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80: 3 questions to ask to know if you are at the right company · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've been at a company for a few months, and you're in that period where you're trying to figure out am I really going to make it here or should I move on?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know what the right move to make is?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Bite Size Sales, where we believe that sales at B2B startups should be easier than we often make it, and that it's plain wrong that sales teams at startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams at their bigger and more well-known competitors do.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a seller or sales leader at a B2B startup, you're in the right place.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, everyone.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is Andrew Monahan here, your host at Bite Size Sales.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I am restarting the podcast.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the history, you'll see there's a large gap of about 18 months or so between the last published episode back in May 2020.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I was doing, I did 78, 79 episodes of the podcast in that period.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting a little bit burnt out.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It actually takes a bit of time to put them together, to think about the subject, plan out an episode, and get it recorded and get it published.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I was getting a little bit fed up with it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can have worn off a little bit.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was really pleased though, because they have this thing where people launch podcasts and they tend to stop doing them after just five to ten episodes.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really proud that I got as far as 79 over many months.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I started back in October 2019.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So what's that, about six months or so of doing it?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I by stopped back that and now I'm restarting again.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've got uh renewed energy, let's say, behind getting this done and putting some good stuff out there.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome back.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if this is your first time listening, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to today's subject, I want to tell you about our sponsor today, which is autobound.ai.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really love what these guys are building right now.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was working with a couple of my clients and they were doing some pretty deep research into their high-value ICP main target companies and also the personas in those companies.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as we were thinking through all the research steps that the AEs and the SDRs would be doing to really get ready to talk to the main prospects, the main personas, multiple times during these sessions that we say there must be a tool that does this.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: There must be a tool that does some of this research for you and will then create some sort of outbound, whether it be an email or a messaging framework that is relevant for that persona and that company full of things that are going on.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I started scratching my head and I looked out there and I came across autoband.ai and really love what they're doing.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're making big strides in this area.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're thinking about the work you're putting in to research your main prospects and you're thinking about how you reach out to them, I highly encourage you to reach out to autoband.ai.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: The subject for today is that situation where many of us have been in, where we've joined a company, early stage company, uh, a lot of promise about what we're doing and what the company's doing and what it's gonna deliver over time and the huge impact it's gonna have in the marketplace.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you get there in a few months in, you enter the valley of death, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: You've been there, the honeymoon period is over, things are not as easy as you thought they were gonna be, the product's not as mature and as rounded as you thought, there's issues all around you.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's startup world, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're in that mode.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point in there, if if the orders are not flooding in, you're sitting there going, Am I in the right place?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years ago, I was actually talking to someone who I was coaching, and we kind of went through this with him, and he had a really interesting way of looking, I thought, and I thought I'd share that with you.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: He would ask himself three questions, and he applied it, I think, to many of his roles over time.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was a pretty experienced person.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was his way of knowing if he was in the right place, doing the right job at the right time in his life.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, for the three questions that he had, the first one was Am I working with an interesting product that has a meaningful impact on my customers?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the thing the words there that are good, I really resonate with me, were interesting and meaningful impact.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So am I interested in what it is and does it have a real difference with customers and prospects?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: If they were to buy it, is that an incremental improvement or is it gonna really make a big impact?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, in this startup world where things are so uncertain and we're really working hard, a lot harder we feel than perhaps if we were working in a mature company with a mature product, we're gonna make sure that uh it's worthwhile.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one of his things was meaningful impact.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I like that because if you're making a big difference for prospects, they're gonna remember that it's worthwhile for them, and therefore it's gonna be good for you long term.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think in a couple of ways.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: One is that if you have a big difference for someone, they're willing to pay for that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're making small improvements or small changes, it doesn't have so much value and therefore they might not pay so much, and obviously they're not paying so much, then commissions might be impacted.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, it's just good that it's is having a long-term thing they might remember you for.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's the guy that brought in that thing for us that made such a huge difference that enable us to hit our goals and change the business, whatever it might be.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think meaningful impact is super important.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that was question number one.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number two was do I get to work with great people who I can learn from and who challenge me to get better.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this for him is at the core of what he was all about.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: He recognized that he didn't know everything and he wanted to be with people who maybe they're hard to work with.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that often happens in startups.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've got people who are really edgy, they're rough, they're they're trying to make a difference, and they're they're not letting much get in their way.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it can often mean for a less than polished, let's say, manager, leader that you end up working with, whether that's the head of sales, the the CEO, or even some of the board members.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: For him, though, the most important thing was not that, but is this someone I can really learn from?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna challenge me?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna work with me to get better?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna not let me sit back and and uh rest on my laurels when we get some success?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And is it someone who's got a bunch of experience that I can learn from?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I really like that as a second question.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do I work with people who I can learn from and who can challenge me to get better?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one was is the pain in alignment with the gain?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So brass tags here.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is the compensation I receive worth more than the pains of doing the job?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a comp plan that is realistic.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if I deliver on my numbers, am I gonna get a big outcome that's worthwhile?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna make a big difference in terms of my income?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna make a big difference in terms of maybe my stock options?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna make a difference in terms of my life plan and what I need to earn to retire and live a good life?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when we get to startups, I've been there an early stage where the comp plans are really rich.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a high percentage on the PCR into in many ways to reflect the pain that you go through, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: The pain of having an immature product, the pain of having very few customers who are happy, the pain of working with people that are challenging and that they challenge you, but also challenging because they're they're challenging to work with.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So all that pain that goes with being an early stage, I mean getting a payoff that's really worth worth it in the long term.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a huge fan of taking jobs at early stage companies for the stock.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of these things where you want to negotiate the heck out of it at the start to make sure you get as much as you can.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then you want to feel like, let's put that to one side, and that's not real money in any shape or form, because for most people, that's the way it ends up.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I forget what the latest stats are, but six or seven out of ten startups fail, fail spectacularly.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a few make it through where there's some sort of payoff, but very few that uh do work work all the way through to some sort of acquisition or IPO really result in meaningful change in life on sellers and even middle sales management.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was at a company where just recently I got an email through, and I think the headline on the email was a company name Acquisition.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I left them probably four or five years ago, and I thought, fantastic, they got bought.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Great news.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, the the stock I got and bought when I left is gonna be worth something.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I read through the email, and somewhere in like paragraph three, it said they'd been bought, but everyone who had stocked before series, I think it was F, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Had been wiped out.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was early stage, I think it was a third or fourth salesperson there, and uh my stock was worthless.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was disappointed and I expected it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been tracking and heard and kept to touch people there and knew what was going on.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that scenario is often happened.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you hear about the snowflakes of the world and you hear about the cred strikes of the world, but they are by by far not the norm.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So my my advice if if you're looking for advice on this is negotiate for the most stock you can at the start, but then don't count on that ever coming in and make sure your comp plan is real and rich and and worth it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the three questions that my friend had, the person I was coaching.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Am I working with an interesting product that has meaningful impact on my customers?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do I work with great people who I can learn from who challenge me to get better?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is the pain in alignment with the game.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I would challenge yourself, if you're feeling a little bit uncertain right now, look at these three questions and what are your answers to those?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest with yourself.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe work through it with what are your loved ones and see what their thoughts are.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And also, if you've got some questions that you have on top of that, I'd be happy to hear them and take them in.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's some people on listening to this who've got some great experiences and have additional questions or different ones that they asked, ask themselves.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, I'll sign off and look forward to uh talking to you on the next episode.