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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Right, hello and welcome to V5, where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox some of the hottest topics in all of B2B sales, B2B SaaS. This is going to be a fun one. I am joined by the one and only Jeff Margolese over at ServiceNow. Jeff, I don't get the takes before the call rolls, but you know how to play the game. So get on your soapbox. What's the one thing or what's the area in B2B SaaS or tech that just bugs you? Grind your gears. We're doing this wrong. We could be doing this better. What say you from your seat?
Jeff Margolese [00:00:33]:
Yeah, I think there's still a challenge sitting out there of trying to help a customer to understand not just what it is you might do as a company, but what does that mean for them. You know, when I first started here at ServiceNow, I'd see our SEs doing all these great things, look at this cool technology. And I go, yeah, but what does it mean for the customer? Like, I know you think this is really cool, but we gotta not just demo them, but show them the value of what we do. And I think that's still a continued challenge. Especially now you have technology of GenAI and Agentic AI and data fabrics and all these things. And it's hard sometimes for teams to realize, hey, you know, the customer has a job to do too, right?
Jarod Greene [00:01:17]:
How do you strike that balance between yes, the products are cool and yes, these features are amazing and yes, these capabilities are awesome, and yes, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, that's what you want to see because you want the demo as soon as possible with the whole. How do I frame it in the context of what's in it for you? How do you, how do you balance that too? Because I'll talk to folks who will say, I'm doing what you asked me to do, I'm showing them the value of the product. But to your point, they're missing the other side. So how do you reconcile those?
Jeff Margolese [00:01:42]:
I like to start the story, so to speak, with here's your day today or your challenge today. And if you were to use our solution sets in a certain manner, this is the value proposition that you're going to receive. So I really love this before and after as an example, because we're a workflow automation company with a customer service-based solution. Well, have you ever called into a telephone company, a water company, whoever's giving you basic service, your mobile phone company, and invariably, as they're trying to serve you they go, oh, can I put you on hold? Or they say, my computer is really slow. You know what they're really doing? They're looking at 12 different applications to find out who you are, what you have, and what your problem may be. Well, we kind of solve that. So when we're doing that whole what's it like before? What's like after? I'll explain to them. Yeah, you ever had that problem? Do you guys have that? You know, don't tell them that.
Jeff Margolese [00:02:37]:
We store their customer information in 10 different systems. We go, yeah, but we can fix that. Let me show you what that looks like.
Jarod Greene [00:02:43]:
Yeah. And, Jeff, on that journey, what do you think is important to. I think weave in what you do differently? Because I've seen that where it's like in connect two, to from, or from to two. So where you are versus where you want to go, how do you string that together with the. And we're the only ones that can get you there.
Jeff Margolese [00:02:58]:
You know, it's funny because when I first even started at VMware, we used the same company here at ServiceNow for years. So our sales methodology was coming from a company called Visualize, and they use value. Selling is their message, and there's many of them out there. But the one thing that always stuck with me when we did the training, we actually coached our teams to use that was what is our unique differentiator. So getting to that is important. Now, if you want me to sit here and do a commercial on ServiceNow, I'd be more than happy to. But our big one is we're a single platform, single data model, one way to do it, et cetera. I think for each company that's trying to do that, they definitely have to find their own way.
Jeff Margolese [00:03:37]:
But I do heavily believe in that unique differentiation, because especially now, you think of the AI world like everybody's got it. I mean, I always like to say, and I open up our. Our events these days with like, what's the two most popular letters in the English language? And it's A. And I just. True. Let you know, in case you're wondering.
Jarod Greene [00:03:54]:
Yeah, we see it. Yeah. I've been through my fair share of sales methodologies, both on the private equity side, where they have their own or the commercial kind of ones, where I think I saw a magic quadrant that had 16 different vendors on it. And then every time we ask the sales leader what methodology you follow, they'd say, oh, MedPIC or some derivative of that. So they're all out there tried and true. When you think about what makes, I think a great sales engineer. Solution consultant Rose by any other name. I hear elements of storytelling, I hear elements of value messaging.
Jarod Greene [00:04:27]:
I hear elements of make sure you know what the product does. Are there other characteristics that if you could just put in the recipe for, for like the best SC to ever live, what will go into that pot?
Jeff Margolese [00:04:37]:
Definitely pick some of the top ones there. I always like to think of one other ultra, which is curiosity, especially back in the old days. That would be five years ago and we do still a lot more on site based sales calls. One thing I always just tell people, I said, listen, always go on site to the customer. I mean, even pre-pandemic, one of the big ones was when you're walking around, like notice things like look inside people's cubes, what books are the reading, what teams are they following, you know, find out what's going on, what are the other vendors that they're talking to. You'll see the mugs and the, the notebooks from some other vendor. Like, okay, well I see what we're, we're up against here. You can kind of pick that up and then it's, you know, solution consultants in particular, we love showing the technology and jumping to solution.
Jeff Margolese [00:05:23]:
It's in the damn title. Okay, well, sometimes it's like, you know what, take a deep breath, ask a few extra questions, be curious, then use all those other good skill sets that, you know, Jarod, you referred to.
Jarod Greene [00:05:35]:
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So that was our rapport. I saw Iron Man in the back. We had a whole conversation about Marvel Universe and played the name game with some folks we work with. This is great. Well, see, this is how this works. Like 5 minutes goes super fast. So, Jeff, I will let you get to it.
Jarod Greene [00:05:50]:
Thank you so much for joining us for V5.
Jeff Margolese [00:05:53]:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Jarod Greene [00:05:55]:
Appreciate you.