The Customer-Driven Leader (Episode #9) ~Bart Fanelli

Bart Fanelli is the CEO and Co-founder of Skillibrium and a seasoned GTM leader with 25+ years in tech. Bart is best known for helping scale Splunk from ~$60M to ~$1.5B and driving growth at OutSystems from ~$100M to ~$300M. Bart is a co-author of The Success Cadence and an executive advisor focused on building predictable, high-performing revenue organizations through alignment, discipline, and scalable operating rhythms. In this episode, Bart and James discuss what it really takes to build high-performance teams without losing the customer. And what happens when Customer-Driven Leadership meets “hire for will, coach for skill" in today's AI-hyped, rapidly changing world of work?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us live here on the Customer Driven Leader Podcast, where we explore the critical role that leaders have in creating and sustaining winning cultures that positively impact customer experiences. I'm your host, Dr. James Killian. Thanks for being with us, and thanks for the XM Global Collaborative for sponsoring this event. And thanks for the couple of you who have decided to actually join us live on the webinar. So I expect to hear some uh QA when we get towards the end of the session. So I'm super excited to introduce my next guest, uh Mr. Bart Fennelli. He's the CEO and co-founder of a fantastic company called Scalibrium. Keep an eye out for them. Uh he's a seasoned go-to-market leader with over 25 years in tech and is best known for helping to scale a little company called Splunk. You might have heard of them, uh, from around a tiny little $60 million to a much more impressive $1.5 billion, and also driving growth at Out systems from $100 million to $300 million X, a 3X growth there. So Bart's also co-author of the Success Cadence, which I definitely want to hear more about, Bart. And he's an executive advisor focused on building predictable, high-performing revenue organizations through alignment, discipline, and scalable operating rhythms. And Bart and I always have amazing conversations. So I'm sure that this one is going to be not so different. So Bart, thanks for being on with me this morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Thank you. I I always uh such a glorious intro. I appreciate it. Hard fought battles along all of those for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Always, always, my friend. Well, I, you know, and we're gonna talk about that too, because you know, you and I were introduced through a couple of mutual friends. Uh, shout out to Tony Olivier and and Jack Welch on introducing us there. And uh we just hit it off pretty much instantly because a very like-minded philosophy. So you talk about those hard-fought battles, and I want to get into that for sure, because I think you know what you and I have discussed is that uh those those leaders who are fighting those battles today have never been under more stress and pressure. I would even argue a state of duress as compared to how they are today. And I really see that particularly impact go-to-market leaders, so sales leaders and sales teams. And so uh really eager to hear your thoughts about this. Uh, but as you know, as we had our prep session, uh I have bookends. I have something I always start with and something I always finish with. And so uh the thing that we'll start with here is the question I ask everybody, and that is a leader, team, or company is customer driven when what? Can you please finish that sentence for us?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

When everybody's communicating and aligned for the same desired outcome. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Wow, that that's the most succinct response that I've ever heard, and I and I love that. Um I I do think alignment and communication, uh it really is back to fundamentals in a lot of ways right now. Uh what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, I I agree. I think we've you know we've all been through um uh I think those that have been in career a long time, there's very in varying uh cycles, and it is by far now um coming full circle to people and fundamentals, only because tech is somewhat um not commoditized, but it's easier to build and do with tech and AI. Um, so it's back to the human. We have to have teams that are willing and able to go run the business in a particular way. Otherwise, we we fall on the trap, it's chaos, it's somewhat entropic. You know, um it just does its own thing. Yeah, and it doesn't scale that way, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, I I think that's right. And um, you know, I I had this really interesting conversation with one of these um genius product leader types out of Stanford, you know, one of these guys working for Meta who was you know making like four million dollars a year. I mean, so he was doing all right for himself, right? And he says, Yeah, James, I uh I'm out. Tech is done, it's dead. And he and he's telling this story about how he's gonna uh uh buy an indoor sand volleyball pit with a bar and a restaurant, and that's gonna be his retirement strategy because the tech world is dead. Now, I think that's a pretty extreme kind of a position. I don't think the tech world is dead per se. But I do think that you know the point being, uh to your to your point that you just made, the the tech industry has become a bit commoditized because you look at the speed of which a novice can actually create a truly functional product in a matter of hours to days as opposed to months. And so I do think it comes back to who are the people who are uh positioning or marketing or selling, delivering or servicing that, and that comes right back to go to market in teams, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, you know, I under I hear it from uh from a lot of um peers and and those that I collaborate with. It's hard, like there are many are exhausted um because of the the cycle within tech. It it swings so aggressively. And um, you know, the volleyball and bar indoor pit and all that is that's phenomenal. He obviously has had a great run, clearly. Um, but you know, uh some of us still have a passion for for continuing to figure out the the complexities of this, and and the easiest fallback, or well not the easiest, the most predictable is as long as we can align people and teams, even with the chaos of um uh tech moving at light speed and apps being built in like no time flat, to your point. It comes back to are the people operating within something that is repeatable, defensible, representation of a brand, can they actually do the job, the way it's designed? And otherwise, it's a free-for-all. And in some companies that's okay, small, high group, super high growth, but there's a massive um middle where there's these SaaS companies that have over-rotated either on hiring or are trying to become more efficient, they have imbalanced performance. All the tech in the world will not help them. It comes back to change management and people and and building teams that can execute the way that the business needs them to execute. So for me, that's a sweet spot and um it's it's almost like a full circle moment. Um, so it works. Like we're okay with that.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, I I I love that. I you know, and I was I was thinking too uh sidebar here, you know, you're talking about some of these tech companies that hire too fast. And you know, as you know, I I had a a long history of leading a business unit at IBM and then divested that to Qualtrics and then was over there for a number of years, and it was a great run. Um, but but you know, they've had a rough go of it. And you look at what's happened to Medalia just recently as well, which I I wrote an article on that it's pretty scathing in terms of them getting handed over their creditors, and and it's a rough space, right? But I I think about um what you just said about hiring too fast and then that pendulum, that whipsaw that tends to happen within that industry. And I think the tipping point, you know, for when I at the time that I was at Qualtrics was there was this a big bet or a power metric that came out, and it was uh, I believe is we we we will be a 7,500 person organization by 2027. And at the time that came out, I even thought, that's not a smart method. Why are we saying that? Why do we want to be that? And almost instantaneously, what everyone saw happen was the hiring standards got relaxed. So what used to be very hard to get in the door with 18 interviews, now all of a sudden it was like, oh, I know a guy and he can fog a whatever. So let's bring him in. And and that's never worked, right? And so then you see what happened down the road was oops, we hired too fast, we gotta let everybody go.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

So yeah, the so the way I I I uh processed that, that's the lagging, like that's a lagging uh indicator, or you're you're you're putting some target that's arbitrary way out there, and and there's about a million things you gotta do to make that successfully uh attainable. And and the number is irrelevant. It's it doesn't set like what I don't even understand how you can put a head head capacity number out there. There's nothing relative about or merit, there's no merit around it. The other would be hey, we want 10,000 customers as an example. We're we're going for 10,000 customers. Okay, can we even service the customers we have today? And the and the answer is no, um, usually. And or can we make the the 1,000 employees that we have and go to market successful and define exactly how they do their job professionally today? No. Then why can we hire 7,500? Like we can't. So those are wrong, that's just the wrong paradigm, thinking about it the wrong way as an executive. And it's it's somewhat pervasive. Um, it still exists, by the way. And yeah, so it just tells me that there is a place for everybody, whether you're right uh or you're wrong in the way you approach it. Kind of doesn't matter. Um, we know those those big statements end up failing, but they still, some board member, some investor, somebody still falls for that bullshit. And I don't get it. So so it's back to who's accountable? Well, the investors and the executives are the ones that should be held accountable, but guess who ends up suffering the most? It's you know those that are on the ground running the business that were hired incorrectly or um you know not given what they need to be successful, no development, no, no professional uh coaching, um no operating model that's repeatable. It just went at all costs. So I think that's I think we're gonna face um the music on that again um in our the world of AI. But at the same time, we got to calibrate and try to help those companies that are moving in a more pragmatic way.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Yeah, I I I think that's very eloquently put. Um and uh, you know, to your point, when you see this um and I'll go me, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of shoot for the stars and land on the moon. So I I I love having like you know, a Jim Collins B Hag, you know, big hairy audacious goal. Oh, yeah. Uh my wife and I call it B shags, big scary, hairy, audacious goal. And uh I'm a big fan of those, but you got to be smart with what's what's the target that you're actually shooting for. And those arbitrary numbers, to your point, you know, 7,500 employees or 10,000 customers, it's often the associate on the front line that's left holding the bag and delivering a subpar experience. And so, you know, first of all, I would just like to say um thank you for saying that's bullshit. So we're gonna get raw on this one and drop a few four-letter words, which I love. Um, the the um, you know, so that that dovetails into like my next question for you because I I like to personalize these things a little bit just to for context, because yes, we're all leaders, right? But we're also all consumers. And as consumers, we've all had to deal with that bullshit that comes from the frontline associate who probably actually, deep down in their hearts, wanted to deliver a better experience to us, but they were hamstrung or they didn't know what to do, or they didn't have the authority to make a call, and that leaves a very big gap in experience management. And so, can you think personally about uh an example from your own experience as a personal experience where you had a a good example of a bad example of an experience like that?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Uh there's so many. Um I'll use an I'll use I'll give you uh I'll use something relative in our industry. You know, we all buy we all buy software, uh, executives buy software, that's what they do. So, so usually we're terrible buyers, um, especially if we're sellers. Uh you we don't like to be sold to. And you know, if you're an existing customer, and and now we're we're gonna corner off all of the the the self-service AI that obviously doesn't need a lot of hand holding, there's there's still um SaaS software out there. It is a pervasive big market. And when you buy SaaS software, you're you know, and you're being serviced by a client team, whether it starts with SDR, BDR, an AE, a customer success person or solutions engineer. So the worst experience for me is every time you engage someone different, you start over. Like that is to me, like I ask them if they're out of their fucking minds. Are you out of your mind? I've been a customer, and you I have been writing checks to you and your company, and you're asking me how you can help me. You you should know. You have the telemetry, you know the relationship, you know um all of the sales execution um steps that the company has gone through to serve me. I've written you checks. Why are you asking me? And that's it, that sets me off inevitably, and that's the you know, that's the premise. That that's the majority of companies that are out there because that big middle, the big SaaS, all this whether it's private equity owned or standalone SaaS, they still exist. They are not going away for a decade. Like there will be change, but we still they still have to service their client base and they still have to post growth in EBITDA. You only do it by serving your the customer base you have exceptionally well. And that has to be driven through leadership. It can't be just left to the people on the other side of the phone or on you know, answering the call or doing the Zoom. Um they sh you gotta know them, you gotta build a relationship with them, and they have to take you through the experience. So anytime, I and I won't name companies, but anybody asks me, I like that I pay money to and I'm a customer of, I sni I literally snap. It's it's a it's an involuntary response. Are you out of your effing mind? Like it's almost like um, hey, hire can you hire more salespeople? Well, you know, hire as many salespeople as you can. I was in a boardroom one time, I'm gonna go full circle on us. First uh um investor, first board meeting, how many quota carriers can you hire? Dumb question. Dumbest question you can you can ask.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Yeah, how long is a piece of string?

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, it's like uh I have no idea. I need to go figure that out. And you know, in that particular situation, it's hey, I'm taking 20% out, and uh the numbers won't change, and I'll tell you about that next quarter when I come back. Sure enough, that worked. And so so less capacity, same productivity, cost out the bottom line, the company starts to grow and scale after you model leadership to hire the right way. Well, that's the person, those are the teams on the other side that when you get on the phone with them, oh, they know everything about you, they know where you are in the journey with their software, they know exactly what problems they're solving, and they know exactly who to involve without you asking. Well, that's so called service, and that's a service that I think all of the SaaS companies out there in the world today are being challenged to deliver. Um, because if they don't, they're gonna churn.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Oh, yeah. Well, not even just SaaS companies. I mean, it you you find it everywhere. I mean, uh you know, look what happened to Spirit Airlines, yikes, right? I mean, that that's an extreme example, but uh just personally, um just as uh late last night, actually, uh before I shut the lights out, I recently ordered four clothing items from a new um clothing company that um I hadn't before, but I like the look of their stuff. Thank you, Instagram, for bombarding me every six seconds, right? And I um and I decided to pull the trigger and order some of the stuff. They had some good specials, and I ordered four items, and three of them I really like, and one of them just didn't quite fit right. No big deal, right? Um and so I decided that I would like to return it or exchange it. And they are they have their own 30-day exchange policy, which explicitly states from the take the day the time that you receive it, you have 30 days to exchange or or return. And I decided I wanted to exercise that option within a matter of five days. And I now have had um I no fewer than a dozen email exchanges with this uh service, and and and it's it's it is absolutely insane, Bart, because they're saying things like, We're gonna give you a 20% discount if you want to keep the item. Uh no, I'd like to exchange it. Okay, we're gonna give you a 30% discount if you'd like to keep the item. I'd like to exchange it, you know. And and then finally they say, uh, they say, well, um, you know, yes, okay, we can exchange it for a different item. Um, you you'll have to ship it back to this address at your own expense. And I was just like, okay, to your point, uh snapping, right? Like, what the F is the matter with you? Uh and I finally just said, you know, I do this for a living and you're not very good at it. And um, I've already spent more time than the $45 shirt is worth on this, so I'm just gonna throw it away. And you just lost a future customer. And I actually finished up the email with just out of curiosity, are you an AI bot or a real person?

unknown 18:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

There you go. So, so you know, on the unfortunate truth is in that in those models, sometimes I think that by design, they'll make that statement. They're not gonna exchange it because it's too expensive to exchange it. They'd rather you just throw it away and and keep it because they're caught. They've already sunk cost into it. So um it's just on it's a shame. Now, they'll the crazy thing is they'll probably still be successful as a company because they'll just out they'll race uh themselves out of it and try to grow to offset you know the dissatisfaction. Um and they'll fix it.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah, but how how do you do that if you're just gonna churn customers because you're gonna irritate them, you know?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

I mean I think it's a it's a race to the bottom. You know, or maybe it's a race to the maybe for them, it's a race to a certain threshold of revenue so that they can they can get bought by someone that will fix them. Who knows? All kinds of crazy strategies out there.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

True, true. Um so let's uh let's pivot a little bit and talk about growth and go to market and leading in this crazy, crazy environment that we're in right now. So the the growth that you saw when when you and your team were at Splunk was just super impressive. Um tell us more about that and and you know, from your experience in leading that kind of growth and what you're taking from those key learnings um and experiences and really applying it to your own customers at Scalibrium. You know, talk to us about things that leaders need to be thinking about in terms of driving growth, but maybe aren't focused on the right thing. We've touched on that a little bit. Can you say more?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, yeah, less is more is the is the point. So, you know, there was a a group of very aligned um executives at Splunk that they understood um what it took to scale a company. So it was a wonderful shared experience where um early in the company's existence, they hired senior executives that had done done the job before, meaning professionally uh um designed, implemented, and scaled an operating model that was um predictable. And I got the chance to be a part of that and build many of the frameworks associated with it. Um and it all came down to when you define a model uh and you're hiring and uh training and ramping teams to support that model. If they choose not to support that model, then you can't support them. Um it comes right back to people. So you you have to have the model defined, everybody has to be continuously reminded of the model, and then you have to make sure you select the right team through your process to ramp them and coach them to run the model on repeat. And if they won't, and you've given them everything, then that's considered a low-will or an unwilling, non-coachable person. You have to take the proper steps, but you have to either give them a chance. Well, you do give them a chance to recover, but you have to remove them. Otherwise, they will they will drag the company, the culture, and the the growth opportunity down. So we were very disciplined at doing that. And even better, we did not hire at all costs in advance. So we we actually Slow rolled the entire process where we only hired when people were highly successful in mass. So I think in the early days for the first five years, we had over 80% of the field organization overperforming. And that's because we intentionally did it was called the success model. We intentionally did not over-assign quota, very limited based on ramp and um attrition on projected attrition. And then we maintained that aggressively, meaning you only hire when the team that you have is is all they're all overperforming and bust into the seams. And then you layer in where selectively in real time. Seems aggressive, but not if you're running a business that you want uh to grow predictably. Um and after all, you are hiring them and paying them, so there's a mutual relationship there. They should be committed to the job. So we learned all that in real time over the course of about seven years. Um and then everybody kind of rolled off and did their own thing. Pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yeah, for sure. 80% uh overachieving. I mean, that you know, traditionally you see about, you know, roughly about 30% of reps actually hitting their number on average, which uh that's just an astounding statistic. So you you've touched a bit on this in what you just described, Bart, but but given that you are kind of chipping away what it is that Scilibrium actually does, can you maybe just give the the 60-second uh pitch here on what it is that y'all do?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah, very simply, um when you think about go to market and you think about um think about SaaS, that those those companies that are out there that need alignment to serve their company, their customers well and consistently. Well, they they have to rally around a core set of skills and workflows that that are learned, and then you have to coach to reinforce those. Um and if you center all of that effort and energy on the leadership team, then you you hold a level of accountability that translates from the senior executive to the contributor. And Scalibrium does that through a four-box coaching model, matching workflows and then matching curriculas that are usually unique to each of the customers we serve. Um, and that is a revenue operating model that's repeatable. We we instantiate it and then we guide them to run their business based on it. Um, and it it proves out um every time that if you if you're uh intentional with your leadership, not blanket training your people and then expecting results, but you focus on your leadership as the development, as the agent of change, then you get sticky and predictable results. That's what we do. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

I and I love that so much. And I and I I just wanted that for the benefit of everybody else because you and I have had these conversations. But you know, as I look at, you know, kind of back full full circle to some of the things that we started talking about, um, unprecedented times, right? I mean, we used to talk about VUCA, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The iteration on that is now banny, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. And it feels like that is just increasing at an exponential pace, frankly. I mean, the number of comments from senior executives now, when you get vulnerable with them and they say, I just don't know. Yeah, I don't know anything. I can't make decisions based, I'm in a vacuum.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

It is super crazy. But I think, you know, given all that, it's it's it's it's one of these situations where you have to assess the situation and adapt and overcome. And, you know, I mentioned um I recently was speaking at the Work Human Conference in Orlando on the topic of what I'm referring to as work experience, not employee experience, which is still very, very important. So is employee engagement, but those are all lagging indicators. You know, use that term lagging indicator. It's all it's all about, hey, how was your onboarding? How was that training? How was your anniversary date? You know, how were the ever 364 days this year, Bart? Right. I mean, well, let me think about that. You know, that's not subject to bias at all or research effect at all, right? So if you think about work experience, with the five pillars that that I that we've identified, and those being the importance of culture and specifically microculture, yeah, um, how things get done within your unit, right, uh as a first step, uh, accountability, the criticality of modern collaboration, systems integration, and how do you onboard reps, leaders, part-time fractional gig, contract consultants, and even AI agents in this crazy age to actually be able to set everybody up to be successful. And one of the things that I really love about what you and the team at Scalibrium are doing is I use this phrase frequently and with intention, create the conditions for success. And I love that that's what you you all are doing over there. It's not measuring how did that thing go, and then you go, oh, that sucked, actually. Instead, it's creating the conditions. I mean, I your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, you have to. So, so you know, all the great companies that are out there, they actually um if you I mean, the the the biggest example would be Apple. Like you, if you know employees that work at Apple, it is extremely precise. And uh everybody knows exactly what their role is, and and nobody deviates from that. And you and they're proud of that. And that's an extreme example, but um any company can create the condition. And the condition is has to be defined and designed for every employee, whether it's a 10-person company, a hundred-person company, or uh a few thousand people, the cycle is the cycle from onboarding to offboarding. The conditions have to be defined and everybody has to be held to a standard. If they're not, what's the point? What is the point? Um, you there then that means everybody has their own agency and they can do whatever they want. Well, if everybody's doing whatever they want, how is the customer being served? The customer's not being served, the the the people with agency are just doing whatever they want. You the company's leadership owns the responsibility of setting the condition from onboarding from day one, employee onboarding and customer onboarding, all the way through to um employee offboarding or lifetime customer value. And those are the things that can be predictable, they can be defined, they can be um um set in motion so that culture rallies around that. But it's a leadership choice, it's not up to the contributor. And and whether you want to be a part of that type of journey or not is also a choice. Don't sign up for a company that has that level of structure and discipline. If you just want your own, go be your own entrepreneur then. So, you know, this is um it's a it's a matter of choices um that will evolve over time. And those that are young in industry, I uh, you know, they have to make these crazy choices where, hey, they're gonna try to sign up for a high-flying AI company where anything can happen. We don't know. Um, and we already know that there is a high level of churn out there in AI right now, uh rebel churn. It's it is high, it's masked by growth. And that's okay. Um, so they can do that, or they can do a pragmatic, um, highly structured company that has all of this predefined and learn how to run a professional um prospect or customer engagement cycle with professional leadership and in a professional operating model. Yeah. You can do either and and succeed. Um you and you have choices. I I'm a fan of um the latter. I want I want the defined, the predictable, and a way for me to learn and or teach people to be highly successful. And that's leadership, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Yeah, I I love that. And and and you know, and thinking about your your example of everybody kind of like running on their own agency, uh, wild cowboy, you know, wild, wild west kind of uh style, right? I mean, you can still find those kinds of cultures that do uh actually deliver a a superior customer experience, but the problem is it's inconsistent at best because there isn't a standard or a system, there's no operating model for people to work with and to know what are their their guidelines and parameters. And so and that becomes really important. I I was talking with somebody just recently who um who spent many of much of their career in the restaurant industry as a leader there, and he said this thing that really stuck with me, and he said, your brand is delivered at the table. And I really love that because you know, if you think about that, or you think about like a high-end chain, like a I don't know, like a Capitol Grill or something like that, right? Or a um a Morton Steakhouse or something like that. Um you can go from city to city to city and still have a very top-notch, very consistent experience because their brand is delivered to their table through consistency and an operating model, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and and you know, so so the whole idea is that brand they invest in that brand, they preserve that brand, they train around that brand, um, and the experience is consistent because of that. And that's a choice. Um, you know, then there are other levels of brand and experience that are uh dollar or spend appropriate. So, you know, the higher uh the brand, um, the better the experience, the more the cost. So we're willing to pay. Those are all things that are predefined in an operating model and a strategy, and you can't compromise that. So, what would happen if they stopped training their people? What would happen if they stopped doing huddles, um pre-uh rush huddles as a team? What would happen if they didn't do um collaboration andor promotion within their own organization? It would all deteriorate, the brand would suffer, people won't go there anymore. That's so that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

That's exactly right. And and and that is a function of culture, and that is a fun and culture is a function of leadership. Yeah, and so back to leadership, it you know, this central thread that we're we're we've got here that we're talking about. As we think about this, you you've said um there should be no bullshit leadership, right? Yeah, so if you think about that, like say more about that a bit, and you know, what would you say is maybe the biggest lie that go to market leaders are telling you telling themselves in this wacky business operating environment, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah. So um the can you hear me okay? Because we had a small blip. No, I'm good. We're good. Okay. I'm good too. I was I was catching up. Um I got the question. So so the lie and no bullshit leadership, uh you know, it's hypocrisy. Uh I'm a big uh a trigger for me is hypocrisy. As a leader, you can't say one thing and then go do another. The only way leadership really works is if you set the example and hold true to the example that you want within your company. And that is every leader at every level. Um, so it starts from the top. So the behavior of the most senior executive in any room at any given time sets the the example for the culture, right? So as soon as that uh turns hypocritical, they say one thing on the all hands call and then they're in a team, you know, in a team briefing and they're banging the table and acting completely different. It's over. They're full of shit. They don't even understand. So Urk, so the lie is that you you can um demand performance or you can hire a head to make the number. Like those are just subtle lies that um are they show immaturity in executive leadership um that can't maintain consistency in an operating model and wait for the compounding results, which means they are not managing their board, they are not managing their executives. Um, these are all things that people that are high joining companies have to look for. And it is hard. There's no question about it, and the demands are hard. But if you're an executive leader, you have to be able, you have to have the pliability to manage your board and manage your investors as well as lead your teams. So that's what um elasticity and leadership is. You so you you can't sign up for bad numbers, you can't um commit to things that are unrealistic, 7,500 employees or 10,000 customers in three years. Those are dumb statements that are should be red flags for investors and board members. You you you just that's bullshit leadership. That's bullshit, it doesn't work. Um, but you can go slow and pragmatically and rebuild a culture and a company and be very balanced in your approach and not be hypocritical, and you will create followers, you will create brand, you will create industry, and that's that's the way to do it, in my view. I I sorry, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, please.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

I was just gonna say I completely agree with you.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Yeah, I completely agree with you, and yet it's hard. It's hard, and so like why are leaders caving so fast today, and what should they be doing about it?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

You know, it it's back to um who you run with, right? I think certain type um the mentalities run together, and sometimes um you you you determine it's not for you, and you fact you create your own movement in a different direction. So I I don't know, I just think everybody has to be who they are, and those that are signing up have to follow what they believe in that that is a fit for them and their personal mission. Um and for me, it is a a way better existence to live pure and um transparent and run in a professional realm than a you know, scream at the scoreboard or bang the table or demand results. I just don't it just doesn't work. And it's it doesn't punitive to industry, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah, I I think the whole um you know uh tech bro, um, you know, toxic culture of you know, the what do they call it, the uh hustle porn. Uh that stuff's just gotta go. I mean, yeah, you have to keep everybody motivated as a leader, but uh, you know, you can do that uh at an individual level, things that are relevant to an individual and form that one-on-one relationship to help with that. And yes, you have to rally the troops always, but um, but do it in a way that's realistic and and not ridiculous, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

So think of it this way: there's how many layoffs, man? There are thousands of people on the street. It's crazy that are highly qualified and um willing to run an operating model that is defined, willing to learn new things because they know how delicate industry is right now. Yet companies stay with what they have, don't up-level their operating model or their leaders, and then and they demand performance. And that is a red flag. It is a giant change management process that we are in, where you know, pick the company that's going to define and help you succeed, rather than um, you know, it feels like it's the right bro culture, so to speak, which is fine. You can have a great culture, you can have a high performance culture, but it has to be done um based on pragmatic decision making, skills development and progression and coaching and leadership with professional acumen. That's a better existence for all. And you just hope that that that's elastic from senior leader to contributor in all of the go-to-market functions. And if it's not, if I'm a senior leader, you're removing the the people that are that are not doing it the right way. That's the way to do it. And then you get predictable scale over time. Otherwise, you're just gonna churn in place.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

There aren't that many leaders. And think of this. If you have like if you're a built multi-billion dollar company and you have a hundred leaders and go to market, you have to make a hundred good choices. But that's a hundred that's not a lot, if you think about it. Over the lifespan of a company, you you you can get critical mass to follow an operating model. That's what leaders do. Well, if you can't, then you have a leadership issue at the top. It's a choice. It's all a choice.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

It is. I it's so um your tell us about your book, The Success Cadence, and and and and how has some of what you're talking about here, how is that showcased in the book, and and what are some other themes uh that we haven't covered that you think would be um interesting for viewers, listeners um uh to learn a little bit more about?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Yeah, you know, it's all um it's all this I I like to call it, it's all the same same, right? Um you have to be repetitive in order to be successful. Um and it has to be simple and understandable um so that it can be applied at scale. So the success cadence is the culmination of um you have to have the right operational design and cadence, um, and you have to have the right culture. And and that means you have to measure your people objectively to do the job as designed. And we use a four-box skill, will, or willing and able model, and that was spelled out in the book on how you bring a company from um very early stage from onboarding to offboarding their teams through a four-box coaching framework at the most uh efficient intersection, which is leadership. That's the only way you can do it, is have leadership following the same repeatable process and making sure the people that they hire adhere andor follow this process that we know works, that is designed for our culture and company. And if not, um we have to determine if they're having some type of bad experience, or low-willed or not coachable. Maybe it's cultural, maybe it's personal. Give them a chance to work themselves out of that. If not, you have to gracefully part ways with them and hire someone that will. So we emulated all of the great work that we did over the years um at both BMC Software and Splunk into this four-box model in combination with uh Tom Schodorf, who was um running uh revenue operations as the CRO at Splunk. He was also at um BMC Software. And then Dave Matson, who is um the CEO at Sandler Training, he he um sponsored us writing the book together with us. And it was based on how you build a culture of performance through a four box model. And he, you know, it works without question. We proved it works at scale at Splunk because we kept it simple. Five core principles that we ran on repeat from onboarding to offboarding. They they matched up with the daily cadence, the weekly cadence, the monthly cadence, and the quarterly cadence, and we all spoke the same language on the way we ran the business. And then we coached our people the same way. Well, that's the four box, that's the success cadence. And then we did it again. Went and uh did a um a fast growth or uh I would say a late stage company that was starting to grow fast, a hundred million dollar company called Out Systems, where um it took them 17 years to get to 100 million. They got funding, came In rebuilt the operating model, running the four box, running um the cake the success cadence essentially over three years, tripled revenue to north of 300 million in three years. You know, and hard, but I think we said earlier hard work because it's hard people conversations constantly. And most companies, most leaders are not equipped to have hard people conversations. They would rather exist and avoid those conversations. And when you do that, your performance suffers.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

That's right. And and you know, it in and I'm a big fan of having um as I've said on on the podcast, a variety of guests, like like senior executives, um, practitioners of experience management, both customer experience and employee experience, psychologists. Um, but I love having revenue leaders and go-to-market leaders on because that's the most obvious place where the rubber meets the road, you know, is leadership equipping, enabling, empowering their teams to do the right things to be successful and again create those conditions for success. And sadly, what we know in the go-to-market space is uh a very pervasive problem, which is oh man, Bart did 3X's quota. We gotta make him the sales manager.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Oh man, but yeah, wrong move usually the wrong move. And and in fact, they they might not even want that. Um, you know, it's it's it's a reluctant move. So that's the you know, there's only usually in most companies a few of those folks, and they are the ones carrying um the underperformers of everybody else. So the thought is put them in leadership and they'll, you know, they'll go make uh everybody else do the same thing, and they have no understanding of building a team, but they do understand a certain way to get things done. So the right thing to do is to get in their head and unpack and pull them into the build to set the experience for everybody else rather than giving them a small team. And you know, so that we can understand what's working really well. Uh a good friend of mine coined it, um, David Jenkins. Um, he was the founder of Whiteboard Selling and the author of the book Whiteboard Selling, for the field from the field. So that's when you get this those that are doing it really well in a room and you unpack everything. All right, let's line it up. What what what are you doing that's different? How can we make it so that everybody can have the tooling, the training, and uh the operating model that you are applying to make work without breaking the company?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

You know, that's where the lone wolf comes in and they break the company, and that's a bad cultural example. So instead of uh firing them, which is you know the hard thing to do, and instead of promoting them, which is the easy thing to do, you you have to spend time with them and unpack them and then cure create the conditions for repeatability through a coaching model. And then and then you build the company in that way. And that's how it works. Hard, uh easy to say, very hard to do. Um, but if you want to build an enduring company, I don't know what other choice you have.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

Yeah, I I think that's right. And uh, you know, as I as I like to say, you know, it's not hard. It is hard work, but it's not hard. I mean, you just have to make the decisions to go and do the work.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

It's it's the commitment. Yeah, it's the commitment at every level and leadership, and then um making sure you do not have you cannot have the tolerance for deviation. Uh or uh um we'll call it the bullshit leadership. They give you lip service and then they go and do their own thing, or they completely uh they spend all of their time and energy trying to negotiate with you on why what what we're doing as a company is wrong and what they want to do is right, and and it's exhausting. So that's just someone that's not a cultural fit. That's all that is.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

There you go. There you go. Well, Bart, we're we're we're definitely on the back nine here and and um about to start uh our initial dissent um on the end of the show here, but um certainly want to encourage audience QA. Have a couple of questions for you here that we'll do kind of lightning round style. Okay. So uh what breaks first when you try to scale from, say, a hundred million to a billion? Is it strategy? Is it talent, or is it leadership?

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Uh oh, great question. So I'll separate uh talent from leadership. Um, talent breaks at the ground level because you usually overhire to race to your goal, and then you lose control of the quality. Um and and therefore, uh what you're doing is you're teaching the leader um the wrong behavior pattern for scaling a company. So it's very difficult to unwind that.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

I I appreciate that. All right, question number two. So uh speaking of our friends in the office of the chief revenue officer, um, many uh CROs and sales leaders just absolutely obsess over a pipeline. Is there something that they should be obsessing about instead?

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Yeah, yeah. Pipeline is only as good as it being highly qualified and true and accurate. So you got to get way left of pipeline, and you have to obsess about the skill proficiency of those facing customers to align with the right problems to create qualified pipeline, full stop. So that's where you spend all of your time and energy and the rest compounds, and you get an evergreen customer buying and selling experience through your team. You can't chase pipeline, you chase quality interaction by defining it within your operating model, and that's how you scale.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

God, I love that response. I and it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite sales leaders that I ever had the privilege of working with. And he basically had a departure from the cultural norm. He he kind of did a TO, everybody. TO, all right. Let's let's have a real meeting here as adults, and I want the truth. Even if the truth is hard and brutal, and you're gonna tell me that our pipeline is actually only a quarter of what we thought it was, that's the truth. And if we know the truth, we can actually manage that. We know what the gap is and we can solve for it. And I thought that was just astounding for a sales leader to make a statement like that.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

That's a professional leader right there. That's exactly uh you have to find that and and make it pervasive within your culture, and that's a hiring choice. And you know, it you have to find the root cause of the problem before you can go fast. So that's a fun, that's a wonderful thing. I would say less less pipeline is more as long as it's qualified for the right reasons. Uh I think you're right. And then ratio, like, hey, we need 5x or we need 3x, based on what? Like you're giving me you're I I have companies that pay for pipeline. Like you're out of your mind. Like you're paying for the worst behavior in the world. Pipeline is a byproduct of highly pragmatic um execution and collaboration between marketing, sales, and leadership running something repeatable. It is not an arbitrary number, and then you have to determine if it's qualified or not based on fairly tight standards. Go slow and you will go fast. That's the idea.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Yeah, I I love that. There's a um, I I think it's um aviators, military aviators, naval, um, you know, and and the blue angels and such, and they say uh slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Yeah, I really like that. Okay, uh so so so last rapid fire here. So you you know, you've we've talked about this before in the in the four box, the two by two. You say hire for will and coach for skill. I don't know. What does will actually look like as part of say a hiring process? Is that something you tease out as part of the interview, or how how how do you determine that to make the decision to bring somebody on board?

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Great question. Hardest part of any leadership job is hiring. And um, and you have to be able to recruit. If you can't recruit, think of it this way: if you can't recruit people to work for you, how are you going to recruit customers to buy from you? Think about that. So recruiting is a leadership first principle. And um when you're hiring for will, you you have to test for coachability. Is the person uh, do they even have the level of empathy that they can self-reflect on their own failures, which is kind of the first step for being able to develop someone. Um, if you're if you have someone that's done everything right, they've been perfect through their entire career, and that's all they're sharing with you in your interview process, that's a red flag. So you you get these um variations in people in in roles. So you're either hiring someone very junior, can they really ramp fast and learn from our system designed to support scaling and ramping employees? Meaning, have we done that really well? If the if the answer is yes, we're we might take a chance on building that person up in a uh BDR SDR role for a SaaS company, eight, then promoting them up through an AE ranks and so on and so forth. Or if you're hiring a senior executive, can they narrate how they would take a junior person and bring them through that journey themselves? Or are they just saying, I'm gonna hire A players across the board because that's how we win? Well, you get a team of uh all eight players with the same dominant personality and is self-destruction. Yes. It doesn't work. You have to figure the balance out. So the hiring process, you know, you can you can do uh um the type of dynamic questioning and hiring that helps you uncover whether or not they're the right fit. And there has to be a group that agrees on hiring. You can't just make the choice by yourself. Like you have to have people to you define the profile, you define the system for hiring, and everybody has to be aligned to that, and that helps you maintain the level of culture and performance and coachability that you need to scale a company.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

Yeah, I appreciate that. I the best companies that I've worked with or for have all had a policy of rigorous interviews and 100% agreement that it's a go forward. And that way nobody can sit back and and say at a later date, I didn't really think that he had the right stuff. You know, everybody's got a way in. So as we land the plane here in the next couple of minutes, um, Bart, so you know, I I finish, you know, we start with what is a customer-driven leader, we finish with um you know what I like to call two things, which you can uh assume like a stop, start, and continue. So if you had one piece of advice for practitioners, leaders out there to build a truly right and high-performing go-to-market team that's actually going to deliver superior customer experiences for the long game. What's one thing that they could start doing and one thing that they should stop doing?

SPEAKER_00 55:41

Yeah, in vet so the start is uh you have to invest in um the operating model or in re you can call RevOps, you can call it Sales Ops, you can call it uh training enablement, um, whatever you call it. You have to build, you have to build that function in a highly disciplined way, in alignment with finance, because the only way to do it intention with intention is to make sure that the model, the revenue model that finance wants and that the executives are presenting to the board is in alignment with how the operations will run. And when you have a revenue operating model that's congruent and you're you're building for skill and you're building for progression of that skill through a company, you'll win. Um, so that's what you have to start doing. And and it applies, it it's age appropriate. Small, small company, you don't need that much. Big company, you're redoing a lot of things, but it's vital. And then um, and then the stop is stop over hiring quota carriers without that that first piece in place because you'll self-destruct. Um, you may get some revenue, but it's just gonna churn. You're gonna have a crappy customer experience, and your company will be cannibalized, without question. The reason I can tell you that is I uh almost every customer we face uh went through it, you know, from uh mid-2015 on where they were hiring at all costs, and um they overhired and under-supported with an in with an infrastructure to make it repeatable, and then they fired everybody. And now many of them are getting acquired by private equity. And um, you know, the problem is they have extremely high CAC or reverse CAC. You know, they are spending massive amounts of money to land new customers and they can't even keep them, and it's it's broken. So, you know, it you gotta you gotta figure out the balance very early in order to scale a company.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Ladies and gentlemen, words of wisdom from my friend Bart Fennelli. If you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it, and here we are yet again. But all leaders need help, and that's why people like Bart exist. Bart, how can people best get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Uh so Bart at scalibrium.com or hit me up on LinkedIn, and um happy to collaborate, talk, share, and learn. I think it's that's part of business. Let's figure out how to win together and grow together, and that that's what we do.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

So fabulous. Well, you know, I'm a huge fan. I love what you and your team are doing over there at Scalibrium, and I'm super excited to see the impact that you're going to have on leaders and teams and cultures and financial performance. I I think in this crazy banny uh time that we're all operating in, um, having a guiding light is just really important. And I I wish you and the team well. I know we're gonna see a lot of great things to come.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Thanks for being yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate the collaboration, and I look forward to more. So thanks, James.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Absolutely. Thanks, everybody. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you on the next episode. Take care of the