Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / Doubling a Sales Team in 2 Months Without Dropping Standards | Lauren Lynch, Cyber Sales Leader

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Doubling a Sales Team in 2 Months Without Dropping Standards | Lauren Lynch, Cyber Sales Leader · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Being in a situation where you're scaling is awesome, right?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of good things are happening if that's what you're doing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it does put a lot of pressure on your hiring process.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very different proposition adding 20, 30, 40 new people in a short period of time or doubling the size of the go-to-market team than if you're doing onesies or twosies throughout the year.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It forces you to really think about executing a great process, uh, think about the profiles you're looking to hire for and test for, collaboration amongst different team members as part of an overall team hiring process.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it also makes you think about how the team sells.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly what Lauren Lynch did at Wiz.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: She joined to build the commercial team, doubling it in just a few short months.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she also had to do that as there was a change in leadership who brought new ideas with them about how to sell.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: She's got experience outside of Wiz.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: She built a career Rapid Seven, Sneak, Wiz, and Drata, and each had their own challenges and opportunities and learnings that she went through.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it was fun to talk with Lauren about all this in this episode.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We cover a lot of grant, including that age-old question.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to say you want to hire someone who's coachable.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know if they're coachable?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's her way of doing that?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about the questions she asked to assess whether the candidate might thrive in the confusing and competitive space that's cybersecurity.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: How has she approached all those leadership changes or sales process changes that new leadership brought that had to be adopted in the team?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And on a personal note, despite all her success, why she thinks she has not been even more successful.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's good conversation, it's highly practical and transferable to other organizations and other hiring processes.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Lauren.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Lauren, welcome to the Cyber Go to Market Talk podcast.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to be here.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this discussion today.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've teed up from something that's uh really interesting in terms of getting great talent in a company, and you've got some experiences that people might might recognize the names of the companies, to recognize what you might have been going through.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's gonna be a relevant conversation for a lot of the audience.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But first, Lauren, you will be, I think, the fourth or the fifth person to play the almost new spin the wheel game here at the podcast.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So for everyone that's uh listening and can't see on the screen on the video, what I do is I spin the wheel, and we have five topics here.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: One is the cyber donut hot seat, one is it's personal, the next one is visionary or smoking crack, another one is differentiation teardown, and another one is overrated or underrated.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what we'll do is we'll spin the wheel, we'll pick a topic, but then we'll answer the questions, or Lauren will answer the questions at the end of the episode.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, Lauren, you ready for me to spin the wheel?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I am ready.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: This sounds fun.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, here we go.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's personal.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's hold that thought there.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get too freaked out by that, but hold that thought right there, and we'll come back to that towards the end.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, Lauren, I look at your your career.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a story career at cybersecurity companies.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like to me, though, looking in from the outside, you really were able to build your career over many years at Rapid Seven.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like for a lot of people, you know, sometimes there's just a match, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You go in there and you're you're trying to build a career.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's suddenly there's something about a company or a situation they're in that says, yeah, this is my home.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering what it was about Rapid Seven that you really felt like that.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am incredibly grateful to my time at Rapid Seven because it was actually my first foray into SaaS sales.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I was doing some selling before, but in a very, very different industry.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And what I loved about Rapid Seven is there was really good training and enablement programs meant to really set people up on a set career path, whether that be going into enterprise sales as an IC and running that path for your entire career, or going into, for my case, going into leadership.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there was just a lot of opportunities continually, it felt like really like each year to take on a new team or a new challenge or invest back in myself in terms of like training and development and leadership programs.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: There was just a lot of good structure like that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then also it was for me an opportunity to join a company in its very, very early phases and see it all the way through going public.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And just that that journey continued, like I said, presenting new challenges to work through, new products.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like the company was constantly acquiring new products, building new products, and it just kept feeling different and exciting all the time, with also keeping a lot of the same core people there.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's probably the other piece.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I met some of some great friends of mine, but also people that I have worked with now at a couple of different companies.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my first experience into creating a network like that that will carry you throughout your career.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: So very, very special time.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really grateful for my time there.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they were a Northeast Company.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Were you in HQ?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this was I joined in 20, like the start of 2013.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I moved to Boston in December of 2012.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were in the Prudential Center in downtown Boston.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then we moved to Summer Street in downtown Boston.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then for anybody that's listening that's lives uh in Boston or is a fan of Boston sports, we moved into the TD Garden or the building right next to the TD Garden.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the last spot that I worked at Rapid Seven in, and that's still their office today.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, worked there through COVID and everything like that too.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we had some pretty incredible office spaces, but the one that we landed on at the end is a fantastic spot and easy to get to the garden too, which is nice.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I imagine it's very energizing to be in that environment when the company's doing well and you know, people want to be there and they're growing and all the rest of it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of wonder these days, if you're a more junior seller and you're remote, how you do that when you miss out on that whole kind of culture of being in a big office where everyone's working together and learning from each other.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about that uh quite often actually with folks that I've worked with and folks that I worked with at Rapid Seven, because what was super unique to that experience too is that it was a completely in-office culture.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you were covering a territory outside of Boston, you were based in the Boston headquarters.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that created it made me such a better seller at that time, too, because not only could you hear from your peers, like hear them live on the phone, like this model was not for everybody.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was noisy.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: There was music going.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I personally loved it, but some people did not like that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what was great is that you could hear, you know, a way somebody positioned the product or asked a really good discovery question.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you hadn't even been trained on that yet.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you're like, ooh, I'm gonna try that on my next call.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I loved the way that sounded.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I loved the answer they were able to get, whatever that was.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then on the flip side, it was also great because we've all had those times as sellers where you get hung up and you get told they're not purchasing, you know, the worst news that you can get as a seller.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you're able to turn to the person next to you and just be like, man, like, can we kind of talk through like just dissecting maybe what went wrong in that deal, or also just having a moment to be like, ooh, that was hard.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was brutal, but let's kind of pick each other up.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think a lot about the folks that are doing this today and have started completely remotely as an SDR.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gotta be hard.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that you think about you have to be really determined, really driven to be making dials like in your home by yourself and having those many, many times of rejection and being able to sort of brush your, brush yourself off and just get right back into it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's hard.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So as I think about, you know, companies that I've that I've been at and even thinking about sort of the future of sales, I see a benefit in this hybrid approach.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now it totally depends on where you're at in your career because enterprise sellers selling in the field, they should be in territory, they should be with customers.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: But early in your career, if you can find a spot that sure, if you want some of that remote flexibility, maybe hybrid is a better match, but something that gives you that connection to go into the office and that exposure really to other people that are going to teach you.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably the biggest thing that you miss out on being completely remote.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd I'd love to know from the audience if there's anyone out there who's really made the remote SDR thing work.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Please get in touch.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to chat to you about it and see how you've done it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's fast forward.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So laterally, you've spent some time leading teams at two really well-known companies.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: One is Wiz, another one is Drata.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: You joined Wiz at a time with just growth, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, growth in capital letters and a few exclamation points in the end.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so when you joined, what did you walk into?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a team?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Were you hiring?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So as many people are familiar with Wiz and the incredible story that that company is.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: What's even more impressive is like their earlier days, they started selling mostly to the enterprise, which a lot of companies are always trying to push themselves up market.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wiz made a determination, like, hey, we're selling to the biggest and the best companies.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then they had to figure out sort of midway through that journey, how do we go more down market and service the sort of mid-enterprise and even SMB?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was brought into Wiz, it was actually to lead their mid-enterprise segment, as I had done some of that, uh, leading a commercial org at Sneak prior to that.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the challenge was how do we make this powerful enterprise product really relevant to smaller companies?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do we figure out how to tell the best of breed story to companies that sometimes do have to make decisions on I need to buy the least expensive product or just good enough will work.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of challenges that come with that.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And how is mid-enterprise defined?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um, we had a couple of different definitions of my time there, but initially it was 2,500 employees and below.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then they had a, they did have an SMB group when I joined that was 500 employees and below.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then since then we had like changed that a couple of different times, but sort of stuck around the 2500 and up was where enterprise began.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you walked in there, you had to build out that whole function hiring, right?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about profiles.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: What were you looking for?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do you go about doing that?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there was um, there was some really talented mid-enterprise infrastructure in place.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was a couple of first line leaders that they had in place.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them were reps that had kind of grown up at Wiz, some of them were folks that were brought in from the outside.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But sort of midway through my tenure there, there was a change of the guard in in the leadership.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And with that came this huge explosive growth, like growth that I don't know if I'll like if you ever see that twice in your career, hopefully I'm lucky to see that.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it was, it was pretty incredible.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So for some numbers, like we went from 35 AEs in the mid-enterprise team to 65 AEs across this newly defined commercial space.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's basically doubling the AEs.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went from having four RDs to 12 RDs.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then we created a third, or excuse me, a second line of leadership.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a third line leader there.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to hire three RVPs.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we went from this org that was, with myself included, about 36 people, uh or about almost 40 people to over 80 within the course of a couple of months.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was an absolute master class on how to find the right talent, how to like be a great recruiter as a senior sales leader.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then also how to make sure that you're bringing in really good first-line leadership that's going to actually help you find more of those AEs and make sure that you're really like creating a good culture and framework to move the company forward.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, did some external recruiters put their kids through college based on helping you out?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you have an internal recruitment team?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did that work?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: We had a, we had an incredible, incredible group of recruiters over at Wiz, like internally there.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think they might have used some external for other other parties, but for the build that I was doing with my team, it was in partnership with our recruiting team.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then also the RDs that we had in place and myself were the ones that were messaging people all hours of the night on LinkedIn, like, hey, you want to come join us?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look, like your background makes a lot of sense.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we were doing a lot of that recruiting ourselves.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also obviously Wiz was an incredible already then still an incredible name in the space that we had a lot of inbound requests to.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But that sometimes is a double-edged sword because you get a lot of, you got to sift through a lot of that.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really important that we defined what good looked like and what the right profiles were that we wanted to go after because there was no shortage of talent, both externally and stuff that was coming internally.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if anyone out there has never hired before and you want to get a sense of what's like to be inundated, put a put a job rec out there and be we'd be amazed at the people who think they've got experience selling.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I will say too, actually, I so I initially was earlier in my career, was like, I I don't know if I'd want somebody like really actively pursuing me for a job.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'd want, I don't know, like I sort of want to hunt the people that are not looking for a job.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have since been proven wrong on that a couple of times.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I there was a woman we hired actually at Drada who sent me a video message.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: She had this incredible pitch and it really caught my attention.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had a call with her.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: She was one of our top commercial AEs.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So like, yeah, you just want to be sure or want to be careful as a hiring leader that you do not have any sort of like bias or uh I don't know, assumed things because you can surprise yourself.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk about your process then.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: How what were the key parts of it that said that now we're getting into the right people and we can have a way to test without the right people before sending out offer letters?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the the process, like it supplies at any company that I've been a part of, but I can talk about some specifics of maybe exactly what we're looking for at these.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: But really, what I'm looking for is like high EQ, high IQ, and a very curious person.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Those are some of like sort of the baseline.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not hiring process, but like these are the intangibles that I'm trying to screen for.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: The other piece is obviously high integrity.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I like them to follow some level of repeatable sales process.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about a one size fits all sales process.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I do want some nuance to it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, hey, they have to only work with medic.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if they don't do that, that doesn't work.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but I want them to follow something, even if it's not exactly the process that that we would use, just because I think an organized AE is so critical and somebody that has like a process that they follow versus just sort of like flying by the seat of their pants.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those same intangibles outside of sales process are the same things I'm looking for when I'm hiring first and second line leaders.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously, there's different things I'm looking for from a leader perspective and experience there.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, I want it to be somebody who is a good person that customers want to work with and people internally want to work with.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: We spend, I forget what the stat is, but some ridiculous thing of almost all of your time in your life you spend with people you work with.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you want them to be people you enjoy working with and people buy from people they like.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: As far as process, I like to, this is both with AEs that I've hired and with leaders, I like to have 30-minute conversation first to just keep it casual, see if there's a fit in terms of our style, how we would work together.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get to know you as a person.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: The other really important thing I'm looking for is drive and motivation.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's is very different.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to understand what's your why.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is it you're young earlier in your career and you really want to buy a house, or you want to retire early?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why these earning years are important to you, or you have a family and that's really your why and that motivates you.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand those things to get to know the person.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then some of the more like work specifics and like background come into play.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that first 30 minutes I keep relatively conversational.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then we move into a little bit of like their background and just kind of leaving that conversation, knowing would I want to chat with this person again?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Would they want to chat with us again?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, I'll usually do like a longer 45 minute or an hour conversation where I'm really trying to understand their process, how their mind works.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And again, this is for leaders and AEs.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then I want some other people to talk to them, cross-functional folks to get involved in this.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it sort of depends.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen it go a couple of different ways on how many people you want in that process, because you do want to be careful that you don't have too long of a process, especially for an AE that they are meeting with, like, you know, 10 people.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's way too much.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: But like three or four to get a good sense and for them to really understand what they're getting into.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then last, this is something we did at Wiz and I have carried through is a presentation on either it can kind of vary a little bit, but having them present on something they've sold or having them present on the product that they will be selling, having them present some level of like a territory plan and examples of how they've broken into accounts, examples of how they've won competitive deals.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I always have a slide.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: We sometimes move it to the front, sometimes to the end, where it is a my why type of presentation.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want to learn about you outside of work.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I want the people on this interview panel to learn about you outside of work.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Show us some pictures of your dog, of your kids, of your spouse, like whatever it is.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just think that human element going all the way through is really critical.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when you were the process when you were then involving other people, how formal was that?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Did everyone have a role to play and something to look for?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it generally, you know, everyone just talk to this person and tell them what you think?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we usually would have a conversation.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is again everywhere that I've been, you have like a sort of the hiring team, if you will, or the interview panel team.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we do align at the beginning, hey, so-and-so is gonna look for how they do prospecting.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So-and-so is gonna ask more about problem solving and competitive deals, and someone else is gonna be really searching for that sort of culture fit here.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we all have roles.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I've been asked uh many times to interview cross-functional partners, it's the same type of thing.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're all looking for a specific thing to screen for, but then we all also have a voice in that of, like I said, what I want to work with this person.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do I think this person's gonna make our company better?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And is this the right person for the role?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then we all come together at the end and are able to sort of share those thoughts.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we try.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Another important thing is to not share any of those thoughts until you get to the end of the process, unless somebody is like, hey, this is a this is a hard no for some reason.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then like we do want to be respectful of of that too.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Curiosity is is something that I think is so important, but it's can be hard to really evaluate properly.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if you got any tips about how to really get into that.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd say my my number one and two is I'll ask people what types of discovery questions they ask.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that is curiosity, like me assessing the curiosity that they bring to the table in terms of getting to understand the deal, their clients, all of that.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then the other piece is not really something I'm feeding to them.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's me watching throughout the interview.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are they asking questions about what it takes to be successful here?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Are they asking questions about like how the, you know, how competitive our product is in the market, how many accounts they're gonna have, like all of these things.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd be, you'd think somebody looking for a job would be interviewing the company as much as we are interviewing them.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: But you'd be surprised.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: There are some people that I get to an end of an interview and I'm like, what questions do you have for me?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes I will start it off the opposite way and just say, hey, I want you to ask me some questions and people kind of scramble and like kind of act like they're looking at a note or something, or I'll get something like, I don't know, just like asking like very throwaway questions that I'm like, that tells me a few things.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, this person may not want this role as much because they're not as like doing as much prep.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: They may just not be somebody that preps in general, which is again like a red flag for me as a really good seller.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You are really organized and prepared going into customer calls.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then last but not least, like if they don't want to understand things about the role, how will they know how to be successful?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: How will they know if this is even a place they want to work?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's both questions I'm asking, but then also just behaviors that I'm that I'm noticing.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I heard something the other day, and I I I've done this before as well, where you drop a couple of breadcrumbs into the conversation and see if they bite.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it could be as simple as, you know, something comes up in the conversation, oh gosh, yeah, we're wrestling with pipeline generation right now.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a challenge for us and all the rest of it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for three or four seconds and see if there's a, oh, what's going on, right?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or they go, okay.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's and that's also like a this isn't about curiosity, but more about like the problem solving that you're going to be looking for.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I do sometimes like to bring that challenge, like, hey, we just we did a marketing event and we weren't really able to get as many people there.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, tell me about how you've actually driven attendance in this post-COVID world of everybody being remote.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you make these events work?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just situational questions like that I've found to be so much stronger than like the how many accounts did you have at your last company?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: What was your quota like retirement?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and things that are just sort of yes, no, or quick answers.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now you mentioned EQ, IQ, and curiosity.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: How would you rank those?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's tough.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I actually I saw a leader I worked for a little while ago called it CQ.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like he actually put curiosity in that mix.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually, this is a a little bit of a cop out answer, but I would rate them all like very equally because I just think if you if you don't, we already talked about the curiosity.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't have that EQ piece, that can be really hard in sales, especially when we're talking in my festival roles, like pushing up more to the enterprise.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of face-to-face, there's a lot of relationship building, there's a lot of long-term relationships that you're creating.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have that ability to really be able to read other people, read a room, be able to navigate those types of conversations, I think it's really hard.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then also being in cybersecurity, the IQ side of it, I've worked at like Sneak, for example, like that was a developer technology that's incredibly technical.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's like you and and we're not looking for AEs to necessarily be as technical as an SE, but you have to have credibility and chops to be able to speak in these rooms.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there's gonna be many times that you are asked really quickly at a conference or in an event, what exactly do you guys do?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have a follow-up question.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have the ability to answer those things, you lose all credibility.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry, I'm gonna say kind of equal for me.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a moment that you can think back on where as let's take your first half hour conversation, you're like, yeah, this person absolutely wants to talk more, but somehow through the process, there's just like a hard no, as you say, came up, like, okay, we find something, we dodged that bullet right there.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had that's why I love this panel at the end, because so many people can get on a 30-minute call and tell you, oh, I did this, or this is how I, this is how much I prospect.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I like to send really creative emails and they'll maybe give you some examples without like showing you.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where I love the panel.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: What we did at Drata most recently is we were having people share with us a couple of sample, like prospecting LinkedIn messages or emails or campaigns.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you could really quickly see, oh, this was like just generated by AI, or this was like really like just like nothing that would like grab somebody's attention or be that interesting.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had a couple of candidates, both at Wiz and at Drata, where they presented really well in these, you know, 30-minute, 45-minute conversations.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you got to the actual like application that's required for the panel, either they kind of mailed it in or the actual work just negated a lot of what was said previously.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's I I love that process because it sort of forces you to like really show your work.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to do it as a leader at the last two roles that I've had.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you do have like you have to show what's your plan?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to build this out?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, again, this is like sales presentations that you're doing.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think about it so much as like a real world example of the job that they would have.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if they fall apart in that, no matter how likable they were or how good the answers were, I just can't move forward.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been thinking more about the AEs when we've been talking so far.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: What about that first line manager you have to hire?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anything any changes there about how you approach that?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, first line manager, I am spending even more time with them throughout the process.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm doing a lot of checking in throughout the interview process too.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that first call still would probably be a 30-minute meeting just to see if it makes sense to move forward.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: But then over the course of that, I'm probably spending a couple hours with that person, both in person.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: I find that's really important when hiring leaders.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've jumped on a plane for candidates that I have really liked and thought would be a good fit, just to make sure everything is as it presents on a Zoom.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's where I get much more prescriptive with my cross-functional partners of what exactly are we looking for and what are the leadership traits that we need.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: A leadership hire is a way more expensive mistake to make if you do it the wrong way.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: So just having a couple more extra checks and balances.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm also I'm lucky that I've been doing this for a long time.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I have a really wide network of people.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the first time I even talk to somebody, you can bet that I have texted somebody who knows somebody, just like, can you give me a little bit about this person?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it worth having further conversations here just to suss that out?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing a ton of kind of backdoor reference checking, obviously within reason, because I you never want to like blow up somebody's spot who might be interviewing and is still employed, but trying to do some backdoor reference checking.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then also I'm really curious, like what types of references or people they want me to talk to as a part of the process always says a lot.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the actual, I still do a panel for leaders, but that is much more tell me about your leader, like present to me and the other cross-functional partners about your leadership style, what you've learned about Drada or Wiz in this process.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: How would you bring something new to the table?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: How would you, you know, you've heard a lot of challenges that we've shared of like what we're looking to do next or the growth we're looking to have?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: How do you fit into that and what's your plan to execute?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And really taking a good hour to go through a presentation like that with a lot of back and forth.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And would you have a slightly different process, whether they're a bit more junior in their career versus a bit more senior?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And would you evaluate them a little bit differently?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like I think the the folks that are a little more junior, that's where I go back to this like my why concept so much because I think like the people that are earlier in their career, they always do feel a little bit more moldable and coachable and like there's they're really transparent about what they're good at and what they're not good at, I find.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: There are some people certainly earlier in career that are gonna be like, I can do it all.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: I figured it out because I've managed one time.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the folks that I personally want to hire are the ones that are like, hey, I've done this piece really well, but here's a blind spot that I have noticed in my leadership skills.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I also use that to assess like, am I the right person that can really help with that?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like, or is there somebody else on the team who could really help teach this person something?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think trying to just like understand those, those blind spots are important.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I find that the uh, yeah, the more like later in career profiler, the more experienced manager will likely have like more things to share in terms of examples and stories.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, I have I have seen it both ways of the pluses and minuses of both of those profiles.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I really a lot of times love that earlier in career person that really wants to make a name for themselves and has like just a lot of like skin in the game for doing something new and different.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that those folks are just really fun to partner with.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, depending on this where the company is at, that more tenured leader is really important because what you don't want is three leaders that this is their second, their second time ever doing it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: You need that that mix of folks.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, going back to A's, one of the things that uh people often look for is coachability, right?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because they want to get that person who's maybe you know hungry to keep getting better.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Any thoughts about how you would assess coachability?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we try to we try to give like feedback throughout the interview and not like in a hey, at the end of every call, like, hey, you didn't answer this, you didn't do this, but you try to, you push a little bit there, like, hey, I I didn't, I didn't quite follow that answer.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help me understand that a little bit more?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you think about doing something differently?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, like there's those are some like situational things that I'll I'll try to assess.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I also a question I like asking a lot is if I talk to your current, this is again on the AE side, if I talk to your current manager right now, what would they say you're really, really good at?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what's something that they would say you're working on?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that they explain like what they're working on, I've had some people say, Hey, I, you know, I needed help with discovery questions.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: My manager's been helping me with that.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we're starting to see some improvement because of X, Y, and Z that I've implemented.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've also had other people in that question go, Well, yeah, I mean, I got some feedback about this, but like, I don't really agree with that.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't really, and and there's uh let me say, like, there's nothing wrong with it.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't have to just like blindly agree with your leader, but it's the way that it's teed up that just gives me a little bit of the spidey sense of like this person might be, I don't know, just like not that coachable, not really that open to feedback.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think it's it just doesn't work in in any uh sales culture that I've been in to not have some humility and coachability.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: You just need it at all levels, like myself included.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: I there's many times where I'm like, oh man, like I I did not get that right.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I need to learn that more.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the idea that we're all perfect is uh is interesting.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not gonna get you far.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: There must be something you believe you should get better at, right?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Any other great questions that you you like?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: I like like so everywhere that I've been has had an incredibly competitive, like a noisy competitive market.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So asking people to really walk me through a competitive deal cycle is a question I will continue to come back to time and time again.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm really looking for there is something where the deal was competitive, but then you also had some roadblocks that came up.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Halfway through the deal, we lost budget.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Halfway through the deal, we lost our champion.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: You went to another company.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, things like that that come up or halfway through the cycle, a competitor was introduced that is a better technical fit for them.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we had to figure out how to make this still work.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear those stories because that going back to like the things that I'm looking for and the things that I care about, that shows me someone is really driven.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: They have that good IQ, that curiosity, that that ability to like build a good relationship, that they can sort of get over those types of objections.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found sometimes when I ask that question, I'll get a response of, well, we just decided to lead with a better price.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or we just like things that are not like, yeah, they like let's be clear, you absolutely can win deals by like undercutting a competitor, but that can't, that's not, that can't be your answer all the time.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I want someone that's had some of those battle scars and has those like things that they can uh actually like push through and they can really demonstrate that.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then similar, when you're talking about leadership hires, I love to hear the stories of I, you know, I coach this person either, you know, up to be this incredible seller or leader.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want to hear that story.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I also want to hear, hey, I inherited a team and I had some like underperformers, but under my leadership, they were able to get, you know, get really good.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: They, we were the top team.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want to hear those.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: I love that like underdog challenge story.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it just like that speaks to me as I have had many moments in my career where I have felt that way and sort of risen above something.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that just resonates with me a lot personally.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, Lauren, the eagle eye watchers on YouTube are just looking at the screen right now, going, did something change?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like Andrew's got a different shirt on, Lauren's got a different shirt on.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: What the heck just happened?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we're actually recording this bit you're listening to right now, or watching right now, 21 days after the bit that you just heard up till now.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there we are, two software salespeople talking away, chatting, it's going well, or you know, or kind of funny things are going on.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great conversation.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's learnings, there's stories, but the software failed us.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I got the call from the SE saying, sorry, I was doing the demo, but it crashed in front of the prospect.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a great conversation after what you were hearing before for another 15-20 minutes that wasn't recorded.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we're kind of going back and saying, okay, let's let's not try and just say nothing happened, you know, something did happen, but let's you know continue the conversation from from here on in a different time frame.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're gonna do.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when to pick up with something you were saying earlier, when we were talking about hiring, you mentioned that the catalyst for a real surge in your hiring, running the commercial team at Wiz was the changes and and go-to-market leadership and things like that.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: So for those that aren't aware, tell us briefly what happened.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Wiz obviously had this incredible revenue growth.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this like mission of like, let's make this the, you know, this world-class company, this huge company that like even the impressive, you know, hundred plus million revenue that they had seen, let's blow this up to a billion in revenue.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that, I think a lot of people will hear in early stage software companies, sometimes the what got you there will not get you to the next spot.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that Wiz was at a little bit of an inflection point there of there needed to be some new structure brought to the business, some new leadership, some new people in general.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, was like not only are we going to bring in some new foundational members of the team, but we want to take this and triple this team, quadruple this team.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they've continued to go on and do that.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of a mix of this inflection point of we've proven that we have this incredible product and revenue.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now we want to go blow this up to be as big as we possibly can.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we need more people to be able to do it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And where I heard, I mean, I've got friends that was, some are still there, that it was definitely that.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, let's put the foot down, let's bring in some people who know how to do that growth, and they come.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if what I heard, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong, is that, you know, as it was up to then, things are very loose, right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: People, sales people come in, you might get a little bit of training to help you, and then you're out there, and it's just, you know, let's just keep running and gunning, right?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then it kind of flipped the other way completely, which was a lot of process, a lot of structure, and you know, bringing a lot of learnings from Zscaler and Nat D about how to really do this, right?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that came in.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of changed the culture a lot, right?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm wondering as a leader, how do you manage that change in your team that you have?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think first it starts with you as the leader of kind of wrapping your arms around what does this change mean for me, for my team, for the future of the company?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I really understand like how to lead through that?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And like how will I create these relationships with the new folks that are in here that are going to help my team to be successful?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: But then also, how do I provide as much like air cover as possible for the folks that, especially the frontline sellers?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: How do I make sure that they can stay focused on selling and delivering?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the funny part part about all of the change that happens in these organizations is you're still expected to deliver high revenue goals.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's how do we keep those ICs focused?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do we help the frontline leaders to understand part of the challenges, or excuse me, part of the changes that are going to be coming?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we get everybody aligned around this mission that we're leading towards?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was something that I thought the folks that came in did a good job of presenting this billion-dollar goal.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was sort of the North Star to get there.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that didn't mean that every piece that came underneath that was easy for everybody to get on board with, but we all understood that that billion dollars was the charter and that we were all a part of that mission.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to kind of figure out from there, what am I gonna take from this new sales process that will help me?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I be open-minded about learning something different?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: And look, some people do not like this type of change.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some people do not like a lot of sales process.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's people throughout that that self-select out as part of that process.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's an evolution sort of all around, but it really does start with you as the leader getting your head right about what these changes mean because you cannot be an effective leader in those situations when you're still questioning what the direction is, you're still kind of leery of what the new people might be like.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: You got to get on board quickly or at least present that you're on board, even if you're still kind of figuring some things out.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then sort of the pieces will come together as time goes on.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like it is that classic situation.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, either you disagree and just get on with it, you disagree and you go, right?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have that person who's running their own game, you know, in the Midwest somewhere just because they didn't feel like they liked the new stuff, right?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And was it all like one go, like as from June 1st, here's how we're gonna do 15 different things differently, or was it kind of over time we're gonna change the terminology, we're gonna change the process?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: How did that work out?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: It felt more we're gonna go.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was a very intentional move on a lot of the new leadership's part of there is this challenge that you have, and I've lived through change at a couple other companies too, where you do too much of the like, I want to crowdsource everybody's feedback on potential changes.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're just an analysis paralysis of will we adopt these new things, will we not?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: What everybody's always going to have a question, a problem, a piece of feedback and all of that.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's two ways to go about this.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can crowdsource till you're blue in the face, or you can just say, hey, we're just gonna go because I know that this playbook works.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they chose the we're gonna go.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there was, again, it's not like they came in and they said it's our way or the highway and you can't have any input in this, but there was a lot of like, hey, this is what we're doing.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're bringing in, they started with like a really strong enablement team to train us on common language and common understanding of like a value framework.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that was sort of the the first piece of that.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was tons of like sessions and trainings that came after that to really get people bought in versus just here, I'm gonna hand you a pamphlet and what this means and then like go figure it out.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just a case of creating a PDF and saying everyone.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you remember about that?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really fascinated by this.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you remember about the training to make that change?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was there some things that stood out for you about how they did that?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it was it was interesting because a lot of it still had to be done remotely.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a that's a tough, that's a tough thing to do.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I've now done this remote thing at a couple of different companies as a leader and trying to do sales training remotely is just like you can be the most dynamic trainer and like have the best content, and you're still gonna have 10 people that are like doing other stuff on a side or responding to slacks or whatever it is.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to my world, Lauren.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they did they did some of that stuff to start, and then what they did was they grabbed us, like we did, uh, I ran the commercial team.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I got all the commercial leaders in a room, and it was really important for us as a leadership team to align on what are our values as a team, what do we really take away from a lot of these trainings and what are going to be like the core things that we care about in terms of inspection and understanding our deals.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so there you were able to take the playbook and apply it to your own business.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: So as a combination of virtual plus, I just cannot stress enough, the leadership buy-in is so key because if you're front lines and I had second lines and I was a third line, like if all of these layers are not bought in, the ICs are not bought in, like it all falls apart.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and I forget if you said this, did were the leaders taken somewhere, say, let's get together for a couple of days and go through this?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we um it was kind of a combination of both some of the value framework, but then also just like leadership philosophy and like what do we want to be as leaders?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was one of my favorite leadership offsites that I've been a part of was at my time at Wiz.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: I did I I actually, as the leader of this business, got to pick a lot of the content that we went through and talked about because I had an enablement counterpart.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: So again, I still wanted to talk about the the value framework and the like the sales playbook things that we were bringing.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of what was really important to me personally was keeping this good culture that we had as a team and making sure that like we were strong as a leadership group going into what was about to be a time of tremendous excitement and growth, but also really tough change of maybe some people leaving the business that had been there for a while and were really impactful and were great for the early stages of Wiz, but maybe weren't interested in being in the second piece of the Wiz journey.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so with that, like again, I use the the analogy of like the flight attendant a lot or the pilot of the plane.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: If there's turbulence and your team is looking to you to be like, okay, how are they reacting?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going around like, oh, it's it's really turbulent, it's really scary.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then like me as a passenger, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the worst turbulence of all time, versus looking at the pilot or the flight attendant, and they're just like, yeah, this happens every day.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: These are things that happen in the sky and like we're gonna be fine.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was just important for me and my leaders to have that type of energy going into this time that we knew was gonna feel loud.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it feels it's an interesting kind of thing about sales is that although we're part of a team, at the end of the day, we're really individuals running our game plans and our territories, things like that, but you still have to try and align everyone to the idea about this billion-dollar goal and say, look, we're all we're all striving for something that's gonna be meaningful in all sorts of ways for us, right?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of have to cut together with a program a little bit rather than just doing things your own way in Nebraska or wherever you might be.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have to have tough conversations with people about, you know, you you're just not grabbing onto this new wake fast enough or or effectively?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was, I will say in in my group, the the core leaders that I had inherited when I joined Wiz remained through, with the exception of one, remained through my end of my tenure there.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, like we didn't see as much change in our unit.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: We saw, I think, more change upmarket in the enterprise and the strategic segments.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think again, being the commercial business that was already sort of new-ish to Wiz in nature because they had been so focused on that upmarket motion.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: We, a lot of us were new.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: And again, my the leaders that I had there had been there since the beginning.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, they were the ones I think that also saw some change of friends that they had worked with for a while that maybe decided to self select out or other leaders that weren't interested in continuing the journey.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's change is hard for anybody.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: When you have people that you've been on this like pretty incredible, like working really hard journey, like building something amazing, you do sort of feel like, oh, if I don't have like new people in here that I can really like gel with and really enjoy working with, like, do I feel like I'm on an island by myself without those, those people?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I might have mentioned this in our last conversation, but I personally was in a very interesting spot that I was not an OG wizard.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't start from like the start of Wiz.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I also was not part of the Z Scaler crew.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in this interesting space myself.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was able, my own experience was able to give me perspective and a lot of empathy for what people were going through and kind of feeling like what is my place in this org.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was really important to me from day one.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: I actually established a relationship with the gentleman, Mike Ernest, who came in to lead the sales org, like as our VP of Worldwide Sales.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he was in New York when I happened to be there.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I want to sit down with him.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get to know him.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that was able to like kind of start to be that bridge between the team that had been there for a while and the new team.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really helpful.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I needed to own that as the leader of my business.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think is maybe I don't know Mike at all, but him coming in, he's probably looking for someone to say, you know, throw me a bone here, right?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: I need to connect with some people here and really try and get this moving, right?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: They must have really valued someone coming to them and proactively say, look, let's figure this out together, right?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering as you you you left one incredible journey at Wiz, and then you moved to another incredible journey at Drata, which has been doing so well as well.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Any big learnings that you took to Drata to say, I'm gonna do things a little bit differently here from what they've been doing or what I learned from at Wiz?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think this isn't necessarily something new that I do, but something that I learned early on and has been only reinforced for me being at some of these companies where I've seen leadership changes and new people coming in.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Building that relationship with people when you start and really understanding what it's been like to walk a mile in their shoes at the company before giving a lot of like, this is what we're doing type direction, I just think is important.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I said earlier that like, you know, given given the size of the team, you have to be careful about how much like crowdsourcing you're doing.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying like testing out your ideas and seeing if people will buy in.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's truly the human experience.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get to know the people that are on my team.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand why they like working here, what's challenging about working here, what's good about this cell, what's hard about the competitive environment, and figure out I likely already have a perspective coming in.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly did with draw and I had spent a ton of time with them in the interview process.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I had to build out a whole plan of based on the data and like the where the business was at, like what would I actually do?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a perspective coming in, but I wanted to kind of see like, how would this be received?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: How will people take this?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like didn't mean that I'm gonna change what I know is right for this business.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: But how do I do that in a way that people will be more bought in versus feeling like, here's this person who doesn't know my business at all and just telling me this new way to do something?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Cause that just that just doesn't work.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it's not something, it's not not something new, but I it's been reinforced with me through a couple of, you know, starting at newer places and realizing that just coming in and telling people they're gonna have to do it this way or get out.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: It just there's a way to do that with a little more tact and finesse.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when you went there, was that a scale up or were you trying to fix something that uh was going on?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was a scale up.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: So part of why I was super interested in that is prior to coming to Wiz and even Sneak, I had a lot of enterprise experience at Rapid Seven and I had taken some of these commercial roles to have a lot of the responsibility of North America.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't really want to be a commercial only leader for the rest of my career.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so Drada gave me this opportunity to step back into owning everything, both commercial and enterprise.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Andrada was at this another inflection point of, hey, we've really dominated the down market business.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need to go upmarket.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the charter for me was how do we expand this enterprise team?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do we grow ASPs?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we like really grow our enterprise revenue?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we did just that.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was pretty incredible.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some people made the mistake of thinking that what works for the mid-market is going to work for enterprise.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: I guess they'd already got a small team and you're pouring fuel in the fire, or did you have to really change things up?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: There was a there was a small team, a couple of reps that are great reps and have been at Drata for several years, did an excellent job like establishing that there was a product market fit, but there was a need to hire more people to build out more of a territory model.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had an incredible channel team there, but how do we more regionalize the channel relationships and partnerships so that you can start to build a true like enterprise-level geo-based org?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's really the only way to scale this.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I took a lot of my learnings from what I saw at Wiz.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: They did an excellent job of just like going all in on the channel and regionalizing the heck out of that business.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I mean, to the point where you had, you know, probably some reps say like too many reps in one geo.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: But what they did was like saturate that so that it was sort of impossible as a buyer to not think about Wiz in that region.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I tried to kind of bring some of those things that obviously Drata is a smaller company at a different scale, but those same principles.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Last question on Drata.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: How did you approach enablement there?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um was very lucky to have some great enablement partners at Drada.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we worked in tandem with them.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: There was like a definitely a lot of ideas that I, as the VP of sales, could bring to the business of, hey, I think we need to invest, like we invested in uh third-party force management training.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was important for us again as going up market.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was like we need a good sales methodology and like a framework to use to start with.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I partnered with my CRO at the time and our enablement folks to actually design that course with force management.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: But then enablement would do weekly sessions with our team, helping to reinforce the topics that we knew were most important.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is where some really cool stuff comes in with AI of we ended up getting glean over at Drata.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there were some really interesting things you could do to analyze, like gone calls, win loss, like understanding what is actually not just like feature function stuff, but like what are the questions we're forgetting to ask?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: What are we not teeing up in the right way, or who are we not speaking to?
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then we could take those themes and I would share them with my managers, and then we would talk with enablement on like, okay, hey, I think we need to do a training on discovery.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need to do something on competitive positioning.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need to talk more about how do we level up and get multi-threaded in deals.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like that partnership with enablement.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: People ask me a lot, like, who do you work most with in the business?
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is a top three business partner for me.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Good experiences.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've had to hell had the hell of a run at Rapid Seven, Sneak with Drata.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's next for Lauren?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think I've realized in the last several years that some of these hyper-growth companies, I enjoy not only the scale of this, but like how to build in a new market.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, like how to take something and having to like with Drata, go upmarket with whiz.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do we take an upmarket product and bring it down market?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: I like that that challenge there.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: I also love, I've been in cybersecurity for quite some time.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love this space.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's forever like changing and evolving.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the competitive landscape some days makes you want to like rip your hair out because you're like, there's six of us competing in this deal.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: But the other side, it's like reinforces that this is the right place to be and there's a lot of value to be had here.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really, I think finding a company that's got that great scale story.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other piece that I've realized is I love hiring, I love building a team, and I love creating a culture within a business that is sustainable and successful and one that's like high caliber, but also high integrity.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's important to me.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to find somewhere that I can be taking that hypergrowth experience, building it with like how do we scale this team, but then also like a competitive sale that's hard to win sometimes, but really fun and satisfying when you do.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can sense your passion and energy behind it.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to seeing what's next for you.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought you might not remember, Lauren, but three three weeks ago we spun a wheel at the start of the conversation.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: I do, yes.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're gonna go back and finish off that that whole thing.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are, the cyber go-to-market talk podcasts.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to call it, the fun wheel.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, whatever it might be.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: We landed on it's personal.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna ask you three personal questions and get your honest and deep thoughts about these things.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, first one is what are you still trying to prove and to whom?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is this is relevant to the the last question that you asked.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think like the I've I've had a couple of roles that have given me a lot of exposure in the business, a lot of responsibility in the business.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for me, it's how do I continue to grow that level of ownership and responsibility in the business?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at the end of the day, who am I proving it to?
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's I'm proving it to myself.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think for me, it's, you know, getting into a CRO role is like where I'd like to get to next in my career.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's really blending my experience of the selling side of it, but also the account management and renewal side of this, really owning everything that revenue is touching from business development to SDRs to sell sellers, everything in between.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think those are the things that are most interesting and exciting to me in this next phase of growth.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: And again, who I who I want to prove that to is really me.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I am both my biggest cheerleader, but also my harshest critic too.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it it's it's important to me to figure that that piece out next.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let me challenge you on that.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is there someone back in your in your career that you go, I want to show them I can I can be a CRO?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show them after that comment they made that I've got it with people.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can people have made comments about me, they probably throw away stuff 15 years ago and still I'm like could have riling against it.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so certainly.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have people that have been doubters of mine?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can think of one actually early days Rapid Seven, who I still joke with some of my my friends from that time of someone who would just like sort of jab at me, like being on the leaderboard and like, oh, well, you got this feel because you know something good went your way versus like selling.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: He got lucky.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that guy was actually, it was funny.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: That guy was a motivator for me early on because I was just like, man, this guy's just like noisy and obnoxious.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: I really surpassed anything that that guy has been doing.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that sense has not, I just, it's not relevant to me anymore.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: But there are certainly like there are people that have maybe given me feedback of like, hey, I don't, I don't know that you are ready to take something like this on.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, those, those voices and those comments that I've gotten over time, I am incredibly like competitive.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so those chirp at me at times.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think part of my evolution in these last definitely five years as I've become like, I think a better, an even better leader is that you do have to like tune out some of that noise and it can be used to fuel you.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, nobody cares about your success more than you, and nobody fuels that more than you.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I've had a couple annoying people make some comments, and I'd love, you know, to continue to be like, yeah, I showed that person that I know it's I love it.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Next question.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's something you're quietly proud of that nobody ever asked you about?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would say I'm not actually quietly proud of this, but I probably don't talk about it enough.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like there is so much in this world of software sales coming from just being a seller and having to deal with resilience.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: But even more for me, like my resilience has shown itself in a lot of leadership roles, in challenges, in changes, and having to really roll with the punches in this and figure out the line of like, how do I maybe not take some of this too personally, but how do I also like pivot this and turn this into something that could be an opportunity or a success for me versus, oh, hey, I've hit this roadblock and like I can't get out of it.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: That is a super power of mine and one that I will say I've had to work really hard at to get to that because early in my career was you get a setback and it can like take you down for a couple of days and start to make you question, am I good at this?
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Does this make sense for me to continue on this path?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think through some work that I've done with my executive coach the last several years, have really worked on that.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very proud of like the growth I've had in that and the the body of work that I have that can show that, yeah, you can get through some of these challenges.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's amazing how our minds lead us down different paths that aren't always healthy for us, right?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you actually glad you got some help for someone to talk it through with you, right?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Last question.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why have you not been more successful?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it kind of goes into that last answer a little bit.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, look, I'm I'm very proud of what I have accomplished at this stage in my career and at my age.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: But there's always somebody that you're gonna look at, you know, in a company over that's done it in less time or done it and maybe is making more money or perceived to be more successful.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's so there's a little bit of that like comparison game that happens.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for me, I have I have fallen victim to some of that earlier in my career of some of the stuff I just talked about, like maybe second guessing myself, taking a piece of feedback and you know, one piece of negative feedback and a sea of positive feedback, and all I hear is that negative piece.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's again a lot of the things that I've that I've really worked on in the last few years is to give myself grace on that and know that like it's okay to make mistakes, and that's also part of like what makes you human.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a better leader by being upfront on like, man, like I made a decision here that was like probably not the right decision, and now I know I'm not gonna do that again.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's there's times that I've that I've uh probably held myself back with some like self-doubt in that way.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it seems like you've just been on a great, great trajectory on your career.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: So wish you every success in the next uh next step that you take.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the conversation, thank you so much.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise.