Latest / The High-Performing Technical Leader / Ep. 25- How the Sales Engineer Role Is Evolving in Enterprise SaaS, with Ori Weizman

Transcript

Ep. 25- How the Sales Engineer Role Is Evolving in Enterprise SaaS, with Ori Weizman · The High-Performing Technical Leader

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back, everybody, to presales unplug the leadership playbook.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Arvi Karkanji.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the founder of Elite Talent.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I primarily work with SaaS companies to help them hire top-tier pre-sales and polesales talent.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: But as always, today is not about money.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: This show is about giving leaders the ability to share what they're doing behind the scenes when they're building apps and the strategies that are literally working in today's market.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: If this is your first time joining us, welcome.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: One quick note you should know before we jump in is that these conversations are live and intentionally unedited.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: So what you hear here today is completely real and exactly how it happened.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: We stream it live on LinkedIn, but you can also catch a replay on our podcast across Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever it is that you listen.
• 0:46
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• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: I personally read every single one of them.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: And on top of that, I always make sure that if you have any questions for the guest, that I can tag him or her and make sure that I get your answers.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: But with that being said, I'm super excited today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm joined by Ori.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: He's somebody with a very strong track record in the in this space, especially especially in pre-sales.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited to dive into your story today and your topic and just really uh talk about your point of views because you have some really good ones, especially right now with the way the market is.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for joining me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's great to be here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me on.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited about this conversation.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I actually uh followed a bunch of your posts and podcasts before and uh really wanted to uh get a crack it coming on here.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for having me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you, by the way, for following.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I'd love to get started with a little bit of your story.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how how did you get started and end up in this like you know wonderful world of pre-sales?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I I always knew that I wanted to go into computers, actually.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a big computer guy.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was born in Israel.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I moved to the States when I was like one and a half.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: My dad got a software development job uh in the States, and so I grew up there, I went to university there, and I just kind of always knew that computers were for me.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: There were computers in my house all the time.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I loved playing computer games, and I was drawn to the computer screen.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um then I thought I wanted to be like a developer, and actually I had kind of a critical moment early in my career where I was looking for my first real job.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had had some internships uh and I wanted to get like a developer job.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I interviewed with a company, I made it all the way to the end, and the recruiter uh called me to be like, listen, uh, we're not gonna give you the job, but I wanted to offer you some advice that I don't think you should be in uh development.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you want to be staring at a screen not talking to anybody for you know 10 hours a day.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he suggested consulting.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So uh once he did that and I kind of looked into it more.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I it kind of took off from there.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh because I wanted to be very technical, especially early in my career, it just was a natural place for me to go in pre-sales.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I worked for a bunch of big consulting firms early early on in my career for over a decade.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it just kind of worked.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It found me, I guess, a bit naturally, but uh it was a good place for me to begin my career, I think.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's so cool, and by the way, so nice of that recruiter to just give you some advice and obviously led to where you are today.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: Were you upset you didn't get the job at this time?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you're like, oh no, I'm not even gonna do it about consulting.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really wanted to go to Chicago, and I had friends there, and like I they brought me out for an interview, and I like spent a day.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a I at this point, I'm like a young kid, like 22 years old.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I get put up in a hotel, like they flew me out, you know.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so it was nice.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I didn't get the job, it was very disappointing.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, after I got over that, it made me realize that consulting was cool and a good place for me because I really need change as like a constant in my career.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So with consulting, it was project-based.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot about business, I learned a lot about a bunch of different types of businesses, a bunch of different types of solutions.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up finding my way into SharePoint, uh, which makes me feel really old to say that.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So anybody who knows what that is, they're probably old like me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but from there, it kind of eventually got, you know, I spent like five and a half years at Deloitte, I spent a few years at Cap Gemini.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I ended up uh moving to Israel actually for a consulting gig as well.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started my own consulting company in Israel and did that for a few years, which was fun.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it also made me realize that you know, I I kind of felt like I was at the end of the line with consulting and even with the the pre-sales aspect of it, and I didn't really want to push for like a partnership.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really want to run my own company anymore.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I actually kind of found my way into uh a sales job with a startup.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's Israel, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Startup nation.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I kind of found my way here uh and it has been uh it's been a career revival.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's not that I wasn't you know doing great before, but uh I feel so much more energy and motivation and drive uh in the in the kind of the startup world.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I absolutely love it and I love what I do, and it's uh it's you know, we take that for granted because when you don't really love what you do, it's really hard to do a good job.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't believe in it, you know, it's really hard to uh to kind of put out good work product and you know adequately service our customers.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been uh it's been a it's been a wild journey, but uh you know, it's all about the journey.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very happy with where I've ended up.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's honestly part of the reason why I'm such a big believer of like everything happens for a reason.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of funny, you know, you get disappointed at the time, but when it leads to this, and now you have the full picture from then to now, you're like it was meant to be to happen, so that's pretty cool.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I was gonna say, and most recently in the current company, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you build the EMIA region from the ground up.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, I was just gonna say I'd love to understand a little bit, you know, what how that how you got the current job, you know, what led to to growing the region and where'd you start to where you're at right now.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like I said, I kind of needed a change in my career.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I was working uh at AWS at the time, and um, you know, I felt like I needed, I had worked for big companies like almost my entire career.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had this stint where I had my own consulting firm, but I was still, you know, my customers were big uh customers, and I was working on teams within those uh customers, so it still felt a lot like I was part of the you know the big corporation.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then I I realized that, you know, one, I didn't really want to be necessarily hands-on technical where I'm actually like building things, which is something that I like doing early in my career, but at this point I didn't really want to do it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, AWS as a uh a pre-sales person, you're you're building stuff like almost on a daily basis.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a few kind of, you know, when you work at a company like AWS, a lot of recruiters reach out to you because they want the people that work there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I had a I had some opportunities at some other large cloud companies like Microsoft and Google, and then I had a recruiter uh from Silk from this startup that reached out to me.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I was just like thinking, like, I I'm like at this place where I just don't know what to do with my career, like where I want to go.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking, you know, why not give this uh startup a shot?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they brought me in originally to be the pre-sales kind of leader in the uh Israel in the Israeli market.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And once I was here and you know, I kind of understood a little bit more about startup life and started, you know, most of my management and leadership was in the states, like the head of sales, the uh head of pre-sales, they were all uh, you know, the global head, the global VPs, they were in the states.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we did have like executives here in Israel, but it made me realize once I kind of became trusted by the company that there's so much more opportunity outside of just the Israeli market, and it made sense to kind of go after that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh they let us run with that.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was paired early on with a different salesperson, and we uh, you know, kind of came up with a plan of attack to go after the uh email market.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: We leveraged the alliances and channels and kind of opened it up.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We got uh a pretty big customer uh that we expanded significantly pretty quickly, and uh the rest is kind of history from that perspective.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it was cool because I really got to build out this sales motion from scratch in a territory that was, I mean, to be honest, it was new to me.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think going through the shock of like I'm Israeli, I was born here, I speak Hebrew, but moving here was a major culture shock for me.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And really selling oh yeah, oh, like really, I I one of the biggest surprises of moving here was uh how much I felt like I stuck out early on.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um it helped me though understand you know that cultures differ, and when you sell to different cultures and different countries and different places and people, you kind of have to uh adjust for that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it was just the right time and the right place.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I think, especially with startups, like when you show initiative and creativity and curiosity, then and then you earn trust by kind of doing the job.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like no one at a startup, no one cares about, you know, were you in the office at nine and did you leave at five?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like have you are you getting it done, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what we need.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So once I got through that and then you know, the kind of realized the sky was the limit.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I'm really driven to win and like very competitive.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so I think that helped me as well.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it was uh it's really been an awesome experience, and I have learned an incredible amount in the five years that I've been here.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I have so many questions, so I'm gonna try to speed through them.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: But first of all, how cool it feels like, at least from what you said, it's like the recruiter or another one has helped you shape the career again into like something, you know, that maybe at the time you didn't really know you needed, but the opportunity showed up.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's part of what I typically say is like even with when I talk to talent and they're not super interested, you know, you just never know when the opportunity comes and when it's the right one.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it might not be the right timing for you, but you know, at the end of the day, are you gonna let it go or switch and you know, kind of fall into something that in a way was meant to be?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then um from there, I wanted to ask in terms of the culture shock part, how how did you learn to deal with different cultures?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like I feel like even in Europe, let alone the US, it's like completely different types of buyers.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: How do you navigate that?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how did you learn it to begin with, or any big mistake that you made that you know made you realize how to fix it?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, and I I've got a great story about this actually.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think uh before I tell you the story, I think there's like a couple things that matter a lot.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: One is like going in with a heads up, this is not my culture.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I do not necessarily understand uh them in the way that I think that I do, and what I might communicate might be absorbed differently than what I intend.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to kind of open your eyes to that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, you can you know do research and ask the questions and and then you make sure that you communicate, you make sure that you understand the response.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like it seems a bit silly, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: We take it for granted, but if the person you're talking to doesn't understand what you're saying and you think that they do, you're in a place where you're never gonna make progress.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a big one.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, the second is honestly experience, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like trial and error.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to have it not work out every time, learn from that, and then you know, improve.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where you get uh the experience part.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like the story that I love to tell about culture shock in Israel is like I am early days, like I'm you know, speaking Hebrew all day, and I've never been more mentally exhausted than I am speaking at Hebrew.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought I knew Hebrew when I came here, and my Hebrew is not good.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm in a room for this meeting with a bunch of different leaders, uh uh all you know, Israelis, Hebrew speakers, and uh they are yelling at each other in Hebrew.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And like I'm like I I speak loudly, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're yelling.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: They are yelling at each other, you know, and like I understand maybe half of what they're saying, but it seems very contentious.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And like in the middle of the in the middle of the whole thing, the main uh guy, like the the senior person, he stops and is like, uh, holy uh do you want us to speak English?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can all see, you know, I'm thinking to myself, like, I'm gonna tell all the Israelis to to speak English with me just because I'm there.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So funny.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the meeting, I like I stayed after and I asked the guy, I'm like, so that was a bad meeting, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that was really bad.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, No, no, like we got we got so much done in my terrible Israeli English accent, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, we got so much done, we were so productive, and everybody was good, and everybody's like hugging and kissing afterwards and talking about their kids, and the ethos, you know, is like to just get it all out to be very direct.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a saying, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you get two Israelis in a room, there's three opinions.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh you know, it's just it was it was jarring, but it was also like eye-opening because hey, you know, this communication is okay, you know, people don't really make it so difficult.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in in the States, that would never fly.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like you raise your tone in iota, and you know, it's it's very uh taboo.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you just you gotta kind of learn, you gotta be able to uh you know swing with the punches and be audible ready to use a sales uh sales term, right?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: To not assume and to kind of go in heads up, but uh I think it builds character, you know, to to be a part of different cultures and to kind of be successful, it's uh it's good, it's a good life experience, it's good sales experience, it's good.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's actually so funny.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I'm originally from Mulvania, and my dad I my dad's always been an entrepreneur and he's owned his own business his whole life, at least since I have memory.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: And every time I was around him, he like or business meetings, whatever, they would always like yell at each other.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd be so uncomfortable.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it was all like when we would end, he'd be like, Yeah, that was a great meeting.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, What just happened?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: So that's so funny that you mentioned that, and it's kind of like similar culture in that sense, but I totally understand it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I prefer well, I'm I've been in the US for like 15 years now.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I prefer one over the over the other, but I've worked with so many Israeli companies and I always appreciate the directness.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, they'll tell you right then and there if they like it or if they don't, or you know, if if they want to move forward or not, and I'll take that any day, you know, other compared to like other ones.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, this is great.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: You'll hear from us, and then it's nothing happening.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I like the directness too.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's better to know kind of where you stand.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, there's American, there's lots of great things about American culture too.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I I love them both.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a child of two worlds, I guess.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, awesome.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, with that being said, I'd love to jump into some juicy pre-sale stuff.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: I know you have a really um good opinion when it comes to SE's becoming like really important enterprise sales cycle.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously you've talked about that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I know you wrote an article.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think is like driving that shift?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that like nowadays, especially with the advent of uh AI and LLMs and the availability of information.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think that back in the day, like so I've always been in sales in some respect, even in consulting, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's relationships, you're selling projects, you're just selling services versus a product.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there was always an aspect of kind of trusted inner circles to get information.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: People relied on, I think, relationships more in terms of someone that I trust that's gonna sell something uh that I should be interested in.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna, you know, leverage this person that I trust to see if this uh might fit me.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think now you like you can get so much information about something so quickly and so easily, and you can be so much smarter, so much quicker.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're not really using these AI tools, you're you're missing out, right?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a lot of hyper on this, and you know, we'll I'm sure we'll get into that too.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um, so I think the fact that the buyer is actually smarter, has better uh information, has the ability to do research, uh makes it more difficult because you now, you know, you can't just like the I said in the article, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: The good old boys uh club of sales, I think is dead.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, people don't have time, and so they don't want to like a lot of times uh people don't even want to go out to like dinner afterwards, you know, they're tired, they want to go home see their family.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's not it's not really the same world.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think because uh the sales are becoming more complex, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because everything is becoming more complex, like AI has opened up a ton of opportunities.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, it wasn't that long ago when no one was using things like ChatGPT and Claude, and now it's like I can't even remember what my day was like before I didn't have access to these tools.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So everything is changing rapidly, it becomes extremely complex.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: People are no longer uh wanting to be in positions where it's a singular decision maker, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's gotta be a much bigger buying committee.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to talk to a lot more people, you have to uh especially if it's like expensive software, right?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in the million dollars in terms of AR for what you're selling, then no one's that sales cycle is gonna be long and it's gonna be difficult.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think from that perspective, you just there is a need for both domain knowledge and technical knowledge in a way that wasn't as uh necessary before.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that it wasn't necessary, but I think it's just becoming so much more uh important now.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is, you know, uh the next article that I'm gonna put out is gonna focus on this.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I kind of alluded it to it in the first one is that I think there's a concept of a technical buyer now.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So like I'm a big uh fan of Pedic and MedPick, and it talks about the economic buyer, that's the E.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that there's a technical buyer that's more than just a champion.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not about you know this person championing you to the economic buyer, it's about a decision gate.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're going through the level boss to get to the final boss.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think that dynamic uh makes things uh materially different, at least that's one of the things.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I I totally agree with you on that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'll I'll say even in my experience as a buyer or a consumer when I buy different softwares, et cetera, like I don't necessarily want to be in like seven different sales calls.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like I prefer to do my own research up front and then literally go to the whatever two to three companies that I feel most comfortable with and have one sales call, give me all the information, and then you know, let's go ahead and either buy or not at that point.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, obviously, I'm talking from a commercial perspective on enterprise sales, like you said, you know, the buying or the buying committee is like way bigger, but I'm sure that they probably have buyer and option exhaust too at this point because there's so much out there.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Competition is probably at I feel like we say this every year, but like at an all-time high, and AI is not making that any any simpler.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, on that perspective, you mentioned something about technical buyers.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you say there's a difference between like a champion and a technical buyer.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: Can you break that down a little bit?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, you know, traditionally the champion is someone that goes to bat for you when you're not in the room, right?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're convincing someone who's a stakeholder but not the decision maker, and this person is trying to convince the decision maker uh when you're not in the room.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think nowadays you have situations where there's a technical buyer that, you know, they can maybe love your software and you can convince them, but you're it's like what you're doing with the economic buyers, you're convincing them to sign uh on the line that is dotted.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do the same thing with the technical buyer.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is someone who is gonna come at you with a skeptical eye that's you know not gonna be a lower level stakeholder, but someone who is potentially an executive, it could be a CIO, it could be a VP, but someone that actually needs to say yes and maybe even has their signature uh on the on the purchase order.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've been in situations where there's actually been multiple signatures.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you have the economic buyer uh is the ultimate authority that approves it, but you still have to have the person who is directly below them, which I think in many cases can be the technical buyer.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this person needs to see that the software that's being implemented is going to, you know, first of all, it's gonna do what it says it does from a technical perspective, right?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, we want to sell the business impact, we want to sell the business decision makers, but there has to be a key technical stakeholder that says this is gonna do what they say that it does.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a lot of times, this is the person that actually validates the PCO, so goes into the numbers, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're selling, like I sell cloud software, so our software, we're an ISV, you know, we have a it goes on top of cloud infrastructure.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: This all needs to be validated.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that role comes down to the technical buyer every time, every single deal that I've been in.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Involved with the person who is doing the TCO is, in my opinion, a technical buyer.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you will now have champions that will help sell to the technical buyer.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're in a position where you're making a decision, the way that you approach the vendor changes materially.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that is the key difference between someone who's a champion who is saying, you know, this is good, this is good for me, and someone who is actually a uh decision maker, because it's like they the chairs kind of flip, right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So ultimately the technical buyer is going to champion you to the economic buyer by saying, yes, like this works, it's the right cost, they're not playing games with us.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can handle this software, our team can handle this software.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's different, I think, than a champion that is actually, you know, there's uh there's a good book called Selling With that I will plug here uh by Navy Brawl.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this talks about how to kind of build champions and sell with your champions within the company so that when you're not there, they're actually making the case for it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna have to mobilize your champions to convince the technical buyer to pass that gate, and then you're gonna have to mobilize uh them to convince the economic buyer as well.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: In many cases, the technical buyer will bring your champions with you to the meeting with the economic buyer to actually convince them too.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I do think it is more than just nuance.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I actually think that this is something that companies need to uh go into with their eyes open and think about.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I you know, it doesn't necessarily need to create a new acronym, but certainly I think it's a it's a more key personality and champion doesn't quite define it.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so in a way, you're saying the technical buyer is a new champion for you inside the company.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It can't like ultimately they're gonna have to be the ones to endorse you to the economic buyer, but I think that only happens after, like they you maybe could say that they change role to a champion once you've gotten that decision to go through.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Until you get their buy-in, they are actually someone that you need to convince and that you need to sell to, and that champions need to convince because at the end of the day, these personalities don't take your word for it ever, nor should they.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna take the word for it of a team, you know, they're gonna look at a TCO and validate it without you, right?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're looking at a cloud calculator, does it match up with what the vendor gave you?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, maybe they flip at one point and become a champion, but uh there is, I think, a concept as a technical buyer that's independent.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, very cool.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, very true.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I wanted to ask just to make sure we clarify for the audience, can you give us an example?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously, don't use one of your own deals, but just an example of like, okay, the champion could be a this type of title, and you know, the technical buyer could be this type of title, just to give the audience a distinction.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, absolutely.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that you're selling to like a SaaS company, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you're trying to sell some software to a company that has a SaaS product that they are then selling to uh you know their own customers, right?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the technical buyer would be someone who owns that SaaS solution from a technology perspective.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So everything that goes into that solution, what technology they use, what feature sets they can offer, um, that is gonna be, you know, probably like a CIO type of executive or like, you know, at the very least, a VP or like head of SaaS product or something like that.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then their you know, boss, who's probably gonna be a CEO or maybe a COO, but definitely an executive that is either at the top or one step below it, they're also going to have that's the person who is actually going to have the budget that says I'm going to approve this too.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like two signatures.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to actually be selling most of the time, like 90% of the time, it's going to be to this technical buyer.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, starting with this person, like you're trying to break into an organization, you don't necessarily need to start with the economic buyer in this particular instance.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can start with this, you know, person, and then this person, you might not even meet the economic buyer, honestly.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: They might know about you, um, but you may not even meet that if this person is, you know, basically making the decision, but they're still gonna have to get the signature, and that signature is still gonna be ultimately what is gonna pay your uh bill, and and you will at one point have an interaction with them where um you know you're gonna have to kind of make a convincing argument and they may bring you in as well.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I think it is I don't think economic buyer really covers that personality, and especially if you're selling software like what I do, uh, where we do target SaaS companies, there I've seen that every time a distinct difference between these uh two personalities, and you have to uh be able to make, you know, you have to be able to convince both of them.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the technical buyer becomes even more key uh in that aspect, and I think they get mislabeled as an economic buyer sometimes too.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you know, it's interesting, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's always differences, it depends a lot on what you sell and who you sell it to, but uh I feel pretty strongly about this, and I like the topic, it seems to be a bit uh controversial.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, no, I I agree.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the buyers have changed in the way they make decisions, and um, you know, with all the software that's out there and everybody promising all these different things, it's probably also been burned before where you know something it promises for you to do this, and then they start and it's like, oh, but it has you know one, two, three limitations, and now all of a sudden they're in a three-year contract.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I think it's true what you're saying, and probably very important nowadays with the way you know AI is and all the softwares that are coming up to really validate the software and make sure that it does work for us for the company or who we're selling to, et cetera.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, on a different note, I I actually made a post about this on LinkedIn a couple of days ago where I talked about how the SC role is changing.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I personally feel like just from you know talking to companies all the time, and they're obviously now hiring for SEs, which I help a lot with, but one of the things that I've seen kind of come up on the rise, not for every single company, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: But um, is that SEs will probably be at some point either required to know how to run a full-cycle deal or at least have knowledge of it so that at the time where maybe an AE is not available or something happens, they know how to take over and end up closing that deal.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't know what your perspective is on that, and I'd love to get your opinion, but I also wanted to ask where do you feel like SEs and AEs really complement each other best when it comes to a deal that it's mainly complex and like enterprise level?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really interesting question.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of thoughts on this too.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think I want to separate two things.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're selling you know software that is more commoditized or uh less complex or less expensive, I don't necessarily think this model that I'm gonna present applies.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're selling complex enterprise software, right, that might be millions of dollars in TCB or AR, hundreds of thousands of dollars in ARR, even, then you're you're it is a it is a very complex process and it's probably a complicated uh technical product, right?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're you know the it tends to the things that are the biggest impact tend to be the most complicated, and uh there's a really a real need for technical background to be able to sell to that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, from an SE perspective, uh and from my personal experience, I have taken deals from zero to close, like from you know, yeah, and I even dig for leads.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like I love hunting, I'm a hunter.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, a lot of what I do on my day to day is think about you know potential new use cases.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I use things like sales navigator and uh zoom info and look, and I do background on companies and I try and target different industries.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I do a lot of this stuff.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and I'm I'm uh my my title is in pre-sales.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the the need for technical acumen in these sales is critical across the board.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, you have to be able to simplify the technical language into a business message.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're not just gonna be talking to you know low-level technical stakeholders or a technical buyer, you're also gonna be talking to an economic buyer and explaining why this software is going to impact your business.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to map the technology feature set that comes uh with the software to the business impact on uh whatever it is that you're you know impacting, uh like we go after applications.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the application's impact to the business uh and how our technology enhances that.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that you know, from an S, I think there's just honestly, I think the SEs of today and uh are are really the million dollar AEs of tomorrow.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're looking at a good uh dynamic between an AE and an SE, there's a lot of work on both ends of that coin, right?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that there's interchangeability, right?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like an AE needs to be able to have some level of ability uh to complement an SE, and an SE needs to have the ability to complement the AE.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I would my suggestion for AEs that want to kind of stay relevant that aren't necessarily uh the most technical uh people is industry focus.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like really know your industry, know what you're impacting across the industry.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are the problems that this industry is having?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: How does your software help solve those problems?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why should the people in positions to make decisions care about what you're saying?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is your business impact uh and how can you speak the industry?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you need to be an expert in industry.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if I want to sell to you know finance and banks and things like that, and I don't know anything about global payments or cross-border payments or things like ISO 222 or Dora, uh, or the Cloud Act or all these other things that are relevant to that industry that are top of mind from those business decision makers, then there's no reason for them to listen to me.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think you want to, as an AE, you have to have a technical background that is solid.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that you also need to be an industry expert and focusing on, like if you're again, if it's more commoditized, it's it's less need to be as in-depth and you know, it's more structured messaging, and you know, commodities usually sell or they do not.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I think you know, at big companies that sell software that is used widely by everyone that isn't necessarily as expensive, that like a department head could approve without any sort of additional soft uh signature is a different situation than you know uh complex enterprise software.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, um you know, being being able to understand medic so that you can uh have like a filter so that the things that you shouldn't invest your time in versus things that you should invest your time in, that's really where medic becomes powerful when you have a lot of uh inbound uh and you need to understand what to focus on.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, in this situation, I think industry knowledge, like AEs that don't have industry knowledge or technical background, you know, like I mean, honestly, like what would you what would you say you do here to know uh office space?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so old.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: These movies are old, everything I'm saying is old.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's funny.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I will say I'll validate that because even on my end, when I'm working with companies, most of the time they're looking for somebody that's specialized.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I agree with you that even if you don't have technical experience, the more you're able to stay in like one industry and one lane and get so good at it, people are should I say people, but companies are paying more for specialized knowledge versus somebody that's moved around from industry to industry and it's like a do-it-all in you know all these aspects, but you don't really know it all.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, I can definitely agree with that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, I would just add uh one last point is like the only way that you're gonna sell million-dollar software to someone is because they have an industry-specific problem and they don't know how to deal with it or uh they need you badly.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not you're not gonna, it's not a nice to have at that point when you're at that level.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have to know what their problem is, you have to understand how you solve it.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's more than just like cost savings, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cost savings to me is commoditization.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: If all you're talking about is we're gonna save you money, a lot of people don't, you know, less people than you think care about that.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody says they want to save money, and it is certainly uh, you know, kind of a negotiation tactic, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta save us money in some way, but most of the people, when you're selling like critical software, they care way more about how it's gonna expand their business than they do about how you know is it gonna cost less than what I'm currently using?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, very true.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I wanted to shift gear slightly into the world of AI.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And you told me that you said in the in your company's AI committee, is there is there any big misconception that you see about AI right now replacing whether it's an AE or SE or just go-to-market roles in general?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: No idea.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have to say, I think that AI replacing people in sales, SDRs, whatever is actually not even remotely close to being at that level, even if you're selling like some commoditized software, like you could put together a workflow that might reach out to people, but it is there is no way that it is actually replaced, like you're not gonna put an AI agent in place of a human and think that you're gonna get anything accomplished.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're talking about like enterprise sales, again, million to a hundred seven, six, seven-figure type sales, zero chance because no one wants to buy from an AI agent, no one thinks that an AI agent understands them.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: There is no relationship between a human and an AI agent.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I honestly think it is nonsense.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I see it all over LinkedIn, I see all sorts of the latest one that I thought was interesting was uh uh interviewing candidates with AI.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was curious to know what you think about that because like if I ever went on an interview and it was with an AI agent, I'm pressing the red button and getting out of that interview immediately because if I'm not worth their time to bring a human to talk to me, then uh it ain't it ain't worth my time either.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's so funny that you mentioned that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: No, I agree.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the only time you can maybe get away with AI interviewing is if you're one of those big companies, you know, like Google or Microsoft, and they're doing that initial screening because they have thousands and tens of thousands of applicants.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: But outside of that, especially as a startup, interviewing with AIs, probably like exactly like you said, the experience I've had is that most candidates are gonna say, if you're not gonna value me, then I'm just gonna move on to something else.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I think they're obviously needed within the process, like you can help with workflows or for example, automating rejections, which a lot of people still complain to this day that they just get ghosted by companies, which to me is insane because I feel like that's part of the reason why AI should be used for.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, yeah, a lot of thoughts on that.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's a whole different podcast we need to do on.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: But um I was gonna mention a funny story.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: I saw somebody on LinkedIn complain that they signed up with an AI SDR company that was basically gonna replace our entire SDR team, and they uh didn't get any book calls for their first three months, and they were trying to get out of the contract, and they couldn't get out of the contract, and they signed a three-year agreement with them.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: And he was just like, I don't know what I'm gonna do because this literally sucks.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe a tip for anybody on there don't sign three-year agreements or something that you haven't tested or proven before with any sort of guarantees.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of hype, like, and uh we're human and it's such a human response FOMO, like fear of missing out, right?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it you you think that oh, I if I don't do this, I'm gonna be obsolete, or and then you know, there's always the case of people that are uh you know lack empathy and think I want more money in my pocket and I'm gonna save money, and but it's really there are no shortcuts here, like for startups.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, very, very, very rarely does a startup immediately uh gain traction.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of iteration uh from a lot of different people across a significant amount of time.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you hear about the unicorns, you hear about the whiz, right?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the biggest uh deal that ever happened.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, back in the day when I was starting out, Waze was a big one, right?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh and this really started big splash, but that is like 0.0001% of the companies.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you have an exit that's like 500 million, you know, and you're not a unicorn, it still can be very positive and very successful.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, um, I think people have like a fear of missing out.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say this like I I think I used the analogy with you, and maybe it was even in the description for this, but it it's AI is like watering a seed, right?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like the seed is still required, the seed is the human being.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you have the right tool set and you understand how to use it, you can grow into a very big, formidable tree that is solid, and this is how you're gonna differentiate yourself from everybody.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm gonna give you an example.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I use three different LLMs every single day.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I use uh Copilot for work, and Copilot actually has Claude and other uh models built into it, uh including Chat GPT.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then I use uh Claude as kind of like my main personal one, and then I use ChatGPT for you know, I don't use Google anymore.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's something kind of simplistic that I don't care about, I'll put ChatGPT so I don't use the tokens on uh Claude.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: But like if it's something that I need uh you know thoughtfulness for, I use Claude.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it is an enabler of uh like ideas.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to speak if I want to get through a problem or solve something or figure something out, and it's good because I don't take everything that it tells me at face value.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm very skeptical, and a lot of times I'll just tell the like you know, maybe this is a bridge too far for people, but I named uh the AI too, I just call it Athena, right?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Athena is like the goddess of wisdom.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I like Greek mythology, so yeah, I just refer to it as Athena because it makes it more, you know, a person that I can talk to, and I can disagree with this, you know, person.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is what helps me, right?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is what differentiate, and it's like crazy how like productive it makes me because it helps me work through things that would take me so much longer on my own, you know.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, even if I'm talking to you know one of my friends or a colleague, like the vast knowledge at the fingertips of Athena is enormous.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: So they can comment, she can comment on everything, and I can have like a back and forth conversation, and then it triggers in my mind, you know, what I what I think is uh good and what is not, and I kind of dig deeper into that, and like it really it enables me, it brings creativity out of me, it brings ideation out of me.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is like the ultimate brainstorming capability, and that's I think the main power.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know, there's the there's the stuff that's like I never have to take meeting notes, and I'll tell you what, I was awful doing that before anyway.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, like using facilitated with teams, it's like insane.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, right when I got my hands on this, I immediately across the board implemented it, and you know, so I do a lot of stuff like that, right?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that there's the tedium that I don't have to deal with.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of like the co-work uh AI space, but in my opinion, like the real power is in the uh enablement of creativity, of brainstorming, uh of research, and like the discussion that you can have because it's it's really wild like to be talking about something that's uh actually human.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is crazy, uh, and it's gotten so big in such a short time.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: I said that the original will just yeah, drop question for you Do you label like, for example, Clotter here and like uh Chatchup T or she or are they both she is?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: What's your name?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I talk to AI, it's just another thing.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I'll say it helps me to treat it like a person, honestly.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but well uh I asked them what are we joking my company about it because I always call it uh yeah.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'll they send it to you.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I asked because I also personalized, I didn't give them names, which probably I should, but I call Claude She and like Chat GPT a he.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know why, maybe it's just the way they were named.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I guess I posted about this on LinkedIn like a while ago, and people were like, What do you mean you give them personalized like like human factors?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think it's I think it's great to do that.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's you you you know you're talking to a robot, absolutely, like there's no question about it, right?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but it really it just helps to to address that.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the point of an LLM, right?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: A large language model, a a natural language model where you can speak in plain English and get plain English-based responses.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's supposed to do.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I just find it very helpful to do it that way.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'll say one more thing before we move on to our rapid fire section.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: But um, one thing I've also noticed is that it's not, you know, you you mentioned the aspect of, you know, I don't want to waste my tokens on something that's kind of silly for a clog.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been on tons of leadership meetings and I'm part of leadership groups as well.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I know AI became like the hype and people are letting go of so many people and layoffs, you know, for AI so companies can try AIs.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if you saw it, but Ford hired back like 300 of the people they laid off because AI couldn't do what they did.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: Shocker.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I've also had neighbors with uh leaders within startups tell me that we're going back to hiring a human because tokens are.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Expensive, it's the equivalent of hiring a human, letting them do their thing, and also I don't have to manage them because uh as you probably noticed, once you're trying to build something, especially on clouds, somebody has to still manage it, like you still need to be some sort of an expert or coder because you just don't like they're not gonna do it right all the time, and then you just waste the time doing all these things that they don't lead to anything.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I will the best example I can say of AI and how it can enhance your company is like the Iron Man suit.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is it is complicated, it is advanced technology, but it can make you fly and it can do all sorts of great stuff.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: You still have to know how to use it, you still have to use it responsibly.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you still, you know, it but it can't it's not gonna do it on its own, right?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's really a good example because there's uh I in the movies, they actually have scenes where the suits themselves go and do something, but it's directed by person, or it's not just going and making decisions, like you're still um, you know, and uh and uh what's the guy, Jeeves?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jeeves is uh like an LLM, right?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in the suit that uh Tony Stark has.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's kind of the way that I look at it.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can it can definitely enhance uh your workforce, but it's not all it's not the easiest.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I would say if you want to differentiate yourself, especially in sales, uh learn how to use these tools effectively and do a lot of trial and error.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way to do it is to just start talking to it.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and if you do that, you will kind of find your way.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think curiosity and creativity are yeah uh like you know worth their weight in gold in uh sales, especially in startups.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if you can leverage AI tools well, you're gonna.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can blow people's minds.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like the first when this whole thing started, uh and I started using this, I gave a presentation at one of the QBRs in my company, and people were like losing their minds because they didn't realize that like you could do this type of stuff with it, and it that wasn't that long ago, and now everybody is doing this, and it's like on to the next thing.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the form multiplier here is significant, but you do have to put effort, you do have to understand how it works, and it is not the battery deal.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's you can't just be like to the Metmobile, and then everything is gonna take care of itself, you know.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's still it takes time and effort, and it takes human beings.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Couldn't agree more.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I can't believe we're already at the rapid fire section, but these are fast questions, they don't have to be short answers.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, what is one tool that you can't live without right now?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: But you can't say AI because we just talked about the LLMs.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was my answer.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is I literally can't live without uh LLMs, but you know, like if you have to pick something else, honestly, LinkedIn.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like LinkedIn gives me a huge amount of insight.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn like paired with sales navigator too, because a lot of times, like I'll have theories about use cases or about industries, and I'll go to LinkedIn to try and prove it out.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll look at different personalities, profiles, posts.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll try and look at different companies and see what the roles are at these companies and if they match up with my theory.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of garbage on LinkedIn.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, honestly, it can be like the worst social media ever.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you kind of get through that nonsense, then you can find a lot of real like honestly, you like finding you on LinkedIn, I thought was incredibly insightful, and I thought that you had a lot of great posts.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um it would I and I I'm on LinkedIn every single day.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, like and I um so it's really and on every job I've gotten is literally from LinkedIn.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: This job that I have was from LinkedIn, the AWS job, someone reached out to me on LinkedIn.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like the job that moved me to Israel was LinkedIn.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I got a message from a recruiter, and a month later I was living in Israel.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: So talk about like you know, life changing events.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, yeah.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very well, I wouldn't say underrated tool because I know people now use it to the full potential, but I will say a lot of people have love hate relationships with it, but I think it just comes down to like you said, they let the garbage stuff get in their head and you know, they get distracted or et cetera, which it happens to everybody once in a while, but if you use it to its full potential, it's a very, very powerful tool.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I once saw a LinkedIn post that said, if you fail at business, just succeed.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, if that's not like the ethos of LinkedIn, I mean, it's like you know, like there.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I saw another post from someone who was like in the hospital because they overworked themselves, and they made this long post about how they were in the hospital.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the the last thing that this person said was the takeaway was that they need to work harder, like they're in the hospital posting on LinkedIn from that.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, it's it gets wild out there.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you why.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: It does get wild.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen some crazy posts.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen some uh the funniest one I've seen to this day probably is a startup company out of uh San Francisco where they had tents in their office, and this young, young founders maybe in their early 20s, and this guy had posted just a picture basically in his pajamas in the office while they're sleeping in tents, and he was like looking for people to join my startup.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you like this type of grind, come join me.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, what the hell is going on?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, yeah, it can definitely get very wild.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: All right, second question What is the biggest growth lever for SaaS in 2026?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: See, I yeah, I like if you can figure out how to impact your product with AI, I mean that literally it's it's it is it ain't easy.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is not easy, it is not simple, not even a little bit, but uh, and everybody wants to talk about AI, but if you can figure out how to make a material impact on what you offer through AI, and I I don't mean like service-wise, right?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think from a coding perspective, you it can't replace coders.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're you know, massive companies like Facebook, it's a bit of a different story, but you know, startups, like you're not you're gonna have bad coders make bad code that senior people are gonna have to rewrite.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but if you're good at coding, like remember the seed analogy, it can greatly enhance your code.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're doing more to take care of more technical debt and then focusing on feature sets and things like that, or using AI agents to do something in either an active way or in an agentic way that materially impacts like one, I'll give you an example in finance.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, right now, like payments, it's driving huge revenue growth for banks and uh instant payment and like wanting to like think about it, right?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you send money to a friend, you want it to be instantly available.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be that you'd wire it to them and it would take them.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it would take them a couple days or something like that.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a big amount, it could take longer.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that these uh banks have to do now, especially from a compliance perspective, is they have to have an in-flight fraud check.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: So before the transaction can come back and say it is acceptable or for it to go through, you have to have a uh fraud check that gives you a risk profile that if you're above a certain number, it ends the transaction or flags it for further review or delays it.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: So an AI agent here can come in and do this intelligently across multiple risk models, and you can build out a specific model just for this.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then you can have like an agentic uh AI service that goes and scans all of your transactions after the fact to see if there's anything there, and you can like conversationalize your data to say, you know, it like you can actually talk and say, hey, what you know, what transactions have we flagged that look fraudulent?
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this can help provide better services, faster services uh from banks to their customers for banks to leverage things like instant payments, uh, for them to leverage uh cross-border payments, uh, which have now been enabled through ISO 222.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's and this is like you know, I'm I'm like talking about one little you know area of use cases.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a way that this can impact uh every single SaaS company, uh, but they need to do it in a way they need they can't just you have to put effort.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like everybody wants to not put effort at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what it is, you have to put effort.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: You you will be able to do more, right?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Infinitely more, right?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like the invention of the wheel allowed you to do a lot more.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: You still had to put a lot of effort into carrying whatever from wherever, but now instead of only being able to go, you know, 10 feet, you can now go 10 miles or you know, uh 10,000 miles.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it it always comes down to enabling you to do more, uh, but it still takes lots of effort.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the effort is what people always forget, right?
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: The effort that it used to take you to walk a mile uh versus the effort that it takes you to drive a hundred miles, right?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: That like you once you're enabled, you forget about that effort that it you like now that I can go a hundred miles, it's like I don't even remember what it was like to not be able to do that.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it still takes effort and it still has to be done responsibly.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's you know, and AI is making everybody crazy because it's it's like you you can talk to this thing, right?
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just it's hard to deal with.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: I get that, but you know, there's always effort.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I get annoyed now when I don't get an answer in like 0.4 seconds versus like what's the installation?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like I get real real annoyed now like a female chill.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're you're babbling on.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: I need you to give me some concise summaries here.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's so funny.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one in a way, bonus question, but what have you had any like bad hiring decisions and what did you learn most from it?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, so I've hired a lot of people in my career.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've done way too many interviews.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've made some actually early on in my career.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh I became like a manager pretty early.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was like 24.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I I made a real, real poor uh hiring decision that really like affected a lot of different things.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like there's a at the end of the day, what you it depends on what you're hiring for, of course, right?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's context.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And let me I'll put it into like you know, current context, like with sales and SEs and you know, pre-sales and and salespeople.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that in sales, you are always supposed to have all the answers.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're you gotta be able to navigate a conversation that goes south on you.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be audible ready, you have to have command of the message, you know, all these different buzzwords that people in sales like to use.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, like you need someone that can admit when they don't know something, because the difference between someone who understands what they don't know and someone who's just trying to tell you what you want to hear is significant.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you put that person in front of like a customer, right, then they're gonna they're gonna try and BS their way to the finish line.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if it's if you don't know and you can acknowledge it, then there's ways to talk about, you know, I'll get, I will get you an answer or I need to circle back or whatever it is that you need to do.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that like I think you have to you have to be someone that can be honest with yourself, you know, and you don't and you aren't afraid to make a mistake.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: I honestly think that is the number one most important thing to hire for it is that you are like you'll you'll go into an interview, you'll ask someone like a question, and I've done a lot of technical interviews, and people just give me answers that are wrong, and they don't know that you know, they're hoping that it's right, but they they don't know.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of saying, I don't know, but maybe it's this, they go in and they try and you know speak with confidence.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is no good, right?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're doing that, you also if you if that if you get by that gate that way, you're you don't have curiosity to figure it out either.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I want I need someone that wants to be creative, that wants to be curious, that wants to learn.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're learning all the time.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I learned something new on every single deal that I go through, I learn something new with every single personality that I deal with.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if I can't admit that I don't know everything uh to myself and I can't be honest with myself, then everything flows kind of downwards from there.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's that is no question the most important thing.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take someone that has less skill, skill can be learned, skill can be earned.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take someone that has less skills.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: They have the willingness.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: We need, you know, it's sales is competition, right?
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta have drive, you gotta figure it out at all costs.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm a hunter, I want to go hunting, I want to figure it out.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: So if I had to summarize, I feel like hiring in 2026 would be in two words would be curiosity and just the ability to figure it out.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's I feel like the two number one skill sets that everybody is hiring for, and rightfully so because of the world we're in.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, I I couldn't agree more.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: Curiosity and drive.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, curiosity and drive, correct.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um on the hiring section, what are you and I know you just spoke about it, but is there any certain like red flags that kind of jump out to you when you're interviewing somebody that you know for sure, like this person is not gonna work out here?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think I think like not being able to handle nerves, uh like someone that is talking very fast, that isn't comfortable.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it says a lot about how how they are in terms of this job, like if this job is a reach for them or not a reach for them.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think also like I think like being able to design, like I for an SE, I think the most important thing is designability.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So like I wanna I wanna have conversations where I actually see the thought process play out in real time.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that is how I kind of test for the uh comfort level of the person.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I'm comfortable with my skills and someone asks me to design something that I maybe haven't designed before, then I I'm okay with showing how my thought process works, how I move through that problem and what questions I might ask, you know, versus someone who is speaking fast, doesn't take a break, doesn't ask a question.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like you know, so I want to understand how people break down problems, how people deal with scenarios that they weren't necessarily expecting.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so I think that's that's kind of like I really like organic interviews.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I really hate question and answer type stuff.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like the KM.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like honestly, people will always uh talk about like medic.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you understand medic and whatever?
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: But medic is an acronym that is super easy to learn.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: But like to put it in play in practice, uh, you don't necessarily have to know what the acronym is to be able to commit, you know, to run a sales cycle, uh especially at a startup.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because like startups don't need medic as much as big corporations.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you have a fire hose of you know leads coming in from marketing, from channels, from alliance, then medic helps you screen for what you should actually address and kind of get the noise out of the way versus a startup where like you really don't know your market, you don't know your ideal customer profile, like you're kind of guessing and you need to make decisions on the fly.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's why I always I always use that type of interview style.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if I'm looking for someone in the space.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think anybody's ever said that, and I think it's a very underrated um not tactic, but advice in terms of like, especially in this case, we're hiring for customer facing roles, so you're not knowing how to negotiate your own emotions and you know navigate them through, and when you're speaking, etc.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: your confidence level, that obviously says a lot, and especially for enterprise deals, I mean they'll probably eat you alive if you show up like that on these big, you know, multi-enterprise type corporations.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, trust like if they don't trust you, they're never gonna trust someone that they think is telling them what they want to hear.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's why you hear constantly hear the uh stereotype of salespeople just kind of like being sales, like used car salesman, like you know, telling you greasy salesperson, like it's because there is some truth to it, right?
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where salespeople are trying to paint the prettiest picture without any sort of problems, but that's not that's not really how business uh works.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Business is messy, like business is real messy, and being successful at a business takes a lot of uh everything.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not, you know, you're not like you don't get on a uh uh electric train that goes 500 miles per hour, right?
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: You building that train, you started out with a train that was very uh dirty, that was coal-based, that you know, and then it took a long time to get to that.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people think there are shortcuts, a lot of people think that um they can just kind of walk their way into everything.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, the the good old boys' club of sales I think is dead.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, being comfortable with yourself is what gives people uh confidence in you and trust in you, and and you got to believe in what you sell.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I could never work for a company where their product is something that I don't believe in.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so Trin, I think this is a perfect timing to just end our episode.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you so much for coming in and sharing all your journey, your value, and just everything that you're going through right now.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_03: There's honestly so much notes to take from this episode.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I always like to say that if you didn't have the ability to take the notes live, make sure to bring in your note taker so that you can take proper notes and actually implement everything that you just shared.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I again I thank you so much.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: And where can anybody, if anybody wants to connect with you, where can they find you?
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_03: What's the best way?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_03: Is it LinkedIn?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, LinkedIn.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh just my profile is I guess I got in early.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's LinkedIn slash IN slash Ori Wiseman, and that's my profile.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: So check me out there.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I got some articles that I write, I do some posts, uh, send me a DM.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking to people about anything, everything.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: Love that.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, we'll we'll always put in the show notes as well to make it easy for everybody.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but thank you again.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_03: It was a pleasure.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and see you all on the next episode.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.