Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 156: Dave Phelps, RSM at Crowdstrike - Make your territory, your franchise

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156: Dave Phelps, RSM at Crowdstrike - Make your territory, your franchise · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

0:32
SPEAKER_01: I love chatting with CEOs and CROs on this podcast, but sometimes you just need practical and useful tips from someone at the coalface.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: Dave Phelps, regional sales manager at CrowdStrike, goes through his process for planning and working at territory and doing research before meetings.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, which exists because at cybersecurity startups, it is hard to get to repeatability and scale the business.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Sales Bluebird gives you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or 10 about building great cybersecurity companies and great cybersecurity sales teams.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Monahan.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Our guest today is Dave Phelps, regional sales manager at CrowdStrike.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Dave, welcome to Sales Bluebird.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Andrew.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm thrilled to be here.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with you.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to it.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: I know this I say this every time, but let's say it's especially true this time for a couple of reasons.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: One is this is going to be a very different episode than usual.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, usually what I do is I interview CEOs and CROs, and we're talking about high-level stuff, strategy stuff, um, how they're approaching building the business, things like that.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Today we're going right down into the weeds.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be into how do we do things, what do we actually do?
1:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, we often say things, but what does that really mean?
2:01
SPEAKER_01: And as a seller, how do you go ahead and do that?
2:04
SPEAKER_01: And as a quick introduction for the team, I've known Dave for 13 years or so, I think now.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, Dave's career, he's been uh a seller at the blue chips, so the blue chip in cybersecurity, McAfee, proof point, semantic, and now CrowdStrike.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, a career at great places, working with and for some great people as well that we both know.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's really cool to reconnect with you from first working together quite some time ago.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel Sam.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: I'll try to go easy on you and uh not be too hard.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: So but first, before we get to the business end of this and uh get into those details I was talking about, Dave, you need to get know a little bit more about yourself.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: I've got 35 questions on my list here.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: The good news is I won't be asking you all 35.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: What I'm gonna do is ask you to pick a number between one and thirty-five three times, and uh I'll read out the question that it corresponds to.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Are you uh ready to go?
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, let's go.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: All right, first number, please.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: 23.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: 23.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: What was your best subject in school?
3:08
SPEAKER_01: English.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: English.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would imagine that these days, but English for sure.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: I loved English in in high school and going into college.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: What was it about English you loved?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it was about writing a teacher, right?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: I love writing uh back then, and I had uh Miss Bachelor in tenth grade, sort of an elevated English class, and uh just got a lot out of it.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think it was it's it's all about people, right?
3:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's why.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good for you.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Next number between one and thirty-five.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Twenty-four.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: Twenty-four.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: What's the best advice you've ever been given?
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Take everything one day at a time, because you can get ahead of yourself on basically anything.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, if you're looking for results, the thing that I was told and always remembers is take every single thing you're doing in your life one day at a time.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: No, I I I love that.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think that in what we do and and uh probably in life in general, right?
3:58
SPEAKER_01: It's so easy to look a bit further ahead and then get lost in all the bad things or good things that could happen.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: And being grounded in the here and now is really the things that you can you can influence.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: I I think it was a podcast, it was a year, year and a half ago, about you know, three ways, three things to learn from the ancient philosophers philosophers.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: And one of them was you know, being uh being in the moment and controlling what you can control and not worrying about too much else.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's it's so hard to do these days, right?
4:26
SPEAKER_00: With being in the moment, I mean, because of what's around us.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So I mean you try to accomplish any goal, it's gonna look at the beginning or the offset like that's gonna be very challenging.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to that, but if you take it in steps, you take it in stride, it's not as big of a feat.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: All right.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Last number two, more than 35.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Let's go number one.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Number one.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Dive bar or cocktail bar.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Dive bar all day.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you live in Dallas now, right?
4:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Favorite dive bar in Dallas?
4:54
SPEAKER_01: It's been about 10 years since I've been to a dive bar.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you have young kids.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if dive bars are.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: There was something called the Loon.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if this is open anymore.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And they were supposed to have four the strongest drinks in Dallas.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: I think it is still open at just booth locations, uh, but definitely a dive bar.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Funny story there, I think I saw Mark Cuban my second time going.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: He's the owner of the Mavericks, uh, for those that don't know.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was a Magic fan.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: I had just moved from Orlando, Florida to Dallas, Texas for work.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And he definitely took my hat off and uh threw it while we were taking a picture together.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: So still a great guy.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Can't blame him, but cool dive bar.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I love dive bars too.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: All right, let's get then to the business end of this.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: So the the tee up is that you know, you you we were chatting, and your idea and you what you came to me with was a lot of people when they take over a territory, either a greenfield one or some someone else's old territory, there's something that's a little bit lost about all the things they should be doing just to get ready to do it.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: I've got to go, you know, call these people, or if an inheritance of mechanics, I need to go and call those folks, and things like that.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: And the rigor behind really thinking strategically about your territory can very quickly fall by the wayside.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: And uh, we wanted to kind of bring a simple approach people could use as they're doing that.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure listeners have all been in situations where they're taking this over, and some are probably thinking about that right now.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: We're halfway through the year.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: This is being recorded in in the summer, July of 2022.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Going into the second half of the year, sometimes territories change, and uh depending on how fast the company's growing, I can change every quarter.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: So good topic to have.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: And then what we're gonna do is we'll go through the five areas, we'll give them a little bit of focus each time, but then we're gonna go back to one of them because I think there's uh something to dive into in this one area.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: So let's kick this off.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So do you want to quickly just go through headlines of what are the five, and then we'll go back to number one just quickly.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Sure, absolutely.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, really what I wanted to talk to you about was building an actionable business plan, right?
6:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think that starts with number one, which is being able to develop a meaningful ranking system of the accounts you're given.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And this can be used whether you've got a major's role where you've only got seven accounts or five accounts.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: It can be used in a large enterprise role where you've got 20.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: And it can be used in a role where perhaps you're a public sector person and you've got a hundred, right?
7:09
SPEAKER_00: How do you strategize?
7:11
SPEAKER_00: How do you put those in an order of meaningfulness to where you can actually be successful?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: So this is gonna vary per what's interesting to your business, too.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: So uh first of all, how many accounts do I have, right?
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And how many employees?
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And you can rank these on workloads or workstations if you're an endpoint guy like I am.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Then you can pivot and you can look at annual revenue, right?
7:28
SPEAKER_00: How much does the organization recognize each year, or even IT spend?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: So there's just a variety of different ways that you can look at that.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say, so since we're on it a bit more detail.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: So if let's say someone's got 30, 40 accounts, what is the output of this though, right?
7:43
SPEAKER_01: Are they trying to get one or two?
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Are they just trying to put them all in order?
7:47
SPEAKER_01: How should they be thinking about that?
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you're gonna be given a number at the beginning of the year, right?
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And you want to do your very best to hit that number.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna have a better opportunity to hit that number by understanding and ranking those accounts from largest to smallest again, based on the criteria that's most important to your business.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: So for me, it is workloads, right?
8:04
SPEAKER_00: That's what I care about.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: So I know that I can do meaningful business with my largest accounts, and I'm gonna focus there first as I move down my list.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's the purpose, that's the goal in doing so.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: Number two is identify low-hanging fruit.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: So where do your gaps exist?
8:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, start a heat map and do it quickly so you can identify if I do have you know low-hanging fruit or current customers, what's my area for expansion?
8:28
SPEAKER_00: Industry commonalities, who are my technology partners within these possible organizations?
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And you can't do that without having conversations, and we'll get there.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: And then identify within that organization.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: For me, it's uh it's usually a CIO or a CISO, who's my strongest connection to that person that I'm targeting, right?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: An economic buyer, a potential champion for yourself, and find out who knows that person, right?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna use that down the road too.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: So when we were back in the day, we would always use uh P Matrix, right?
8:55
SPEAKER_01: The penetration matrix.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: Is that is it you think that's part of this?
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I think it is part of it.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think there's various ways of doing that, right?
9:01
SPEAKER_00: P Matrix heat map, these two things can be one and the same.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's critical for you to know where are you installed and where are your partners, right?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: We've got a variety of technology partners with CrowdStrike.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: I want to know where those guys are installed and then go begin to have those conversations.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Number three is build customer profiles.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is a lot of the same stuff from number one, but you know, this is a really important one because this is where you can begin to set yourself apart, right?
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Outside of understanding the annual revenue and the customers fiscal when they might purchase, you know, have they had a past data breach that you need to read about and make yourself aware of?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: What makes them unique?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: And this is where you hone in on if you're in an enterprise or large accounts role, you know, look at the 10K.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: The 10K has some very interesting things that you can use to your advantage and you can get in front of those customers.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: And typically the way I'll do it is, you know, I'll say, here's what I think I know about you, Mr.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Customer.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, tell me where I'm wrong.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: And that way you're not starting the conversation out by showing up and throwing up and telling them all the great things that your company does.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Nope, a lot of folks do that, and I think it turns some people off.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: If you show up and you can articulate, here's what I did in terms of research on your organization, here's what I think I know, nine times out of 10, they'll add things to your list.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And you may not have all the pertinent stuff and the most important stuff up front, but you'll have things that you can build on, and I think it's critical.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: And reading the 10K, we can get into that, is where you can start.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: If you're in a different role, like I'm currently I'm selling the large healthcare accounts, it's a different path, right?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: That's not the 10K, but it's a different path, and you can gain a lot of the same information in a variety of different ways, website, studies and reports, et cetera.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, let's come back to that in a bit more depth because I think there's some interesting things to learn from that.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: Next one on the list is get active.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: So this is building on too, right?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Where you're installing that stuff, talking to the VARs in your region, beginning to have those conversations, leveraging that technical ecosystem, and then leveraging your peers' leadership, right?
10:55
SPEAKER_00: I think most companies do this in our world where you've got leadership, executive leadership that's willing to do outreach for you.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, here at CrowdStrike, we're very fortunate.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: We've got two guys on staff that were former CIOs and CISOs at very large hospitals, right?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: I sat in your chair and that messaging really resonates with customers.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then look at what events you care about, right?
11:14
SPEAKER_00: That's still part of the role, and events are now happening again with COVID uh being what it is at this point.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: So getting active means really digging in.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: You've now got this business plan begun, and now you're really digging in and taking action on the streets.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: And then the final one after get active is get after it.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Similar, right?
11:32
SPEAKER_00: This is similar, but it is different.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, again, identify which accounts on your list of now you've ranked them.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: You can identify now which ones can do a strategic deal with me this year, possibly.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: What are your franchise goals?
11:45
SPEAKER_00: And these these can be whatever you want them to be for yourself.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Which accounts are the coldest of the cold for whatever reason, right?
11:51
SPEAKER_00: They just did a deal that you know overlaps in your space, and there's likely not an opportunity there.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, so find another path into that account, but be able to understand on your list.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: This is a long shot.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And I call it the coldest of cold.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: And then what are you doing every week?
12:04
SPEAKER_00: List that out.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing every week to be successful?
12:07
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing every week that's gonna get you to whatever those top five goals are?
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And then bet on yourself, I think is a big part, and incorporate the research you did.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: You can't build this business plan, which is gonna take you a lot of time.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of man hours.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And I've done it.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it is very manual.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: There's no point building it if you're not gonna use it.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: So I keep it open every day.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm constantly updating it.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: It's man-made, it has errors, but it constantly needs to be updated, and that's what getting after it means is you can't just make this thing and then just not open it for six months.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: I have mine open every day.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I never shut it alongside you know, Outlooker, two things that are always open.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And then I track my meetings and I track my pipeline.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: A little bit aggressive about tracking my meetings, like I'll literally go put down, and these are just discovery meetings, right?
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Like the big meeting, not the hey, we we have a follow-up meeting on a Thursday.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: That those discovery initial meetings, I track them and the date and all that good stuff.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's what really getting after it means.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: So you used an interesting phrase in there, which was franchise.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit why you said franchise and not like territory.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: I think I picked this up during our MACFE days, right?
13:01
SPEAKER_00: We own your own franchise was something that I took away from a lot of great people that are common in our uh in our world that we both know.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And really what it means is run your territory as if it's your own business, right?
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Because these these are your accounts.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: You are responsible for the relationship between your entity and theirs, and running it as such as if it's a small business was something I was taught pretty early on, and I take it very seriously.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And I call my stuff the Phelps franchise.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: As corny as it sounds, uh, because I do approach it that way.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: When I hand off an account for whatever reason, transition, etc., I want that particular customer to be in good standing with us and think highly of us, and that's the approach that I've taken.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: I think that's one of the most powerful ways to think about what we do at many different levels.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: I remember talking to people recently when they're asking me, you know, if you went back to start again or someone who's getting into sales right now, what advice would you give?
13:52
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I say is, yeah, you gotta think about what you're doing, not as just a series of jobs and you know, hitting some quotas, but how can I actually build a true business, a franchise that I can take from vendor to vendor?
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And it's almost like I'm gonna just say to myself, I'm gonna be the guy that knows every healthcare organization in Texas.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: And wherever I end up working, I want to have that as my patch.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: And I can literally just walk into places because they know me, they trust me, they want to work with me, I've delivered for them and time and time again.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: And then the second level I think about it at is you know, too often we think ourselves as just sales reps, right?
14:31
SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm just selling, I'm getting on the phone, I'm just selling what I you know right now, right this second, this is what I've got to do.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you think about it like a business, you might think about where you're investing in your own time, but also when you go and make some asks from the company, you know, I think we should go do this in my territory, it's a little bit different.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: We should go do that.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: We should, you know, invest in this one thing over here, things like that.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: When you're thinking truly about a business that needs investment in different focus areas, I think it, you know, when you go and have asked to senior leadership, going and asking for$5,000 for an event is one thing, going and asking for$5,000 as part of a franchise plan that's thought through, that's got some history of success and things like that, that's very different.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: 100%, right?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I think it goes back to the old adage that you've got your name and you've got your reputation.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And I can think back on, you know, a couple of years at some of these companies where I didn't necessarily blow it out of the water in terms of quota, but those years, ironically, were years where I learned more because of the scenario in which I was in.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Like I can remember a year at Prue Point that was that was tough the first year because I had just a lot of SEs over a span of 12 months and just not a lot of consistency.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And I was dealing with a lot of accounts that just frankly we hadn't touched.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: But I learned so much about myself that year.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: I learned so much about kind of being off on my own and just getting after it.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: I was doing a lot of, you know, drive-bys at customers and dropping things off and sending mail things and just doing a lot of kind of old school activities, just really grinding, right?
15:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is something that has kind of helped me get where I'm at today, along with, you know, starting an inside sales and all that comes with, you know, that world.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't agree with you more.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: All right, let's rewind a little bit and go back to number three, which is building customer profiles.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: And you dropped in there, you know, look at the 10K.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: So I gotta tell you, you know, I I've been many places, and I probably even said this to myself or said to me, you know, you need to go do your research and uh go look up their 10K.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: And the advice and the training about how to do it stopped right there.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no doubt.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Go look at their 10K.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh and you go you open up a 10K and you look at it, go, holy moly, there's 75 pages of eight-point font with half the words I don't understand, there's numbers that don't make any sense to me.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: What the heck am I supposed to take from this?
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: So let's let's think about that then.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: So when you approach taking a look at a 10K, what are you looking at?
16:45
SPEAKER_00: So tell a story behind this.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: When I came to CrowdStrike, I had a lot of years of public sector experience.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: And I had a strong desire to get to the enterprise side of the house, the private sector.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And so what I wanted to do when I went through the interview process is I created a business plan before I even had the role that I could present to the individual I was interviewing with.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: I wanted him to know that I understood the business, even though I had no experience selling any of these accounts because I didn't have any relationships.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: So you take that and then you couple it with, well, how do you then begin to understand who these customers are?
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And you talk about a 10K.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: I have a friend, a buddy from college, he's a lawyer in New York.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: We were just kind of having an off-cuff conversation about this new role.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think is after I got the role.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I said, I want to be the guy who's reading these 10Ks.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Where do I start?
17:29
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, dude, just look at strengths, risk factors.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: That's all you got to do.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Business strengths and risk factors.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Ironically, I think these are number one and two in those 75-page documents, right?
17:38
SPEAKER_00: And you can find some meaningful stuff in there.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And like I said, showing up and doing the here's what I think I know about you stuff, a lot of that stuff comes from the 10K.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: So you start listing those out and talking about them.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: And I was selling into oil and gas and I was selling into retail and hotels.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: So all of these 10Ks, they're very unique and they're very different, but there's a lot of similarities, specifically risk factors, right?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And we're in the world of breaches.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: You look at any 10K of any company, you're gonna find something to the effect of, you know, impact the cost of a data breach would have on our profile, our company name, obviously, financially.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And because the fact that we sell cybersecurity, and I work at a company who literally literally slogan is we stop breaches or breaches stop here.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's just an immediate thing that I could speak to as a commonality for the customer.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Like here, this literally calls out you're worried about these things, and rightfully so, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Last two years have been substantial in terms of breaches and things like that.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: So the other thing you look for when you talk about, you know, the business strengths, which I think is number one in any 10K, look for things around mergers and acquisitions, right?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: These companies, they have growth strategies.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them commonly have MA activity in there.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, again, working at CrowdStrike, we're fortunate, you know, we've got a ton of proactive services activities that speak directly to MA activity, right?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: New CISO comes in.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: I've inherited all these tools, I don't know what to do with them.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't know what's working, what's not.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's think about a compromise assessment, Mr.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: or Mrs.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: CISO, and let's roll this out and we can tell you where your weak points are.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: We can tell you about silent failure.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: You've already got an issue.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: So doing that just simple, and I'm telling you, I think the way I did it is I would pull up that 75-page document and I would pull up a words, a word document as well.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: I would just skim through it, and these are bullet pointed a lot of them, and I would just take the things that I thought were important.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: If you want to read 75 pages, kudos to you.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do it, but I took what I thought was meaningful from each and every single one of them.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about where these companies, they're global, a lot of them.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: They've they've got businesses in China, you know, that's part of their business, but at the same time, they know there's inherent risk there as well.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you collapse down a 75-page document down into a couple of pages at this point, right?
19:39
SPEAKER_01: I did, yeah.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: And then then what you're doing is reading line by line what's in those two areas because you're trying to get a sense of what they're calling out themselves as what their strategy is, what their strengths are, things like that, but also where they see potential impacts or the risks to the business.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you mentioned MA, you talked about, you know, doing business in China.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: What else kind of stands out for you as you're reading this that you remember from some of these?
20:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had a customer tell me that losing a plant is a reality, but losing a brand or a BU just can't happen.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And it it said that exact thing in their 10K in a way that like he just dumbed down for me.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: This was a food processing company, he's a great dude.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Same guy told me, Do you know what we do here?
20:20
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I think so, but I mean, what do you do here?
20:23
SPEAKER_00: He's like, We make all the stuff you don't think about, where'd that come from?
20:26
SPEAKER_00: We make marshmallows, we make gummy bears, we make protein shakes.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And so he's an animated gentleman, but uh he had said a couple of things to me, you know, when we started doing Discovery.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And again, I think he was open with me, and ultimately we won this deal because I think the other vendor didn't spend any time doing this, and we spent a lot of time focusing on we don't just want to sell you Falcon.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: We would prefer to talk to you about what we think we know and understand what you're trying to accomplish.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And here are the steps we took before we ever had a single conversation.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: We showed that we cared and that we were willing to do the upfront research in order to have a meaningful conversation rather than showing up and just talking about us.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: So in your process, then you're reading through the document, you're copying pasting into your Word doc or Google Doc to say this these are think might be the topics to use.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: What then, right?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: You go and meet with someone, how do you even bring this up?
21:19
SPEAKER_00: That's like slide number two.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a big like, especially when you're meeting with somebody for the first time.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: My first thing is here's who I am, here's what you should know about me, especially in COVID, like being remote.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: You're not even in the room with somebody.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: So even if you have a camera on or you don't, I'm a big fan of let's talk about who's on the phone, right?
21:35
SPEAKER_00: So we know who we are.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And then my second slide is like, look, you took this meeting because you wanted to talk about CrowdStrike, but I want to take a step back, hit the reset button, and let's focus on who we think XYZ organization is.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And I actually list them out.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: They're, you know, it's a slide that's got maybe three or four bullets.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't put the whole thing, right?
21:52
SPEAKER_00: I kind of dumb it down into a few words and I speak to it.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Then I put the risk factors below that and I speak to it.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: And then we just kind of get off and going and we just get off and start talking about their business.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think it makes it a whole lot easier to have a conversation that's again not just tied to your technology or what you can deliver or how cool we are.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So you put the slide up.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: How do you introduce that slide then?
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I think at the top, mine always says, What makes XYZ company the best at what they do?
22:16
SPEAKER_00: And so I always introduce that slide is here's what we think makes you guys the best at what you do.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And then that right there and then, right?
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And because they never talk to each other about that slide, it's not like I'm saying just because you're in retail and you're in retail, I tell you both you're the best at what you do.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: No, you know what I mean.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and then we just keep we just give Off and going.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: It's worked for me.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think in a couple of deals specifically, it's really set us apart because it's again, it's shown a unique approach versus we just took the meeting because we just want to hear about your product.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: I try to slow that down even, right?
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Because you will have some folks you get on the phone with and they're like, We took a meeting and we just want to hear about it.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So if you do that in every other meeting, it's kind of boring.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's do this differently, right?
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I feel like the stretch, right?
22:54
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to pull out things that are relevant, obviously, for them, but also relevant for whatever company you're at, right?
22:59
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to bring up things that have no impact whatever to do with you know what we can work on.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that's a big stretch, right?
23:06
SPEAKER_01: It's like I saw that you've, I don't know, you you're trying to expand your supply chain in into southern France, right?
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, well, how as a security team, how what are you thinking of, you know, it's almost like, well, it's too much of a difference.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: Am I right about that?
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Or is it easier to find really interesting and compelling things that have an impact on cybersecurity?
23:24
SPEAKER_00: How long do you want to do your homework, right?
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, find one or two that are really meaningful.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: I remember working with a restaurant last year, I guess maybe it was two years ago, COVID happens.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: They had to open up a separate business within the business that was just focused on delivering food, right?
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And it had made them a whole ton of money.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And it was all this new revenue stream they had never had before.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: But with that comes inherent risk as well.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: You're introducing a brand new business during a remote workforce thing, things they had never experienced.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know that answers your question.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: That's just another example.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: But what I would say is I guarantee if you look hard enough, you'll find one to two that there's some commonalities between what they're doing as an organization and what you deliver as a technology company.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: And anytime you've done this with a leader or a team, is anyone kind of, I don't know, giving you the let's let's keep moving, you know, let's get past this, you know, yeah, yeah, whatever.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you got to read the room.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Like you show up, let's be clear, we're salespeople.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: We show up, we have a strategy and we have a process and we have things that we want to do.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: But the same deal that I described a lot of at Food Processing Company, which we ultimately won based on our credibility and the respect and the research, was the same organization that showed up and said, We really don't like vendors.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Don't usually talk to them, usually just do this our own separate way, and then we'll come to you when we need you.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, by the end of that sales cycle, I had a real champion, a guy who cared.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: But no doubt, first meeting, like he tried to rush me through it, and he did, but we doubled down, we got it through the second meeting, and that's when the real discovery happened.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: So you just got to read the room.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not about you, it's not about us.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, we say it all the time, but do we really mean it?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Is it's about the customer.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: So you just read the room, you'll get to where you need to get.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: You just have to do a good job in an effort to get there.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think that's a good point, David.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: What I always think about that is what they're really saying is I've met with a hundred somewhat lazy salespeople before, and they've not been very compelling, they haven't added any value.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, all they're trying to do is just sell me shit.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let's cut to the chase, right?
25:18
SPEAKER_01: And if you're prepared and you're ready to be different and prepared to really have a conversation about them and what they're trying to achieve as a business and how you're gonna help them.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're not one of those 100, you're one of uh probably three or four who do it like that.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: And uh, as you said, you know, a good executive will tend to want to engage with someone like that versus the other one.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: What do we say?
25:41
SPEAKER_00: There's 2,800 security companies out there pinging these folks about more.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: They're pinging them about something, right?
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got a widget.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: And you're absolutely right.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: And we accept that risk when we take this role, knowing that there's a lot of folks running around town doing it the that way you just described.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just saying I think the approaches try to be unique through these activities, and I think you can set yourself apart.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, I've had more than one customer say at the end, like the things you did in the beginning are why we kept going.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Didn't say that's why we bought from you or you know, why you won, or you know, the tech speaks for itself.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to get in the boat and have a shot, these are things that get you in the boat and get you an opportunity.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: I like that a lot.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about how you get an assessment of people.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: So I think one of the things these days is that you can get any list of people from, I don't know, you pick your poison, Zoom Info, and all the companies they bought and other ones that are out there.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: You can find a name, right?
26:36
SPEAKER_01: A name is easy.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Understanding influences and dynamics and politics and things like that is less easy.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: How do you go about assessing that when you're engaging with a company?
26:45
SPEAKER_00: So this one's my favorite, but I also will admit I don't think I'm the best at it by any stretch either.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: I do the same thing with the people thing, right?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I call it who's who in the zoo.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And when you're building out that business plan, what I do for each account is I'll build out what I call a customer profile.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And it has to do with all those things, right?
27:00
SPEAKER_00: The fiscal and where are they located?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'll I want to know who the C-suite is for that entire organization, which could be a lot of people sometimes.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you want to find out who's your economic buyer, who's your technical champion, who's your champion, who's your final signature, not always available up front.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: But you've got to figure out those things.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And the only way you can do that is use your Zoom info or whatever.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: And I've used that, I've used LinkedIn Navigator.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: You're collecting data from a variety of different places, and the idea is put it all in one place, which is this business plan.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And then I make it a focus of, you know, I've been doing this long enough that I know who likely is my champion.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: I know who likely's final signature, I know who likely would be a technical analyst just by looking at an org chart, just comes with doing the thing for a little while, but you can quickly figure it out.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And then that allows you the opportunity to, when you do engage with that customer, you already kind of understand the organizational layout.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And when they they're sputtering through something and they say CTO and you say, Oh, that's Josh, right?
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Just shows credibility again.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: It's going back to like I prepared before we chatted.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: And that stuff goes a long way.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in flying by the seat of your pants in any fashion of life.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh, specifically this one where we're talking about companies making an investment to keep their entity safe.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: So getting this data, I'll do the same thing with people as I do with the customer.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: I'll literally say, and the one that always gets a chuckle, I'll say, hey, you know, looking at your LinkedIn profile or uh, here's what I could glean from looking into you.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, I understand that you specialize.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, these folks will put in their specialties, right?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: They're they deployed this technology or they did that, or they do volunteer work.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Like, look at their volunteer work.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: People will put that up there because they're proud of it.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's their personal life, and this is a personal game.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Then the one that always gets a laugh is you find the guy or gal that's just not there, right?
28:36
SPEAKER_00: She she or he does not have a LinkedIn profile.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't do most socials, but I do have a LinkedIn profile.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: But you you tell them they're an internet ninja.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these people are born, they're either my age or a little bit older than me, and you know, they remember the early entities of the internet, and they always get a chuckle with that.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, that's purposeful.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: And so then you can say, listen, I told you what I think I know about all your guys, your buddies.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I need to know about you that I don't clearly know and that I couldn't go out and get?
29:00
SPEAKER_00: That stuff is an icebreaker.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And again, that's before you get slide two.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: That's that first slide where you're like literally saying, Here's who I am, here's what I think I know about you, tell me where I'm wrong.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And then, hey, this guy doesn't even have anything.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: He's a he's a ghost on the internet.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: He always gets a laugh.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: That's it's fun.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: It's that's the fun part of doing this job.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
29:17
SPEAKER_01: So well, you have the experience and the confidence to build to do that, right?
29:20
SPEAKER_01: You you know how to step into that without stepping on minds along the way.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: It is a delicate balance, I will agree.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: What do they say about words, right?
29:27
SPEAKER_00: It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Everything, right?
29:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like 820 or something.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, tone is important.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Tone is important.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: And then let's wrap up with on this one area about what you call the three whys.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: Tell me more about that.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Pick that up at CrowdStrike, but I think at any company, I'm always eager after a deal's done to ask my customer, like, I think I know why you bought, but like, why'd you buy?
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Because people buy for different reasons.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: People buy because they're emotional about something, right?
29:53
SPEAKER_00: So I can put why buy CrowdStrike all the time.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, we stop breaches and we've got Falcon Complete, and we keep people safe.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And in the history of CrowdStrike, we've never experienced a breach.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: The why buys are, you know, why now, why buy it all, and why buy my company?
30:07
SPEAKER_00: It establishes risk.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: So the first and most important thing I learned back in the day at McAfee was like, find out why they wouldn't buy.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, what could go sideways?
30:18
SPEAKER_00: And then you can build your whole deal around that.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: And the key way to get there is find out why they might buy next quarter, right?
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that can be a variety of things.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: I guess the easiest one to just say it and move on is like maybe they've got uh an upcoming renewal or something you're trying to replace.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Why buy it all?
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Is so this comes down to like doing business value assessments and understanding like what the limitations of their current tool sets are.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And do they know that?
30:41
SPEAKER_00: Can you help them see that if they don't know it?
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And then why buy your company, right?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: What's the unique value proposition that whatever you're selling comes with and being able to articulate that?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And again, you only have the opportunity to do that because you did all the upfront work.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: But it's all all the wiser to me anyway, the way I view it is let's find the reason they wouldn't do anything with me or anything at all.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: I like what you said at the start there about the the emotional reasons why people buy.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I those that have worked with me recently and had heard me talk, yeah, this phrase, you know, people buy with emotion, justify with logic.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it's so true.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: And if you look at what we're taught about selling, how to sell and things like that, it's very logical, it's very factual, it's very, frankly, often it's pretty boring, right?
31:22
SPEAKER_01: I often wonder if it really gets to the heart of why someone makes a decision.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: If we're always thinking it's because we've got 98.9% detection rate, and they've got 98.5% detection rate, and ROI says it's uh it's gonna be returned in 26 months, and theirs says it's gonna be in 36 months, right?
31:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely in our favor, and it's why the people call it an ROI justification and not an ROI decision.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's other reasons why people make these big decisions and big transformations, and we sometimes ignore the emotional, the personal reasons why they do it.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, that's the hardest thing to figure out.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: It's the hardest part of the job.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: You can get there, but even afterwards, sometimes, admittedly, and definitely not perfect.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't always know.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: That's why I always so not always, sometimes I will go to them and be like, here's why I think you bought.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it's part of it, but like, why'd you buy?
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you get surprises when you ask?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: And then if you want to do like a win wire, you know, we got internal asks, like, which is always fun, being able to deliver like real data, not the same thing you saw on the other win wires that says, you know, consolidation play or whatever, like, of course, that's all simple stuff.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, but why'd they do it?
32:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, I I by the way, I won't share the interesting ones because they're usually personal, but yeah, ask them.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Ask them afterwards, and you'll get some of your answer, but you'll get more.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: It means more, and you learn from it.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: I know this is this to be true of bigger companies that you know, the wind wire goes out and there's a lot of information in the windwire, right?
32:46
SPEAKER_01: A lot of nice stuff in there.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: And then you get the kickoff or whatever, and you grab the rep that sold the deal and you buy him a drink and say, How did you really win this deal?
32:53
SPEAKER_01: And they tell you the real story that never make a wind wire.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Yep, it rarely has anything to do with what was on that piece of paper, no doubt.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: So if you're a more junior seller or whatever, I highly encourage you.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Definitely read the windwire and celebrate and you know, give the data boys and that of girls, but figure out how you can get 20 minutes or half an hour with a beer or a coffee and get the real story.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Because, like you're saying, a good seller will go back and truly understand after the sale what they missed and what they didn't hear about.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's there's nothing there, right?
33:19
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes there is.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: And uh you get a real sense for what was going on behind the scenes that you might maybe didn't get the information about during the deal.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: But Dave, listen, I've enjoyed the conversation.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: As always, great to catch up and hear what you got going on.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: I really love the very, very mature, sophisticated approach that you bring into this.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, you've worked at four really solid companies with solid sales leadership, and it really feels like you kind of you know learnt a lot along the way and uh really maximizing your value as a seller at uh at Cred Strike.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel very fortunate.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Andrew.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: This was a this was a pleasure.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: This was a lot of fun.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to get hold of you for whatever reason and catch up and pick your brain about this, what's the best way to do that?
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Personal email is david at phelps2e.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Very good.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, Dave, listen, I'm rooting for you in uh 2022 and 2023, and I wish you all the best.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, sir.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: See you everybody.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was a fun episode for me.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: I've known Dave for many years and admired how he works, how hard he works, and the results that he's got at some really, really good blue chip cybersecurity companies.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: When you work hard and do it with a real process and the skills that Dave has, then good success comes.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: So, three takeaways for me.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: One was just that he has this very distinct methodology that he follows, right?
34:33
SPEAKER_01: So he is someone who will spend half a day or a day researching and working on his territory before he starts picking up a phone or sending emails to people.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: So he has this process he follows.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: The second one was this idea of doing the research around the 10K and 10Q, which I know is not new, but I think too often what we just say is, oh, just go do the research, and there's not much guidance of where to look.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: I really liked how he focused in on just two key areas of the documents and he looked for whatever he could find that was a tidbit to use.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And the third takeaway for me was how he uses those tidbits in meetings, right?
35:08
SPEAKER_01: He says, This is what I think I've learned about you, the company, wherever it might be, and let them kind of adjust, right?
35:14
SPEAKER_01: Or say that he did it right.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, he really had a good way for using that in meetings so he didn't feel weird right at the gate.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Dave is uh someone who will continue to be successful, but uh great to reconnect with him and I wish Dave every success for the rest of 2022 and into 2022.