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Where the Power Really Sits — and How to Get It · Rev-n-u Unplugged

• James: Welcome to season three of Revenue Unplugged. If you're new here, make sure you like and subscribe because it really does help us keep bringing you conversations like this one. Today's episode is sponsored by Indigo, a recruitment agency that helps high growth tech companies hire SaaS sales talent across North America and Europe. If you're scaling and need the right GTM hires, head over to Indigo. Now, onto the show. Brian, welcome to Rev-n-u Unplugged. It's an absolute pleasure to have you the show. We've some really interesting topics to dive into. Today we're be looking at being more than a sales leader, where the power really sits, and probably one of favorite words that I haven't really thought of around sales leaders that you put on there is adaptability, and I think it's actually quite a critical point in today's sales world. So lots to get there. Brian Tully: Well, James, thank you very much for having me here. Really, really appreciate it. ⁓ As a ⁓ let's see, long career. So ⁓ started off at West Lehman Brothers Syndicate Desk selling $6 billion ⁓ issuance to different How do you ⁓ choose invest a billion dollars here versus this company? And then jumped out into the bootstrap startup with two friends and an accountant and ⁓ hit. James: My guest today is Brian Tully, an operator with a career that spans Wall Street, Bond Desk, a bootstrap SaaS business he took from zero, yes, zero to over $21 million in recurring revenue before a successful exit. And then he spent the next decade being parachuted into VC and PBAT companies, fixing the hard stuff. We get into why the CRO tenure is just 18 months. Brian Tully: So we basically grew that, bootstrapped it from zero to 21.4 million reoccurring SaaS revenue in the GRC space, and then ⁓ had ⁓ a successful exit to Thompson Broaders after bidding war between Oracle and Thompson Broaders. That was fun. And after that, ⁓ were the fastest growing piece of Thompson Broaders for three years straight and got a couple more pieces and grew from 120 million to half a billion dollars. James: Before we do that, Brian, if you could just let our audience just know a little bit about yourself, where the real power sits inside a business and why adaptability, yes, why adaptability might be the most underrated trait in sales leadership today. Right, let's get to it. This is Rev-n-u Unplugged. Brian Tully: And that gave me the pedigree. After that, general manager of a transfer pricing business in Thompson-Broiders, which was a turnaround and successfully did. And then for the past 10, 11 years, I've been an operator for VC and PE companies. So get brought in to solve problems. Our retention rate is that we could sell everything, but our retention rate is 35 % for a SaaS product, fix it. James: Wow. Brian Tully: gonna do a merger and acquisition and we have no plan by the way the acquisition is tomorrow. Or ⁓ if don't hit our targets for sales then we're gonna go bankrupt in four months. ⁓ We to prove value to the investors to get another 8 million 20 million let's go. So hyper growth is definitely my specialty various job roles but I have had CRO twice. Chief client officer once. Chief Strategic Officer, General Manager, President. So you name it, I've done it. ⁓ And I really just love working with innovative companies and growing. James: excited hear your insight from wealth of experience you've had. The first bit I'd like get into is the first topic, being more than a sales leader. So ⁓ what do you mean by Brian Tully: it So I think there are amazing sales talent out there. And there are people that know their market, know their customer, and can magically make the sales process as fast as possible. But they have trouble making it to a real executive leadership team leader. So think like a CRO. And what I mean by that is the average tenure of a CRO is 1.8 years. That means that there's a lot of people who are good at sales that are just not making their jobs. So let's go into why. The first is a sales leader, ⁓ not properly trained or just intuitive to begin with, will go into the meeting and basically report, I've crushed sales, I've done this, this is fantastic. By the way, I need X, Y, and Z to be successful in the future. Give me X, Y, and Z. That's not an executive leader. is a sales leader, which is insanely valuable in the company, but that's not transcending to it. ⁓ what I mean? The difference is an executive leader, yes, you to do that. Yes, you have to crush your numbers. Otherwise, you're not going to be there in the first place, but sits there and says, hey, what do you need? What does product need? What does marketing need? It's truly listening in those meetings and not just demanding and then moving on or working on their computer. is trying to figure out how to make the whole company better in addition and what can sales do to elevate that. So had a fun Columbia course a long time ago, a leadership course, and the whole class was split in half and you got either a pink sheet or blue sheet and you had to work with your other person and you weren't allowed to ask what was on their sheet. And it was something, a company in India, you need to get this product, you need to sell. was certain scoring on like 20 metrics. And quickly I looked at the sheet and I'm like, all right, I'm going to get the highest point total by doing this. unnecessarily pressured the person I was with into giving everything. ⁓ actually got more than the sheet allowed just fun. ⁓ And scored the highest of anybody. And it was like, yay, I won the game. But I didn't win the game. Because the lesson was, your combined total is what matters, not your individual. because I pressured on something that was important to me, ⁓ really detrimental to ⁓ other person, we actually came out to about middle of the pack, like slightly higher than middle of the pack. And the whole lesson is how do you get what you need while helping the other person? And that's how a successful ELT works. That's how, if a sales leader can transcend to that, then all of a sudden, ⁓ my gosh, that's a CRO I want to keep for the next 10 years because he's making the entire, or she is making the entire team better. So that's what I mean. So I have some tips and tricks of how to actually accomplish that. I'd love to get into it, but. James: please, look, ⁓ it's interesting one. I've got questions to pick into that, but if you could share some of tips, that would be Brian Tully: Yep. So it's actually kind of easy if you're a really good sales person. Just use your outside tools inside. So don't go to the ELP and report and say, I need this XYZ. You would never do that to a client. You're going to ask proper discovery. Hey, how are you doing? What's important to you? What are your pain points? What are the value that you could get? And then you're going to figure out, OK, sales product is the customer voice. How can they bring the customer voice into this equation? How can they prove that they're on the right track, whether it's marketing or product or dev or the CEO? How can they actually then add value by selling it or escalating, shortening the sales cycle so that they're successful? Because if you do that, then product and marketing are going to love you and you're going to have this amazing relationship. you're actually going to gain authority and probably get more than what you would if you walked into that meeting just to manage stuff. And many people actually do that. James: do you think, because I love everything that you've been saying there, but are you describing a characteristic to be able to have like being more than a sales leader and what you're talking about there is about understanding how you can help people. Like a lot of people say a very good CRO is there to remove blockers, remove challenges that stopping salespeople from getting deals done. When you got the demanding type, usually were very successful sales leaders, sales people. Good sales people don't always make good sales leaders. So do you think the problem around being more than just a leader ⁓ a characteristic trait that's being missed when hiring and promoting sales leaders? Brian Tully: I think, uh, it is. I think a lot of people focus on the sales results and the metrics and, oh my gosh, you got to 100 % year-over-year growth or higher, you know, four years in a row. You know my industry, that's who I want. And they bring those people in and then they, you know, even if the results are good, friction can arise because the wrong approach isn't there. If you just have a salesperson in a executive boardroom and all they're doing is blaming marketing for not having enough lead generation or blaming products that they're not focused on this one thing for client and that's why we missed our quarter. That becomes detrimental to the entire system, to the entire go-to-market function. So ⁓ a to flip that is Don't focus on the one client, focus on the consensus and bring dead and product in elevate them. So don't just say, I need this for this one client. Say, here are the 30, 40 clients. Here's the value around it. I will put you in a VIP dinner with these clients to talk to them. ⁓ are the gong calls. Here's the ⁓ AI recordings of every single time they mentioned our competitor and why we're losing. Like that's how... Now we're having a meaningful conversation instead of you need to build this feature. I'm going to miss my number, which was very good. Elevating them from a, know, SCR all the way to a head of sales because they're speeding up the sales process. But once you get to a leadership, especially beyond a certain size of team, that becomes detrimental because you're not working collaboratively. And then sales is doing this and the marketing team's doing this and products doing this and it begins to fall apart. James: Yeah. How would you advise because it's almost like a mentality switch. Once you go from sales, VPS sales, where it's about revenue growth, new logos, you step into that CRO role, I think a lot of people still focus on new logos because they try to prove themselves as a sales leader and ⁓ generating ⁓ actually fixing churn and looking out tomorrow. Today is one thing, but tomorrow is even bigger, and you have to have one eye on tomorrow. So how do you switch that mentality from deal, deal, deal to the bigger picture? Brian Tully: Yeah, and I've actually done this now in three different companies. I'm brought in as a I like to joke around. I'm the one in the horror movie that's read the script that knows to go to the attic and not into the basement or go outside to the car and not do this. So ⁓ ⁓ just went through ⁓ experience with someone else. And it really is if you can say, are you applying? your amazing sales skills internally, like focus on a couple of conversations, sit down and say, okay, great, here's what happened and really break it down, do a retro on it and say, would you have said that to XYZ, your largest, most important client? And it's like, no, course they're going to be like, no, of course I wouldn't say that, that'd be idiotic, that'd be dumb. You'd be like, all right, ⁓ why are you doing it internally? Like, it doesn't matter. And that's the kind of the aha moment is it does matter. know, internal matters and leadership just as much as external because no matter what you're doing external, if there's a different direction that starts going and starts spiraling in the wrong way, you're not going to be successful long term. You'll be successful short term, but not long term transactional versus relationship. James: Yeah, so I think it's important. you mentioned transactional, that kind of segues into like detail around that, because we spoke about this when ⁓ we planning and the of that transactional leader. ⁓ the early warning ⁓ that in that transactional management ⁓ and how do they get out of Brian Tully: So first warning sign would be ⁓ short communication. That's edgy. So if you're sending ⁓ two sentence, three sentence over I need blah, blah, blah, blah for this client, that is a huge warning sign. If it's ⁓ always from another department and never really giving or never offering to give, that's a huge warning sign. And then eventually midway, it'll turn into friction. Like you'll hear, or worst ⁓ is when it's too long, then the departments begin complaining about the other departments. You'll hear an SCR be like, I have nothing from the marketing. It's all marketing's fault. And if you hear that, you're already done. That means that sales is mad ⁓ marketing's bad. It's one motion. Like there's never one blaming the other. Marketing and sales has to be in unison. Nothing drives a VC or PE company more mad than when you're in a room if gosh forbid marketing blame sales, the sales blame marketing. Cause then they're like the whole go-to-market system is broken. I don't even know why I invested in here. I'm frustrated. So those are kind of like the three warning signs, but communication that I'm CC'd on, if it's too short and if it's always going one way, that's a great, you know, monthly one-on-one, hey, how are you doing? And try to begin to guide. James: Love that. Well, I really appreciate your insights in around being more than a sales leader. I think it's critical that people think about that for today. We're going to move on to topic two now, where the power really sits. Now, I love that. What's your thinking behind that? When you say where the power really sits, what's the power? What are you referring to there? Brian Tully: Yep. So I'll actually go back, ⁓ because I am old. I'll go back, ⁓ early 2000. Early 2000, really the sales team had a tremendous amount of power. And the reason why is they were the main communication with the client. So if a XYZ, important sales rep or sales leader came and said, we need blah function in our software or we need this hardware to do it, or we need to take this approach or go to Canada because of XYZ or Germany for this. It would happen because like, okay, well, they know what the client wants, we're going to move on. I think over the past 20 plus years, what's really changed is the voice of the client can now be controlled by many departments. So a good example, product can have just as much control over the voice of the client. as sales or marketing can have it or even client success can sometimes be more powerful than sales. you're in a retention business and a slower growth business, you know, it's all about retaining. What do they need? And the person that has the power, the one that really controls that voice of the client has the most influence on product direction, ⁓ on message, on investments. and that's really what's going to drive the company forward. Sales leaders need to understand that and where that power dynamic is, and that can vary company by company by company, on where you are. James: How do you assess with a business where the power lies? Because I think it could be easily confused with who shouts the loudest or who has the, I don't want to say controlling because it's the wrong word, but you get, there can be individuals that can hold the room and you can feel that the power is there, but that could just be papering over the crack. So how do you assess taking the people to one side? How do you assess whether the, where the power lies within the business Brian Tully: Yep, and screaming being the loudest in the room is what the old way used to be. Because sales used to be able to just get louder, because sales can be loud, and say, we need this for this client. And everybody's like, OK, fine. That's not the way it works anymore. That's actually a great example of the change. So a good example, who is really controlling the market message? When you're doing a new product release, when you are doing the features, who is determining the features, who is determining that market message really key there. And then also when the CEO has a really tough problem, where do they go to? So it normally starts with who's the strongest ELT leader. And that doesn't mean just performing the best in their function. To my original point, it means helping out others too. Who do others go to for support? If everybody's going to marketing, you know, ⁓ I want my price list. I want my market message. ⁓ you know, what should we do, you know, for building features? If they're going to market, guess what marketing has power. If they're going to product and products, you know, determining all those things. And then everyone else is basically a cog that plugs in. Okay, sales now go do your thing. Cause I've already figured out the whole pie. Then product has it. And who is the most person that keeps getting to choose those directions. And then ⁓ really there's a fire, who's the CEO going to? Like that will determine who the power is. And then you have to either be that person, which is helping out everybody else so that they come to you. Like, ⁓ my gosh, sales is so much more than sales. Or you to respect it, which is fine too. and then work with that person as much as possible, enabling them so at least your input and your insight is being respected or honored, maybe even more than others. James: that a lot of sense, but how do you work out then putting people to a side where the power should sit? So I'm assuming everything you spoke about there could be different if you're a product led business, if you're a market or your enterprise. So how do you work out where that should sit Brian Tully: So in certain industries, it trends. So a good example in pharma, pharma is a ton about marketing. So it basically trends towards marketing person. it actually trends towards product now, because marketing can be a lot more than just product ⁓ nowadays. then I would say for slow growth companies that are like PE owned, that are just going to grow like 5 % ⁓ if basically looking at whoever controls that client, like client success. I would say is the most, but it really does, once you're in there, depend on who the strongest exec is, because they can take back that power or be the leader on it. James: a question that's just come to mind here when you talk around that, one of the biggest areas or one of the biggest challenges that sales leaders are facing right now is churn. It's been easier to switch technology off. If you roll back in the day when you sold your everything was on prem. Once you were sold, were almost guaranteed that you were gonna get the lifetime of the deal because it was a challenge. Should there be more power onto customer success retention has been and would that affect the churn rate that a lot of people are seeing? Brian Tully: Yeah, I definitely do. I've been fortunate enough to be in a SaaS business, True SaaS. were the largest Citrix user to do a quasi SaaS product, which was pretty funny ⁓ one point. customer going back in time, even like 2010 ⁓ was an afterthought. Like if you were stuck in customer success, like, ⁓ my God, I couldn't be a sales rep or I couldn't do this. ⁓ here, That's no longer the case. I I would say that customer success is equal now to sales for your exact point, because it doesn't make a difference if you can hit 150 % growth year over year if you have a 50 % share. So customer success, the way they really gain a lot of power is the consensus view of the client. product steering committees, putting those together with the right people on it. And also when you're arranging those VIP dinners, like one of the great tricks is, if you really have a view and you think it's right and you're trying to influence the rest of the organization to gather consensus, put the CEO ⁓ the middle of 10 clients that only think one way at the VIP dinner table. And all of a sudden, normally the CEO comes out and goes, ⁓ my God, the only thing that matters is this, especially the follow the shiny object people. So, you know, it works very well. So in today's AI world. SAS valuations are going down. And the reason why is they think everyone's going to churn. Eventually, Vibe coding will be able to take out traditional SAS platforms. And the truth is, for ⁓ products that don't deliver value, But ⁓ more products that are delivering a ton of value, AI will be incorporated and they'll actually grow. The CS team is the one who's really got to hold that line. Otherwise, you're going to be on the wrong end of that stick. James: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Would like to just touch on a part that you mentioned there. When you realise that where the power should lie is weak or weaker than it needs to be, what does it look like stepping into that vacuum and how do you bring everybody along to get the strength into that power team? Brian Tully: Yep. So that really is run a, so I'll do it from a sales point of view, run a discovery on every one of the ELT members, figure out what the common consensus is, and then offer help to those members. And a good example, you don't have to do something radical other than what you're doing, you just need to package it right. So a good example, if Marketing is having trouble with I'm not sure what the message is and I can't quite get it or my campaigns have been effective leverage the SCR team leverage your AEs with one slide two slides, you know one campaign versus another campaign for an AB and have them go out and they'll do the 55 minutes of what they were gonna do anyway in the hour meeting and say hey by the way, you have like two minutes. I just want to see some what are your thoughts on? get that back to marketing and all of a sudden you're really influencing marketing. Product, it's basically, okay, let's get the right people in the steering committee so that they can have, let's make sure the gong calls are all being recorded and they're seeing the right gong calls, not the wrong gong calls to drive the consensus. And then after ⁓ doing you then lead, be like ⁓ in the leadership with the CEO and everybody say, run two-hour session and basically say, here's the consensus of the challenges that we have. Here are some things that we're doing. Can we align on trying to solve these three problems? And I will work with product or marketing or sell. Those are kind of the triangle. If you get product and marketing and sales together, you got it. So product and marketing, you do this. But I will actually lead this effort. You know, if you're coming to a CEO with the problems of the company and saying, have a potential solution and you've already built points with the marketing and the product team, you're probably going to get the nod for, even though there's a vacuum power vacuum, you're probably going to get the nod and be like, all right, great. Go for it. Show me the plan. You know, how long is it going to be to execute? What do you think the value and the outcomes are going to be? And then you start working that way. And then you could potentially become that person that is. the power player or worse case you now have alignment and you're trying to solve real problems to help the company. James: you that the, a company builds and develops and moves forwards, the ⁓ power can shift. How do ⁓ how are constantly analyzing to ⁓ if the power should be shifting how do you manage passing that baton on? Brian Tully: So normally I look for the indicators of the core things the company needs to do because it can naturally shift. A good example, if your sales is amazing, but there's churn and there's tons of churn, but it's because the features aren't right or because the dev team is taking a year instead of six months or whatever the time frame is, then a lot the focus of the company is going to be like, we need to solve this problem. They will naturally have the power for a little bit because if we don't solve this, we're done. But that can shift back. in that case, even if you are the power player, shifts over here for a little bit, work with them, be like, great, to be a part of the solution, not just, oh, that's a dead thing. As soon as you go, oh, that's somebody else's problem, I'm to focus over here, you're naturally giving up your opportunity. to be a key role in the company. If you do that too many times, then you are on this island over here and all you do is focus on sales and it's great because all these people are solving all this other stuff. It's tougher to move back. James: you've got a lot of experience Is sales ever the power play now? Brian Tully: Yes, it can be the power player. It can be the power player, especially in companies that have a growth problem or hyper growth. If you need to hit 150 % year over year growth in the next two years to raise your next $100 million of funding, that is a real problem that needs to be solved. And a good example, especially in the first year and a half of that. Let's say there's a two-year thing. In the first year and a half of it, it's hyper invest into sales to get that number as high as possible. And then you kind of clean up everything in the next six months right before you go into that ⁓ sales process or go into the fundraising process. So can definitely do it, but it's acting as more than a sales leader. If you're just acting as a sales leader, no, you'll never have that. James: I really appreciate your thoughts around the power really sits. I think it's fascinating. We're gonna move on to adaptability now. And I really appreciate you bringing this up, particularly as I guess you've worked ⁓ in many industries, you? You've been hardware broadcast, public safety. How have you managed moving into these different sector? Because it's not plug and play. It can't be plug and play from... what you've done. So from a mentality standpoint, how have you ⁓ to these different environments? Brian Tully: Yep. So I'll add a couple more. I'll add cybersecurity, MarTech, PropertyTech, tax, legal, finance, big banks. My targets have been global, all around the world. ⁓ You it, I've done it. Partnership, direct, indirect, co-op petition is all part of the game. So the first thing understand ⁓ is, yes, there trends. And you can kind of come in with like half a plan, but every company is its own unique snowflake. So a good example, starting with our previous conversation, who has the power? If product has a power versus marketing has a power, that's a different playbook. What are the challenges of the company? Is it retention? ⁓ it new sales? ⁓ it market fit? ⁓ it product features? Is it operational efficiency? ⁓ Is it support? Is it you can start going through? You need to understand all that. And then you need to understand the skill sets of the team. the core is how adaptable are people? How coachable are people? Because you have to constantly change. ⁓ how they performing ⁓ right Once you have that, then you can come up with a vision because nothing is more alienating. than a CRO sales leader, whatever role you are, coming in going, we're gonna do it this way. Because it worked great at XYZ company that I just came from. By the way, I'm gonna name XYZ company 15 times instead of the company I'm currently with. because I am older or more experienced or more senior, you're gonna do what I say. That will work for like 10 seconds and then behind the scenes in the water cooler or at the bar or whenever they're off camera. All they're going to be doing is slacking and complaining about you. ⁓ my gosh, isn't this horrible? They're going to pretend to follow you if not actively revolt. And then you're not going to see any of your things really being accomplished or only half being accomplished, not getting the value. And that will fail. James: I want to take it back a step and particularly looking at how sales leaders are hired and adaptability, I think, is a characteristic, not a skill set. And you mentioned like the sales is going and talking about that this playbook works at my last place and we did X, Y and Z. A lot of P private equity firms are hiring sales leaders based on what they've done before and say, right, Can you uplift that playbook and put it here? We want that success here. Come and do it. But you've had a huge amount of success everywhere you've gone, which has been totally different. You could not uplift what you did before. So what is it about adaptability? What could these businesses that are hiring a CRO actually look for in someone like Brian, where adaptability has proved hugely successful? Brian Tully: So one of my favorites is during the interview process, coordinate questions. First of all, don't ask the same question. Don't just go in free form. Make sure you know the questions you want them to ask or you want to ask and get ⁓ answers for them and make sure that they're listening. If they just go into the interview process and pontificate for five hours, six hours, 10 hours to your team and they don't ⁓ questions and they don't begin to incorporate that. into their next presentation, playbook, whatever they're going to do. And then you have a test to kind of regurgitate it. And if it's everything that they did in their previous company without incorporating their knowledge from ⁓ interview process, that is a huge warning sign. Then you be ready for a lot of friction with your team. You better be ready if you want to, to flip the whole thing. and just let them rebuild it from scratch, but rarely do you get that kind of bandwidth and rarely, you know, that's kind of with its own risks of your, you know, pretending the new team is going to be perfect and the old team was awful. You know, that's not good. So I would look for that more than anything else. Are they asking as many questions as what they're talking James: We keep going back to it, but going back to your earlier days, when you took the broadcast and ⁓ sporting roles, what's thing that you've over time about adaptability that you wish you'd known stepping into those roles Brian Tully: Well, the sports and the broadcast was very new. That just ⁓ my role. And it was radically than I've ever done before, which was fun and exciting. So one thing I would to know going in. I would have loved to actually been ground ⁓ a client and shadow them. I would have loved to, like I did go to broadcast studios and kind of get the whole lay of the land and how that worked. And that was fantastic. But I was never ⁓ the field with a photo, camera person, ⁓ you know, seeing all the things they have to do and how to do it. can imagine it, but it's different if you're in the truck, you know. trying to upload, trying to get it back. If you have a disruption, what are you going to do? That would have been lovely to have that real experience. James: I think it's great to have there and learning and ⁓ understanding. I that's a big part of adaptability, isn't it? On AI and the SDR point, we've spoken about smaller, smarter SDR teams being used, and you talked about a testing layer rather than large head count. What you've seen, how that model actually look like in practice? And what should CROs be doing right now? if they haven't started thinking about this way of working. Brian Tully: Yeah, you're not already incorporating AI in almost everything you do, you're in trouble. I mean, really, when talk about playbooks, adaptability, former company, everything you were doing two to three years ago is almost half of it's dead. So a good example, the new game ⁓ is how do you to a billion dollar valuation with as few as humanly possible people, which, you know, Probably started with WhatsApp. WhatsApp got a $19 billion valuation with 55 employees. They were the unicorn out there. But now you have companies like Neon with 130 getting to a billion dollars. Wiz is at 32 billion with less than thousand employees. So you can actually do that. So that is the model that VCsPE want. Now, does that mean that you don't need any people? Hell no. You still need an amazing team. You still need great people. But AI is the amplifier. So a good example in a company that a friend of mine had 50 SDRs, he's doing 70k half a million dollar sales, he used to have 50 SDRs doing outbound. Now he has about 10 doing outbound and he's having AI replicate that for the next 40. and he's finding higher results. That's more the game, is have your core team. So let's take SDR, for example. You still need amazing SDRs who are testing market message, who are saying, this is the feedback, who are going through the process, who are figuring out what's optimal. But once you figure out what's optimal and you kind of have it, then you use AI to hyperscale that because they can work day, night, midnight, all the way through. and they can keep spinning this up and getting all these amazing results, you still keep all those SDRs, but they're testing the next market message and maybe innovating into different spaces. great trick or one great ⁓ area to help is the and have it report to the STR. So that way, the STR... actually it's not being a replacement, you're having ownership. It's your scaling mechanism. And you can say, okay, you have two reports, you have two AIs, how are they performing versus the other, like you're almost training them how to be a manager. It just is a synthetic person instead of a real person. James: So, this down so it's simple for me. Someone's from 50 SDRs to 10 SDRs. Are they using to do outreach and to book meetings and to actually have conversations with clients? Brian Tully: Yes. Yeah. James: they are having good results that people are receptive to speaking to AI and having the first conversations with a bot. Brian Tully: about equal to the SDR and because of the scale and the volume, they're able to amplify it out. Not only that, they've actually moved one step further and a lot of the negotiation is going back and forth from an AI bot. So now they're closing 70k deals with no human interaction at all. James: So that's incredible. ⁓ me through why I need the 10 SDRs. Brian Tully: You need the 10 SDRs because AI is great when you've already figured out what to do. If you haven't figured out what to do, then AI will hallucinate all day long and just send random stuff and spiral into oblivion. It's not smart enough to figure it out. It's smart enough to replicate. So that's where your scale is coming from, but you keep the amazing team that's working on it because What worked today might not work in three months, might not work in six months. That's why you need the SDRs to constantly beta test, keep on going. Think of it as they are now an elevated position with staff to scale them is the right way to think about AI because now they're really thinking more strategic of how do I get to the right place? Wait a minute, is this working? Not working. They're going to do that kind of analysis while the AI scales out what was successful in the past. James: Why do you need an SDR to do that? Because I'm you can get all the data, there's gonna be technology that can come back looking at what the AI bots are doing and what's working now and then if it doesn't work. Why do you need it? Do ⁓ provide function where they change in outreach and do that or is that coming from just ⁓ one who's looking at insight? Brian Tully: So I've actually just ran through this example. Brilliant sales leader was in charge ⁓ the process and basically dictating all the messaging. Amazing. And some the campaigns were great. Amazing. How much time did they actually spend focused on that versus the closing deals, making sure the customers renewed, everything else? Not that much. So because of it, like it wasn't that they couldn't do it and they probably would do a great job. The problem is they'd have once a week meeting to kind of like, ⁓ let's try this and then take their eyes off and then have to go back. So you're not going to get that love care feeding attention. That's where, you know, the two to 10 SDRs become essential because they're going to come back with like, wait a minute, I'm seeing all these problems and I'm hearing this or that just doesn't feel right anymore or this isn't working. You know, Yeah, you can look in the data, but it's really, really core to have that kind of insight. James: How do you then... convince sales leaders to look at it, because it is worrying knowing what to spend and knowing if your product's ready for that type of outreach. Does work? Because I can see it working on PLG Motion, Midmart. Does it work on enterprise? Brian Tully: Yes, I have focused most of my career on enterprise and you know when you're hitting or when you're not hitting as an SCR and outreach. So I'll take it all the way back to Tagstream. mean, we bootstrapped it. So I did cold calling because why not? And I cold called the Fortune 500, started with the top down and by call 25, I knew I had an 80 % hit rate. And I knew I was going to get the next thing based on my market message because I basically real time spun it through the first 25. Like once you have that, that's when you're like, if I had AI, I would have thrown AI on that and scale the heck out of that message to the entire world because I knew that was going to do the final. If you are doing outbound with your emails, you're only getting a two, 3 % hit rate. If you are making, you know, 20 contacts for your calls and only two or three of them are coming through, you still find it. Like that's where those two to 10 SDRs come in insanely helpful. Once you get to like 50%, once you get to like 60%, that's when you throw a gas on it and you use AI and leverage as much as possible. And it's not just the SDR process. good example of marketing, this podcast should immediately become an Instagram, a Facebook, a TikTok, post out with the clips in repurposable formats, you know, for no additional effort. You know, if anything, it should just happen. You should review it and move on and voila, I just created four different types of content. If you had an SDR team that could also immediately become an SDR market message with a clip and everything else. And now you have a different outbound campaign process on top of it. That's how you're using AI to hyperscale. to drive more interest, more leads. you still need to have you on this call and myself on this call to do the original thing to know is this good or not. Because if you don't like this and you're like, ⁓ throw that one in the garbage. And I'll use the other ones and do that process. James: So I totally understand when you talk about marketing in this podcast. That makes a lot of sense. Where do you sit the noise that people will get fed up with being sold to by a robot? There's already the call that people don't like call centers that are bots. Brian Tully: Yep, and I think that will happen. What you're saying is absolutely correct. The question is the duration and you can say that for anything. know, people used to be cold called all the time and people hate being cold called. You get to be like, ⁓ it sucks. And then email marketing was the way to go. And now everybody emails a million times and nobody written in the email. And then you get these things in LinkedIn. And like at first it was kind of cool, but now it's like, ⁓ I get a hit like 16 times a day. I don't want to look at that. So you have to ride the wave. while the wave is working, play it. And that's where playbooks last, maybe two years to three years nowadays. And then you got to throw it out and be like, we're not doing that anymore and figure out what's next. But my personal opinion is that AI is just going to get smarter and smarter and know what? Eventually, in the next couple of years, it'll have all the world's knowledge in it, or potentially. I think it's actually going to keep on pushing forward and I'll end with this. It depends on your message and if you figured it out. So good example, if I call you up and talk about dusting your floors, you're to be like, probably hang up on me. bot. Now, if AI bot calls you up and says, ⁓ my God, I'm going to give you a gold bar and believe it, you have to believe they're going to give you a gold bar. But if they can really prove that they're going to give you a gold bar tomorrow. Yeah, you're gonna, I don't care if it's a robot or a person or whatever it is, wait a minute, me more about that. How are you gonna give me a go at And you can start the conversation. James: I'm taking up so much of your time. two parts I want to just finish with you. What do know about these AI agents for SDR? Are they being built in like a Claude or is there a product that they're going out there and buying something that does it? Where should people go And the reason why I asked this is that ⁓ I've held three virtual tables with CROs all talking about... AI for sales and enablement. There are some people who are just putting their toe in the water and there's some other leaders I'm like, wow, you just blow my mind as to what you're doing. So for anybody listening to this, where do you start? Is it find a product or most of this being built in something like a Claude? And I say Claude because that's what I use. Brian Tully: No, no, Claude's amazing. use Claude too. Absolutely incredible tool. So start off with what problem are you trying to solve? And is AI a good fit for that? If it's determining your market message, AI is not a good fit for that. It will create a million of them, but it's not a good fit. ⁓ figure out what product feature I need to develop, not a good fit. If it is ⁓ need to... outbound to Latin America or to Asia pack 20 different languages. my God, AI is an amazing fit there. And then you would go, okay, what is the tech capability that I have? I've had some amazing rev ops people and I've had some ⁓ rev people that are incredible people, but they have different skill sets. So if you have someone ⁓ who write Python, if you have someone who can write code, because you're going to have to get to that level. If you really want to do an agent right, yes, you can vibe code. But the people that really know how to code, that can vibe code. Those are the ones that get it right. the core problem. So if you do not have that person, do not vibe code and do not try that out because you're either going to get a false positive or once you put it into practice, you can basically email every single prospect you have with the wrong message and really blow it up pretty bad. James: And before you go, I want to tie this all together because I think the topics that you spoke about and AI massive because being more than a sales leader, if you don't understand technology now and what AI is all about, I think you're going to struggle because you have to understand ⁓ how it and why you need it. I think the power is going to sit in tech. what you're using. think there is a real power in and around that and the adaptability of each sales leader and where the tech needs sit. So being more than a sales leader, ⁓ having engineering background is gonna really, really help. And AI is gonna be ⁓ everybody's best if used the right way. Brian Tully: Yes, you absolutely to be a sales leader CRO, you have to be tech ⁓ literate and tech friendly and want to tinker and want to play. If not, you are going to be left behind and are just so many things coming out. You need to then hire ⁓ a sorry, a chief operations revenue operations person that plugs that for you and tell you the truth. I love technology. love how to use it. ⁓ I believe it's a great enabler and it's the way the future, but ⁓ need someone who can write Python around me. I need that person. So that is my number one thing. If I joined a company, they don't have it. We need to have this, know, a media where I'm actually fortunate, amazing partner. Can't wait to work. James: Love it. look, Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time out and some of your amazing insight ⁓ with us. I will let you get back to your day now. Brian Tully: Awesome. Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure and thank you for having me.