Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Secrets of Precision-Guided Selling w/Adam Cuzzort
21 Plays5 days ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Adam Cuzzort, VP at Outreach, about the evolving landscape of sales technology, focusing on the shift from quantitative to qualitative sales tech. They explore how AI and advanced analytics are transforming sales strategies, making them more bespoke and aligned with individual customer needs. This insightful discussion is a must-listen for sales professionals and leaders looking to leverage technology to enhance their sales processes and outcomes.
Timestamps:
- 00:18 - Introduction of Adam Cuzzort and his background.
- 00:54 - Discussion on the qualitative vs quantitative approaches in sales technology.
- 03:19 - Challenges in modern sales environments and the importance of understanding customer value.
- 10:05 - The role of AI in enhancing sales processes and personalizing customer interactions.
- 17:40 - The shift from measuring sales activities to understanding the quality and impact of those activities.
- 24:42 - The importance of middle management and onboarding in sales effectiveness.
- 32:23 - Differentiating between skills coaching and deal coaching in sales.
- 33:16 - Closing remarks and the future of sales technology.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Close Mode and Guest Adam Kazort
00:00:05
Brian
Hello and welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm b Brian Deitmeyer, CEO of Close Strong AI, the home of precision guided selling. like And today I'm legit excited to be with Adam Kazort of Outreach. Adam is the VP and.
00:00:20
Brian
GM of product management. He was also the co-founder and CEO of Canopy, which is now an outreach product, two-time CTO, software engineer, brother's got some chops. I'm really happy and excited to talk to
Overview of Outreach's Sales Execution Platform
00:00:31
Brian
him today. For those of you who aren't familiar with outreach, and you you should be, it's a sales execution platform where every rep can sell like your best rep, design, measure, and improve improve seller workflows. Adam, welcome to the Dang Show.
00:00:46
Adam Cuzzort
Thanks, Brian. Yeah, I'm excited to be here and talk about two of my favorite things, the intersection of sales and technology and and where we're headed.
00:00:53
Adam Cuzzort
So excited to dig in with you.
00:00:55
Brian
Yeah, and and and I am. you know for For background, you you and I have been kind of chatting for months about various issues. And and i like I said, i'm i'm i'm really the buildup to this has been great. So and so let's let's dive
Shift from Statistical to Qualitative Sales Tech
00:01:08
Brian
into it. you know that The topic is sort of qualitative versus quantitative sales tech. And you said some stuff last week that that you know kind of rocked my world in a good way that we were talking about sales tech traditionally being statistical and aggregated data, but now there's a change occurring.
00:01:18
Adam Cuzzort
Bye.
00:01:25
Brian
So first first, I want to talk about like that tradition. Why was there so much focus on aggregating like statistical data?
00:01:35
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, I mean, I think it was we were working with what we had, right. And, and because of that, there was a large emphasis on making sure that what we had was the best that it could be.
00:01:38
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:46
Adam Cuzzort
So, you know, you had a lot of folks, really, this this whole wave of revenue operations that spun up. And it was like, how do we optimize our CRM and what we're tracking? And then how does that lead to making better data driven decisions?
00:01:59
Adam Cuzzort
in sales.
Predictability in Sales Forecasting
00:02:00
Brian
Yeah.
00:02:00
Adam Cuzzort
And I think if you rewind even before that wave, you had the wave that was kind of like the storytelling, right, I have a good relationship, maybe we closed a deal on the golf course, I took them to dinner, like, you know, and and while that worked, it was really hard to understand what was true and what wasn't.
00:02:04
Brian
Right.
00:02:18
Adam Cuzzort
And in the aggregate for a large organization to sort of predict what was going to happen ultimately at the end of the quarter. and Anybody that's in sales leadership, especially the CROs listening, you know that you know predictability is paramount.
00:02:31
Adam Cuzzort
Whether you're a privately held company or especially a publicly held company, but really across the board, part of being a professional well-run sales organization is being predictable. and so i think
00:02:40
Brian
Yeah.
00:02:41
Adam Cuzzort
That statistical thing kind of grew out of that right is like how do we manufacture predictability how do we get a lens on it. We have to use the tools that were available and so making sure that we had the right level of analytics and dashboards and bi i that was sort of brought to bear on trying to understand. What was working and what was it was really we were kind of doing the best with what we had.
00:03:01
Brian
It totally makes sense, and that activity was what we could measure. So you you made a point last week that quite frankly, i'm I'm hearing more of these days, so I'm excited to talk about
Complexity in Sales and Need for Showing Value
00:03:10
Brian
it. You were talking about deals being more bespoke and and qualitative, more buying influences, and it's no longer a linear process.
00:03:18
Brian
like Can you expound on that a little bit?
00:03:21
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, i think I think what we've seen, especially in the last couple of years, is you know selling has gotten harder. hass It hasn't gotten easier as we've seen more kind of the macroeconomic pressures and and look like the way buyers buy has continued to evolve. And it's gotten harder and harder for sellers to navigate the way buyers want to buy and the way they need to buy.
00:03:42
Brian
Yep.
00:03:42
Adam Cuzzort
And so I think it's it's mostly due to two two things that sort have stuck out to me in a lot of the conversations that I've had.
00:03:48
Adam Cuzzort
And that is, one, you know it's it's on the seller more than ever to be able to show hard value of of whatever the solution or or product mix that they're offering is to that specific customer, not an abstract.
00:04:02
Adam Cuzzort
but What is the value to that customer? And that that requires a deep understanding of the way that customer is going to realize value. And so it's gotten harder in that sense. I think the other thing that I've seen is the buying committee, sort of the the group of folks that are that ultimately need to sign off or in some way be influential and involved in that sale,
00:04:25
Adam Cuzzort
has continued to grow and there's new personas, right? I know a lot of folks have been talking in the sales community over the last year about CFOs being more involved and you know other business stakeholders being more involved because at the end of the day, every organization has to get
00:04:28
Brian
Yeah. Okay.
00:04:40
Adam Cuzzort
more juice from the squeeze, so to speak, right? And so because of that, it's challenged sellers to understand how do I navigate all these different personas and the things that each one of these personas care about, which is oftentimes vastly different.
00:04:49
Brian
Yeah.
00:04:54
Adam Cuzzort
And so it's caused, I think, what used to, what to to your question, what we used to see as kind of a, hey, let's build out a linear, you know, five or six stage sales process. to become much more difficult as we bring in new you know folks on the buyer side throughout the sales journey with that organization and almost have to go backwards to go forwards again.
00:05:15
Brian
Yeah.
00:05:15
Adam Cuzzort
right And do it in different ways that those folks you know care about.
00:05:18
Adam Cuzzort
And so navigating an opportunity cycle now doesn't look like a straight road. It's kind of winding with some roundabouts and coming back around.
00:05:27
Adam Cuzzort
right So I think in that way, it's gotten more challenging.
00:05:31
Brian
Yeah, it's, excuse me. Um, Um, when you were talking about the value that this value point about like this way, not your words, but this sort of generic value proposition versus like your value on this deal. And, and it brought me back, Adam, to a conversation I had with one of my partners in my old business, Hugh McDonald.
00:05:49
Brian
And Hugh did 12 years and $20 billion dollars of win-loss analysis. And Hugh really understated guy, engineer, former VBS sales and control data, you know, West Point grab. And we're having lunch and he's like, yeah, after that work, I can pretty much tell you why winners win and why losers lose.
00:06:07
Brian
and And then he went on to something else. And I don't know about you, but I was just like, if we're in a car, you could have heard my tires screeching from the brakes. I was like, back up, man. Like, first of all, it's a great book title, but what why do winners win and losers lose? and And this goes back to the point you just made, I think.
00:06:23
Brian
He said we show customers how we meet their needs at higher confidence and lower risk than the alternative on this deal and what struck me when he said that is That's really hard to scale and and that's what I heard you just saying like what what is your value on this deal?
00:06:39
Brian
And I feel like we're fundamentally Changing the definition of value proposition, but now there might be technology that helps us do this at scale and
00:06:45
Adam Cuzzort
right
00:06:48
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, I think so. I think that's what we're seeing now in the shifting landscape of how we can bring technology to bear to help sellers and help sales leaders and honestly help buyers navigate this whole dance, this whole journey,
AI's Role in Personalizing Sales Effectiveness
00:07:02
Adam Cuzzort
right? And everybody has increasing needs and complexity in that journey. And so I think First off, what we can do now better than we were able to do before, I think, is measure what's working versus not working, specific to every single persona and every single organization.
00:07:18
Brian
Yeah.
00:07:21
Adam Cuzzort
used to be when we'd try to say, let's measure what's working, we would be looking at you know specific maybe sales methodology criteria that we met. And when that happens, we have a higher correlation to winning deals.
00:07:33
Adam Cuzzort
But now it's like, well, what happens when, you know, the CFO gets involved in the buying cycle, two thirds of the way through the deal, and what they care about is consolidation of technology stack, right? Now, now we know specifically how to address those specific problems, those objections, those concerns down to like individual level, at the buyer persona level, or at the organization type perspective. So, know, it's, it's, it's sort of in some ways,
00:08:01
Adam Cuzzort
a double click on things that we've already had, but I think they the net difference is the fact that we're able to do this at scale and we're able to do it in a way that is much more personalized.
00:08:08
Brian
Yeah.
00:08:11
Brian
Well, and, and, and of course, you know, I was gonna ask you this question. I'm not going to the enabling technology as AI, right? That's all the diff all the difference now that helps us get to the the kind of qualitative stuff.
00:08:19
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:08:23
Brian
And, and, but, ah but I wonder what, what else are we going to be able to like measure, improve and learn?
00:08:24
Adam Cuzzort
i
00:08:29
Brian
Uh, what you just gave one example, but yeah, what else comes to mind for you?
00:08:32
Brian
What are you brainstorming about these days?
00:08:33
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:08:35
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, i'm I'm brainstorming a lot around things that historically, you know, sellers want to make sure that they understand and sales managers are always curious about.
00:08:45
Adam Cuzzort
But gathering that information has been a burden on sellers, it's been difficult for sales managers to stitch that stuff together. And those are things like, How much influence do we have in this account? you know um where where do Where's the power? Do we know where that is? right What about budget? And these are all things that like every seller needs to understand to effectively navigate the deal and every sales manager needs to understand about their aggregate pipeline, but it's really hard to do. And sellers often feel like I have to do all this data entry and there's all this admin non-selling time and it feels like a burden.
00:09:19
Adam Cuzzort
And I think technology can really help us here and not just tracking that stuff, but measuring it and measuring the success of it. How do we measure something that is inherently difficult?
00:09:28
Adam Cuzzort
Like, do we have enough influence in the account? so I think the combination of
00:09:32
Brian
Okay. Okay.
AI as an Assistant for High-Value Tasks
00:09:35
Adam Cuzzort
what got us here, which is all the statistical data that we were talking about earlier, and all these new AI capabilities that are now hitting the scene in the last year or two, really start to combine to something that allows us to really up level the game and hopefully, make it a lot nicer for buyers to buy and a lot easier for sellers to sell and really focus on the important things which are what we talked about in the beginning, right is the hard value that that customer is going to get.
00:09:52
Brian
Yeah.
00:09:58
Brian
Yeah, it's one one of my advisors and mentors Jim Dickey often talks about the shift in technology going from efficiency to effectiveness. And I wonder, I'm assuming that resonates with you.
00:10:12
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, absolutely. Because at the end of the day, it's like, can give me all the dashboards and all the stats in the world. But what I really want to know is what's working and what should I double down on? And what should I stop doing, right?
00:10:22
Adam Cuzzort
And within my sales organization, so that effectiveness is really key.
00:10:22
Brian
Yeah.
00:10:26
Adam Cuzzort
And that's what sellers want to write at the end of the day, that's, that's kind of what puts money in the pocketbook. So we want to make sure that we're always investing our most precious commodity, which is time in the right place.
00:10:38
Brian
Yeah.
00:10:39
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:10:39
Brian
Yeah. and And the thing, the other thing that occurs to me too, is like a lot of these, i'm I'm not sure of the right word, but it's, it's, it doesn't, the tools are working for the rep. You know, and yeah I think you've heard me say this before, like reps, this is a hard point for me that I struggle with all the time, reps are tired of filling out forms, CRM, sales training forms, whatever.
00:10:58
Adam Cuzzort
Yes.
00:11:00
Brian
and And these, these are, I think passive is the word I was looking for that some of these are kind of passive tools, right? That the reps just doing his or her job. and and the analytics are coming back to them.
00:11:12
Adam Cuzzort
Exactly. I mean i think the the nirvana state for a seller when it comes to technology is that it becomes almost invisible. right that I go almost back to that old school way of selling where I'm just taking prospective client to dinner or I'm you know going out on the course or something and I'm having a conversation with them about why they should trust me with their business and why I think I can deliver value.
00:11:21
Brian
Yeah.
00:11:35
Adam Cuzzort
and I'm not worried about you know all of the technology tracking of what we're saying and what the likely deal ah all of that is sort of handled for me and i can really focus on you know ultimately what sellers are great at which is building the relationship improving the value and the delivering on on the the trust that the customer is gonna place in them and i think that's at at the end of the day every good seller that's what they want to do that's what they want to focus on and anytime that they spend not doing that feels like overhead feels like burden to them.
00:12:03
Adam Cuzzort
So, so yeah, I think that's the nirvana state. And that's the promise, I think of a lot of the new AI technology that has come out, but I think it's going to take us a little time to get to the point where it's completely transparent.
00:12:16
Adam Cuzzort
But I think organizations that are looking to invest in this
00:12:16
Brian
Yeah.
00:12:20
Adam Cuzzort
this type of technology now should be thinking along those lines right of how does this actually help my sellers spend more time selling and less time administering and sort of delivering the visibility and tracking and analytics internally to the organization.
00:12:35
Adam Cuzzort
and sellers are are no different than any other business professional in the sense that this promise of AI is to be an assistant to be, we you know, you've heard the term co pilot used a lot, I'm sure, right?
00:12:45
Brian
yeah
00:12:46
Brian
yeah
00:12:46
Adam Cuzzort
But what does that mean for a seller?
00:12:48
Adam Cuzzort
It means, so you know, that I have something that is helping me do the part of my job that I don't really like to do, or that is repetitive, or that I don't see a high value in. That's, that's really, I think, where we're at from an AI maturity perspective.
00:13:01
Adam Cuzzort
And Certainly what we are investing in at outreach is you know not AI to replace sellers, it's AI to give them superpowers and take away the part of their job that is low value and give them more time back on the things that's high value.
00:13:07
Brian
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to me that you use that word assistance assistant because we like I fed into to GPT a lot of what we do in my company and that word came up a lot and one of my partners bristled at that, you know, it's like because we were using the word coach a lot and I actually lean into the assistant like that's what I want as ah as a salesperson.
00:13:34
Brian
Like, give me an assistant that does that stuff for me. and Another point you made, I've been interviewing recently, I'm trying to get and like about five AEs who are doing the job, right? So I talked to a lot of smart guys like you, who were talking about kind of strategic stuff. And and it's interesting that a rep I did a podcast with recently said what what you just said, that that it's ah ah this is coming full circle, that a lot of the tech is allowing us to go back to the human relationship.
00:14:04
Brian
Which was fascinating to me, though the way he put that to me and you just said it again.
00:14:05
Adam Cuzzort
That's right.
00:14:08
Brian
so And and there' there's at least another person, like I'm feeling this trend now that it's like, we what what's what's old is new again, that let's go back to the relationship. Let's go back to giving a damn about the human that we're talking to.
00:14:22
Adam Cuzzort
That's right, you know because I think it's because that that tracking, the analytical side, the sort of visibility and transparency to the organization can now be handled by AI and and that assistive capability, which then frees and us to go back to really what what is the heart of sales, which is relationships, which is trust, which is delivering on value, right?
00:14:41
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:44
Adam Cuzzort
So yeah, I think, this, hopefully, right the sort of glass half full side of all of this new technological wave of AI is is really that we get back to what sort of is at the core of selling, which is humanity and the relationships there.
Returning Focus to Human Relationships in Sales
00:14:57
Adam Cuzzort
So that's what excites me about it.
00:14:58
Brian
Yeah. And it, yeah. And it, and it sort of like, I, I keep talking to people about EQ and the need for higher EQ and sales teams. And, you know, part of EQ is reading the room.
00:15:09
Brian
You know, really, really again, get giving a dang about the person that I'm talking to. And we can measure that now.
00:15:16
Adam Cuzzort
Try it.
00:15:17
Brian
We can measure whatever we want to call it, empathy, you know, that we couldn't. and When you talk about qualitative stuff like that, that's the way to scale AQ.
00:15:24
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:15:25
Brian
Like, hey, you know, you're you're not really listening well enough, that kind of thing. Or the customer's are reacting in the XYZ kind of way.
00:15:33
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, yeah. And I think everyone, regardless of the job that they're doing, you know, once that sort of always on assistant to sort of fill in the gaps for things they might have missed, right? I mean, I would love if I just had an assistant that's always taking notes, like on my entire life. And I can just turn to it and go like, what did I tell that person last week about that topic, right? And so is kind of the promise, right of of AI, and I think where it can add a lot of value. And as we think about how that gets applied to sales organizations, you know, another thing I think that's that's really,
00:16:02
Adam Cuzzort
Important and i think where we should be placing a lot of investment and emphasis from a technology perspective is kind of the. Now what aspect for for sellers right as selling gotten harder and we have new buying personas coming into the mix and sales cycles are elongating and getting more complex.
00:16:10
Brian
Yeah.
00:16:20
Adam Cuzzort
you know, reps need that assistant at their fingertips that's just helping them with like the now what like what is the next step? How do I move this deal forward? And I think you know that's what I love about some of what you all are doing at clothes strong and really thinking about coaching in a new light, you know, it's how do we do this just in time in a way that's completely bespoke to like this particular deal and this particular seller. And that's that's really I think the power of an assistive capability for sellers is like,
00:16:45
Adam Cuzzort
that voice on your shoulder that's always there going like, Hey, you remember last week when you mentioned this as the next step to connect to this new persona, that it's kind of nudging us and helping us with that now what now what should we go do? It's a it's a productivity superpower that every business person I think once regardless of their role, but especially sellers, you know, need this we're all time constrained, and time is money in sales. So that's, that's really where I think, you know, technology is moving and smart organizations should be focusing on and investing in.
00:17:14
Brian
Yeah. You, you, you made a point last week that made this all come alive for me. You said we're moving from how many conversations happened to what happened on that conversation. And there's so many other areas too, where we can make that transition.
00:17:26
Brian
I feel. Yeah.
00:17:26
Adam Cuzzort
That's right.
00:17:28
Brian
I also go, please go ahead.
00:17:28
Adam Cuzzort
That's right.
00:17:31
Adam Cuzzort
I just really, the ability to combine those things, right is like it's not just about the volume, it's about the quality, and then and then what were the topics being discussed by which personas? right there's There's always this nuance that's really hard to track in something like a CRM, where it's you know there were five people on the call and three people were positive, but we had a strong detractor on there, and this is what they were detracting and cared about, and how do we overcome that?
00:17:55
Adam Cuzzort
and you know there's there's so much nuance. And I think the ability to combine positive and negative sentiment and then like formulate a strategy, formulate a play, how do we move past that? how do we That's really what the heart of good sales coaching and good sales leadership is. right The best sales managers that I talk to that sit down with their reps on a regular basis are working through those kinds of conversations.
00:18:19
Brian
Yeah.
00:18:19
Adam Cuzzort
And so I think the more we can speed the time to delivering that insight to the seller themselves and to their manager, the better.
00:18:27
Brian
Yeah, it's there. Another thing that I'm i'm curious, there's a book written by a Harvard guy Danny Earl about about connecting. sort of strategy to tactics at the sales level, right? So there's there's part of our corporate strategy that we're executing one deal at a time. Not all of it, not not M and&A work and that kind of thing. but And there's there's always been a frustration. Industry analyst Jim Dickey, a lot of people know, say, you know, companies are frustrated. They have this new strategy. they They roll it out at SKO, and then everyone goes back and sells the old thing.
00:18:59
Brian
and and i In my previous company, we did billions of dollars in human coaching. And what my human coaches couldn't do is have the strategy of the organization in their brain to say, all right, you're in this vertical selling this solution against this competitor. We we could ask all the questions to de-risk the deal and find out what data is missing. But moving from deal to deal, solution to solution.
00:19:21
Brian
AI's got that capability. And to me, this is ah ah this is something that I don't hear talked about enough is is connecting, feeding that strategy into the brain of the AI.
00:19:31
Adam Cuzzort
No.
00:19:32
Brian
So we're actually, we do make that connection. And I'm curious about your thoughts on that.
00:19:36
Adam Cuzzort
Well, I think this is really at the heart of the biggest challenge in building sales technology over the last couple decades, right? Was that as we've matured it, what we've done is we've tried to make the technology sort of agnostic to the business.
00:19:53
Adam Cuzzort
If you look at CRMs now, they're basically just a big database with a bunch of integrations. so And so we've tried to cover more organizations and more different use cases, but we've In doing so really kind of gone down to a lowest common denominator solution and so i think the the hardest thing in sales has always been to add enough value on the technology front but in a way that actually adds the same level of value for every customer regardless of the industry or the product mix or how they sell and so i think as you said.
00:20:24
Adam Cuzzort
being able to to sort of understand the strategy of the organization, and then distill that down into like actionable intelligence that gets delivered to every layer of the sales organization and the seller that's just about, you know, five minutes from joining a call on that deal that they're trying to close.
00:20:42
Adam Cuzzort
That is a ah ah huge leap forward in how we've been able to operate in the past.
00:20:45
Brian
Yeah.
00:20:46
Adam Cuzzort
You know, my my job as a technical and product leader in a sales technology organization has always been create a solution that works for everyone.
00:20:46
Brian
Yeah.
00:20:54
Adam Cuzzort
And that is really difficult in a way that's like opinionated and works the way that that specific customer wants to work because there's so much variety in the way that sales organizations run and how they sell and their processes and tools. And so that's a really exciting, I think we're at kind of an inflection point with this unlock of new AI technology and and just how bespoke we can make that just in time insight.
00:21:20
Brian
Yeah. the I feel like a lot of the AI tools, super valuable, let listen to the call and tell you what happened. And that's, again, getting us to that qualitative stuff.
00:21:28
Adam Cuzzort
Right.
Aligning AI with Company Strategy in Sales Processes
00:21:30
Brian
And in this point that we're talking about now, it's it's the proactive piece before the call where the AI is smart enough to say, this this is how we're competing in this environment.
00:21:40
Brian
This is our strategy. We're rolling out this new product and we want to switch to this new bundle. you know And how how are we using it proactively? and And we're playing with some of this where it's really fun to make the tool smart about are proactively about our strategy and where we're going.
00:21:56
Brian
And then we can measure how well we're executing that after the fact. And I feel like getting both sides of that coin is super valuable.
00:22:01
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I talked to sellers and there's different reactions to this depending on who you talk to in the sense that a seller that is relatively early on in their career, that's learning kind of how do I be like the number one enterprise segment seller, right? How do I how do I get that level of success and OTE basically at the end of the quarter?
00:22:24
Adam Cuzzort
they're They're all about like, yes, give me all of these tools. Give me all the coaching. Give me all the insight. Prep me for that meeting, Brian, please. you know then I go talk to like some of the the more tenured sellers that have been doing this for decades.
00:22:30
Brian
Yeah.
00:22:36
Adam Cuzzort
And sometimes I get the response from them like, oh, you know I already know. I already know the strategy. I've picked up on that. right I've been doing this for 30 years. But I think the unlock moment even for those folks is that, you know yes, but when you have this always on assistant, think of how much time that's gonna save you and and remove the blind spots that you may have already had, but not known about.
00:22:55
Brian
Yeah.
00:22:56
Adam Cuzzort
And so those might be things like, hey, a new product offering that your company's bringing in or you know new competition that you're seeing in the market that everyone always has to stay up up to date with.
00:22:56
Brian
Yep.
00:23:05
Adam Cuzzort
And so are things about sales that are kind of, changing and a lot of that is sort of like how to build trust how to build you know champions within an organization and then there are things that are changing all the time like the shifting market landscapes and competition and new product offerings and acquisitions and and so even you know experience sellers often can use and and get a lot of value from this kind of always on assistive capability that's raising this to their attention.
00:23:31
Brian
Yeah. And i I do, I do think it's funny. I did a podcast with it with a CRO who said, look, 2024 we're, we're two X pipe versus six X. And, and so she was saying.
00:23:43
Brian
Look, for success this year, it's the middle of your pipe and it's the middle of your sales team. It's not, and forget the C players, they're probably never going to be out there. A players might might be rocking it.
00:23:54
Brian
And you're right, at the margins, we can deliver them some stuff, but it really resonated when she talked to me about the middle of the pipe and the middle of your players. And then also on onboarding.
00:24:05
Brian
Right? you You kind of just skirted around this, but the new reps, how how do we put best practice in front of them right now on on day on day one, like actual best practice?
00:24:08
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:24:15
Brian
And I feel like that's, yeah, it's it's the new reps, it's the B players, it's the middle of your pipe.
00:24:19
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:24:20
Brian
It's all these areas that that we can make an impact on in 2024.
00:24:24
Adam Cuzzort
You're right. I mean, we we, at Canopy actually, when we first started, we, one of the things that we identified early on was that if we could, if we could model out what the best sales reps ramp time looked like and what the milestones were that they achieved during that ramp, right?
00:24:41
Adam Cuzzort
As they're onboarding and learning we could sort of build a model for what that optimal ramp cycle looks like. for an organization and then deliver that to sales leaders so they could you know build all of their training and onboarding plans to match that ideal ramp profile.
00:24:56
Adam Cuzzort
But in some ways, that's still kind of just reading the news, right? It's kind of like, this is what happened and this is how you should think about it in the future, but it's not really guided.
00:25:04
Brian
Thank you.
00:25:05
Adam Cuzzort
It's not really sort of prescriptive. and specific to that organization and in the sense of we we saw sort of the time to first deal and kind of the amount of attainment that that ramping rep got, but we didn't know the sort of intangible factors, right?
00:25:20
Adam Cuzzort
What were they doing that no one else was doing? What were they particularly good at, maybe from a soft skill perspective that that other reps that were ramping weren't? And so I think we're we're again, we're entering this ability to really be much more specific and bespoke around analyzing what made that ramp better, faster, more effective than another cohort of reps that we ramped.
00:25:44
Adam Cuzzort
And then start to model that in a much more guided way. Because yeah, you're right.
00:25:47
Brian
Yeah.
00:25:48
Adam Cuzzort
If if if we can if we can shorten the time that it takes to onboard and ramp new reps, huge impact for the organization.
00:25:54
Brian
Yeah. And I think you you take me with with with your thoughts, you take me to a a really tactical place. Like let's say qualifying, for example, as we're building our new business, we interviewed about 60 execs and we're like, what are your frustrations with pipeline and et cetera, et cetera, forecast accuracy.
00:26:03
Adam Cuzzort
And.
00:26:09
Brian
and One of the things we heard is I'm so frustrated that I get called in to close these deals and these pieces of trash were not even qualified in the first place. So like if if we take this this conceptual stuff we're talking about and saying, okay, what are the reps, what are the best reps doing? What qualification criteria do they have that that drives win rate, that drives deal optimization and drives renewals? And and it we can collect that and and get that in front of the new reps to say, if you want to move those three metrics,
00:26:39
Brian
Run run run through this and that that's where I start seeing like really street level street level impact.
00:26:46
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, exactly right. and And a lot of this has to do with the fidelity of the data were that we're getting. And and again, like historically, it was really what those reps are doing on the CRM records.
00:26:57
Adam Cuzzort
And nowadays, we're able to collect so much more data around what's happening, what's what's being discussed through various communication channels, whether that's a live meeting or whether that's an email or a LinkedIn message or whatever it is, we're able to really gather those insights.
00:26:57
Brian
i
00:27:11
Adam Cuzzort
And I think deliver those much more effectively. Because really, since I started in sales technology, most of the sales leaders I would talk to would say, you know, I want the correlation analysis, like what are my best reps doing that my other reps are not doing?
Correlating Best Practices from Top Performers
00:27:24
Adam Cuzzort
How do I make that sort of middle 50% look like that top 25% to your point.
00:27:28
Brian
Yes, yeah.
00:27:29
Adam Cuzzort
And and so but a lot of the time from as a technologist, I was limited in how I could deliver that because I was limited by the data.
00:27:37
Brian
Yep.
00:27:37
Adam Cuzzort
And so now we have so much more data at our disposal to start to draw these correlations between what's working and what's not.
00:27:42
Brian
Yep. Well, and that the data was limited by the tools, right?
00:27:45
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah.
00:27:46
Brian
and So now we have a new tool.
00:27:48
Adam Cuzzort
Exactly.
00:27:50
Brian
and And I think, you know, there was a lot of critical articles about, you know, when when is AI going to become really helpful for reps? And and I feel like even before talking to you that we're starting to get there now.
00:28:01
Brian
We're really, you know, it was this really big, fun, sexy thing, but it's it's we're we're now figuring out how to get it granular to granular down to that, like, again, qualification level or or discovery level to say, hey, we can go to a stage in the sales process and a skill and give you really cool insight about that.
00:28:18
Adam Cuzzort
Yeah, that's right. and And to a large extent, this is great for reps, because it allows them to, ah to a large extent, sort of self manage, right? To look at all of my deals, look at the qualification state of them and go, you know, are they all the way that I think they should be before I go into that one on one with my manager before I go into the next meeting with the customer? Like, am I saying the right things? Again, like even the best, you use like a sports analogy, the best athletes in the world still need coaches.
00:28:47
Adam Cuzzort
right? Because they need somebody that's kind of looking out for the big picture, double checking what they're doing.
00:28:48
Brian
Yeah.
00:28:53
Adam Cuzzort
Oftentimes, you have great individual contributors that are excellent at doing their job, maybe the full sales funnel, maybe they're really good at qualifying, maybe they're really good at negotiation value. But they still need somebody kind of doing that double check for them going like, did you remember to ask about this?
00:29:09
Adam Cuzzort
And I think that's the again, like we we are entering this era for sellers, where they they really can get this and they can, to a certain extent, kind of self-manage and self-coach, which is really powerful right for them and for their leaders, because that means their managers get more time back to ask even better, deeper questions, not the sort of like fundamental stuff.
00:29:28
Brian
Yeah, so yeah, two, two kind of issues. Uh, we, we could go for an hour here, but we won't, but to two, two issues.
00:29:34
Adam Cuzzort
its
00:29:35
Brian
Well, one is the manager time issue, which we haven't even gotten into.
00:29:38
Brian
Like we know 5% of pipe is coached, but managers don't have time. Uh, this allows us, but it, you know, sometimes something you just said, this is sort of a, to me, a complete fundamental rethinking of enablement.
00:29:38
Adam Cuzzort
That's right.
00:29:50
Brian
Right. About the way we used to do it, the data we used to have.
00:29:52
Adam Cuzzort
Yes.
00:29:53
Brian
And, and, and again, I would go back to enablement and strategy execution. Like we, we have a whole different methodology and approach to, to be able to, to execute it and measure it.
00:30:04
Brian
And it it's, it's a really, uh, exciting time to be in this space. It's moving pretty quick.
00:30:11
Adam Cuzzort
I think so. i mean i you know Enablement is a broad term within the sort of sales ecosystem landscape, but at the end of the day, it's you know how do we make our sellers as productive as possible?
00:30:24
Adam Cuzzort
and I do think you're right that the the landscape of how that gets done is changing very rapidly. you know, historically, it's been you know, we need to produce a lot of content and education material for them to consume, and then make sure that they do that every
00:30:38
Adam Cuzzort
I think the way that it's really moving is, it looks a lot more like deal strategy, it looks a lot more like the conversation that really good sales managers have with their reps when they go, what play should we run to move this deal forward?
00:30:46
Brian
Yeah.
00:30:52
Adam Cuzzort
What are the critical inflection points of this opportunity that we need to focus on? And Whether it's a seasoned seller or a brand new one, I think that's the most effective way to enable, right?
00:31:04
Adam Cuzzort
And when I talk to sellers, I'm like, what's the best enablement you feel like you've ever gotten in your life?
00:31:04
Brian
Yeah.
00:31:09
Adam Cuzzort
And it was always centered around some deal they were trying to close, you know, I had this big deal, and I couldn't figure out how to move it forward.
00:31:13
Brian
yeah
00:31:16
Adam Cuzzort
And my manager just unlocked this light bulb moment for me. Right. And it's always in the context of, you know, doing their job, closing a deal. It's not an abstract, let me go take a training course kind of thing. So I think the landscape of that whole method for how we make sellers more productive is is evolving very rapidly.
00:31:35
Brian
Right. Well, so some of that coaching was interrogation. You and I have talked about this in the past. And we've also talked about the difference between sort of skills coaching and deal coaching. And I think you nailed it. It's like, those are different.
00:31:46
Brian
And I'm just realizing that over the last six months that people kind of lump coaching all into one thing.
00:31:47
Adam Cuzzort
Yes.
00:31:51
Brian
And it's, it's very different set of skills, very different. It's not interrogation. It's helped me strategize, helped me get over this hurdle. and ah And I think we're, we're getting there with these technologies.
00:32:02
Brian
And i I know I said this to you at the outset before we started recording.
00:32:03
Adam Cuzzort
That's right.
00:32:05
Brian
I know you're slammed. You've been super generous with your time and your ideas. And I'm really looking forward to to people who aren't, don't have these kind of this qualitative AI leverage in their head today that hopefully we've gone some way toward getting that or so so.
00:32:23
Brian
Again, thank you so much for your time.
00:32:26
Adam Cuzzort
Of course, yeah, I love the topic. and And hopefully folks, you know, get inspired by this to go and investigate, you know, how they start to deliver some of these capabilities to their sellers, because I think they are really eager for it. And I think there's massive lift to the value of the organization. You know, think about like what the incremental gain is of making that much more, that middle percent that you talked about around the sort of middle of your deals, middle of your sellers, that much more productive and effective, huge return, worth the investment, worth the time.
00:32:51
Brian
Yeah.
00:32:54
Brian
Hi.
00:32:55
Adam Cuzzort
And I think we've got you know technology landscape that is now really offering a ton of value. So it's been fun talking about it, Brian. Thanks for having me.
00:33:02
Brian
You're welcome. Thank you.
00:33:04
Adam Cuzzort
Thanks.