Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
If you think outbound is dead, you’re either lying or you’re bad at it.
Quotas keep rising, your people are grinding, and the pipeline isn’t growing. It’s an equation that drives you mad. While everyone wants more opportunities, only a few know how to build an outbound culture that delivers.
I’m Todd Busler, former VP of Sales, now co-founder of Champify, and I’ve spent my career sharpening how to build a company pipeline that’s self-sufficient.
On this show, I’m talking to sales leaders who have cracked the outbound code. They’ve built an outbound culture beyond their SDRs and scaled repeatable systems that drive real pipeline without relying on hacks.
We’ll break down the winning plays, processes, and frameworks behind growing that outbound muscle to help you get results faster.
No fluff. No hacks. Real strategies from real people who have done it so you can stop guessing and start opening.
Rick Kickert (00:00):
So every single deal review, every single one-on-one, every single QBR, when there is a presentation on here's my three why's or here's my understanding of your business, or here's my POV plan, first thing I ask is, can the competitor in that county do the same thing? And they do those 10 things too in your plan. If they can, then you might get burned like I did.
Todd Busler (00:28):
Everyone wants to build stronger pipeline, but only a few know how to make it happen. If you're listening to this show, you know outbound is not dead, you just need a little help building a system that actually works. Well, you're in the right place. I'm Todd Busler and on this show we're breaking down the plays, processes and frameworks behind repeatable pipeline growth straight from the people who've built it. Let's get into it.
(00:56):
Hey everyone. Todd here. I'm really excited for you all to listen to this episode with Rick Kickert. Rick Kickert started and runs a revenue enablement and revenue operations consulting firm called revlogic. He worked at some of the best B2B SaaS companies ever, including AppDynamics, Wiz, Rubrik, et cetera, and now works very closely with CROs at some of the hottest growing companies. Before getting into SaaS and the world of enablement and revenue operations and pipeline generation, he spent 10 years at a buyer at a huge healthcare system managing million dollar plus budgets. He brings a wealth of experience when it comes to buyer enablement and a big shift or reshift on how sellers should think about sales and buyer enablement. The episode starts off a little bit slow, but towards the end he has some really hot takes and tactical advice for any enterprise sales leader, IC or someone just getting into sales. I hope you enjoy. Rick, what's going on? Appreciate you taking some time.
Rick Kickert (02:02):
Todd, I am in a WeWork right now in beautiful Austin, Texas in my travel, so I hope it's not too echoey or the light's not quite right, but I think we'll still power through it and maybe you'll have something to work with here.
Todd Busler (02:19):
We're finding a way, and I'm sure you're going to drop a lot of knowledge here that you've earned over a long time doing what you do. So I'm excited for the listeners to be able to learn from your wealth of experience. You've seen and built the enablement function and some of, I think the best B2B SaaS sales organizations of all time. I wanted to start with what you see is what's the biggest misconception people have about enablement's role in building high functioning sales orgs?
Rick Kickert (02:50):
I think some of the biggest challenges that from an enablement team, and this isn't to be kind of direct here, but enablement's not met to be order takers. That has been a foundational belief for me. Like you'll get an entire inbox full of requests of, I need more training on this, I need more training on that, those type of things. But the best enablement organizations I think that I've had the opportunity to work with in some of these companies is that everything needs to have a measurable outcome. So if I look at what are the founder's goals or the goals of the business, if I'm looking at what's the goals of the CRO and everything, every single request, I try to bucket it into that. So that could be something like, I need to increase the pipeline capacity from 3x to 5x. I need to increase our ASP from 50k to 100k.
(03:46):
I need to reduce our deal cycle time by a month. I need to increase productive capacity by getting the sales team ramped up another month, two months sooner. If those aren't the goals that are aligned inside the company, then I think as an enablement team, it's your responsibility to try and set those goals and set those measurables. So if I have a regional director coming to me and saying, I need more qualification training, that's great. I actually want to help you. Let's figure out exactly what needle we're trying to move with qualification training so I can measure it. You can help measure the team, you can socialize it, you can get everybody behind it. Everything's got to come back to a measure outcome that drives the business in those metrics. If you are improving on those metrics, everything that goes inside of productive capacity, Todd, the rush just works itself out, believe it or not. I know as crazy as it sounds, but revenue's, the lagging indicator. Those other things are the leading indicators that feed it.
Todd Busler (04:45):
Rick, why'd you start revlogic, as I said in the intro, right? AppD, Zscaler, Wiz, Rubrik. I'm a SaaS nerd, right? I studied these companies probably way nerdier than I'd like to admit. They're the best of the best like the Mount Rushmore. What led you to start revlogic and step out of, Hey, I'm going all in on one company, and then what gap were you trying to close?
Rick Kickert (05:10):
Todd, I'm going to give you, I won't go all the way back to my childhood on this one, I promise, but I am going to go back a little bit into time, give you kind of the, it's important knowing the story of how I started my career and I think it's kind of cool how things just lined up for me to end up in that. So before AppDynamics and Rubrik and Zscaler and Wiz, I was actually at a company called HCSC, Healthcare Service Corporation. It's better known to most as Blue Cross Blue Shield, so it's one of the largest blues plans in healthcare insurance provider. So I was there for almost 10 years and if I could put my job very simply, I was the liaison between the business and IT. So whatever business goals that were coming out, whether it was the Affordable Healthcare Act, whether it was building new claims processing apps, those type of things, I would work with the IT team and build out the project plans.
(06:08):
And I also had an opportunity to have the growth and obsolescence budget there, which means that my office was a rotating door of sales reps and sales leaders coming in and constantly trying to sell, because I say this story every time, in my office, if you were to walk in there and here on the right side of this wall, there'd be a huge whiteboard and on that whiteboard and then a bunch of P codes, those P codes are called project codes, but better known as they were checks that I could write. And next to that was all the projects that we were working on. Best sales reps knew what was on that whiteboard before they walked in and they knew exactly how they were going to be able to align and support.
(06:54):
So again, I had the opportunity to see hundreds of sales reps, some being the best, some being maybe the worst. But one thing I do know I was convinced by is that I don't know that I always bought the best software solution. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't, right? But I bought what I trusted, which means that the sales reps coming into my office, I trusted that they could support me with those programs, those projects. I'd give 'em an office right outside my door or I'd give 'em a cubicle right outside my door and I trusted they would be there and be helped. Now, let me fast forward a little bit. I am in my 10th year over at Blue Cross Blue Shield and I'm like, I'm done. It's time to do something different. And I was going to start my own company at that time.
(07:40):
I've got a touch of entrepreneurship in me, I guess, and at that time I'm ready to leave and I walked down to the Starbucks and the bottom of the building and every outstanding sales rep does. They're down there watching traffic coming in, getting to know people. Now obviously this is before COVID days, there's not as many people coming into the offices anymore, but at that time, that sales rep, he's still to this day, one of the best, Mike Ruffner's his name, and he's down there at the table and he sees me grab a cup of coffee and I tell him, I think I'm done. And he goes, well, I'm going to break the Golden Rule then you're never supposed to take the economic buyer out of your account. At that time, I had no clue, Todd, what economic buyer meant. It sounded nice, but I didn't know.
(08:33):
He says, I'm leaving the company, it just left the company that I was going to be at and I'm going to go on over another company called AppDynamics. And he said, before you consider going off and doing your own thing and building your own thing, you should come talk to my boss. And at the time, his name is Tom Schmidt, he's awesome CRO or president over at Armada right now. And Tom says to me, your Rolodex would be 10 times bigger if you come over to the other side, come work in software sales, work with some of the biggest companies, help build the BVC, business value consulting organization enablement, all of that. I truly believe I was given a really good opportunity there, and I also got to learn from the best. So this whole time of gaining that knowledge and learning, there is very founding principles in sales.
(09:28):
Now they can be innovated through technology, but those things I've learned, I've gotten an opportunity to watch it from some of the best people operate in the business, carry that on, pass it on to these other companies with a great team around me. I realized that we kind of had some secret sauce there and that there is hundreds of other startup companies that would completely benefit from that also, and we're a bunch of experienced operators, so let's go in and do that for them and help them launch their companies. That's the story. I know it's a long one.
Todd Busler (10:04):
And then Rick, yeah, no, makes sense. And Rick, when you started at AppD, that feels a little non-traditional, right? If that was a healthcare oriented company and you had the deep decade of experience there and they're like, alright, I really want to understand the buyer, I think that would feel more natural. What exactly did they bring you over to do? Was it to get the business value team going? What exactly was the early mandate? I know it transformed and we'll get into that, but what was the early kind of goal there?
Rick Kickert (10:31):
Yeah, it's funny. It actually is kind of what you just said. I come from the buyer side. Everything I talk about, everything we build even to the sales process, it's all about the buyer. I believe buyers close deals, I might upset a lot of sellers on this call, but buyers close deals, they're the ones that go there and get the deal closed. When I was a buyer, I never had a sales rep be able to sign the DocuSign for me as authority of a purchase. I wish they could. It actually would've saved me a ton of cycles. That would've been awesome, but they don't. So at the end of the day, everything is around the buyer and Tom Schmidt and others, they wanted me to help educate the sellers on what the buyer needs, what they're thinking about, how to have more consultative conversations with them, what do they think about when they walk out of that office, when they're done meeting with a vendor, those type of things.
(11:28):
And the fun part of it is I got to do it as a business value consultant starting off, which means I got to work with hundreds of other buyers fly around the world doing that, and we just relate. I mean, that was the biggest thing while I got to watch the best sellers be able to operate. So learning from both sides, from both directions. After that, I also got to do enablement. I got to lead sales for emerging technologies like Business IQ and IOT in that too. So I got a vast amount of experience, again, surrounded by great people wouldn't be able to pass it on by myself or have the success, but that's what friends do.
Todd Busler (12:06):
What were those early learnings like for you, Rick? Because I would imagine some of that was you didn't come from another organization that had this elite B2B SaaS sales org, right? So I'm sure you were learning a lot from like, wow, there's a lot going in on this sales side in terms of training their strategies, positioning all of the stuff they're doing. What was most eyeopening for you when you started to get exposed to really good reps and sales leaderships in those early days?
Rick Kickert (12:37):
Oh, that's your funny story here. I've actually never changed this publicly. This is a new one. So I get done, I go on over to SKO, that was one of my first weeks I was starting over at AppDynamics, and keep in mind, we don't do SKOs where I came from, I go in this SKO event, everybody's sharp dress, nice blazers, way more hair than I do slick back. They are probably 10, 15 years younger than me, but I mean they are a different community of people than what I was used to. And I'm watching the presentations on the stage and they're talking about qualification and medic and EBs and champions and all of that and ARR and ACV and TCV and I got no freaking clue what is going on, what I'm talking about. Little did I know that you could go into the CRM and put my name in and I was going to show up as EB your champion across different deals and opportunities and there's my phone number and all that other dirt on me. I was so overwhelmed. I stepped out of the, I remember being dinner the first day and I step off into a dark corner of where SKO is at and I called my wife and I said, I screwed up.
(13:59):
I have made a humongous mistake. I've never been more uncomfortable in my life and I don't belong here. And you get that, what do they call that? Impostor syndrome. And I had to live through that for probably a good three, six months, probably a lot longer. But I remember I was kind of quiet and Tom pulls me off to the side before we're about to do a QBR. He says they need to hear from you. I want you to go to the front of the room and I want you to present on what the buyer thinks about. It's not about BVAs or enablement or in it. I just want you to give a presentation on what a buyer think about, and I remember specifically, and actually it was in Austin, Texas at an old movie theater that was converted over into, they were using it for meetings and I'm standing at the front of the room and people like Brian Witlin and Brian Ice and a bunch of others are acting like I've invented fire or when I'm talking to it, who they are amazing people, very experienced, but they were interested in what I had to say.
(15:05):
And at that moment, the light bulb kind of came on for me. I'm like, all right, buyer enablement is important and every single sales process we build now, it is going to be a relying around the buying jobs. What are the buying jobs of the buyer that purchases your product? And we build a sales product. We want to learn that. We want to understand that we did this over at the companies I've been at, and so every sales activity in the sales process gives something back to the buyer. I walk through a bunch of examples if you want me to or?
Todd Busler (15:49):
Yeah, I want to do that. First off, I just want to say that's a really interesting story and I think that's super innovative of AppD at the time and gives someone there a lot of credit to be like, look, we can go get the best enterprise sellers that have done this. We can teach 'em our playbook. But it is really hard to understand you were coming from a place managing probably a hundred million dollars plus budget and understanding, okay, how are you allocating these funds? What matters? And to teach reps the insides of how you were thinking I think is incredibly valuable. And whoever's idea it was to bring you in super innovative because you don't see that a ton and risky. You didn't know all the three letter acronyms, TCV, BVAs, all that. That shit's easy to learn, but doing the decade of experience you had is invaluable. So I give that team a lot of credit. You mentioned buyer enablement three times already. Rick, we've been talking for 10 minutes. Talk to me about what do you mean when you say that? I hear sales enablement a lot, right? What do you mean when you're saying that and where do you think maybe some of these orgs don't quite understand that part of what you teach?
Rick Kickert (16:53):
Yeah, again, there are founding principles around sales that are proven to work from the PTC, from the BMC days. A lot of other companies have proven and had success with those like MongoDB and Snowflake and AppD and Wiz and Zscaler, but in many Rubrik, many others too. But for me, the buyer does not want to engage with the vendor. Let's face it. And COVID has probably accelerated that a ton and where they want to do all their research online. There's a statistic out there that says, I has only spent 14% of their time with the vendor, which means that if there's a competitor in there now cut that by in half. Now it might only be 7% of the time. So if I have that limited time with the buyer, what can I give back to the buyer so that they have the ability to get through their buying jobs? So simple buying job is their first buying job is problem identification. So they have to identify they have a problem and understand it. A lot of that is going to be done online research. They're not going to call a sales rep and say, Hey, let's go ahead and talk. So what am I doing in my first stage in the sales process? Todd, take a guess. What's the typical first stage of the sales process?
Todd Busler (18:16):
The typical one is qualification or just intro meeting.
Rick Kickert (18:22):
What's the name? That's the name of the podcast we're on right now.
Todd Busler (18:25):
Cracking Outbound.
Rick Kickert (18:26):
Cracking out outbound, right? So stage one it's around PG pipeline generation, right? Everyone, PG cares all soon, I don't care. Whatever you want, analogy you want to use, it's around doing pipeline generation cracking outbound. Let's bring it back to your podcast. So now we're trying to PG into a buyer that is doing requirements building and they are out there going and trying to do their own research on it. So great PG, if you do great discovery like you just brought up, if I'm doing great discovery, I am figuring out what those personas are that are doing that research and what I can give back to them to educate them. It might be a white paper on this is how we do Kubernetes different, this is how we can save you money, this is how we can reduce your tech stack, this is how we can reduce your risk, those type of things.
(19:23):
I don't open PG emails that just say, hope your family's doing well, let's go ahead and meet. This is some things I think we can do for you. It is something that I have been out there researching a problem trying to solve, and boom, it shows up in my inbox. Turns out they might have something back to offer to me that's stage one. I've already enabled the buyer by the way. That meeting that I get with them has a lot higher chance of converting to closed revenue than the spray and pray approach. That's one very simple example. Next stage of a typical sales process is probably doing some type of qualification and for the buying job that's happening at that same time is probably around solution alignment. So I've done my requirements building, now I'm trying to align or I'm exploring for the solution, solution exploration.
(20:10):
I get a meeting with them. I'm going to do a lot of discovery, but I'm going to come in with some type of value hypothesis that shows this is how I think our solution might be able to solve your problem, which means that I have to do a little documentation, I've got to do a little more discovery to figure out how I think I can solve their pain ahead of time. I've got to put it into a template that they can use. Socialize, easy to read, gives a story back to them to enable 'em and remind them that, hey, this is how our solution, this is how the AppDynamics solution, the Zscaler the solution, can help solve your problem while you are in that solution exploration phase. We keep moving to the right, right? I mean requirements building is probably the next buying job that it's going to wrap around the POV.
(21:00):
Now if I understand and help them understand what their solution requirements are, now I'm going to have a POV, a proof of value or a proof of concept that's going to knock it out of the park. But again, I got to enable the buyer, so that means I make sure that I am showing them the things exactly that we documented that says, this is how we're going to help solve your requirements. If I just do a cookie cutter POC or POB, I'm not enabling the buyer, but I'm giving it back to them. If you're skipping a step, ideally in the perfect sales process and buyer enablement relationship, you align the two with each other and you say if you're skipping a step in the sales process, you're skipping something that the buyer needs to complete their buying jobs because they got to go close that deal for you.
Todd Busler (21:46):
It's really a mind shift of seller closing the deal to seller, enabling the buyer to go close the deal and every part of the sales process is more buyer enablement than kind of sales process. It's interesting framing, and again, I just go back to make sense that background, you were able to help do that so well. I want to get in Rick to some of the, I think you have a really interesting lens now working with some of the hottest, fastest growing B2B companies out there in the world. Before we get into some of those mistakes, you mentioned the kind of lineage, PTC, BMC, they've gone to Mongo, a lot of those leaders have matured and are running a lot of these great companies today, many of which running similar versions of the playbook, the bible, whatever you want to call it, right? What separates some of the best revenue teams from what you see or the best sales processes, especially as a lot of that playbook has gotten more democratized.
Rick Kickert (22:45):
I honestly think you could have the same playbook and you can do the same sales process. You can even have the same, let's face it, the market is saturated with products that could all feed, they can check the box if you are in security. There's hundreds of solutions out there that they might not do 'em as well, but they can still say they check the box of being able to do that, like user monitoring, AI come up with any market. So what's your competitive differentiation at that point? It's probably the person that you're working with. It is probably that sales rep. And I honestly firmly believe if you, and we do this here at revlogic too, I want somebody who is focused on being 5% better, 1%, I don't care, everyone likes to throw out a percent, it doesn't matter a percent better than the other sales rep at the other company, the other competitor. And I want also that same sales rep to be 1% or 5% different. So I think about that for a minute better and different are always the same thing. So some of the hottest, some companies that have sat down, people that have sat down and said, I want to do something different. On average there's 121 messages that come into an email box. How do I do something different to set myself apart from the noise every single day? That's the goal. I give you the very simple stupid example. We did this here just to read.
Todd Busler (24:24):
Yeah, one example because you hear 1%, 2% better every day. Tell me some examples of different.
Rick Kickert (24:29):
Alright, so I'll give you one from a marketing perspective first of all, and then we'll go into specific seller examples. So I'm biased this example because this is something that we did. We did a CRO event for Pavilion last week. Great event, kudos to Pavilion to getting 150, 160 CROs over there in Denver. But when we wanted to sponsor and we wanted to set up a booth, so if you think about just your typical booth when you go into an event or a trade show, what do you get? You get a cardboard table nicer than that. You have some swag on top of it, probably something under the back that says the name of the company and what we do and that's what the whole room's full of. And we sat on a call, it said, how do we do something completely different than that? And next thing you know, it turns into what if we enclosed our booth so nobody could see in there?
(25:23):
They completely have, they're like, well, that defeats the goal of you want everybody to come to your booth. If you close it in, maybe they'll fomo and they want to see what's in there. So we build, we grab pipe, black drape curtains, close the whole booth in. So now imagine you're an event and it's all kinds of tables and there's one spot, one 10 by 10 square that is completely closed in with nothing but a neon revlogic sign on the back and slight curtains D drapes, so you can kind of see in there. We built a speakeasy and it was completely the opposite. It had a bar with mocktails inside of it and recipe books and that, but it wasn't making it so everybody could see and walk up to their card table. It was actually completely the opposite where everybody now is curious and wants to see what's inside there and walk in there.
(26:10):
We actually hit ourselves, but it ends up being something completely different that creates a line of people wanting to come in and lo and behold, they're talking about it on LinkedIn and we hadn't even met half those people thinking completely differently and as a use whiz as example, right? They're using pink colors and light blues and the non-traditional tech colors. Now they have a lot of reasons why they're using that, but one of 'em is that it stands out apart from what they do. Their colors are non-traditional. They do kids interviewing with CISOs even though kids are not the persona that they're selling into, but it gets attention. It's something different. Security for kids. That book is sitting on the table on somebody's coffee table that is probably a CISO or a CIO. It's different. It's a different way of thinking. Now.
Todd Busler (27:00):
I love that example, especially at the booth and I study a lot of the Wiz stuff too. I agree it's different especially in a world where there's hundreds of formidable competitors in the security space, and I'm always blown away that you think security's done. Then there's another billion dollar outcome plus there that it's crazy if you're the enterprise rep that just started at a hot company, how do you think about being different, right? Because those examples on more marketing company differentiation, a hundred percent agree, but what about if you're the rep, you don't control the marketing budget, but you want to be 1% different.
Rick Kickert (27:31):
Right? So let's start with the first stage again, PG, so outbound cracking outbound as a sales rep. Let's say that you're just joining new territory. I give you an example, AppDynamics, at the time I was a business value consultant. I think I was doing enablement also, but I get a phone call from a person who had just started over in Boston. She's probably in her first few months over there. Her name's Michelle Boby, she's leading the east and sales over at Wiz right now. Rocket ship of her career for her and well deserved very much. And she calls me up and she's like, Hey Rick, can you fly out to Boston and do a little round table event, a little luncheon that I'm doing? I'm like, this isn't through marketing. There's a whole bunch of other events. They're supposed to be doing Biz IQ and barbecue and all kinds of other places that I don't know if I have.
(28:25):
It said how many people are going to be there for? So there's enough, there's going to be enough people there. I'm like, how many is enough? It doesn't matter, Rick, there's going to be enough. When do you want next week? Like, all right, I don't know her that well. It's not marketing calling me. I actually don't know that our conversation went exactly like I just said, but it makes for a good story. But I fly out to Boston and meet Michelle for the first time and I walk in there and just, she's probably got 25 people who wanted excuses to throw suit jackets on that day, which means that they're probably C-level. They invited some of their own people. Now the story there isn't that necessarily that she, well, she did do something different. She didn't wait from marketing. She called up everybody in her Rolodex.
(29:11):
She asked them to invite their friends and grabbed a couple customers from our account. She built her own warm leads by doing that. And you know what? Those are the best leads that you're going to get for PG. Again, didn't wait for marketing team was great over to fd, but she was like, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to go get it done. I'm going to get it scheduled. I'm going to go through all that. That's the 1% and 5% better too. That's not just doing something different, that is doing something better. Yeah, it's both. Yeah, it's an example of both. Again, in that first phase, joining communities, a lot of sales reps will wait for the marketing inbound stuff to come into them, build your own. If I sell Kubernetes, go join the Kubernetes group. There's probably 75,000 people in that group, if not more.
(29:59):
Join that. Build your own brand, don't sell 'em. Just be consultative how Polk and the ROI will come back to you or reach out to your partner ecosystem. Go start doing some interlocks. It's about getting warm leads, not just from again, spraying and praying, but it requires more work, but it also requires a little bit of a different way of thinking. You invite some people from the community together. Those type of things is moving on to the next phase. I'm about to do a new business meeting. How many people, Todd, you think still send out pitch agenda?
Todd Busler (30:34):
Probably less than should. I don't know the numbers, so...
Rick Kickert (30:37):
I don't either, but my answer's the same as yours. I get so many vendors reaching out to me. I actually can't remember the last time I've got an agenda. But you think about something as simple as that. That is actually something different now that me sending out an agenda and saying Your time's extremely valuable. I know we only got 30 minutes. I just want to make sure that I am on point on the things that you want to talk about and I will adjust what I come to the meeting with. And there's only two outcomes from when. One, they don't respond, but they likely read it and they respect you more, or two, give you some feedback of what their priorities are that they want to talk to. Now I'm coming in with a lot more information that I did not have when I started the meet going into that I'm going to be way more on point.
(31:27):
I am being different and I am being better than the other sales rep that they had talked just stupid little things. If I do a POV, I do a POV, like going and if I know what I'm trying to solve for and how I do it different, take it and put small recordings on it. Said, Hey, you said that reducing your risk is extremely important to you. Let me show you how I do that five minute video clip. Send it back over to them or put it in a digital sales room so they can easily share it. Like here's the six things you said are important to you. Let me show you in a quick video clip. Because those things get shared. They get passed on. If somebody doesn't show up for your echo back meeting, they missed it then. But if you put in a video that can be shared, there's a ton of video platforms that are out there that are free. Takes a few more minutes.
Todd Busler (32:16):
Hundred percent, a hundred percent great examples. I subscribe, Rick, a lot to the Charlie Munger quote, find out the reasons you're going to die and then avoid them. I want to spend the next couple minutes talking about mistakes because I think what's really interesting about your vantage point is a, you've seen what elite looks like at multiple companies in multiple different categories right now you have an interesting opportunity to meet with tons of the best CROs, VP of sales, CEOs, board members, and I'm sure you have a lot of conversations with companies that you, for whatever reason you decide not to work with or they're not ready. But you see a lot of companies, so what's a mistake that you're typically seeing when companies are trying to formalize outbound or level up their enablement or get ready to be able to scale this? What's the common mistakes or TRAs?
Rick Kickert (33:08):
I don't even know where to start with that, Todd. I'll give you probably the most common one that's happening at the moment. We did a training for the Lightspeed for a lot of the founders for the early startups with Lightspeed, and I think that the number one thing, it was an enlightening moment for me because they came back with a survey and one of the top problems in that survey was pipeline forecasting. We built this training for them and have an opportunity to meet with one-to-one with several others, and we start looking at, we're looking for 6x pipeline, 5x pipeline. Man, that's really high. That is one that requires a lot of investment to go and try and get that type of pipeline. But two, what's your win rate? If you require a 6x pipeline and your team's not that big, then what's the win rate that you have? And lo and behold, it was 20, 30% win rate and I think the conversation there for a lot of us less work to go and try and just win those deals than it is to go and try and create six6x pipeline.
(34:17):
So to me it's like how do I do great for one? Where is my qualification in my sales process? That's the first thing. So is it in stage one is in stage two, it's got to be in there and so am I qualifying that pipe so I know I could qualify to InterQual it out so I'm not wasting cycles. Last thing we need sales reps do is wasting cycles on deals that have no chance of closing at all, and I don't want it in my pipeline forecast if it's going to drop out anyways, that is one of the foundational most critical things to a successful hypergrowth company focusing on winning the at bats that I have. The second one I think is understanding your ICP who are my highest potential personas and use cases to go close business because if I'm not landing in that zone, my sales cycles are taking way longer.
(35:13):
It might require engineering resources to customize something. It is just more investment no matter what. And the third thing I got to say, it's differentiation. Again, I brought it up earlier. There are so many companies in every single vertical that say they can check the boxes where there's just a lot of gray area and people are comfortable playing in that gray area. So making sure that when you're getting into stage two, stage three, your sales process, and I'm documenting what I'm going to do in the POC or the POV, even when I'm building out my understanding of your business, if I can't highlight things in there, let's say if I can't show the buyer how we do it differently than someone else can. My competitor, I've learned this over at AppDynamics, this is a painful lesson. I think that's why it's still entrenched in my stolen in my brain, fly out down to Columbus, Ohio for the big executive meeting with, I won't give the name, but a fractional jet selling company that's out there.
(36:18):
And we had been working a deal for several months over there getting wider and wider in the account. And I go in there to give the BVA and I got the entire, it's a U-shaped room with all the execs in the room. And I'll tell you what, Todd, if I didn't think I'd crushed a meeting more than any other time, I just nailed it and go through the whole BVA value propositions, everything that we can do and save the money over three years. The ROI showed 'em how we could do it in the POV after the meeting, we're going over to the nearest taco shop, we order margaritas. I mean we are celebrating and deciding what the price, that price should be on that and no discounting as we've got everything week later, your phone call didn't get the deal. Our competitor literally took the business value assessment that I had presented, didn't know there was a champion of the competitor in that room also, and basically said, we can do everything that they did and get you the same return on invest the same ROI, all that work, all those sales cycles that flying out, all the flights, all of that.
(37:36):
And somebody was able to just literally take what we built our competitor and say, yeah, we can do the exact same thing. And you'll get that same savings too. That is a moment that you don't forget about. And so every single deal review, every single one-on-one, every single QBR, when there is a presentation on here's my three why's or here's my understanding of your business, or here's my POB plan, first thing I ask is in the competitor in that county do the same thing. Can they do those 10 things too in your plan? If they can, then you might get burned like I did.
Todd Busler (38:16):
That's an interesting story. I want to summarize three things you said there. I also see this, I am in an interesting position where I talk to tons of VP of sales, CROs, and I also see the same obsession on pipe coverage versus the focus on conversion. And yeah, I think a lot of people are getting screamed at on pipe coverage and everyone will tell you their biggest problem is pipeline. And I do a lot of probing there to say, is that really the problem or are we better off diverting efforts somewhere else? I agree a hundred percent on the ICP too. Where do you have the right to win? And with more vendors in every category that's narrower, not wider. When people say their ICP is huge, I say, okay, that's not good because you're not going to look perfect to anyone. The differentiation point's really interesting too because on one end, and I talk a lot with our sales team, look, there's a couple people that do what we do, but there's thousands of people that are trying to deliver the same positive business outcomes that we deliver.
(39:15):
So when you send that email and yes, our ROI case makes sense, great, so do 800 others. So it's not only differentiation in how you're getting in, but the last part I think is a real big challenge for people right now. You can come up with the great required capabilities, you can help the buyer shape that. You can come up with the BVA. But that last point of like, cool, how do we get so detailed that we're the only one that can do that? Because that situation that happened to you is happening in my opinion, more than ever in software just because there's more players in there and there's more overlap in what people are doing.
Rick Kickert (39:50):
So if I gave you, you're in Miami right now, but you came from Jersey, right? Does that make you a Jets fan?
Todd Busler (39:58):
All Philly sports fans.
Rick Kickert (40:00):
Okay. Philly.
Todd Busler (40:01):
South Jersey. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Kickert (40:02):
Alright. So Todd, if I told you Eagles suck, always have, always will. My Chicago Bears are way better. You wouldn't be able to defend that down to the T. You would throw stats at me one just as recent as what just happened at the sea. Again, you'll have so much conviction that my Chicago Bears suck and your egos are outstanding. That's what I want every seller to have that same conviction and that same passion the same way they're going to defend their sport or their hobby or their hometown or whatever that might be to be able to defend your product and you can defend your product that way. You're going to have differentiation in there. That's the level that we want. That's a great back to...
Todd Busler (40:49):
Yeah, that conviction matters a hundred percent. The conviction matters.
Rick Kickert (40:52):
I know you asked me the question like 20 minutes ago, but you asked what makes them different? That's one more thing.
Todd Busler (41:00):
Last two questions I have for you, Rick. First one is you see a lot of these companies, they find product market fit. They figure out how to get multiple reps productive, they raise a big round. Now they're about to make some real significant investments into go-to market. Where do you see companies wasting the most time or money when they're making that investment, right? Because you probably go into a lot of orgs where they just got rid of the CRO, they just burned a lot of money on a false start trying to get this thing going. Where do you see that as poor investments, poor wasted time and money?
Rick Kickert (41:35):
My humble opinion, but the best CROs or heads of sales or founders that I've seen, they're not going to go hire a bunch more sales reps to bring in more revenue. They're first going to look at what their current sales attainment rate is and then look at what their productive capacity is of their sales team and their go to market team. So if I focus on increasing that sales and attainment first, so how do I make the sales reps that I have better before I go hire a bunch more? Probably if they're not that great a, I've either hired wrong, I've hired the wrong portfolio, maybe I need hunters, but the difference is that I have to make sure that I've got the ecosystem in place to support a great sales team. I've got to have the enablement, I've got to have, maybe it's the channel.
(42:34):
There's ways of focusing on locking the channel at the same time that I'm trying to unlock my sales team. So those type of decisions first saying what is, if my attainments 90%, yeah, go hire more salespeople all day long. That's awesome. You got something great. If I've got a hundred deal regs coming in every week, you're doing something right? And those deal regs are converting at a 60, 70% clip, go hire more. Absolutely. But if it's 30, 40, maybe even 50% and my ramp times take over a year to go get somebody productive, I got to go cold sales things first and then have a great sales team after that and go hire. But immediately the quickest mistake is if I go hire another sales rep, they got a 1.2 million quota, I can count another 1.2 million coming in. I wish it worked that way. I really do. And I guarantee every sales rep probably listen to this podcast, wish they worked that way too, but they got to be set up for success and they're not.
Todd Busler (43:41):
A hundred percent. And it goes back to your three points. Do we have that win rate conversion story? Do we actually know where we have the right to win? Do we have and believe with conviction, some differentiation, right? So go back to your earlier point, which is kind of tying this together. Last question I have for you Rick, and it wouldn't be a podcast in 2025 without it, is you're on the ground with some of the best companies period. And the way I see you, and I know this because we have joint customers and we have a partnership together. You're deep though, right? Not just strategy, but you're also in the systems. Where are you seeing, I personally believe that AI as it gets better, will likely make sales teams smaller but more productive. And I actually think the best sales reps are going to make more money than ever because they're going to be so valuable. But where are you seeing AI having a real impact for some of these go-to-market teams? What are you seeing on the ground floor? Anything really jumping out or still pretty early in terms of efficiency or output for the true upper mid-market enterprise seller.
Rick Kickert (44:42):
This is such a hot topic and it's every other LinkedIn that's out there. People are building a brand, putting they're facing in a picture on LinkedIn with their AI opinions every single day. I try and give something a little bit different of an answer that's not everyone's talking about for me in my business is to help a go-to market team be more productive. I want them to hire more of them. I want companies to train more of them, all of that. So when I look at that lens and I say, how can I try and go back at sales attainment? How can I get as many people productive as possible? Everything that we've spent here talking about, you usually came back to either the sales process or buyer enablement. So that is the job, that is the north star, that is the compass. That is the work of what a sales rep and go to market does.
(45:39):
Now, if I go look at AI, there's AI that might help me in stage in that first stage where it is cracking outbound and it can help me do my account research, my insights create me a all right PG email that I should not just press a send button on. It's a great way to get past the blank piece of paper, but it's going to speed up my accounts and my insights and knowing the personas that I want to go into in that next stage. Again, we talked about is probably qualification and the new business meeting and that there are some AI tools that are going to help me be able to take notes, synthesize those notes and put them into a format of something I can send back to the buyer so they can show 'em they understand their business. You're going to go on the next stage.
(46:32):
It is probably around something around alignment, which means that, again, it's going to help me give recommendations on how to build questions I should ask to test a champion probably a different tool. Again, now going to the next stage, it's probably going to be around a POV and a POC. There's tools that are going to help with that, probably a different one again, so RFP quoting, tons of different AI tools that to do it different tool. Again, I mean tell you what frustrates the heck out of me with what's going on at the moment is that those are six different tools that I just talked about that have to go and help the seller. That is not helpful to me, that is not helpful. I a seller already only has about 30% of their time to sell because they're so busy updating a crappy CRM or they're busy logging into different tools to try and figure out how do they set up their sequences and how do they update medic and all those other different things.
(47:36):
They need the tool that is going to help them be their assistant and make them more efficient to every single stage of what they do in their operational cadence. When that tool comes out, that to me, when that AI tool comes out, that will be the winner. That's the one that is truly helping a sales team be able to operate, be more efficient, hopefully 10x their pipeline and the way that they execute it in the way that they close it. But just coming out with all these individual tools that now say they have AI, they're still in a silo and I think that's confusing the heck out of the market right now and confusing the heck out of the sellers and the sales leaders and the founders and the boards and the VCs. One, give me one tool that helps me be right there on my side. Do everything I have to do, don't make me log into six or seven supposed AI tools. Sorry, I'm pretty passionate about...
Todd Busler (48:33):
Different take. Yeah, it's a different take too, right? I think it's challenging to pull something like that off, but it's a different take. And like I said, you're on the ground floor, you're seeing it. So Rick, this was awesome. I think you obviously have a wealth of knowledge here and I think what's really interesting, I talked to tons of sales leaders. I have many of the greats on this podcast, but you can tell just in talking to you how your role as a decade as a buyer really shapes everything that you approach from the other side. And I'm not surprised by the success you've had and because that different framing, I think really having the empathy for the person, those EBS and those potential champions, I think the world is only moving more in that direction, right? Buyers have all the knowledge. So I think what you're doing is awesome. I'm a huge fan of revlogic. I've learned a lot in this conversation, so I appreciate you taking some time, Rick.
Rick Kickert (49:25):
Yeah, Todd, I'm a huge fan of Champify and I've loved the conversations that we had. This was easy. It was easy to talk about it. So it was my pleasure having back anytime. Awesome.
Todd Busler (49:37):
Thanks Rick. Thanks for listening to Cracking Outbound. If this was helpful, let us know by messaging me Todd Busler on LinkedIn and share this episode with a friend that you think will be interested. If you want more resources about building and scaling all things outbound, you can sign up for our newsletter at champify.io/blog.