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Chris Mabry, Head of Community at Iris · Pre-Sales Pathways

• Chris: Hi Chris, thanks for joining me on the show today. Chris Mabry: Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with another Chris. We're taking over the world. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I think I mentioned on the previous call when I was at Slack, I was the only Chris Clark and then we got acquired by Salesforce and suddenly there was like 15 Chris Clarks. We had to have a group chat just to coordinate the confusion when people were visiting the wrong office for the wrong person. yeah, it's the joys of having a very common name. Chris Mabry: Love that. Chris: I saw you guys ran a happy hour with shuffleboard recently. looked like really good fun. Chris Mabry: Yeah, so we were in Austin I think we've gotten to the point where if we're getting people together, we wanna do something fun, right? And it's not not just about renting out the bar. So shuffleboard, we try to be really creative and get into places that a little more fun. Chris: Amazing. Yeah, for the Europeans listening, I had never come across shuffleboard before I went to the US, but if I remember correctly, it's like a long board covered in sand. You have to push something down. Chris Mabry: Yeah, yeah. It's like it's almost like bocce board but like on a board. Like a like a like inside, you know? Basically you have to throw and then you have to see how close you get to the to the anchor piece. ⁓ yeah, I'm no good at it at all. but you know, it's something to do. Chris: Awesome. Yeah, like you said, it's nice to mix things up. So Chris, terms of your career, we'd love to start, you know, right at the beginning, at least ⁓ terms of when you transitioned into pre-sales, talk us through how that first move actually happened. Chris Mabry: Yeah. Okay, so it all started with one call, Chris. I was my my backburn is in network engineering, so har like hardcore tech. And had a a a mentor of mine who went to a company, a startup, and was a ⁓ one of the execs there. I had dinner with him and said, Man, like working in this basement's not working out for me. It's not really my personality. I like the job, but it's not great. He said, Okay, let's let's Let's see if I have anything for you. And I started an implementation and post sales implementations success for for this company. And like many people that get into pre-sales, like Brian that you had on your last episode and others, it's like we kind of find ourselves into these roles. I so I'm sitting I'm sitting at my desk and our department on same I mean, we were a small company, we're in the same floor a sales team, and I could overhear a sales call. Okay, they had it on speakerphone. And it's a sales manager and the account executive talking. And I'm listening to them and they're just like, they're overcoming objections. They're asking great questions. They're all doing all the things that I end up learning as a s as a seller, you know? And I literally get up and I say, Brett, whatever you did on that call, I want to learn it. And he laughs at me and he's like, Chris, I lost the deal. don't want to learn how to do that. And was like, I was like enamored. ⁓ by sales in general. because I thought that if I could learn how to do what they're doing, I ⁓ I apply this to my entire life, not just at work. and that one call really ⁓ gave me a of motivation to study at night, to listen to more, to be involved. And that's how I got into sales engineering was at was at that company working for him actually. Chris: Amazing. So you were, you know, before that in implementation at the company, you overheard this call that it's like really transformational gets you excited about the sales aspect. And you mentioned you were doing some sort of training or learning and development on the evenings and weekends. How exactly did that move happen? Chris Mabry: know, I'm I think it's I put myself in the ring, man. You know, it it's there there's there I don't know if intentionality at the time was like was like I I didn't have a a whiteboard trajectory here to get into this role, but what I did is I said I want to learn how to have these conversations and to be so confident and comfortable in these calls, especially when being told no. And And so what I started doing is I I basically I became like every seller's favorite implementation guy because I was I had soft skills and I was like learning soft skills and I cared about making sure that they were successful so there wouldn't be any churn. Okay. That into me joining sales like pre-sales calls. and during the pre-sales calls, I was just showing up the of the account executive in mind. And they were the ones said, man, we we want Chris out. the road with us. ⁓ so I I I think if I look at the different different process I took, I think it was I a tremendous respect for the sellers out the gate. I didn't kind of I I think a lot of people in pre-sales like to harp on sellers because we have bad experiences with some of them. but I took the opposite approach and I was really I would really craft good like Chris: Thanks. Chris Mabry: good calls and experiences for them to try to help them win their deals. a can be said by being the person at the company that people lean on. Something we talk about often, which is like, it's not popularity, but it's reliability. Knowing that you're not going to sink their deal means a lot. Chris: Yeah, 100%. And so it sounds like, you you become interested in the role. actually create opportunities to do that work in your current role or previous role. us through then what happens. You actually formally transition into pre-sales. Where do you go next from there? Chris Mabry: Yeah, I'm in pre-sales. and then then my wife and I had our first kid. We were in Austin, Texas, and ⁓ had our first child and we decided to move to New York where she's from. ⁓ And in role, I found locally I found a company that had some really incredible offices and a really incredible culture. And I shifted lead their networking And and that's how I ⁓ like Chris: Okay. Chris Mabry: That's how I found solution engineering management. So take this, I take this t this craft, I learn, I go to a different company, and then I find at that company we were like high growth, like super high growth, doubling the size of the team. Then there was a lot of need for internal process improvements, in the organization. And that's where I got into leadership. Chris: Amazing. Yeah. And you, mentioned the previous episode with Brian. He actually talked about that initial transition from IC to first lime energy being the, you know, the most difficult one of the career. Does that resonate? Like what did that transition feel like for you? Chris Mabry: ⁓ a hundred percent, man. When I was listening to Brian's conversation, I was thinking, yep, yep. I'm sitting there just shaking my head. Like, an interesting transition, you know. One that I didn't there's a of things I didn't know until until I made the transition. I'll cover I'll cover two things with you now, and we can dig into them more if you want. the first piece is is you have to represent success of the You you are basically a ⁓ A manager is somebody who is a representative, representative of the business overall. So when you're an IC as a solution engineer, you can look at all the problems and you can say, like, well, why doesn't this work this way? Or product never listens to me when I put in my feature requests, or know, the salespeople, they just never prep, they just throw demos on our calendar. But when you get into management, you think you have to get your mindset into the fact that. The salesperson putting the meeting on your calendar at the last moment, it's it's still an opportunity to work. You should still probably join the call. maybe that's gonna help us hit our number. you have to think of things differently. Maybe product doesn't, yeah, they hear what you're saying, but that's not where the market's going. So they're not just ignoring you, but they need to build the business so that it's more valuable. So that changes your relationship with the business and everybody you've worked with so far on a 180. All of a sudden you're not everybody's friend anymore. And you are an agent of the business. Number two was just how much influence an IC can have. y I thought just like many people think that it takes getting into a management role to change the business or to make process improvements, you realize pretty quickly, or at least I did, that like actually ICs have a lot more power than you think, and maybe even more than managers do. I was an IC who was like always focused on operational efficiencies and I was always raising my hand to take on new projects and stuff. but I didn't quite understand the level of impact I could have been making. Chris: Yeah, I'd actually, I'd love to drill into that second point because a lot of I speak to, one the main things that entices them moving into line management is they feel like they want to have a bigger impact. They feel like they want to influence decisions. And I'm curious, cause it sounds like you're saying you actually have the opportunity to do that as an IC. You know, you don't necessarily need to move into management. Chris Mabry: Yeah. Well, you know what, Chris, it's the difference between management and leadership. They're two different things. And leadership can happen in any role. And and you can make process improvements, change the product, change your go-to-market strategy, whatever way you lean, you might lean towards marketing, you might lean towards product and engineering. You can make those adjustments at time. you just have to get internal stakeholders on your side. You have to do the campaigning that you would do as a manager anyway. ⁓ don't just become a manager and say, I I know what we should do, and everybody listens. the difference is though, when you get into management, you have, you know, one day a week, you've got seven one on ones to do. You've got to people, you've got to think about performance. You have to think about your low performers and how to bring them up. You to think about so many other aspects of the organization that take a lot more of your time. So when you get in the management, you can't focus on those kind of organizational impacts that you were probably thinking you could because you've got to have you've got to do interviews. Maybe you have to do 16 interviews before you find somebody. That's an hour each, right? there's so much more to the role that's not to impact the day to day life of your team that that that I just didn't really like. Y you know it's there, but you don't think about how much time it takes. Chris: Yeah, yeah, it really is just a totally different role, isn't it? It's a totally different role with the new set of Yeah. Chris Mabry: Yeah, it's like a it's it's a totally different type of job and it's no longer the job you had and you're learning a new job. Chris: Yeah. So on the topic of totally different type of job, you move from your first pre pre sales role or solutions engineering role, you then move into a management leadership role. Then you join pre-sales collective talk, talk us through that. Chris Mabry: Yeah, that was crazy. So so the pre-sales collective thing is this was me. I I found the pre-sales collective and I wanted to be a part of the overall craft and community and conversation of this profession at large. Pre-Sales Collective is the de facto number one largest organization for that. So I joining events just to listen. and then I submit a speaking request on the website. Just like I found a button and I typed in a topic and it was accepted. I thought I had anything interesting to say. I thought, who's gonna listen to me? I'm just a normal guy who has a normal job. but it turns out a couple of that thing led to another thing which went pretty I wouldn't say viral. I mean, we're in a very niche organizational thing here, but it went pretty well. And then my LinkedIn blew up and I was like, I was like, whoa, something's here. Chris: ⁓ wow. Chris Mabry: This is this is something that I can dig into. Fast forward a year or so, I'm an ambassador of the organization. I've grown within that organization. And that organization needs a new leader. And the ⁓ the who aren't owned the organization reached out to me and saying, hey Chris, like what we've loved, what we've seen, ⁓ and internally team really likes you. We'd like to talk to you about running pre sales collective. And I had no idea how b even even how it operated, honestly. But I was really ready to start. I really was ready for my first operator role. I wanted to really run a business. I wanted to own a profit loss statement. I wanted to own I wanted to report to a board. so it was kind of perfect timing and and that's what brought me to leading the organization. Chris: Yeah, incredible. And you mentioned that, you know, moving into the first management role, there's a shift in perspective. You need to think a bit more broadly and a bit, you know, about the different departments and their perspectives, but actually running all of that is a, you know, I'd say here, totally different kettle of fish. Like, was the, did that feel? What were some of the biggest adjustments to make? Chris Mabry: I mean, know, it was it like huge in so many ways. the opportunity I built into this ⁓ I at end of the day I I I I said yes because it was just it was such a huge opportunity for me in many ways. But I understood I understood the weight of it. I was first of all filling the shoes of two of the most popular people in my industry globally. I was taking on Chris: Mm-hmm. Chris Mabry: everything they built, you know, the biggest leadership community in the world, the biggest podcast in the world, the biggest newsletter in the world, like top stuff, you know, things that I would read as a ⁓ as as a as a right? At the same time, I ha so I had to keep all of that going. and then at the same time I had to make the organization you know work. And it costs money to run that organization, you have to get paid. so was like it was incredibly stressful, incredibly exciting the same time. but I was doing like every week I was I was essentially doing something new that I had never tried before in an extremely public fashion, like in front of hundreds and hundreds of people. So so it was I it was like Trial by fire doesn't really cover it, you know? And I and at the end of the day too, Chris, I was thinking, man, if I'm the one who messes this up, this is my entire profession. So only is it like, you because you can, you can, let's say you work somewhere and it's not working out for you, okay? ⁓ Let's you're not catching on to the product, let's say it's just not your background and you took a chance. You can exit that that technology company, let's say you work for a SaaS company, and you can go to the next one. Nobody's really gonna know. Chris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Chris Mabry: Everybody knew what I was doing. Literally anybody who ever wanted to hire me or anybody I wanted to work with in my career was watching. so it's a it was awesome, you know. I ⁓ I loved it. It was a different type of it was a different type of challenge than I'd ever had. Chris: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I can imagine. like you said, the reputational risks that that carries is massive, right, compared to anything you would have done before. So then ⁓ follows that and what was some of the motivation for your next move? Chris Mabry: Yeah, well, we got it back on track. We grew. I was traveling every week. I met dozens, hundreds of really cool people and built some incredible I've still had people reach out to me saying, Chris, like that that one time we talked back in whatever really impacted me. Thank You know? ⁓ so I had all of those things happening, which was just Chris: Amazing. Chris Mabry: And but but also the opposite. I mean, everybody's telling me how bad it was too, right? You get like you get all the feedback. what happened is ⁓ sponsors of organization are all solving pre-sales problems. And I got to be ⁓ really friends with a lot of them. and I to myself, wow, the next I I I worked working, I missed working with software and tech because I do have a tech background and I like the technology side of it. And I thought, man, if I go and work on a in a tech company again, I want to solve a problem I've had before. And I want to solve a problem in my profession for the people in my profession. And so that led there were opportunities on the table, and I took one in demo automation, and that's what led to my next move. critical to keep pre-sales collective going. I'm still a huge fan of them. And but took the move to operate. a SaaS company because I wanted to get back into tech. I wanted to get I wanted to lead a pre-sales team again. I didn't want to lose the capabilities. didn't want to, you know, forget how it works, right? And I wanted to report to an investor board. It was a way for me to actually get myself in the room with VCs and get into the next phase of my own operator journey, which was I wanted to learn how to like really a software company. Chris: Yeah, yeah. And then fast forward to your current roles. So you mentioned that you wanted to sort of get back onto the side of things, focus on a problem space that you were really familiar with. What led you to your current role in Iris? Chris Mabry: You know, I think it was two years ago, or was right when LLMs came out, I did a summit, like an AI summit at Pre Sales Collective. And the chat, there was like 500 people there or something. And in the chat, I'd asked, like, what's the one problem you want AI to solve for you? And it was like 90% of the people who responded said RFPs. Okay. And RFPs ⁓ generally in market like a plumbing problem. Everybody has them. Chris: Okay. Chris Mabry: Nobody really likes working on them. I think I think differently than that. I think that RFP space, the proposal space is this, it is one of those problems that nobody likes. That we as solution engineers, we get on a Friday afternoon, we have to finish them by Monday. They there are 150 questions. But what if you flipped the coin and you turned all of those things into ⁓ revenue generating opportunities for your company? What if you could hit your number responding to bids that are out there already in the wild? And I wanted to s I wanted to help solve this problem because I've had it before. I've ran teams that we responded to them. I've I've felt the pain. I also think that AI is like the perfect tool for it. and I was friends with Ben Hills, ⁓ one the founders of Iris, ⁓ and he was the first phone call I made. And I said, Hey Ben, I Chris: Okay. Chris Mabry: I wanna make this work. Like I I wanna help solve the RFP problem. I know the way you're doing it's the best. I do the team. fast forward now, I think I'm ⁓ ⁓ eight month mark. I've been working to build this organization. Chris: Amazing. And I would love to understand a bit more about your role specifically, because I actually hadn't come across someone with specific title that you have. So I'd love it if you could maybe the audience understand ⁓ what scope of the role is and maybe even before that, like how did it originate? Because it is quite a unique role. Chris Mabry: It's a super unique role and and head of community is a role that I have to explain a lot. So if I go to a dinner and I say I'm a head of community, they say, What does that mean? it's I think if you boil it down, I'm a I'm customer advocate advocate. somebody at the business who understands the challenge thoroughly. I the thoroughly, I understand our customers and the people who have this problem. I turn all of that learning and all of that knowledge into the voice of the company, into creating space where people can solve these problems together. Vangelism, partnerships. I own of our ⁓ and ⁓ go market partnerships. And what I'm doing there is I'm finding companies that solve adjacent problems or or or sources of intel that I can pull into. to make iris more intelligent. ⁓ I'm building those out and I'm owning those relationships. I'm a solution engineer and and I work with some of our largest partners to help them have calls. ⁓ I own ⁓ a lot the organization when it comes to that. And I think if you were to boil it down, the success looks like like we're known as being company who Chris: Mm-hmm. Amazing. Chris Mabry: Actually has l has actually lived it. Like that's what some of our reviews will tell you. At the end of the day, like we want the whole world to understand that about us. Chris: Yep. And it sounds like such a unique role as we mentioned, not the sort of one that you would necessarily see advertised. A lot of the roles that we have on this show, know, people get really, listeners get really excited about them, they're often not advertised. They're roles that you had to craft. I'd love it. Is there any, anything would share there around how the role came about or how you went about crafting it? Chris Mabry: Yes. it was it was it was exactly like that, Chris. Like you've nailed it. ⁓ it's not something that would have been on a job board. It's it's one of these roles that if you're listening right now, you're thinking, gosh, that sounds like perfect role for me. How would I possibly get into that? I think the the the the creation head of community is becoming a popular role for ⁓ and and for high growth ⁓ startup companies. Chris: Okay. Chris Mabry: so it is a role that I want people to be on the lookout for. And can see it at large organizations like Slack and others have head of communities. but but really I think I think the creation of this role is based off the fact that the traditional marketing doesn't work. And people realize even even in and and maybe even more so, it's important to know people. and understand community, understand that buyers still buy from humans. and you need to be the one who's able to craft that a way that is that is not salesy, that is concreted and moving the the the people that you serve's profession forward. And so I just find a lot of ways to do that. And it could be in in-person events, dinners. run the customer advisory board, my series of conversations with our customers, our prospects, or just people in the industry at large. And I just I just a lot of the time just give space for the conversations that need to happen. And having a role dedicated to that at a especially at our early early stage company, it's pretty priceless. It's it's I I I think It's hard to find somebody who understands your market so thoroughly and and and comes from it. but it really does help us drive our product roadmap decisions and a lot of our our decisions on how we grow our business. Chris: Yeah. I love you. talked about, ⁓ understanding of the market being a key part of this role. And also you've got this really interesting perspective in that it's not just that you've been a solutions engineer, but you were effectively running the community represents that entire profession. So you've got this really sort of broad perspective of the profession. How are you seeing AI change things? Yeah. Everyone will see the the marketing on LinkedIn and there's a lot of hype and there's also, you know, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you've got of the doom and material. But I'd love to know your perspective on like how are the main ways that you see AI reshaping the role. Chris Mabry: I I I think I would answer that in basically with two different perspectives. the f the first being the perspective of the buyer. So in solutions engineering, consulting, S E, the whatever you want to call it, we are our buyers at a moment of what what I define sales as a moment of crisis. Okay. So it's a moment where somebody has a br business problem they need to solve as quickly as possible. Chris: Okay. Mm-hmm. Chris Mabry: If your refrigerator breaks at your house and you have a fridge full of food, what are you doing that evening? You're going to the store and you're buying whatever one they have there that you like the most within your price range. Now, buyers expect a lot more. And let's just let's use the refrigerator analogy because I already went down that path. What am I gonna do before I run to my local hardware store? I'm gonna be like searching it online. Which ones do they have? Do they have them in stock at this location? Here's my price point. What are some of the features? I'm gonna know probably exactly which one I'm buying. If I can even put it in my cart virtually and go there and just pick it up or have it delivered to my apartment or my home. Our buyers are no different. We all buy everything, right? They're going to expect that level of insight before they get on the phone with you. If they ever get on the phone with you at all. AI has it has increased and expedited that tremendously. So as a solution engineer, you need to be as prepared as your buyer is now, and that has changed dramatically. When I got into this, I could get on a call, I was, you know, you know, back to back demos. We did very we ⁓ it was like a high velocity sales motion, so it was very small amounts of discovery. We'd do six, seven a day. And half the time they were the same demos. That is completely gone. so you need to meet AI has basically transformed the ability for your buyer to do everything they need to do before they get on the phone with you. So what that means is, like at Iris, every demo we do, the moment we get on the call, we have their instance spun up with their information, crawled their company's website, called all the information we can find, and we say, ⁓ RFP are you working on? And they'll show us the RFP and we'll Let's just run it right now. And that is like dramatically different than a normal demo. Like we're actually solving the problem they have. Chris: Yeah, mean, that's you're compressing what would have previously been at least weeks, right, in a sales cycle, if not much longer. Chris Mabry: Yeah, yeah, like let's have a discovery call. Let's talk about our stakeholders. Let's get the next one on the books. Let's get the next one on the books. And first of all, within the first forty-five minutes, your customer needs to see themselves in your product. That changes the way you work as a solution engineer dramatically. Okay. now, so meet your buyer where they're at. The second part is is I completely transformed the I work. using LLMs. I think one thing that I have to remind myself ⁓ what used to be hard isn't hard anymore. Okay, so if I want to take a list if I'm gonna build out a list of evangelists to talk to to get their insights to help me understand how to make the company more successful, I can run you know queries ⁓ I can query HubSpot directly in Claude and ask it all the questions I need to find all the right people I need. I can immediately reach out to them in 45 minute block. Something that would have taken me days. So I think as solution engineers, we have to like retrain, especially some some of us who've been in this in the for a while, we have to retrain our brain into remembering that the things that used to be really hard are not hard anymore. Chris: And I would love to build on that a bit. You we talked about how AI is reshaping the SE role generally, but in your role specifically as head of community, how has that sort of changed with AI? What do you see as some of the most impactful use cases day to day? Chris Mabry: For me, it's just access to data. know, before let's take even even at Pre Sales Collective before Chat GBT when it all changed our our brands, trying to figure out people who were interested in or good at a topic. Let's let's say a leadership track I wanted to run. It would take having and and it's still it would take having the knowledge of people and whose whose roles and what are people posting about and what is the conversation. Now today I can just query and run agents and find all of that data. the thing that it has not replaced, so so I can I can find I can build run a show documents for my events. I can build email sequences. I can build CRM analysis. it doesn't replace it it it replaces a lot of the manual work I was doing. to drive these things forward. But what it hasn't replaced is I have to have relationships with these people to make these things work. I just got off a call right joining here with you, Chris, with somebody who is a a major global leader in our space who's ⁓ looking at our new role. And we just chatting about the role. We were talking about what it what it looks like, what to ask, what questions to ask a hiring manager. Those things don't can't I haven't found a to use AI to To help me rebuild those relationships. That's because for years we've been connected and we've known each other and we've trusted each other. And so is making things a lot faster for me as a head of community when it comes to research, things, things. It me tell better story. but it it has not helped me build deeper relationships with people, I think, in meaningful ways. ⁓ Chris: Yeah, interesting. outside of pre-sales, but I follow a podcast called Lenny's podcast. It's a product and engineering leaders that are often on there being interviewed and they do a survey once a year around tech work, a sentiment. And it was interesting in terms of who felt most positive about their line of work. Sales was actually up there next to, think founder was the only one above, but sales, you know, still feel very confident. I think probably a lot of that is because it is so relationship based and that's one of the things that AI is not going to. replace anytime soon. Chris Mabry: Yeah, and if anything it makes it it's made it all more important. And so if I'm in sales, like one initiative I have at our company is getting in person with people. Like like hitting the road, you know. just until s I mean, we're on summer now, it's a little bit slower, so I'm I'm at home more, but I was on the road every week. So every single week I was out with people, you know, ⁓ whether it's a dinner, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a QBR, a coffee, anything. I think today you have to be in person more than ever. So if you're listening to this and you're wondering, how do I get into, you know, maybe how do I get leadership to look at me as somebody who's leader? How do I ⁓ influence in my company? how about you offer to go visit your customers in person? Like right now, find five people that you could easily go to and just tell your manager, tell your sales rep, tell anybody at your company, I went and go visit them. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Mabry: I'm just gonna check in with them. We're gonna do some training on site. I'll bring in some donuts, whatever it is. Like your execs will love that. Executives right now want out on the road. They want people meeting people in person. And so that's one of the biggest ways to build your influence. Like when I into sales engineering, it was one my strong suits, which which was I I always down to go. And so it was like, even for the smallest reason. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Chris Mabry: ⁓ it you know, somebody submitted a trouble ticket, they can't figure something out. I'm gonna go f I'm gonna go fix it myself. And that built like so much trust within the company. Chris: Yeah. Well, even meeting internally, right? Going all the way back to your first point around how you transitioned into pre-sales and that sort of serendipitous moment where you overheard one of the sales reps on the call. You know, I often felt that. I remember when we first shifted to the pandemic and I was at Slack at the time, you know, as a company, we were very much pushing, you know, work from anywhere and remote and that sort of thing. But we struggled with that. And particularly the junior sales reps, they learned so much from being in the office, overhearing each other's conversations. I feel like so many of those, sort of. How do they call it like loose relationships or like more distant relationships with it, when in their company, it's so difficult to nurture that if you're not meeting people face to face at least time to time. Chris Mabry: I mean, I still I still feel it all the time. And I like to meet investors in person and I like to meet with my exec team in person. And I'm lucky to work for a founder who's like really inspiring and incredibly smart. And anytime I'm in the office, I'm I'm learning and taking notes too. I mean, from my resume, you may think like, ⁓ this guy has been really successful. He's led some of the biggest things in our space. I still feel like a student every day, Chris. I feel like I go to and I'm sitting there wondering, how did I even get here? I feel like I just started. You know, and it when I'm in person, I feel like I'm even more present. I'm not, you know, distracted. ⁓ other people around that will see that in you. and so if you're somebody who's interested in breaking into leadership, that's a quality people look for. Chris: Amazing, yeah. I remember Salesforce had this saying, approach things with a beginner's mind and that always resonated with me. you mentioned your CV and your career, you've had a ton of success, ⁓ ⁓ a real sort of wide variety of roles. I would love to know, ⁓ know, are there a couple of things that you would attribute that success to, like personality traits or ways of working? What do you think? Chris Mabry: Yeah, I think that like of my habits are just ⁓ I described, which is being I'm pretty type A. I would say I do need time to recover from being like I think people think that I'm like the most social butterfly. I I I can be. but what I've learned is that you need to you need to be in room. And sometimes you don't need permission be in that room. You already have the permission. You just need to step into it. Sometimes that room doesn't exist. So build the room that you need. have an example of one. What I I was we were trying to grow the maturity of our organization. ⁓ And was like a just became a manager, frontline manager, you know. and we realized we were not getting traction with like the sales enablement team. They were teaching things to our sellers that we were like, why would we be teaching that? That's not what our customers need. And so we built councils and council meetings put solution engineers in those meetings with the sales enablement leaders to them counsel. ⁓ We the room. Yeah. We built an internal advisory council basically saying, I know that you want more more insight into what's happening. We're gonna be the ones that do it. It wasn't our job, but we knew it needed to be done. Chris: So these are like internal councils, advisory councils, that sort of cross-functional, got it. Chris Mabry: So we built the rooms everywhere, all over the company. and I think that the approach there, because it can be kind of sticky, people might think that you're trying to step on their toes, is to be very curious and approach this with a I want to learn how you guys work because I'm gonna learn how to help you mindset. The second piece is I learned ⁓ through pre sales collective, but well, well before when I started getting into those speaking opportunities, was just to build in public. Chris: Amazing. Chris Mabry: I started sharing on LinkedIn. I was not somebody who was on LinkedIn. Now I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I started to talk about things I was learning or experiencing in public consistently all the time. And it was nerve-wracking, but it was man, unbelievably it. And I built relationships through that process that I still have today. and I I also have a sense ⁓ of like. Chris: Yeah. Chris Mabry: I do have this engineering sort of technical and process that I learned early on in my career. I that process a lot of what work is what creative is considered. Like people think that maybe, you know, this discussion you is right? This is not, I'm not doing a, you know, this is not a an investor QBR, this is not that is. ⁓ This is conversational. I didn't design a huge run-of-show for this moment. ⁓ but sometimes you have to. And sometimes you have to build like these pre-mortems to events and post-event things and operating rhythms. I bring this sort of like rigor of engineering perspective into all of that and I process it out. That has helped me ship in public. It has helped me build the room that I need to build. It's helped me do things because I've got I've just work it as a process. Chris: Yeah, interesting. The point around building a network definitely resonates with me personally. I'm someone like yourself. I was more or less non-existent on LinkedIn before I launched my business and I always looked at it as like, it's the place I go when I'm looking for a job. I didn't really think more broadly than that, but the reality is a network has so many different uses and it's just intrinsically valuable and fun to be connecting with other people within the profession. So, but it's quite difficult then if you're trying to build that from a standing start. So, I that idea of being proactive and building a brand, building a network before you you need it definitely resonates. Chris Mabry: Yeah. Yeah, man, that's that's totally true. And I I found this with people. I mean, part of Pre Sales Collective when I ran it had a career enablement ⁓ wing of the business. ⁓ And I found is that like people wait till the last minute to to then go on there and go, ⁓ my god, I need I need a network outside of the people I work with today because ⁓ my just sold or there's been some disruption or a technology changed or whatever the case case may be. I started network Chris: Mm-hmm. Chris Mabry: For that reason, I was thinking, like, I don't want to go at it alone. And then initial thought turned into something way more important to me, which was the sense of community, the sense that I'm not alone. Look, mean, if if I needed help right now in my career, I could pick up my phone and I could text fifteen people that would get on the phone with me immediately. And I helped people as well. And like at first I thought that was good for job security, but it became so much more. just like you've learned, Chris. It's like you you you kind of maybe start doing it because you're like, I need to build some stability, I need to build some recognition, then it turns into something that is genuine. ⁓ Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And people I've noticed through doing this podcast, right? I have like lots of different people on, I asked them similar questions, you know, what's driven their success. And it's funny, like different people get to similar outcomes in totally different ways. Like of the advice is almost contradictory, but it's, know, everyone has a different way of doing it. And I find the broader your network, the more perspectives you take in, the more sort of well-rounded it makes as an individual. Chris Mabry: Yeah. I think it takes staying curious. an and to me it's yes, there's depending on the type of role you have in this profession, you could be very technical or not. But the one thing that remains is you have to s you have to stay open minded and you have to stay curious about what's around the corner. many of people that I've worked with like some of the people I've worked with that have found a stall in the growth of their ⁓ of their trajectory or ⁓ They've been at a company for a while and they don't know what to do next, have kind of turned that off. Or maybe, you know, you're a principal solution engineer, you don't need to learn anymore. Guess what? That's completely not the case. If anything, you're the one that needs to shake up more than anybody else. ⁓ I I I keeping that sort of childlike mindset is is really good for this profession. You can't have this job and think that it's gonna be stable ⁓ and Chris: Yep. Chris Mabry: something that is going to be the same every day, every year, or that there's gonna be a point in time where you've learned it, so now you've learned it and you're good for the next couple of years, like that doesn't happen. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You drew the point around seniority as well. I remember the first time I had sales methodology training, we all got shipped out to Francisco and I thought it was amazing. You know, I was like learning this more structured way of approaching deal cycles. And there were a lot of other more junior reps at the time and they were similar. They were just sponges all of this. And there's some of that more senior reps were really dismissive. was like, you know, I've been in the game long enough. I don't need to do this. Chris Mabry: ⁓ yeah. Chris: And the reality is then when you looked at deal execution, a lot of the more junior reps were a lot better because they were applying what they learn. They weren't rigid and stuck in their old ways. Chris Mabry: A hundred percent. And this and it is backwards. Like I remember when I took over a I th I thought I'd really made it in management when I took over like the most strategic team of the company. We were the team we were doing like twenty five percent of the revenue for the whole business. Okay. Every deal we touched was like a a big deal, right? everybody was senior by many years. hardest leadership challenge ever because nobody on that team wanted to learn how to do anything new. Chris: Mm-hmm. Chris Mabry: you take over like the associate team and everybody's like willing try everything new, you know, and AI has has widened gap tremendously. And I think the people who are even, you know, who more junior, who are just open to learning and trying new things and downloading apps and like that's that's what the new game is about. And and you said you you know, you said something earlier like founders were at the top and then there were salespeople. Chris: Yeah. Chris Mabry: I think us in exec op operating roles are so excited about and and and huge adopters of AI because because well for me, can see all these things that used to take me a lot of time and were maybe not as good. and now I can just do it myself. I don't have to lean on anybody else. I don't have to lean on my marketing department, I don't have to lean on my sales department. I can pull those figures myself. I don't have to become an expert in my CRM to pull a report. I can just tell. I can just tell Claude to get that report and that information for me. And it's like this major unlock. And I hope that people in the market or cr you know, breaking into this industry or getting into their first leadership position that tool to like to help you do that. Help help you find the room you need to craft, help you find a way to stand out. You ask it to go through your entire CRM and say who's gonna be the best on site this quarter? Who needs to see who who do we need to see the most? Chris: Yeah. So we've, we've touched on of curiosity and the importance of that, particularly as it pertains to AI, but I'd love Chris, you know, as a closing thought, is there any advice that you would give to people listening to the show who are interested specifically in following your footsteps or they're interested in that type of head of community role? Is there ⁓ piece of advice you would give to them? Chris Mabry: first thing I would say is find focus on the problem. Not the companies, not the titles. Focus on the you want to solve. For me, coming to Iris, I focused on the problem of proposals and RFPs. And I understand that that problem is at every tech company I've ever worked at. Okay. And that problem is at every engineering organization, every architectural organiz, every bridge has been built with an RFP. It's a problem that I'm excited to solve. And then when you find the problem, things become way easier because you can then narrow it down the companies. And then you can narrow it down the people you know who work at those companies. And then start talking to them. I w I I don't go into companies at all. I start talking to people who are in that craft or in that field and I just ask them questions about the industry they're in and what's what's changing and what is the movement in that industry. you kind of flip the whole job search evaluation stuff on its head and like become passionate about solving the problem and then you can kind of apply yourself anywhere. You know, I'm head of community because I'm helping solve this problem for for our entire ⁓ or for the entire global challenge. And that lets me be super creative. that gives me no barrier, right? And so that's my advice. Chris: Yeah, I love it. And it comes, ties nicely back to that point around curiosity. It's so much easier to be curious in a problem that like really does motivate you and interest you, right? Than something that it's not so much so. Chris Mabry: Yeah, and I've done it both ways, you know. I a and I've had fun too. Like I don't want to say that like I wasn't passionate about some of the other companies I worked for because I I was. I love solving these business problems with tech solutions. Like there's there's this tactile thing happening there and I love uncovering the conversation, like the dynamics of the conversation. But if you if deeply understand the problem and you wanna solve the problem holistically, it gives you a layer that is a layer of ad of an advantage. you will have an unfair advantage and it will compound over time as you start to focus on that problem. And that will help you grow way at a company than if you just get in somewhere that you like and you're really that passionate about the solve. Chris: Yeah, I love it. Chris, is there anything else, thoughts that you'd like to share with the audience before we wrap? Chris Mabry: reach out to me. ⁓ would love to hear from you. Chris, hope you share my LinkedIn in the show notes. ⁓ reach out to me ⁓ and share learning. So you have taken time to invest in your career by listening to this. You've taken out of your day. ⁓ Time's the precious thing. I mean, it's like, how can we even ask for your time, right? It's it's it's it's incredible that you've that you've paid attention. share that. So share the link. Chris: Absolutely. Chris Mabry: Put it on LinkedIn. Hey, I tuned in to listen to Chris and Chris today. This is what I learned. This is one thing that resonated with me. the process of sharing and operating in public and curious today. and that make me happy. So if the end result here is that anybody listening to this goes, you know what, like either I'm on the right path or I'm gonna start doing it today, that's a huge win. Chris: I love it. Build that network and build in public. thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really appreciate it. Chris Mabry: ⁓ you're welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me. Chris: Cheers, bye bye.