Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 166: Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, CRO at 6clicks: best practices for working with the channel

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166: Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, CRO at 6clicks: best practices for working with the channel · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're innovating in a legacy market, bringing new things to the market to make a difference.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do that and what role does the channel play?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Find out in this episode with Michelle Tori Tennyson, SixClick CRO.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Sales Blueboard podcast, which exists because as cybersecurity startups, it is hard to get to refuel sales process and then scale the sales team.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sales Bluebird gives you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about building great cybersecurity companies.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Mulligan.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest today is Michelle Torrey Tennyson, Chief Revenue Officer at SixClicks.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Michelle, welcome to Sales Blue Bird.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Andrew.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great to be here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm looking forward to our discussion.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh you've got an interesting background.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: You spent a lot of time in the traditional security channel, and I'm keen to understand the learnings from that and how you applied it working now as the CRO at a vendor.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get to some interesting conversations around that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: But Michelle, before we get there, let's get to know you a little bit better than we do right now.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have a list of questions here, and I'm gonna ask you to pick out three numbers randomly between one and thirty-five, and I'll read out the questions that they correspond to.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll start with my age, 35.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: 35, I love it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wimboar Isle.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 13 and uh 28.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's start with 35.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Window or aisle.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Window, for sure.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit claustrophobic.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like to look out.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like to look out, yes.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: There is something I find when you're flying on long journeys.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of good thinking can happen staring at the window of a plane.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: But also, I'm I I don't know what it is about me or what it says, but I'm kind of fascinated what you're flying over at times, right?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things I I always think about flying from, well, either east to west or west to east across the western half of the US.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you think there's so much barren land, like two hours of it on a plane, that somehow the settlers kept going.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they thought, no, no, it's gonna be better.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna keep going, we're gonna keep going.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Often think about their mindset of going through that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's it's so mountainous and and desert too.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it's uninhabitable, really.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh yeah, I will I am also curious about why people keep their their windows, you know, the shutter closed on their window, because it's you're right, there's so much beauty out there that you don't get to see otherwise.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right, for sure.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next one you said with 13, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So they say that home is where the heart is.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Where is home for you?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a good question.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I currently reside in Arizona with my second husband.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Came here uh by virtue of that second marriage, and both of my older kids followed me.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we're a blended family.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've got uh four kids between us.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've officially hit empty nest status after 30 years.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you can believe that, I've had 30 years of kids in my house.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not quite sure what to do with myself now, but I'm enjoying it, nevertheless.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, right now, home is in Arizona.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I came here to do what I call a tour of duty with my husband and helped him raise his kids.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was and always has been a primary parent for his children.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um I was, you know, very, very well plugged in, and we've done a lovely job blending our families, and I'm quite proud of what we've put together.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I I told him I'm not gonna die in the desert.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think going back to California is in the cards for us.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he jokes, you know, we're gonna be the only U-Haul going that direction because it seems like everyone's coming this way.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, we still own a home in the Bay Area, and that's ultimately where we'll land.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in the Bay Area for five years, beautiful part of the world.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of good things going on there despite what people say, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of natural beauty if we can get out.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love my kids, but I'm very jealous of your empty nest status, I've got to tell you.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the house feels a lot bigger now.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when the kids are here, we're like, oh, we need more house, and now we need less house, because it's a lot to maintain.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, no, we're really enjoying it.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what was your final number?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 28.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: One great airport that you've been to.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you measure greatness when it comes to airports?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think ease of maneuvering is one, but people watching quality is is another.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's probably a toss-up between Heathrow and Amsterdam in terms of just really good people watching.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the melting pot venues.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with Heathrow.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Shipwroll is fun.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Shipwroll, uh, I've been through there quite a few times.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: One of my abiding memories is they have those foot spas where you can put your feet into the thing and have the little tadpoles nibble away at your feet.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I missed that, Andrew.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I I remember clearly it was a huge area, and they had these tanks, and you put your feet in it.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first time I'd ever seen it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: This was quite a few years ago.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they've taken it out by now, but uh and these people would all line up with their feet in these these tubs, and there's all these little tadpoles nipped away at their feet.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, if I had participated in that, that might have tipped the scale for me.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They would have been pretty.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the Dutch are they quite progressive.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: How did you first make money as a kid, Michelle?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, you know, traditional young girl kind of things.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I babysat.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my first actual job with a paycheck was Burger King.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was schlepping burgers for$3.10 an hour, if you can believe that.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did they give you a pay raise to maybe$3.15 or$3.20?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, I actually found another job, and the day that I gave my notice, my boss tried to give me a pay raise to$3.15, and I'm like, no.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Funny thing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh when I left high school before going to college, I spent one month working in McDonald's in Edinburgh, in Scotland, it just opened up.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't actually remember how much I was paid, but it was it was almost that low.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was maybe three pounds fifty or something like that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the day before I was leaving to go to university, then they didn't know I was going.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: They gave me like a five pence pay raise.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the lady that gave me was real mad when I when I quit the next day.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like somehow, you know, it was uh a big deal that I'd I'd taken the five pence pay raise and then left.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, it's an amazing amount of people that have some sort of experience of working in the fast food industry and then go on from there.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think most young kids should have some sort of customer service experience dealing with the public.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a critical life skill in general that food service is a good way to get that experience.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So then beyond Burger King, what was your first real job that was part of a career?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I got into sales through uh working for a semiconductor firm in Silicon Valley and uh took a job as an inside sales rep.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't know anything about selling, didn't know anything about components, and I learned all of the vernacular of the semiconductor industry and just sort of found my way, you know, kept climbing the ladder from there.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I would say that was probably my first entree into an actual sales role that propelled me.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then if we fast forward through your career, I'm looking at uh you spent a bit of time, six years at Checkpoint, Siegeworks, uh long time, seven years at Fishnet, and then you were a sales leader at Allgrass, and now uh fast forward to just over a year ago, you became the chief revenue officer at SixClicks.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh going back to your first time, first few weeks or months at SixClicks, do you remember when you were there and the first time that you you and the team booked an order when you just joined?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the first deal that that we closed here in the US, so I have global responsibility for the revenue number, and we have a team in Australia, UK, and the US.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the first deal that we closed in the US after I joined was probably the easiest technology sale I ever made, and that was into an advisor partner.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So our product is pretty well suited to the advisory space, a managed service provider consulting uh service delivery organization.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the platform is really elegant for their use case and quite enabling for what they're trying to accomplish.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it was fun.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to meet with the the buyer at the advisory partner you mentioned now, how would you answer their question to you, which would be what does six clicks do?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have two primary audiences or target markets.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, the advisory market is one area, and that did that kind of hails back to the heritage of the company.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Two of our three founders came out of KPMG.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our CEO himself was the chief digital officer for KPMG, so it was his responsibility to digitize service delivery for that organization.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so taking the experience that he and our other KPMG founder had, they basically developed a product that would be really well suited for that market.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was the original intent.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I joined mid-last year, I saw a lot of that functionality that they had developed solely targeted for that market as being resonant in the commercial enterprise market as well.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I came in and actually had quite a bit of influence on the product packaging and pricing model and then marketing of that product line.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're now finding ourselves further upstreaming the enterprise.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the primary differentiators for six clicks as a contemporary next generation GRC are uh multi-tenancy, which is uh very appealing to advisory firms, uh managed service providers, but also very complex organizations that have, you know, maybe multi-levels of hierarchy or siloed divisions or perhaps uh subsidiaries of a holding company.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a model that lends itself really nicely, even in the uh enterprise commercial space.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's one differentiator for us in what is a quite a crowded GRC space, a lot of players in that market.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second differentiator for us is we've got a really rich, robust content library.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when I speak of content, I'm talking about standards, laws, regulations, assessment templates, reporting templates, risk libraries, policy, baseline policies, playbooks, projects.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: The list goes on, and we've got just volumes of content that we maintain, keep current, and uh provide at no additional cost to our clients.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then the last differentiator, Andrew, is our AI engine.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we call our AI engine Haley for the spelling of her name, H A I L E Y.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: But Haley is essentially uh uses natural language processing, and it'll uh she can allow a practitioner to take advantage of her ability to map privacy and cyber regulations to each other and identify gaps, as well as policy or control sets to standards as well.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So with us being standard agnostics, she can essentially digest any standard, any framework, any regulation that's either cyber or privacy, and create those mappings in a matter of minutes where a practitioner might spend hours and hours and hours doing that repeatedly over across multiple regulations.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: The benefit of that work and that efficiency is at the end of the results, it gives you a kind of a roadmap for where the gaps are and how you prioritize where to spend your time.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say an organization is PCI compliant and they know in six months that they want to become ISO 27001 compliant, they can take all of the work that they've done on their PCI assessment and that project, including all of the findings, the evidence, the attestations and responses, and then they can apply that to the ISO certification initiative and identify where there's gaps and what they need to do to prioritize and remediate those gaps.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a huge time saver.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And is the AI the big innovation that SixClick's is bringing to the market, or is there something else under the covers that really delivers the uniqueness and the value?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say the AI is a big, huge component and also the multi-tenancy, that multi-entity capability.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking to large university systems who have you know multiple schools, school of medicine, school of engineering, the use cases are endless for that.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned, first of all, the advisory partners, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm if I'm a partner at a mid-range firm, let's say, what am I doing right now if I don't have a tool that has multi-tenancy as part of it?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the legacy GRC providers in the market say that they can address that multi-hierarchy and complex org structure through LDAP, which is basically, you know, uh access control.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you can offer that in a smaller organization with uh not a very complex business model, but when you start to get into really large, complex organizations, it becomes messy and hard to maintain.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, though, they're still all living in the same instance of a GRC environment, right?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there still could be risk of cross-pollination of risks and so forth.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in a model that the model of a holding company is subsidiary, as I mentioned, this is a real world example.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a client that has 165 subsidiaries.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They buy, on average, about 16 to 20 a year.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's all they do is buy companies.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: They each organization remains its own wholly owned organization with its own CISO and its own risk register.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want their peer organizations to know what their risks are, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so they want to maintain some guardrails around that, but they also have a need to roll that risk data up to the corporate office and to the board.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a central location that needs visibility and they need some assessment response with regularity and they need reporting of incidents and risks, but they also want to give those organizations the autonomy to manage their own GRC and risk program.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Six Books does.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like to me there's a certain irony in the GRC world that uh companies are trying to control that just through access controls and not have a multi-tenancy.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, you're right, it's counterintuitive when it comes to cybersecurity.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And when you go to your enterprise buyers, who's buying this?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Who which is the persona you're going after?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Primarily we're speaking to the the personas in the InfoSec side of the uh business, so those that roll up to the CISO.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: On occasion, we talk to folks in under the CFO or CROs, chief risk officer, which is an emerging role now in companies.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd say 90% of the time we're sitting in the InfoSec side of the business.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: What are they screaming out for?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when they hear what you do, which is the thing they're like, oh my goodness, thank goodness.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm excited about that.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more about that thing right there.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Really, it's the three primary pillars that I mentioned that multi-tenancy, the uh the content library.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So not only are we standard agnostic and can bring in volumes of content, we can also bring in bespoke content.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they may have, for instance, a derivative of ISO that they're using to assess internally or assess themselves against.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a unique custom framework that they've built themselves, or perhaps a high hybrid of ISO and NIST and HIPAA, for instance.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: We can bring all of that in.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's no limit to what we can accommodate.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very easy to use, easy to implement.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: The organization that I mentioned that has 165 companies, while the sales cycle itself was long because they did a pretty extensive POC of our product, and they came off of a pro a previous GRC platform that had promised multi-tenancy for three years and never delivered.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a long sales cycle, but the implementation time was literally six weeks from the time we provisioned them to in production and assessing their hundreds at the time it was 145 organizations.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Six weeks that seems pretty short given the complexities of implementing GRC tools.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: The traditional tools, the legacy tools on the market, the ones that have actually established the market.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I won't name any names, but I think that most people listening to this, if they are familiar with GRC, they're going to know the usual players.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Those companies are development platforms and they have a lot of bells and whistles and they can pretty much do everything you want them to do, include slice your bread, but very expensive, very professional service intensive.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They require coding and customization.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you make that investment and you know have the team to support it, that's all good and well.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of that, you end up locked into that version and that code train.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you're never ever able to take advantage of upgrades from that vendor themselves.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's um it's a very archaic model, and customers are looking for alternatives, very much so.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it seems to me that uh this is one area of of many where the legacy players started off in the early 2000s when you know frame, you know, building a framework and infrastructure around these things and doing a whole bunch of consulting to set it up was kind of how things worked at the time, right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the DNA of some of these tools.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you contrast that to the thought these days, which is, well, that's that's not the way to do it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: We need to make things more consumable, we need to get the time to value all the way down.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like there's definitely some sub-markets in our world that are ripe for that, and this might be one of them.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the market itself has evolved.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what used to be the target GRC companies were obviously the more heavily regulated market sectors, but also companies that have have really large IT staff and a lot of money to spend on something like this, which at the time in the early days it was considered a nice to have.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now organizations we're finding who don't even have regulatory obligations, but they know that they need to adhere to something.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they're self-imposing frameworks and they're trying to adhere to either NIST or ISO or what have you.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: They see it more as a business enabler, and they understand that they have a requirement to roll up their risk story and their risk posture to their board and their shareholders or their employees or their vendors or their customers.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like everybody needs to know that you have a solid risk posture.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's no longer a nice to have.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the mindset has changed and we've seen budgets follow that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably the driver to get beyond spreadsheets.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to me, especially in this world, uh GRC world, that there's an addiction to spreadsheets, to fill in spreadsheets and pass around spreadsheets and then amalgamate spreadsheets and pay people to deal with spreadsheets, right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like there's a need to modernize how this all happens.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing how much still gets done on Excel.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: But uh even large companies, large sophisticated organizations that are high revenue companies, surprisingly, are still very much on the spreadsheet.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's what people know, and everybody knows how to run a spreadsheet.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody knows how to take on a new piece of software and and gain user adoption across the organization, because truly that's that is one of the biggest challenges and I would say friction points with adoption of a GRC solution.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the reasons why we design with our UX and UI in in mind, because that user experience matters.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, for us it matters because it keeps us sticky in the account if if they're getting user adoption, but it also helps accelerate their program.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: As you say, GRC, there's a lot of companies now in this space.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: You got the legacy players you were talking about.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I can think of more off the top of my head, but there's a few other ones now.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think about how to stand that?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: How to rise with the noise, get your more than your fair share of attention out there without just screaming all the time.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you help the sales team with that?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, buyers are so much more sophisticated now, Andrew.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the days of traditional selling are gone, you know, where you're cold calling or putting billboards on the side of the road or in the airports.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's still people still spend on those types of advertising mediums.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I think really customers are self-educating and they're looking for product reviews, I think is a really valuable way for technology vendors to get their message out because there's a lot of credibility in those.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: A potential prospect is going to look to see what kind of rating you have and what customers are saying about usability, ease of implementation, you know, feature delivery, things like that.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's probably one of the primary areas that any organization that's emerging and looking to gain user adoption should focus on.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you do that though?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I often think it's it's a good intention, right?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: That they should be able to go and look places and talk to their friends and their colleagues and get some good information.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: But when that when you rely on that, there's not much control you can have, it seems to me, anyway, from the the vendor side to really make sure the right things are hitting the right.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Place.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's very much a dependency.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're fairly codependent on your customers from that perspective.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a lot of it is just, you know, pick and shovel.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, making sure your customers are happy and continuously asking them, please write a review for us.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh referral selling is really important.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been selling in any technology and you get a referral deal versus a cold lead off the street that comes, you know, someone inbound that hits your website and asks for a meeting.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: The sales cycle related to the referral is going to be so much shorter than the cold inbound lead.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what role do the advisor partners play in that?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Are they referring?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Are they ad advising the buy?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're very important to us because they are advising their customers.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And those advisors aren't only offering managed services, but they're offering GRC complementary services, things like audit readiness, baseline policy development, information security program development, risk management framework implementation.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: VCSO services often, you know, our partners are offering fractional or VCSO services, and they're squarely in a position to influence a user's exposure to different technologies.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I said, Michelle, along the way was that you spent a long time at Fishnet, you know, one of the premier security, traditional security channel partners in North America.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering, as you think back to those days and thinking about what you're doing right now, the different differences between trying to be a successful channel partner versus being a successful vendor and what that means for how you think about the sales team.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm actually feel very lucky and blessed that I've had exposure to both sides of the table.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been on both on the manufacturing side, hailing back to my days at Checkpoint, where you know I was selling firewalls in the early days of firewalls before they were even a thing.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Checkpoint as a 100% channel company taught me a lot about selling through the channel.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I moved into the channel, I understood a day in the life and what it's like when you have to scrap for margin all day long every day and you know try to be remain agnostic to your customers so that you can bring value.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think having the experience of both of those worlds has well prepared me for this role.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So when I joined Six Clicks, you know, the company, as I mentioned, is very well aware and very knowledgeable about the advisory space, not so much about the traditional reseller channel.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So there was some education involved, and I brought in very early, I brought in a channel manager here in the States.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: We developed a channel program and we put all of the foundational pieces in place to really embrace the channel.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've actually even furthered that this fiscal year with our compensation model.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So all of our sales reps now have an uplift in their compensation if they run deals for the channel.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, that's a way to put our money where our mouth is.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a little bit more expensive to run a deal that way because you you're paying both the partner and the sales rep more commission, but it's the right thing to do when you're clamoring for mind share among the channel.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, they they don't get leads like a manufacturer gets leads, so bringing a channel partner a deal is like gold for them.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it it puts you in a nice position to ask for reciprocity as well.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you when you think about how to make Sysclicks attractive to your partners, given that you're relatively early stage and you know just getting going, what what can you bring as a as a newer vendor to a partner for them to want to pay attention and want to do business?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's no way they're shorter vendors to work with, right?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what what do you do to make yourself attractive to them?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think emerging vendors tend to have high uh richer margins, and so that always gets attention.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the legacy companies in the cyberspace, anyway, as I'm told, those vendors' margins diminish over time.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not sure why that is.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it relates back to their market share and they feel that they can do it, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: That they don't necessarily have to pay as much to the channel partner.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: But rich margins get mind share.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, motivating your salespeople the right way gets mind share, leads get mind share.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: But none of that matters if you have a technology that doesn't get mind share, right?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: If if you're appealing to their customer base with a technology that doesn't really that kind of falls flat, it none of that's gonna matter.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you have to have a compelling technology story to begin with, and then layer on all of those channel uh benefits from that.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me say something and tell me if you agree or disagree, is I feel like uh for the run-in-the-mill channel sales rep, right?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's no such thing, but let's say, you know, a rep adoptive, let's say, you know, they what they're trying to do is build their business, build their franchise with a core set of customers.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it really matters to them what they take to their customers.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they're, you know, there's they might only have, I don't know, 10 or 15, 20, 25 customers, but they've got 2,000 vendors to choose from.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: They want to make sure that they're successful with these customers.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, there's a lot of well that has to go into that.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, the technology, they don't want to take a dud.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to go to their customer and try and get in the meeting and then show up and this this technology is you know a bunch of crap or that people are not very professional, wherever it might be.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it does mean that in my mind, and this is really my question, how good are they at helping you make a market?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: If they're a little bit reluctant, how how many of them or in what way do they do it where they they want to take innovative new things to prospects?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question, Andrew.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: How good are they at helping you make a market?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really great question.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't rely on every sales rep to be able to uh see the forest from, you know, see through the forest because of the trees, right?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: We had an experience this week, in fact, if you're familiar with Guide Point Security, they're one of the largest national resellers of cybersecurity in the US.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to know the CEO, I was I worked for him at Fishnet.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I have I have a very high-level executive relationship already.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's the best boss, one I'll say one of the best bosses I've ever had.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But in spite of that, and in spite of the fact that I remain in touch with him, trying to work that relationship from the top down isn't always effective because they do have 500 vendors on their line card.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And unless there's unless there's activity happening in the field, I mean the magic really happens at the field between the reps.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we're bringing you into an opportunity and you see that there's a possibility to win in that opportunity because of a compelling technology and a and a real exploited pain point, that gets attention.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had a situation this week where one of the sales reps in the Northeast found their way to us, and she has a very specific risk and GRC background.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So she speaks the language, she's very GRC fluent.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um she was in a really good position to be able to evaluate us, our product, and kind of stack that up against the needs of her healthcare customer that she was considering us for.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we met with her, we did a demo, we spent a fair amount of time talking about our two organizations, what our go-to-market strategy was, how they like to work with vendors, all of their requirements, and so forth.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I spent a fair amount of time putting her mind at ease during that session that, you know, we'll go in and lockstep, we'll make her look good, and you know, we'll strategize beforehand, uh, we'll make sure that we can meet the customers' requirements, and we'll be sure to reflect really well on her.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we got we were able to secure the meeting with the healthcare provider, and we're actually quite excited about it because she's now also advanced us.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: She was so excited about our technology, she's advanced us to the GRC practice manager within Guideport.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it would have taken me six months to get that meeting otherwise.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's such a good point to make though, Michelle, because yeah, I I work with early stage cybersecurity vendors.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And for those that don't have the experience, I think there's a belief that if we start working with a channel partner, we've got a good relationship with a channel partner and things are gonna be good.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the right percentage is, but maybe that's 25% of it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the real work to be done is on the rep to rep level, right?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's out there in the field, building trust, building a common way of working, you know, figuring out, you know, almost rep by rep, target by target, how you're gonna go to market together.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's where the rubber meets the road when you're trying to build that relationship.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that uh if if someone's newer to this concept, what they should probably know is that you know, there's a long, long road of uh relationships that have kind of fallen by the wayside by bad behavior on either side, frankly, right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, partners getting cut out of deals and then uh uh vendors being cut out of deals and all sorts of things going on.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's so important at that level to have that level of trust, like you were building with the guide point rep.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is critical.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And all it takes is one situation and you will be blacklisted forever.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a it's a fine line.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: You really do have to understand the rules of the road and and stick by them.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is why I say I think my background lends itself really nicely because I've been on that side of the table.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've been the one that's been burned by vendors.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I've lived I've lived the same life that they live day in and day out, and I appreciate where they're coming from.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it allows me to be able to coach my reps accordingly.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and the good thing is that uh you know the the bar is not that high, right?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Good good integrity, good ethics, professionalism, looking after your partner, things like that will set you apart from from a lot of the relationship relationships out there.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's good, but it can be so powerful when it's done right.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just maybe not quite as easy as some people might think it is, I guess is my point.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about your sales team right now.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I mentioned early in the call, I've got uh three teams primarily Australia, UK, and US.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a handful of sales reps in each region.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're splitting Australia and the US uh with a territory boundary, and then I've got a few channel folks in each region as well.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, we have pre-sales technical support that serve also in a hybrid post-sales role.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: So our support team tries to stay consistent with the customer from start to finish through the whole life cycle, which as I mentioned can be quite short from sales, pre-sales to implementation because it is so easy to get the product stood up.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that's essentially it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got a couple of direct sales reps in each region and then a handful of channel people to support those folks and be involved in partner recruitment, deal registration approval, partner enablement, sales training, etc.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when you were bringing the team on after you joined, were you looking for GRC specialists or were you looking for sales athletes?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of characteristics that I look for in really good A-player salespeople.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: One of those characteristics is um motivation, which is um will to work.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I look to understand what motivates them.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me is an indication of how hard they're gonna work, are they gonna roll up their sleeves and do the hard stuff?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I look for athletic ability, frankly.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are they have they been athletes in the past?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have they been accomplished athletes?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because to me that shows a competitive nature and a willingness to perform and achieve at high levels.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Probably one of the most important things, Andrew, is coachability.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and I say that because they don't necessarily have to have GRC background.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: It does help if they are already ahead of the curve on the technology, but I don't look just solely at that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: How do you know if someone's coachable?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually over the years have I've tried so many ways to ask questions of sales candidates.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a really difficult part of the sales management job, as you would imagine.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually adopted the use of an assessment tool.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: So during the interview process, every one of my candidates that gets shortlisted goes through an assessment, an online assessment.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a 45-minute QA.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: It includes a variety of questions.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some questions relate to things like how they buy as individuals.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a large purchase, whether it's a home or a car or piece of land or vacation property, whatever.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is it helps get into their psyche about how they make buying decisions because that is a really strong indicator of how they'll sell as well.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: So do they take a long time to make a buy decision, in which case they'll probably allow customers to take a long time to make a decision, right?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are they comfortable talking about money?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the assessment ranges from those types of questions all the way to, you know, their closing style and so on and so forth.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I've found great value in being able to use that assessment tool.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: The company that manufactures it actually recommends not to share the results with the candidates.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if I hire the candidate, I ultimately do end up sharing the results because I think the findings are so valuable.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's a benefit for people to see where they scored high, where they didn't score high.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to put a percentage on how much weight you give the results of the assessment in the in the um hiring process, what what what percentage would you guess is actually quite a high percent.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: I would weight it probably 75%.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you why, because I've actually tested and gone against the recommendation of the assessment and have found that I shouldn't have.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have you know taken the the assessment and really put a lot of emphasis and a lot of weight behind it and have had great results.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you had asked me that question two years ago, I probably wouldn't have put the same weighting on that.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But my experience has been it it's a really well-thought out assessment, and they it's it's not a personality test per se, but it gets into the psyche of the individual in a way that they can't game, they can't game the assessment.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some artificial intelligence that goes on in the background to help understand if the users pause the test for a long time and they're looking up answers on Google, or you know, there's certain things that they can do to determine whether or not the results of the test are at there's an accuracy score.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm fascinated to know who who does this test, who produces it.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the company that I use is called Objective Business Management.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, excuse me, Objective Management Group, OMG.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the only ones, so there are quite a few tools on the market that do something similar.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at a few different ones.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm fascinated that you you put such a large weighting on that.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I what I've tended to see in the past, frankly, is people say, yeah, we do assessments and you know it's one of the data points.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And really, I think what they're saying is that it's probably more like a 20% weighting or you know, one of the things that they they're looking for.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I wonder if they're doing it for a bit of CYA or whether it's truly, you know, something they're looking for great insights from.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm I'm kind of intrigued and f and really fascinated that you've you signed such a high weighting to it.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what we're doing, Andrew, and and the expectations of my board and our investors are such that I can't get it wrong.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't rely on my gut.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've uh made hires on my gut in the past that haven't necessarily panned out.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sales is one of the diff most difficult roles to hire for.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I often have resurrected those results on candidates and who are now employees.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: As you get to know somebody and you get them through a couple of quarters and you see their sales patterns, then you compare that with the original assessment.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: You go, aha, okay, now I can see why they scored that way here, right?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I think it's a a great coaching tool.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was gonna say.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I love the fact that you follow through with it and use it as something to help, you know, the relationship and help people succeed.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think too too few times do we do that effectively as a as a group, salespeople and sales leaders, right?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where it really falls through and make it really work for you.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's awesome.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then do you continue for you do you continue using it for quite a while after the person's joined and use that as a basis, or at some point does it say, okay, now we know each other really well.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not quite not got quite so much use from a coaching standpoint.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think within the first six months to year, depending on what your roadmap is for your reps, it would be use a useful tool.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: This organization actually has uh a solution that will carry through the life cycle as well.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you can use it for folks that are already in the organization that maybe you didn't hire who you know uh are in a sales capacity.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also use it as an ongoing coaching tool for like regular assessments.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't subscribe to that model, but it's available.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think one point you made, which I really thinking about as you were talking there, you know, in startup selling when you've got a small team, you can't afford to mess with 50% of your hires, right?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a such a huge effect on the company, never mind the sales team.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, finding a way to really get more certainty than gut feel seems to me to be a a pretty sound approach.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm really encouraged that you've got such a high, I don't know what the right word is, trust, I guess, in in the assessment itself.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear that.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I I can't say I've always gotten it right, but you know, you you learn to pivot quickly.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I I don't know if I I've never run an engineering team or or a you know a customer support team, but I know in sales for sure, there's there's no such thing as getting it right every single time.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Even people that you know or were successful as you worked together in the past might not be successful or fit in quite right at the the new company.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: But whatever you can to increase the odds in your favor in in a way, you know, with assessment like that, seems like a pretty pretty natural and logical thing to go do.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why more people don't do it.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't either.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there is a cost associated with it, so that could be a factor.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: But but I found even with senior reps, every selling environment is going to be somewhat unique, regardless of how much experience you have.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I have two reps on my team that are very tenured.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: They've been doing this for a long time.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of them's been selling for 30 years.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's an older guy, and he's an absolute close.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Both of those individuals are strong closers.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he's also used to selling really, really large deals, like multi-seven-figure deals.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not necessarily selling that to that level, right?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our our deals are smaller and more transactional in nature.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so that coaching component still matters, even when you're dealing with, you know, long-tenured reps.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd be very cautious about people who don't believe they can get better or adapt or take on new things.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um coachability to one of your core values you look for, I think is so important.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Michelle, as you look out in the next uh towards the end of this year and into next year, what are the big things that you're thinking about with the sales team and your go-to-market strategy?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Brand awareness.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's our number one priority.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: So getting the name out, you know, making sure that people understand who Six Clicks is and what our value proposition is, that's uh core to our success.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's happening.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're seeing a lot of a lot of direct correlation in terms of inbound leads, uh, referrals from countries that we do not even have a presence in.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's exciting.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're also getting accolades and awards coming in unsolicited, and we're getting awareness across the analyst community.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been defined now as a disruptor by the analysts, and we're starting to get quite a bit of press coverage.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty exciting to see all of the hard work and organic ground, ground level work that we've been putting in uh pay off.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know there's gonna be quite a few companies in our space that wish they had that uh level of exposure and inbound that you were talking about.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's so hard out there right now to get that uh get more than your fair share.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're we're quite blessed.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, sales reps are always gonna want more leads, so it's a never-ending feed fest.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious though, you're a Australia headquartered company, and I'm wondering if that any any effect that has, good or bad, on on how you expand throughout the rest of the world.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the one area that we've had to really focus on is adjusting our contract language so that it's more relevant to the the local jurisdiction.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have legal entities in each of the three primary regions we operate in, although we have data centers worldwide in the three where we have sales teams, but also uh India and Dubai.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, our SaaS platform is available on Microsoft Azure and you've got presence around the world.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think having the the organization with a legal entity in the three primary regions and the contract language reflecting those local vernaculars and jurisdictional regions matters.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I've enjoyed our conversation, Michelle.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to get in touch with you, talk about uh what you're doing or potential employment, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, thanks for asking, Andrew.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so probably email is the best.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Michelle at sixclicks.com.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the number six, clicks.com.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd encourage everyone to go do that, and I wish uh you and the team great success for the rest of 22 and into 23.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode and that interview as much as I did.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Michelle's obviously got some really good experiences and very thoughtful about how she's building the sales team at six clicks right now.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: I have three takeaways.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: They might be different than yours, but here are mine.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: First one is our discussion around the channel and how important it is not just to build the relationship with the channel partner itself, but also down at the rep-by-rep level.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: As I've said in the interview, I don't know what the right percentage is, but uh getting a relationship in the first place is tough, but it's really, really a part of the battle.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: To really get some traction going, you have to go down to the individual account managers and figure out how you can build trust and relationships and a common way of working with them.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the real rubber meets the road when it comes to building a market, building your business to the channel.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: The second takeaway I had was the discussion on how Michelle looks at assessments as part of the hiring process.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: It really seemed to me that she's done her research, got some experiences to fall back on, and put a lot of trust in the assessment that she uses.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's fantastic to see someone do that, commit to it, learn from it, and then also use it as part of the coaching process in the first few months of someone's inside the sales team.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my third takeaway was the idea of being at the call face, as she said, picking shovel time when it comes to getting your fair share of attention, your your voice, your brand, and the market, and all the different things and ways you have to go by doing that.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And as she said, you know, there's no silver bullet there.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of hard work that people do have to get to figure out ways to go to get to the stakeholders in the market.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just the entropy in the market custom, but also the buying order and making sure that's the micro.