you're running to me. That just gets me so fired up. And also to hear that my longest run was at tableau, when I reconnect with people where they're doing amazing things in their career and they still say the place where they felt like they belonged and they could bring their authentic self. And their most fun in their career was this whole vibe, this whole movement, this whole culture that we built at tableau that, for me, filled me with a lot of pride. Oh, my gosh. I like literally hearing you say that. I'm getting goosebumps because I see the picture. I remember a picture you posted of the original team from Tableau and that you guys get together pretty regularly and knowing that you had such an impact together as a team is just. It's incredible. It's super awesome. Super awesome to see what people. So this entire reason why we do this podcast is our love letter to the future CROs of this technology industry. And we close out this podcast with one sentence, dear future CRO and whatever that advice would be as a compilation and your gift to those who are listening to this. So if you could finish this sentence or repeat the sentence and then with your own words, dear future CRO Kelly, what would you say? I would say, dear future croissant, your job is not to just be the chief revenue officer. It is to be the CB. And this is a new phrase that I have coined. CBO is the chief belief officer. And I think many people, when they're leading sales, they forget it's not just about processes and tools and data and metrics and all, of course, it's about the results and it's about all of those things. But the best salespeople and the best sales leaders, they have to inspire. They have to inspire the team. They have to motivate the troops. They have to help the salespeople know that they believe their quota is possible. And if you think about it, it's very akin to how an Olympic coach would manage an Olympic team. When you hear about Olympic or world breaking athletes, they're visualizing what it's going to be to cross that ribbon first or to break that record. They're looking at all of their data to figure out, how can I know for certain that I can make this happen? If they're racing and running, they're looking at all of their, or swimming, they're looking at all of their splits. And if the whole thing is we tell our kids this, if you believe you can or believe you can't. You're right. And the salespeople, often, they get their quote at the beginning of the year. They go, this is so big. How in the world am I ever gonna do that? And we need to be able to inspire. When you get on stage, how are you inspiring your team? How are you inspiring and filling with passion your prospects and your customers? How are you helping them to believe, truly believe and have confidence that you can help them? So, dear future CRO, remember, don't ever forget, a very critical part of your role is also being the chief belief officer. I love that. So many goosebumps without this episode. Thank you so much, Kelly. We have learned so much from you. I have personally learned so much from you, and I am just so grateful to have you in my world. You're just such an inspiration to this industry. So thank you. This was so fun, a fun conversation. And if people, if they have any questions, you can find me on culture driven sales.com. You can find me on my LinkedIn profile, reach out, connect, send me messages there. And I look forward to meeting many of you. And good luck, future CRO. Go make it happen. Thanks, Kelly.