Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 100: Brian Gumbel, CRO At Armis Shares His Tips on Scaling Cyber Security Sales Teams

Transcript

100: Brian Gumbel, CRO At Armis Shares His Tips on Scaling Cyber Security Sales Teams · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Sales Blue Board podcast, where we believe that it's plain wrong that sales teams at startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams do their bigger and more well-known competitors.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a seller or a sales leader at a B2B startup, especially if it's in the cybersecurity space, you're in the right place today.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and welcome to episode 100 of the podcast.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And today's guest is Brian Gumble, who's the chief revenue officer at Arma Security.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Brian, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: What's up, Andrew?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Great to be here.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And this is 100.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm, you know, two and two years and four months ago, three months ago, is when I started on this.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had a hiatus in the middle.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh kind of usually people started podcasts during COVID.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: I actually stopped mine for a little bit, uh, took a breather and reset what I was doing.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if you'd said to me two and a half years ago that my podcast would last past about 20 episodes, I'd be pleasantly surprised.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, congratulations, and I'm absolutely honored to be doing number 100 with you.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's great.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's really good to get uh such a well-known and successful salesperson and cybersecurity on on the podcast.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking forward to our conversation today, Brian.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: So if I look at your LinkedIn profile, I'm gonna quickly draw at this.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you started your selling career at is it Nettel?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, at Nettel.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, before that, the company was called Midcom.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and quickly became NetTel.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was bought out MidCon was bought out by NetTel.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what did NetTel do?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Nettel was a dedicated internet and long distance company.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in New York City as a rep, knocking on doors, trying to get people to switch to long-distance service from I guess it was Dell back then to to Netel.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well the the cool thing about that though is you went from internet and long distance to working at Cisco.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's not an easy or natural transition to make.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So your next job was at Cisco in New York City.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: How did you how did you engineer that?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did what I knew how to do best, which was cold call, and I cold called into the recruiter at Cisco.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me a while.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I finally got him on the phone and I said to him, Hey, I know how you actually get compensated.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very sure if you put me in front of a hiring manager or two, I'll go through the interview process and I'll get the job.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: It might have sounded a little bit cocky, you know, back then, you know, saying that, but I wanted to work for Cisco.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I knew they were an incredible company, fast growers, and I was going to do anything possible to try to land a position there.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I did get that interview.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And nine months later, after several other interviews, I wound up getting my first break and being a basically a junior account executive at Cisco.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it was an incredible opportunity.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I started a seven and a half year career at Cisco.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Looks like you ended up, uh at least for a portion of that time, uh, in the public sector in Cisco there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I started off handling letters A through H in the alphabet.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's how they broke down financial services that was not named.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I had smaller companies like Caxton and Broadway trading.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have Bank of America because that was a named financial account.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I did that sector of commercial financial business for about three years.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then I wanted to move and become a named account manager.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the stepping stone to get there within Cisco was to go into public sector.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I had never sold into public sector.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to get into that team and they handed me a series of small agencies and said, hey, go after all these agencies, kid, and see how you do.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I did fairly well.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I wound up staying in the public sector for the remainder of my time at Cisco.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when I left Cisco, I had an$100 million business selling to the city of New York.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was an incredible experience.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you left that though and went to McAfee.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: What was driving you there?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I the only reason I wanted to leave Cisco was I wanted a leadership position.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love Cisco.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I learned the most at that company.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Being an early stage sales rep, you know, being under John Chambers was an incredible experience.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: His leadership was just absolutely remarkable.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I wanted a position.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to become a regional director.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And every year, the last few years I was at Cisco, they said, Hey, you're doing great.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're on the high potential list.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: If something opens up, you know, you can interview for it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: But there was just not as much growth at Cisco at that time as there was when I first started.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I really had no choice.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And McAfee, I had a friend that worked there, and he said, Hey, what about McAfee?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't know, the antivirus company.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, no, we we do more than just that.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very impressed by the whole suite of products that McAfee had.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I joined and really had my first leadership position there.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I came on running government healthcare and education for the eastern portion of the US.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then you had a small team that you built from there, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: I did, I did.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I came on board and I had a team of about seven people all the way from Maine down to Florida.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, we we did really well.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a fun team.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we we did we did great.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: We wound up doing a lot of business in the city of New York, but also other states along uh the East Coast.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then probably about halfway through my tenure at McAfee, I'm like, you know, I need some more diversity in my career, and I want to be just the public sector guy.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I interviewed for a position for the vice president of sales of the Northeast in enterprise.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I went into the enterprise space after about a seven-year run in public sector, if you take Cisco's experience in McAfee's.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I had then experience, you know, running a team in the Northeast doing enterprise sales, and then that turned into running the East Coast and then East Coast in Canada.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrapped up about six years at McAfee.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And at that point, you were heading up all no, just the eastern Canada, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I remember rightly at uh McAfee.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: That was a big organization you had there, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was um a big organization.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I basically ran, I would say, about 350 people at McAfee when it was all done.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't all sellers, but it was, I would say, you know, I don't know, 150 sellers.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just over six years at McAfee.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering what uh your takeaways and you know big things you learned during that period.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, gosh.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's um I'm trying to think where I start, but McAfee for me, it was one of the best cultures I ever worked for.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's when I learned what culture really meant and what it meant to build a team and camaraderie and everybody that works together to accomplish the mission.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I love Cisco.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think Cisco was more of an individual sport where McAfee, everyone, whatever group you were in, would help each other out to be successful.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a fun, fun environment.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I absolutely loved it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was the biggest takeaway for me that I then put culture as being the first and most important thing in my career.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: When I moved from company to company, I always look at that as being the number one attribute that I look at before making a decision.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: So then after six and a half years at McAfee, uh I switched to a very different environment, which is Tanium.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if I remember rightly, you were one of the first three or four people that joined Tanium in the in the sales organization and that moved over from McAfee, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: So very small, three 350 reports done to yourself, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was I was saying to myself, what are you doing?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had worked my entire career to get to this level of running a large team to then all of a sudden saying, all right, forget that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be an individual seller.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think the the reason I did it, I the technology was absolutely incredible.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had a taste of it with you know what we did at McAfee.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: We sold Tanium as McAfee Realtime.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was OEM.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, McAfee was the first sales team that Tanium had.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I had about a year of selling the products, rebranded to my customers.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I wanted to join the rocket ship.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I thought the technology was fascinating.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it was myself, the VP of the of the West, and also Mike Carpenter, who ran uh, I guess at that time, he was running probably all of the US or all the public sector.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, the three of us left and joined Tanium.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just uh it was a it was a great, a great thing.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: But there were some times I remember, it's probably about the third quarter in, I didn't close the deal.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a five million dollar quota, and I'm saying to myself, man, I must suck.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm a leader.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not cut out to be a seller anymore.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really tough mentally.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized, like, look, I have the pipeline.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the deals I was going after just take a long time to close.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I finally got my first sale after nine months.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was the last day of the third quarter, I pulled in um, you know, pretty nice opportunity.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then it was, you know, the that remainder of the year, I closed another three large deals before the end of the year on a$5 million quota, did$22 million.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh luckily it all worked out, but it was real gut check for me, you know, going through that process.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of learned a couple things from that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the one thing that I tell my enterprise sellers that join the team, it's like, hey, I know you want something overnight, and just be a little patient that the reps are building pipeline, you're doing the activity, you're doing all the right things, the revenue will eventually come.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that was one of the profiles at Tanium, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: They were going after big deals at the time, and big deals take a long time unless something happens to speed them up, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think even like three or four years later, I don't know if it's any consolation to you, yeah, it was still taking nine, twelve, fifteen months for sales to ramp up because of the deal size, not because they they didn't know what they were doing.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, these are complex deals covering multiple departments, lots of influencers, lots of use cases.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And as you know, these they take time to close.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that 22 million that I closed is only four customers, it's four deals.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, think about that.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they don't happen overnight for sure.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, not tall.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, when you joined, you didn't join just to be a rep, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think the good the profile was come in and start building the team as soon as possible.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: How did you think about adding in people as you're being as you were getting traction?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's that's correct, Andrew.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the goal was to build out a sales team.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And after that first year, I became a VP again.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the first thing that you do is, you know, or at least what I do is I look at the total addressable market of where those accounts fall.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for Tinium specifically, the market space was enterprise and everything there was was kind of top down.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So looking at the geographies and figuring out, okay, where can I put, and I was running the East Coast in Canada at the time.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, where can I put the best reps that can make the biggest impact in the shortest period of time?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for me, I put a couple of sellers up in Canada, in Toronto.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had someone in Boston, in New York, Pennsylvania, um, Matam in Pennsylvania, you might not think this, but it's uh some of the largest Fortune 500s within the country.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then someone in Mid-Atlantic, Atlanta, Florida.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you have those teams starting to win, getting business, then you can double up and put other reps in those territories.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And once you get to a place where you know you're a leader initially and you've got about eight reps, you know, you're a VP in a startup, say it's an eight to one ratio.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have to think about all right, what's the second layer of leadership look like?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when you start introducing regional directors into the mix.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did from there.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we had a regional director in the Northeast and Mid-Alantic and Southeast, and each of them had about six to eight sellers that reported to them.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So from the day you started when it was just you to you left almost two years later, what was that growth like in numbers?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: In numbers.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was in numbers of people.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, numbers of people.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So um in numbers of people, we had in two years, we had three RDs and 18 reps on the East Coast.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: So pretty aggressive growth right there.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's two things at Tanium that I thought were were, I don't know, unique's the right word, but a little bit different.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: One was that as a as an AE at Tane, there was no SDRs to help you fixed yourself, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you owned your territory and you're survived on your own workings rather than expecting to get much from the company.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: That was one thing.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: The second thing was that we had the the the TAM model, the the technical account manager, as opposed to like a traditional SE.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm wondering if you think back to those two things, if that shaped any of your thinking in subsequent roles about how to structure a sales team.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I guess a couple things.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: The way I think about the SDRs is because we didn't have them at Tanium, is that they're they're nice to have.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And my organization today has them.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: We had them in Four Scout.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I tell my reps, like, listen, that's that's great that you have them, but pipeline is 100% your responsibility.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, don't ever say that, oh, my SDR didn't do a good job last month and I didn't get any pipeline.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's your repo, your responsibility ultimately.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think that's I I'm a big believer in that program.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it really helps to get top of the funnel pipeline, not close business at all by getting meetings and leads and stuff like that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's um it's important for a rep to understand that you have all these resources, but ultimately that responsibility falls upon yourself.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the TAM organization, I have a different philosophy than what Tanium did.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of respect for those TAMs at Tanium.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: They are some of the smartest I've ever worked with.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it is important to have a pre-sales engineer working directly with an account executive on the enterprise space.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big believer in a one-to-one ratio, unless you become a bigger company like a McAfee or a Cisco, where you can't afford that and you go to a two to one ratio.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's really important to try to maintain a one-to-one ratio with a rep to an S SE as long as possible.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I've worked today with some of the best systems engineers that I ever have.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then so you were there for almost two years, things were going like this in the right direction.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: The hiring was going up, the revenue, the bookings was looking great, and you left.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you left to go to Fourscout.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: What was your thinking there?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wanted career growth, and I knew going to Fourscout, I'd have the opportunity to take on a bigger role and then eventually become a head of sales.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, the opportunity when I left Fourscout was to run the Americas, and that was a big jump for me from what I was doing at Dead Tanium.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: The opportunity for me to run global sales, it wasn't the CRO role or the title CRO was just coming into play at that time.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um basically a fancy word of you know saying of just meaning that you're running sales and operations.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the um, you know, I guess it was the SVP of global sales at at Fourscout.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: But then that that happened rat rather quickly and actually faster than I than I thought it would.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: That there was someone who was doing that at Fourscout when I joined running the Americas, and um that role had changed and it opened up for me, and I interviewed for it and wound up getting it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, very, very fortunate.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: That was the main reason why I left Tanya to take on a bigger role.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: In four years at Fourscout, how would you sum up what was happening then?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Another incredible ride.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, when you when you join a company, maybe at least it's me, I have a little bit of buyer's remorse.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It probably stems back to something my mom used to tell me.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I can't even go shopping with you when I was a kid.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I took take forever to decide on a shirt I would buy.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And like I'd buy it, bring it home, want to return it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm better now, but when I when I move positions, it's it's definitely definitely tough for me.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh Four Scout initially, I was I was a little bit worried.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I joined that organization.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: The Americas is a little bit in disarray, had to make a lot of leadership changes.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, once you get past that hurdle, that's when the fun starts.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to say, that was you know, some of the best years of my life was working with uh with some of those folks over there.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Four Scout was an incredible uh culture, and um I still have some you know incredible friendships from those four years.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we came on when I joined, we were just crossing about 70 million in revenue.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I left four years later, we had reached 400.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was solid growth.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: This was a great experience too for me.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: The other reason Android left was I wanted an opportunity to take a company public or be a part of that, and we wound up after two years, we filed our S1 shortly, went public right after that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was very cool experience.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then given the of the always imminent uh Tanium IPO, you made the right decision going to Four Scout to do that one there, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'll be a hundred when Tanium goes public.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so four years at Four Scout, and then you took a right turn.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: You went, uh, I've been doing this cybersecurity thing for a while, and I'm gonna go do something completely different at SciSense.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, why what was your thinking there?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I I left Fourscout for a couple reasons.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: One, the product was just aging, you know, it was a technology that was over 20 years old.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't making the right improvements or advancements in the tech, and it was getting harder to convince customers to move forward with it.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I did like the people there, so it was tough for me to make that decision, but I knew I needed to go to a more modern company, you know, something someone more progressive.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first reason.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I started looking.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the second reason was I decided with my husband to go through a surrogacy process and have kids.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we ultimately were lucky enough to have twins.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was traveling on the road globally in planes, you know, probably close to 300,000 miles a year.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I just said, look, I I can't I can't do this, especially in the first early years of their lives.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be around them.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I was looking for a CRO position, strictly something in New York City, hardly any travel.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I could be home all the time.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I just took something that I thought was, you know, a hot company.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just, it was just a bad mistake.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess I I um just jumped into I jumped out of cyber.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: I took a role in the company that is focused on business analytics and intelligence, something I have you know, little interest in.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I got there and you know, kind of a couple months in, I'm like, oh, you know, it just wasn't wasn't for me.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Great people, you know, I can't say anything bad about it, just wasn't a good, wasn't a good fit.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't passionate about it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: The culture was a little bit different too.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably if I go back to what I just said earlier about culture being so important.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, if I I'd probably put those things in my values first, I probably would have made a better decision.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I think everybody has a blip on their resume every once in a while.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was fortunate enough to kind of recover from that and then you know found an opportunity over at Armist.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's talk about that then.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you you come back into well, two things.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: One is you come back into cyber.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this is October 2020, and you come back to a company which I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, competes against your your former company, Force Guy.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, they they they definitely have um competitive products for sure.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wasn't looking for that.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: The opportunity, you know, came to me by somebody who's very close with um who is the uh the president of Armist.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I got a chance to really look at the technology and realize wow, they've really created the next generation of asset management and visibility and something like I had never seen before.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Very fascinating.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, after speaking to the founders, I realized that we had a just a perfect match from a culture perspective where they wanted to grow the business and all their beliefs about running a business.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I couldn't be happier.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible company.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: And as you got in there, uh, has were you thinking about growing headcount?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Are you thinking about changing up anything that they were doing in terms of their go-to-market?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what I'd say is um, you know, joining, joining a fast-growing startup, you know, it was evident early on that they had aspirations based on growth to become a public company.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So what I wanted to do is make sure that all the decisions that we made around hiring and our processes and our tools that we use are all those that can scale to be ready for a public company.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And IPO readiness is super important.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you want to make sure you make these investments early on to take you well through the IPO.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, coming on board, I wanted to make sure I had a few different things in place.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the number one position that I hired for was someone to be in charge of global enablement.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: For me, enablement is the backbone of the pillar of a good sales organization.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you Need to have somebody run that properly and scale that to be able to support the growing needs of any sales organization.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my first hire.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Next was ahead of operations and really looking for someone who had the experience of working for a world-class company before.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was super important, making sure that my RVPs and the structure of that business, you know, three theaters, you have the Americas, APAC, AMIA.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then also I'm just based on my background, you know, a huge fan of public sector and the opportunity there.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is sometimes a slower road to get revenue.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: If um, but you know, my based on my background, you know, I have a lot of experience with it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I decided to put somebody, an R VP, in to run all of public sector to take care of the business for state and local, as well as federal in the civilian and defense space.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: So investments in enablement operations and then carving at verticals give focus, right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Was how you correct it?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Don't you need to tell me numbers, but yeah, LinkedIn tells me 532 employees roughly at Armas and about 100 or so in sales right now.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: When you started, how's that number grown uh since you started?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when I started 18 months ago, we had about 200 employees and we just crossed the 500 mark.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Good to see the LinkedIn's already updated that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think they must just pull the number of people who say they weren't there, right?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: So just add it up like that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's uh that's quite a lot of that's doubling the size of the company the headcount anyway in 18 months.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of how you structure the team, uh, is it traditional you said SDRs already?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: A SDR, do you have a commercial sector as well?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: We do.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: We do.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: So in the US, we have we have commercial and we have so there's there's three, I say, verticals.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just commercial, enterprise, and then public sector in the US.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the way we structure it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then SEs and SDRs as well, right?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And what role does channel and partnerships play with Armist?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I probably should have mentioned that earlier.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: My channel chief is going to probably kick me after he sees this this uh podcast.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was actually another important position as well, and finding the right person to run global channels.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that is, I'm a big, big believer in the channel, and that was a very important position as well.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, to answer your question, yeah, it plays a huge, huge role within within our company, and it has at my past companies as well, and making sure that we have the right channel partners and there's a good healthy mix of the mom and pops as well as the larger types of partners, then also figuring out what's the strategy internationally with working with with distribution as well as partners um in the countries that you're going after.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And as you've been doing the hiring, Brian, culture obviously is important to you.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you look for in terms of the right people to come in and make a difference at Armous?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's uh it's it's changed a little bit.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you want to have somebody who's gonna fit your culture, who um you know feels a good person, has great values.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that's always important.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: After you get after that, I would say the biggest thing that I look for right now is reps that have relationships with customers and can get quick meetings set up.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and why that's important is there's so many cyber companies out there, and everybody gets bombarded with folks wanting to sell you something.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And no matter how good you are as a prospector, if you don't have relationships, it's just gonna take you a lot longer to get in front of a customer, do your pitch, get it to a pilot, and then ultimately close the deal.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So as we're growing the business, um, and I make suggestions even to other startups that are starting to build out sales teams, it's very important that you get some quick wins.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the way to get quick wins is to hire people that have relationships.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the first thing that I look at.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Next is you know, are the have they been successful?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Have they been to president's club?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are they hitting their numbers year over year?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And those are just you know some of the baseline things.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Let me uh let me play devil's advocate on the Rolodex one.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I I 100% agree with the the idea that it's incredibly difficult at there to you know start from scratch in a territory where you don't know anyone.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the devil's advocate is that what I found is that our relationships are never quite as strong as we think they are in the sales.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the person that comes in with the Rolodex, yeah, it doesn't always it doesn't quite hold up as well as they thought it did.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering if you've you've seen that and how you've thought about that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I think it's it's one thing to say that you know someone, and it's another thing to really have that experience and the friendships within that customer base to help you get along in your career.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: The the one thing that I look at and kind of throw resumes out for is if you have job hoppers, you know, people that are at a company for one year, another year, and another company, another two years, and they just bounce around.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't like hiring uh those types of folks personally, but I think if you see somebody who has a track record, they've been at a company successfully for three, four, five years, they do well, they move on, they keep their same customer base.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have that experience of selling to a customer, the product not working, bringing down the customer, you go through that pain, help the customer get back up again.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to go through that, that, that journey ultimately with a customer for a while in order to build that true bond.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is look, I there's other things besides just having relationships, but I think you need to have, you know, kind of that go through that journey and experience with your customer base in order to be successful.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's it's not just look while you're you're coming the door, you have those relationships, you get quick meetings, you're also responsible for prospecting into net new customers and relationships you don't have.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: But because you have that experience in the past, that should help you be more successful in opening up doors.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I concur.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I when I do get asked about advice for you know people young in their career, that's one of the things I tell them.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: I say, you know, pick your market, pick your your both geographic or you know, territory market, but also your expertise market in terms of the space you want to be in and stick with it.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Don't don't run out the door after six months because someone else in a different market and different area is offering you you know 10% more.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you stick with it, you're gonna build your franchise in that area.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And your life when you're in the middle of your career and the later on your career is gonna be so much easier just because you have that incredible relationships built up over time that people know, like, and trust you.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's rapport there, there's you know bonded uh experiences over many years.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: You your life will be so much easier as a seller.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Totally agree.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'll tell you one quick story.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I was at a startup three or four years ago, and we were looking for the same thing.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: That was either one or two that we're looking for.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I used to do an interview question, which people didn't like, but I'll, you know, I'll tell you what it was.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I used to say to people, you know, it's important that we have someone who comes in with you know some relationships because we need the quick lens, as you were saying.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, Yeah, yeah, you know, I've got that, I've got that.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, okay, well, you know, I'm not here's how I put it to them.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying I would do this, but if if we put in your letter of employment, your offer letter, that you had to book 20 first meetings with your existing network inside the first 30 days, how would you feel about that?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it always got an interesting reaction, you know.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Some people would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, hold on a minute.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, they start pushing back on it, right?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: And some people would be like, 20, you know, they think it through and go, yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was just interesting to see how much they really believed in their statement that they're they're they're they knew the territory and relationships were really good.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna steal that.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we made some hiring decisions based, well, not the hiring decisions, but something was one of the factors, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: How did they respond to that question?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: We never once put it in the offer letter that that's what was expected, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, although you know we might have had an agreement of you know first month, second month in terms of what would happen.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's a great point.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it really is.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Being able to get those quick wins coming in is is critical.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: So in terms of the road to the IPO, Brian, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: You talked about you know putting some infrastructure and structure, I guess, in the sales team with the operations and namelyman folks.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: What else are you thinking about with the the go-to-market team when it comes to the road to IPO?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's um it's it's really important to be in lockstep with your CMO, if you're a CRO.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm fortunate to have a great relationship with our CMO, uh Gene English, who worked at Palo Alto.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um she has some incredible ideas and a great background.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's really important.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a humming marketing organization, they can supply you with at least a third of your leads and opportunities to build a pipeline.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, same with the channels.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once the channels is cranking, you know, you want to get to that model a third, a third, a third, you know, third channel, third marketing, and third sales um pipeline that that's being built.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's a very important thing to look at is where where do you spend your money?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where do you spend your marketing dollars?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to choose wisely.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have an infinite amount of budget to spend, and you have to make sure that you're looking at the events that are going to have the biggest impact to drive pipelines.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's that's a very important thing.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: You always have to be building pipeline.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, from a cadence perspective, I've since the dawn of time run my forecast calls um every week or every other week, and depending on how depending on the the timing of the quarter.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I have a pipeline call as well that's run every other week at the RVP level that inspects pipeline and the growth of pipeline.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a very important metric to make sure that even the reps that are at 200% of their number, they're still going to be walking into a big pipeline that they've built the next quarter, you know, and you want to always keep that pipeline machine jamming.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you set expectations with the AEs about how much of their pipeline should be self-generated versus coming from the SDRs?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for me, it doesn't matter.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: It should get to be a third, a third, a third, but they need to be at 5x pipeline.
• 32:46
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't care how it gets they get there, if it has to be all the on their own, that that's what they have to do.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm obviously I push on channels and marketing to help out the AEs and the SDRs, but again, it's ultimately their responsibility and they need to figure out a way to make it happen.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: If channels isn't working for them or marketing isn't working for them, they need to either, you know, obviously tell their leadership or pick up the phone and build those relationships to make sure that those vectors are helping build pipeline for them.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: I love you're doing that focus on pipeline.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, I don't know, I'm gonna throw out a number.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: 50% of organizations probably don't have that, you know, week by week focus on pipeline building.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think too often we get focused on outcomes further down the line and forecasts and things like that.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the ultimate is pipeline.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm sure this is not why you you did this, but I always feel that pipeline is it covers a lot of ills, right?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to be the most perfect seller executing every stage to the nth degree and running every single deal if you got a big pipeline, right?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: You you can get some leeway there, you have some breathing space, you don't put yourself under pressure so much.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas if you're you're operating lean, you you better execute well, right?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, totally.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so Brian, let me change up uh uh speed here you uh for you a little bit.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: There is no better way to find out about the real Brian Gumble than by using one of these bullshit LinkedIn polls out there.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got two of them actually, and they're not actually as bullshit as you as some of them are this morning.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: So Manish Bundan, in your opinion, what is the most important factor that enables people to grow and thrive in their careers?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there's three, four options.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: A is challenges and opportunities, B is great leaders and mentors, C is exciting rewards and recognition, and D is other.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh, you know, great leaders and mentors can really help.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I think back to the mentors that I had that helped me get from one stage of my career to the next.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was very important.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: I had the opportunity to work for some amazing leaders during my career that helped shape me.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had to choose, I mean, I I'd say that's probably you know one of one of the I'd probably choose that answer.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's what the results of the poll, 51% chose great leaders and mentors.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: 49% chose challenges and opportunity.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I wasn't that far behind.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: And 8% was the rewards and recognition.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when I think back on my career, I was definitely light on seeking out and working with great, great mentors.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had uh had two or three along the way, but uh for some reason I I thought I would go a few things of my own, which maybe wasn't the wisest thing to do.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I again advising people fresh in the space, great leaders and mentors are so important.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: The second poll from Dabika Singh, do you believe luck plays any role in your success?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes or no?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Without question, there's definitely luck along the way.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: What's that saying?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: The harder you work, the luckier you become.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I I I definitely feel I definitely feel that.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how much more to elaborate on that.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I've I got I definitely I've gotten lucky in timing and all that, and I think um, you know, a lot of successful people have.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the the results were 82% said yes.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: For some reason, 18% uh don't believe luck plays any part in their success, which surprises me.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I think back, have you ever seen that movie?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think what's called is it is it sliding doors?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes, with uh Gwendolith Paltra.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right, with the the the the tube in London, right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is it the doors close, and if they close at a slightly different time, she wouldn't have met was her future you know boyfriend, husband or whatever.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think about those moments in your career where you if I just chosen that path for this path, what would have happened if I just said yes as opposed to maybe, you know, where would my life have been?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone has these moments, right?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then we don't make these decisions based on an absolute, you know, thorough analysis and and all the rest of it.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: At some point you just get a little bit lucky along the way, and some but at some point you get a bit unlucky as well, right?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: It works both ways, yeah, yeah, that's so true.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Brian, if if someone wants to get hold of you, if you're hiring or wants to follow on the conversation with you, how's the what's the best way to get hold of you?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Gumble at armous.com.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: Gumble at armist.com.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Gumble is how do we spell gumble?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: G-U-M-B-E-L.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: And is there a sales saying or question that you you've heard that you just wish would be dispatched into the far reaches of the universe, never to be heard again?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Single pane of glass.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can't stand that one.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: We'll keep shop at night.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like that one.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: The irony of the single pane of glass is you and I both spent time at McAfee, where you know, it I think it was almost almost certainly written into the the sales deck, the phrase single pane of glass, right?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Look, it was it was yeah, but it was great back then.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was awesome, you know.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: But this is 2022.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, come on, we just have to evolve a little bit.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: It uh I don't know if it was a new idea back then, but it was certainly newer than it is now.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Brian, I've really enjoyed uh chatting this morning and catching up with you and hearing your about your experiences and learnings along the way.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for joining us today.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a pleasure, Andrew.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually good timing to end this as my kids are about to run into the room.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So hey, thanks again.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk soon.