Latest / I Used To Be Crap At Sales / From SDR Struggles to Top Sales Leader at Gong | EP08 | Sarah Brazier

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From SDR Struggles to Top Sales Leader at Gong | EP08 | Sarah Brazier · I Used To Be Crap At Sales

0:00
mark ackers: Welcome to the podcast. Here's a sneak peek of
0:02
what's coming up in today's episode. Did you used to be crap
0:05
at Sales?
0:06
sarah brazier: Anything that you could possibly struggle with as
0:08
an SDR I did because I remember having a phone call, having
0:11
like, a 20 minute long conversation with someone, and
0:14
the meeting not converting to my manager in a one on one, and
0:17
saying, Can you tell me what I did wrong? And he hit play, and
0:20
he listened for a little bit, and then he hit pause, and he
0:23
said, You know what, I don't have time for this. He just
0:25
believed in me so little that he didn't even think that I was
0:28
worth taking the time to coach. But that's how bad I was at
0:31
sales. I couldn't even get coaching from my manager. How
0:34
mark ackers: did that make you feel?
0:36
sarah brazier: I was pissed as fuck, and I thought I just need
0:40
to find a place where that is not the culture, because I can't
0:45
get the coaching I need. If I could just master the basic
0:48
skills, then I knew I could take like my work ethic and my
0:52
creativity and be great. You
0:53
mark ackers: went to Gong. Did you know at the time what kind
0:56
of rocket ship you were boarding when you took that job?
1:00
sarah brazier: No, I had no idea. But the the pitch of Gong
1:04
at the time was like, replicate your top performers, turn your C
1:08
players into a players. I was like, Well, I'm an F player. So
1:12
I asked in my interview to the CRO I was like, my one of my big
1:15
concerns is that you have such a young manager, are you sure that
1:18
he's going to be able to enable me. Ryan longfield, who's the
1:22
CRO of Gong at the time, said, Yeah, I am. And I said, why? And
1:26
he said, because he's just that good, and he was so right.
1:29
Tanner is the best manager I've ever had. But also,
1:32
mark ackers: you create a personal brand. I remember
1:34
seeing you come online this video. I don't think I've hired
1:37
an actor here. Well,
1:38
sarah brazier: I was an actor. No, I
1:39
mark ackers: know, but that's what I've always thought.
1:41
They've hired an actor in a sales role. But do you realize
1:44
just how much it would take off?
1:46
sarah brazier: What happened was,
1:52
mark ackers: hello and welcome to another episode of I used to
1:55
be crap at sales. My name is Mark Ackers, co founder and head
1:59
of sales at mysalescoach. And today I am joined by this is a
2:03
lot. This a former foreign correspondent, a former Speech
2:07
and Drama teacher, a former actor, founding coach of SDR
2:11
nation. Possibly, this might be your biggest hint. Possibly
2:14
Gong's biggest ever celebrity employee, an advisor at no less
2:19
than five SaaS companies. At the time of recording, just over
2:23
80,000 LinkedIn followers has increased by two and a half 1000
2:27
since yesterday. The co founder of Dimmo. But most importantly,
2:31
and a big congratulations to soon to be mother. If you
2:35
haven't guessed it, by now, it's Sarah brazier. Sarah big welcome
2:39
to the I used to be crap at sales
2:41
sarah brazier: podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be
2:43
here.
2:44
mark ackers: Let's kick off. We were yes, no questions, Sarah,
2:47
did you used to be crap at sales?
2:49
sarah brazier: Yeah, of course, no doubt.
2:52
mark ackers: So let's, let's get into your background. Really
2:55
interesting background. You know, I've been aware of you for
2:59
maybe four or five years, obviously prominent voice on
3:01
LinkedIn, but only when I really looked at your profile did I see
3:05
a really interesting background that just I wasn't expecting. I
3:09
believe a key to any elite sales person is being able to story
3:14
tell. And I saw that you were a news director for what I believe
3:18
is a student radio station, and then a current foreign
3:23
correspondent for a couple of months in in a beautiful city of
3:26
Rome, and just tell me a little bit about that, like headline
3:29
level, but kind of what transferable skills you think
3:31
you picked up in those those roles there to help you get to
3:34
where you are today?
3:35
sarah brazier: Sure, so my degree is in broadcast
3:37
journalism, so both the foreign correspondent and the news
3:41
director that was for both our college radio station and then
3:47
for our TV station. And I think there are things that are used
3:52
literally every day, and that is one writing succinctly in the
3:57
active voice that's like huge when you're trying to
4:01
communicate and sell, especially when prospecting. And then two,
4:06
it's the takeaway. Everything you should be able to tell the
4:10
entire story in your headline is sort of the rule that I was
4:14
given as a as a student in journalism, and so in sales,
4:20
that's basically the same thing. You want to be able to help your
4:23
buyer make decisions very quickly. And you want to give
4:27
them the, you know, the five cent takeaway, the 1000 foot
4:30
view, whatever it is, really quick, that snapshot. And then
4:33
you can dive deeper into whatever else you know when
4:35
you're going into your metrics and your impact statements and
4:38
doing your demo or whatever. But yeah, just really succinct,
4:43
succinct communication, whether it's written or verbal, which
4:47
that wasn't a very succinct answer. So I didn't
4:49
mark ackers: want to say that, but I was, I was what he was.
4:51
Was telling a story. I was listening. But I see a lot of
4:54
sales reps go wrong there. You know, you ask for a pitch, or
4:57
what do you do? And you get free form. Your answers and you're
5:00
not very clear. So I can certainly see that, if you
5:03
mastered that very early on, how that would have helped you. And
5:07
then eight years as an actor on stage live, what's the biggest
5:12
thing that you starred in? Oh,
5:15
sarah brazier: I don't know. I think probably one of the shows
5:19
I did was called Women in jeopardy, and it ran for a
5:21
really long time in Walnut Creek, which is right outside of
5:23
San Francisco, and that was at like a regional theater, so that
5:27
was probably the place, but that paid me the most to act, and we
5:31
consistently had a full house. I also did speech and debate when
5:34
I was in high school and in college, and so the final round
5:39
of my national, national performance for Speech and
5:42
Debate. In high school, you perform in front of 5000 people,
5:47
like the whole tournament shows up to watch you. So that's like
5:49
the biggest audience that I've performed in front of.
5:52
mark ackers: How'd you find that?
5:56
sarah brazier: I mean, I think I went I think I went into a
6:00
completely different sort of Zen state of almost out of body
6:05
experience. I don't think I've ever had that much adrenaline in
6:08
my body ever again. It was wild. It was like dream state, but
6:12
it's real. There's a video of it somewhere on the internet. Yeah,
6:17
it's great. And
6:18
mark ackers: obviously, like another key to SaaS, I believe,
6:21
is being able to play that role. And whilst we all want to put
6:25
our best foot forward, we also want to be authentic. But there
6:28
is always a mask there, particularly on a discovery call
6:31
and a demo where you are trying to best present yourself. And
6:35
again, I imagine having that background as an actor for eight
6:38
years would have been helpful for you, unless you think that's
6:40
wrong?
6:41
sarah brazier: No, I think that's right. But I think the
6:43
thing that people don't necessarily connect to acting
6:46
right away that is the most influential in how you run your
6:50
deals is is that you are looking at everything, you're looking at
6:56
the situation from all different kinds of perspectives, and you
6:59
get really good at putting yourself in your buyers shoes.
7:02
So in a show, you are given a piece of paper with words on it,
7:07
and you have to lift those words off the page, breathe life into
7:11
them and make a one dimensional concept into a living,
7:15
breathing, believable human being that where the audience
7:19
will suspend their disbelief and go on a journey with you. And to
7:23
do that, you have to say, Well, I have to take off my Sarah
7:25
Brasher every day 2024 hat, and I have to go put on cecilies
7:30
hat. And The Importance of Being Earnest, where she's 16 years
7:34
old and in love with someone she's never met. And, you know,
7:38
wander down that path and try to justify why she's saying what
7:42
she's saying, understand why she's saying what she's saying.
7:45
Know why she's doing these things and the dynamics of
7:48
everybody else in that scene. And so you start thinking about,
7:51
what does this person really want? Why do they want it? Why
7:53
would they do that thing? Why would they say that thing?
7:55
What's the subtext going on? And all of that is really breaking
7:59
down the psychological concepts that are happening in building a
8:03
character. And you do the exact same thing when you are in
8:06
sales. You go, what would compel my buyer to make a decision, to
8:11
move faster? Why are they even looking at making this purchase?
8:15
What are they potentially not telling me, what's the subtext
8:18
to whatever they're doing or whatever they're saying on the
8:21
call, and you're trying to figure out, you know, 80% of the
8:24
sales cycle happens when you the seller are not in the room, and
8:27
so you're trying to figure out what's going on behind the
8:30
scenes. And I think those that is, like, the most applicable
8:33
aspect to me, from theater to sales.
8:36
mark ackers: So I think that's a fascinating answer, and that is
8:40
the challenge lots of sales people face. They're selling to
8:44
a persona or a role that they've just never done. So how do you
8:49
put that hat on and imagine what they're going through, what
8:53
they're trying to solve, particularly in SDR, right? So
8:56
if you take an SDR that joins a company, they could be speaking
8:59
to marketing managers, people that run FinTech firms like they
9:04
don't know that role, and it can be really hard to put that on.
9:07
And even when you start with an IE, if you're selling to CFOs,
9:10
for example, CROs not done that role. And that can be really
9:14
hard. So I imagine that whilst you could get your head around
9:17
what you had to do, there was still a big learning curve as to
9:20
the people that you were selling to?
9:23
sarah brazier: Sure. Well, I think, yeah, no. I mean, so in
9:28
theater, as an actor, the things that you want are the audience
9:31
to love you. You want them to laugh at your jokes. You want a
9:35
big applause at the end. You You know, actors are selfish. You
9:40
know, we want, we want attention. We're big hands, and
9:43
that's okay, like, as long as we know that that's okay, that's
9:45
something we can accept. And we want to do something that's
9:49
meaningful, that moves the audience, and they'll remember
9:53
that's not what my character wants in the show. So I have to,
9:57
you know, put away what Sarah wants so you can. Translate that
10:00
to an SDR, I want to book a meeting, I want to hit quota, I
10:04
want to make money. Those are the things that I want. That's
10:08
not what my buyer wants. That's not what my prospect wants. So
10:11
instead, I go, Okay, what would that person want? Well, to
10:15
understand what they want, I need to understand their world.
10:18
So that's where something like when I sold Gong, it was very
10:21
helpful, because you could go and you could listen to a
10:25
prospect talking about the things that they want, talking
10:28
about why they're making a purchase. You could go listen to
10:30
Customer Success calls. You could really try to get into
10:34
their world. And when you're prepping for a role in theater,
10:37
you either if you're playing an everyday person, you know, if
10:41
you're playing a cop, you might go interview a cop and ask them
10:45
about their day to day. If you are, you know, if you get to be
10:49
like an Angelina Jolie or, you know, someone who's famous, you
10:52
definitely have the privilege of being able to go shadow people
10:55
in their jobs. But you're doing research, and you're trying to
10:58
understand what the world looks like. And you do the exact same
11:03
thing in theater. You're, you know, you're, I'm sitting down
11:05
and I'm reading about about what someone's life is like, and I'm
11:08
just doing a lot of imagining. So as an SDR, that's kind of
11:11
what I do. It's like, what does this person want? Why would they
11:13
want that? What's going on in their lives, what's making them
11:16
pull their hair out? What are their objectives? How are they
11:19
going to get there? And the more you ask that, and then you and
11:23
you ask people, you ask your prospect, well, what are you
11:26
trying to do? Well, why are you trying to do that? And if you
11:30
come at at the role with a lot of curiosity, and you're not
11:33
focused so much on booking a meeting right away, then you can
11:37
have a much better conversation, and it's probably going to
11:40
convert, because then you can start connecting the dots
11:42
between their pain points and what they're doing on a daily
11:46
basis, and the efficiencies that you can bring them with whatever
11:49
you're selling.
11:50
mark ackers: I mean, it's a great answer, like,
11:52
particularly, again, the storytelling and the analogy. It
11:54
works so well. I think that, again, is where I see sales rep
11:58
struggle, is disconnecting from the outcome. And I think that
12:01
that is the challenge in a role where it's target based, it's
12:05
commission based, it's performance based. If you have a
12:08
couple of bad months, you can be out of a job. But the secret is
12:12
disconnecting from that outcome, and, as you say, trying to focus
12:15
on what the prospect wants. It's not about you, it's about them
12:19
and their world and and their problems. But I've never heard
12:22
it described with that analogy that I think works so well. Um,
12:27
so you mentioned Gong there that that's the first sort of notable
12:30
SaaS job on, uh, what is a very busy LinkedIn page. Most people
12:36
don't want to be in SaaS like they don't want to go and do a
12:39
job, particularly when you really break down what an SDR
12:42
role is, that doesn't sound appealing to many people. Was it
12:46
a conscious choice of yours to take a SaaS role, an SDR role,
12:51
for a SaaS company? Or how did you how did you end up there?
12:53
sarah brazier: Yeah, so I actually worked at a different
12:55
company before I worked at Gong, and I just didn't put it on my
12:58
resume, because I was so bad at sales that there was no point in
13:02
being like, yeah, I worked at this company for nine months and
13:04
never hit quota. That's the real story. That's the whereas crap
13:10
at sales. So the lead up to getting to that job is I was in
13:17
the Bay Area and I was acting, but I was also working as a
13:22
barista, and I was also working as a speech and debate coach in
13:28
the evenings at an after school program, and I was working as a
13:34
temp worker at Optimizely at their front desk. And I was
13:39
doing all of that because I needed health insurance and I
13:42
needed to pay rent, and you don't make a ton of money acting
13:49
because the jobs are so few and far between. And unless you're
13:53
getting union jobs, then you know you could get paid 500
13:56
bucks for 20 hours a week across two months, and that's what
14:00
you're going to get. And you know, it's definitely a labor of
14:04
love. So that's the situation I was in. I was working 80 to 90
14:08
hours a week, seven days a week, doing I'd wake up at four
14:12
o'clock in the morning to get to the train, to be at the barista,
14:16
to be to be at Phil's, the place where I was a barista, at 430 so
14:20
we could get everything set up to open at five, and then I'd
14:24
make coffee until like 11 o'clock. I'd jog over to
14:27
optimize Lee's office. I'd use their shower, and then at 1130
14:31
I'd be at the front desk, and I work the front desk until the
14:35
end of day, so like 435 and then I'd pack up, I would go home,
14:40
put on the clothes I was going to wear for rehearsal and eat a
14:44
quick bite, and then jump in my car, drive out to the East Bay,
14:47
and then rehearse until 11 o'clock at night, and that was
14:52
my schedule. And then on weekends, I would rehearse, but
14:54
I wouldn't have to barista or anything. So I thought, Man,
14:58
this really isn't sustained. Bowl. I'm kind of tired. I'm
15:02
getting kind of fat because I don't have any time to exercise.
15:05
I literally use my lunch break to go in the meditation exercise
15:09
room at Optimizely, I was very lucky. They had showers, and I
15:12
throw up, I throw a ball against the wall for 20 minutes, and
15:16
then shower real quick, and then I'd eat my lunch at my desk. But
15:20
yeah, I was, like, just, I think, like, the lack of sleep
15:23
and the stress levels, I was, like, not very healthy, and I
15:26
was totally exhausted. And I, you know, was barely, I don't
15:30
even know if I was breaking even to make rent. It was really
15:32
hard. And every day people would walk past my desk who were
15:36
working these, you know, really nice SaaS jobs making way more
15:40
money than I was and working far fewer hours. So I would I, you
15:47
know, I would just say, hey, what do you do to people? And
15:51
they say, Oh, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer. And say, I'd
15:53
really love to learn more about marketing. Can Can I grab your
15:56
ear for a minute sometime? And they'd say, Sure, and then we'd
15:58
go get coffee during a lunch break, or I get someone to cover
16:02
me. And I talked to a bunch of different people, and one of
16:07
those individuals was Jim Jones, who ran enablement and
16:10
Optimizely. And he said, I coach sales people essentially. And I
16:17
said, that's great. I think I'd be a great salesperson. Everyone
16:20
tells me so. And he said, Great, read this book, and he gave me
16:24
to sell as human and he said, when you're done reading that
16:27
book, come talk to me and let me know if you want to do sales.
16:30
And so I read the book, and I said, I finished it. We got
16:32
coffee, and then he just started introducing me to SDRs that he
16:36
had mentored over, you know, the course of his career. And he
16:40
knew a ton of people. He knows a ton of people. He's really good
16:43
at his job, and I shadowed some SDRs at Optimizely in my free
16:50
time, I took a bunch of notes, and I started interviewing, and
16:56
so I got referred into a company through that networking that Jim
16:59
really helped me do. He helped me edit my resume. He helped me
17:01
edit my resume. He helped me make my LinkedIn look good and
17:05
and that's how I got my first sales job. But it was really out
17:08
of I was desperate, I was hungry, I wanted to make enough
17:14
money to put some in savings, and I knew that if I could just
17:18
get my foot in the door, then I could be good at sales, because
17:22
all of the skills that I had been building up until that
17:25
point, I think translate really well storytelling, being
17:30
outgoing, being gritty, when you've got a lot of door
17:35
slamming in your face, which I think there's way more rejection
17:38
in theater than there is in in being an SDR, so, yeah, that's
17:42
how I ended up in sales. It was a conscious choice, but it was a
17:45
conscious choice made out of desperation.
17:48
mark ackers: And, I mean, yeah, again, I was just listening to
17:51
everything. Said that so much that we could break down. But it
17:54
feels like you identified what you wanted and you made it
17:58
happen, which, again, is the key to SaaS, right? You you hunt
18:02
what you want, you make it happen, and then it feels like
18:05
Jim Jones was important there, so he gave you that book. How
18:09
long did it take to read? It was such a busy schedule.
18:12
sarah brazier: Um, it took, like, a week. I definitely
18:14
remember I flipped through some some sections because I was
18:17
like, this is a little redundant. Fortunately, it's a
18:19
short book, and thematically, it's basically like everything
18:23
that I already knew, like at my core, in tuned, which is selling
18:30
is not about convincing someone that you're right, and selling
18:35
is not about reaching, you know, you reaching your goals or your
18:38
targets. Selling is about building a human connection and
18:41
solving a problem. And if you can do that, then you're going
18:45
to wait make way more sales, even though you have to put what
18:49
you want, which is to hit quota and make a bunch of money, on
18:52
hold, and you have to decide that what the customer wants is
18:56
more important than your goals. But if you do that, you can
18:59
build trust. And I was reading an article that about just
19:04
building, you know, building trust and building and building
19:08
relationship is so important because people remember and
19:14
align with people that they like. So if you have two
19:17
teachers teaching a group of students, and one teacher is a
19:20
big butt head, and the other teacher all the kids love, the
19:22
kids are gonna remember and like, be able to regurgitate the
19:26
information they learned from the teacher they loved, versus
19:28
the teacher that they didn't like at all. So yeah, so if
19:34
you're a jerk salesperson who's been a jerk to your prospect,
19:37
you're gonna lose a lot of deals because you're hunting, you're
19:40
you've got commission breath, you're hunting what you want,
19:42
versus if you are really trying to serve your customer, then
19:47
you're you're going to win more opportunities.
19:49
mark ackers: Yeah, and they pick up on that they know, with
19:53
commission breath questions versus genuine curiosity to try
19:57
and help them get to the right solution. So. So Jim Jones gives
20:01
you that book. You read it, sits down as a coffee. You said he
20:04
then sort of coached you, coached you for interviews,
20:07
LinkedIn, profile, etc. How impactful was that coaching from
20:11
someone that had done it before they had success in that role
20:15
and helped you? How? How impactful was that for you and
20:17
your progression?
20:18
sarah brazier: Super. I mean, he taught me. He's the first person
20:21
to teach me how to close an interview. Hey, Mark, is there
20:23
any reason or any hesitation that you have about moving me
20:26
forward in this process? I wouldn't have thought to ask
20:29
that. And there are people who will not hire you unless you ask
20:32
that question, because that makes you a salesperson for an
20:35
entry level role. No, you don't. I don't. I don't think that
20:39
should be your requirement. But that does mean that that person
20:42
has done a little bit of homework. So learning to ask
20:46
that question, getting coaching on just like what makes a good
20:50
follow up email, editing my resume to tell the story of I'm
20:56
a storyteller, I'm competitive, I'm results driven. I am all of
21:02
those things. But how do you get that onto a one sheet of paper
21:05
and make it look good when your jobs have been nonprofit to
21:10
teaching to theater like, how do you, you know, sew that all
21:13
together with a little bit of baristas in between. So all of
21:17
that, I think, was really important. But the most
21:19
important thing was that he was, he was basically what a champion
21:22
is in a deal, he opened, he opened doors for me, and he said
21:26
he went to people and said you should talk to Sarah. She's got
21:28
potential. And if you have a good champion in a deal, they're
21:32
going to do the exact same, same thing. They're going to say,
21:34
you've got to talk to the salesperson. You've got to look
21:36
at this tool. I think it could really help us. It's got a lot
21:39
of potential. You just have to hear them out. And he was
21:42
definitely that for me. And
21:44
mark ackers: was there a reason he couldn't get you a job in
21:46
that company?
21:47
sarah brazier: I think I could have gotten a job at Optimizely.
21:53
I don't think that they were hiring as aggressively as some
21:56
other organizations. So there were open opportunities where
22:00
people were willing to put me, but, um, yeah, I think, I think
22:07
I probably could have gotten a job there if I just waited a
22:09
little bit longer. Sounded
22:11
mark ackers: like you were. You're too hungry for that first
22:13
role, and obviously you like
22:15
sarah brazier: or just literally hungry.
22:20
mark ackers: So talk to me about that role. Then that role is not
22:22
on your resume. It's not on your LinkedIn. No need to name where
22:25
that company was, but you said you were crap there. Tell me
22:29
about that nine month period and what your struggles were,
22:33
sarah brazier: anything that you could possibly struggle with as
22:36
an SDR, I did so everything from I explained it. I remember going
22:41
into meetings and telling people this, it's like, I know that
22:44
there's a way to do this. I know there's a formula to these
22:47
conversations. I know there's, there's, you know, there's,
22:50
there's got to be, like, a call. There's got to be some kind of
22:53
tree, a logical tree that I can follow when I'm on a cold call.
22:56
There's got to be some kind of logical way to write these
22:59
emails that are compelling. I don't know, can someone please
23:02
tell me? And no one really could. So going somewhere where
23:07
people actually knew, like, what what worked and what didn't, was
23:11
very, very helpful. But the company, I think they, were
23:13
scaling super fast, and the SDR team had been just a handful of
23:18
reps, maybe one or two months before, and was that must had 50
23:24
plus reps by the time I left. So in nine months, going from five,
23:27
you know, they 10x the size, um, and so, yeah, I didn't know I
23:33
was making, I was making cold calls, but I didn't know how to
23:35
handle them, aside from, you know, an elevator pitch, and,
23:40
you know, ask asking for permission to pitch, that was
23:43
about as far as I had. And I didn't really know how to run,
23:47
like, ask discovery questions in a cold call or objection handle
23:51
in a cold call to get to the next thing, more importantly, I
23:55
was very unclear about who my ICP was, and the business didn't
24:00
really know what their ICP was. So you could, you know, the the
24:05
people that they told me to prospect was anyone were selling
24:09
the company should, should, should have been selling to
24:11
finance, but we were prospecting into anybody who, like, could be
24:15
a front desk person, like booking meetings and organizing
24:18
someone's calendar, like an executive assistant to the CFO,
24:22
like that's like the breadth that they were giving us as
24:24
potential people to call on. And so that didn't feel particularly
24:29
logical to me, but I didn't know how to articulate that, because
24:31
I didn't have the business acumen to say, I don't think we
24:34
have the right ICP. I don't even know what the word ICP meant or
24:37
the acronym. So, like not being able to define who to call on,
24:44
and not being able to define why someone would purchase the
24:47
product, because the benefit and the marketing that we did really
24:53
talked about end user experience, but the end user
24:56
benefit was not the same as why a CFO would make a purchase. And
25:00
so I couldn't talk about why CFOs would buy. I could only
25:06
talk about what the employees of that company would experience as
25:11
a benefit. And it was very hard for me to connect to the two,
25:13
because I didn't have the business acumen and I didn't
25:16
have the knowledge of the ICP, and I had just, I had a blank
25:20
canvas. So, yeah, I mean, I, like, that was really confusing
25:27
to me, not knowing, like, basic things around, how do I utilize
25:32
zoom info so I can actually get a lead list and, like, get it
25:36
well, so I would spend like, time just coming, I would like,
25:39
download these CSV files from zoom info, and then be like,
25:43
manually deleting stuff and then upload it to Salesforce. Like
25:46
huge, massive waste of time, because I didn't understand how
25:49
to use the technology yet, which I eventually figured out,
25:54
writing really marketing sounding emails instead of
25:57
something that was really prospect related, so really
26:00
broad, send it out, send out to 100 people the same email.
26:02
Instead of writing a why you why now style email, or, you know,
26:07
whatever format you think of, but writing a personalized email
26:10
about why you should care in this exact moment. Yeah. I mean,
26:15
those are, like all the things that SDRs do, and I didn't know
26:18
how to do any
26:21
mark ackers: of them. He saw a link. Links to, I suppose, what
26:23
we were saying earlier, though, you were tasked with trying to
26:27
get on the same page as a CFO in that example, and you've never
26:31
done that role before. And that can be the challenge, can't it?
26:35
So help me understand, Sarah, when, when you're saying you
26:37
didn't know how to do any of those things on a scale of one
26:40
to 1010. Being crap. How, how crap were you in that role?
26:46
sarah brazier: I mean, I think my manager would say I was like
26:49
500 but definitely, definitely at least a 10. Um, yeah, I
26:56
remember like, and part of the problem was that the business
27:01
had scaled too quickly. Because I remember having a phone call,
27:04
having, like, a 20 minute long conversation with someone, and
27:09
the meeting not converting. That that call not converting. I was
27:12
like, how could I talk to someone for 20 minutes? They
27:14
could tell me all these problems, they could tell me all
27:16
their challenges, and then they don't, they don't take a meeting
27:21
with the account executive. I don't what did I do wrong? So I
27:25
remember taking that call to my manager in a one on one and
27:28
saying, Hey, can you tell me what I did wrong? And he said,
27:34
Well, what part of the call Do you want to listen to? And I
27:37
said, I don't know, because I don't know where I messed up. So
27:40
can we just listen to all of it? And he hit play, and he listened
27:43
for a little bit, and then he hit pause, and he said, You know
27:46
what, I don't have time for this. Why don't you go find
27:49
someone else? And then we ended our one on one early, and it was
27:54
like he I don't know if it was he really didn't have time, or
27:58
he had at that point, he just believed in me so little that he
28:02
didn't even think that I was worth taking the time to coach.
28:05
But that's how bad I was at sales. I couldn't even get
28:08
coaching from my manager to figure out what went wrong in a
28:12
call.
28:13
mark ackers: How did that make you feel like when he paused it
28:16
and said, Go and find someone else. Don't have time. How did
28:19
that make you feel I was pissed as fuck.
28:24
sarah brazier: I saw red. I called my mom. I was like, This
28:28
is bullshit. What did your mom say? My dad worked in sales my
28:35
whole life, and she said, there are sales people. There are
28:39
sales managers who want to help you succeed, but there are a lot
28:44
of people who are in the profession that are out there
28:47
for themselves, and they only want to do things that make them
28:50
look good. And this person clearly doesn't think that you
28:52
can make him look good, so he's not, he's not going to help you.
28:56
And I think that's true, and it's not just in sales. There's
28:59
lots of there's lots of different things. Having worked
29:01
in theater. There's very exploitative people in theater
29:04
who, they will take a young ingenue who wants to be on
29:10
stage, and they'll make you work crazy hours and do crazy things.
29:14
I mean, you can, you can do some research on it, but it's the
29:18
same deal. There's just like a lot of there's there are people
29:20
like that. There are people who will take advantage of you or
29:22
not care about you, or throw you to the side when you're not
29:24
serving their purpose anymore. And I thought I just need to
29:28
find a place where that is not the culture, because I can't get
29:33
the coaching I need. I just need, like, some basic
29:36
guidelines. I need a couple curbs. I need someone to tell me
29:39
do this, not that once I could, if I could just master the basic
29:43
skills that I knew I could take, like my work ethic and my
29:47
creativity and be great. And I told that to him. I said, I am a
29:52
na I'm a national champion in speech and debate. I have been
29:56
in dozens of shows. I. I I was one of the top ranked speakers
30:02
in the entire country. I can talk in front of people, I can
30:06
tell stories, and I have a history of success, and I don't
30:09
lose, and I'm losing right now, and I need you to help me figure
30:14
out why I'm losing. And if you can't do that, then I don't
30:16
really know what the point is. What is it that you do here?
30:24
Which I probably shouldn't have said, especially in that way,
30:28
but I was really mad by that point in time. And this was
30:31
like, this is probably, like, six or seven months into the
30:34
role, and and then I was like, I'm just going to find somewhere
30:37
else to work, because whatever it is that these people are
30:42
asking me to do, which was basically like, you need to be
30:44
making 200 calls a day. Great, I can make 200 calls a day, but I
30:48
still don't know who I'm supposed to be calling on, and I
30:50
still don't know what I'm supposed to say, and no one
30:53
seems to be able to have an answer. Then they gave me, like
30:56
Arkansas as my territory, Arkansas, and Maine and I was
30:59
selling something that you really should be selling to,
31:02
like tech companies, like, I don't know a single tech company
31:06
HQ in Arkansas. I'm pretty sure the largest industry in Maine is
31:13
fishing. I don't think they're gonna buy guys. So, yeah, I
31:20
mean, obviously I still get worked up about it, because it
31:22
was just so, so illogical. And if you pointed out the fact that
31:26
it doesn't make sense that there's one SDR working all of
31:29
California, and there's a different SDR working all of New
31:32
York, and you have 48 other SDRs, and half of them are
31:37
working Oklahoma and Wisconsin, but they all have the same quota
31:44
that the SDRs, who are working the one SDR working California
31:47
and the one SDR working New York, are going to wildly blow
31:50
their number out compared to the ones in Wisconsin and Arkansas
31:54
that like, you just look at the TAM. Because I didn't have the
31:57
word Tam, but I was like, just, just look at zoom info. Just
32:00
look at the just look at the companies on Zoom info. Um, but
32:04
no one wanted to hear me be critical. No one want to solve
32:09
that problem. I was just I was difficult.
32:12
mark ackers: Do you think you? Do you think you were difficult?
32:14
No,
32:14
sarah brazier: I think I wasn't difficult. I think I was
32:16
pointing out a problem. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say pointing
32:19
out a really obvious problem. But, but they didn't have, they,
32:23
they didn't have the answers, or they didn't have the agency. So
32:26
they weren't gonna, they weren't gonna fix it, or they couldn't.
32:30
No one could explain to me why territories were assigned the
32:33
way they were. No one really knew. But also, like our
32:36
marketing team was sending out again, I think they should have
32:39
been selling to CFOs. The marketing team ran a campaign
32:45
where they sent out direct it was a direct mail campaign. They
32:49
sent out flyers, and they said, if you take a demo with us,
32:52
you'll get on $100 Amazon gift card with no even little fine
32:56
print that said, if you're a qualified buyer. And so I, I got
33:00
put on the inbound line, and I was just talking to women who
33:06
worked the front desk at dentist's office. I had a lot of
33:08
dentist office for some reason, calling in wanting their $100
33:12
Amazon gift card when I run the qualification criteria, and they
33:17
didn't do any of the things, they didn't have the spend that
33:20
they needed to in order to purchase the product. So it's
33:24
like, I'm sorry you can't watch a demo because you'll never use
33:28
this. And then they get so mad because they didn't get their
33:31
$100 Amazon gift card. Then you go back to marketing and be
33:34
like, Hey, we don't have any claws about disqualifying them,
33:40
so we gave away tons of $100 Amazon gift cards to front desk
33:44
ladies at dentist office. But I was like, that doesn't really
33:47
make sense why we do that in the first place. I feel like we
33:50
could do that differently. And I was being difficult. I really
33:56
didn't understand marketing exactly.
33:58
mark ackers: I know you're being humble there. It doesn't sound
34:00
even difficult at all. You are just trying to find solutions.
34:04
Obviously, we don't need to dwell on him much like you say.
34:07
I can see you're still emotional when you think about it. But
34:10
what's that manager doing right now? Do you know?
34:12
sarah brazier: No, I don't. I guess I could look them up on
34:14
LinkedIn and see but I think the company kind of figured itself
34:20
out, and they decided we will only talk to people in finance
34:24
and we'll only sell the CFOs. And I was like, hmm, I wonder
34:29
who came up with that idea. Well, it wasn't just me. I'm
34:34
sure there's a lot of people who felt the same way, but I'm
34:37
mark ackers: sure, yeah, I'm sure your manager knows where
34:39
you are now anyway, so you chose to leave you went to Gong. Did
34:47
you know at the time what kind of rocket ship you were boarding
34:50
when you took that job? No,
34:52
sarah brazier: I had no idea. But the the pitch of Gong at the
34:56
time was like, replicate your top performers, turn your C
34:59
players. Into a players, I was like, Well, I'm an F player. So
35:04
either I, my thought was, either I really am stupid and
35:09
everything I'm thinking is incorrect and I don't know
35:12
anything about sales, I don't really believe that, but maybe
35:14
that, maybe that's, maybe that's a harsh reality I've yet to
35:17
accept, or maybe I could go somewhere that seems to know and
35:22
like is literally selling a software to help you turn your
35:25
your struggling performers into successful ones. And if they're
35:29
selling that software and they can't and they can't transform
35:32
me, then I guess I should go back to school and get a
35:36
master's degree in something, or go live with my parents and try
35:40
to figure out my next step, but that was sort of like the point
35:44
where I had come to So, no, I didn't know I was joining a
35:48
rocket ship. I just thought I was going to get to a place
35:52
where someone could say something that made sense to me,
35:55
and I could do it on a phone or send it in an email, and people
35:59
would go, Yeah, I'll take a meeting with you. And that is
36:02
exactly what happened. Would
36:04
mark ackers: you say? Would you say, then, like, that was your
36:06
last chance. Salute. Like, either works out at gong or I'm
36:10
going to leave the profession?
36:11
sarah brazier: Yeah, yeah. I said. I said, I'm going to, I'm
36:14
going to go to Gong, and I'm going to give it my best shot
36:16
for 12 months, and I'm not going to do, I'm not going to be
36:19
distracted, so I'm not going to do any shows. I'm not going to
36:21
be in any plays. I'm not going to going to have any after
36:23
hours, anything. I'm just going to try to master the craft. And
36:28
so I didn't do any shows. I did one thing when I produced a
36:31
show, but it was only on weekends, and it wasn't a big
36:33
wasn't a big lift, and that was after I had already started,
36:36
like, consistently hitting my quota. And yeah, I got there,
36:42
and my manager was this guy who's 25 His name is Tanner
36:45
Robinson. He's no longer 25 but I I asked in my interview to the
36:51
CRO I was like, my one of my big concerns is that you have such a
36:54
young manager, and I just, are you sure that he's going to be
37:00
able to enable me. And Ryan longfield, who's a CRO of Gong
37:06
at the time, said, Yeah, I am. And I said, why? And he said,
37:10
because he's just that good. And he was so right. Tanner is the
37:15
best manager I've ever had, and he was able to explain to me
37:19
exactly why people buy. And that's what we did in our first
37:22
week of onboarding. It was just like, What is a CRO what does he
37:25
care about? What does she care about? Why would they care about
37:28
those things? What are their goals? Why do they pull their
37:31
hair out? What keeps them up at night? What's painful to them?
37:34
How is that different than a VP of sales? What is a VP of Sales
37:37
experiencing? How does that trickle down to the director?
37:40
How is enablement influenced this? How does whatever? And
37:44
it's just literally just sitting around and talking about what
37:47
these people want, why they would want it, really
37:49
understanding your buyer persona, and then going, okay,
37:52
so then where does Gong a solution fit into that, and how
37:56
do you articulate it? And we would write our outbound emails.
38:00
We wouldn't even mention Gong in the email. We would just talk
38:03
about problems, and then we'd say, Is it, is this? Does it
38:07
sound interesting to you? Is this happening in your world?
38:10
And people would be like, yeah, totally. Where our cold call was
38:15
just like our cold call script was just literally describing
38:18
the status quo of being in the dark as a CRO and not knowing
38:23
what's going on in your business, and, you know,
38:29
struggling to be able to identify what was going wrong.
38:33
And I was like, Man, that sounds like the company I just worked
38:35
at.
38:36
mark ackers: Did you prospect them? This
38:38
sarah brazier: makes so much sense.
38:40
mark ackers: Did you? Did you prospect them? Um,
38:42
sarah brazier: I didn't prospect them. They were, they were a
38:45
customer already, but I didn't have an account as an SDR. They
38:50
only gave it to the account executives, and then, and then,
38:55
Gong competitor. There, they hired, they hired a new CMO, and
39:01
the CMO sat on the board of one of their competitors, and so
39:04
they
39:04
mark ackers: switched. Gotcha, um, how would you describe like
39:08
you said at the start? Should be able to tell a story in a
39:11
headline. Tell us, from those that haven't lived it, we've
39:15
just seen it from the outside. What was that journey like at
39:18
Gong from day one to the day you left. Like, must have been
39:22
crazy.
39:23
sarah brazier: It was super crazy. But really it was like it
39:25
was fun, and it it, you know, your self esteem, if you spend
39:30
nine months not hitting quota, it's just tanking. It's just
39:33
dropping into the ground and being run over by a bulldozer or
39:37
something, I don't know. So when I got on the phones at Gong and
39:43
I was full outbound, they didn't give me anything inbound, I was
39:47
like, week two, maybe week two or beginning of week three. Just
39:55
like being like, getting on the phones and trying to pitch and
39:58
getting on the phones trying to object. Handle the thing that
40:01
Tanner did so well is that even if I didn't book a meeting, he
40:06
had alerts set up so that he could go listen to the call
40:08
right away, and then he'd give me feedback, but he'd always
40:11
have something encouraging to say, like great delivery of the
40:14
pitch, good pivot here. So close. Maybe you should try
40:18
saying this next time. And then every week, he would go through
40:22
and we would listen to calls where people didn't book the
40:25
meeting, but they got really close, and we would talk about
40:28
what that person did really well, and he would call out what
40:30
they liked. And then we would brainstorm as a collective SDR
40:34
team, how would, how could we have handled this call
40:37
differently? And so that was like everybody was working as a
40:42
team to help each other get better. People would hand each
40:47
other leads say, Hey, I saw that this this account is in your
40:51
book, and this lead just posted this thing on LinkedIn. I think
40:55
you should call them about that. It's great, like, capitalize on
40:59
that. Um, so, I mean, it was just like, it was a completely
41:03
different environment. And so I would get on calls, and people
41:08
would be interested in talking, and my manager would be
41:11
celebrating that, and then I would be prospecting on
41:15
LinkedIn, and I would screenshot conversations and text them on
41:20
the weekend to my manager, and he'd be like, really good, try
41:23
this line. So I'd be, like, working on the weekend on my
41:27
phone, like, you know, at the beach, and he'd be responding to
41:30
me, it's just really supportive environment. And so that, like,
41:33
you can, you can fall in love with the company. That way you
41:36
really feel like you're in, you're you're in a culture
41:39
that's going to help you thrive? And it did. And you're finding
41:44
wins, and you're coming up with ideas about, hey, I noticed this
41:47
thing going on. I would notice things happening on the floor.
41:50
And I would say, hey, Tanner, I noticed X, Y and Z is happening.
41:53
And he'd be like, great. How are you going to fix that? Do you
41:56
want to run a session on it? It wouldn't be like, No, that's
41:58
dumb. Go sit in your spot. Go be in your place. It'd be like good
42:03
point, and how can we build a better solution moving forward?
42:08
And so I got to run enablement trainings, and I had an improv
42:12
session after working hours once a week if people wanted to come
42:16
do improv. And I got to work with marketing, and I ran life
42:21
after SDR, which is I just interviewed people about, what
42:24
do you do once you've been in SDR? And it was like the highest
42:26
performing video that gong had at the time, like video series
42:30
Gong had at the time on LinkedIn and YouTube. So, like, people
42:34
were just like, yes and yes and and so when you're like a high
42:38
energy person with lots of creativity, I mean, that's like
42:40
the environment you want to be in. No one's shutting you down.
42:43
People are just like, let's keep building. Let's run as fast as
42:47
we can. If you've got the energy to do it, let's get it done. And
42:51
it was awesome, like, I loved it. The worst thing that
42:54
happened was that covid, covid hit us, and I didn't get to be
42:58
in the office and have all of that kind of energy around. But
43:01
still we were able to, you know, have these got boring after a
43:05
while, but we got to have, like, happy hours after work on Zoom
43:09
and covid started out kind of fun, but obviously it was a drag
43:13
once we realized, Oh, this isn't like a one month in quarantine.
43:17
This is like two years and and and California, like San
43:22
Francisco Bay Area, had some of the tightest laws, I think,
43:24
around it. So, yeah, I mean, selling in covid, we did really
43:30
well. It was like, Well, now you really don't have visibility
43:33
into what's happening. And that's where I learned how to
43:35
sell as an account executive and got promoted. And that was
43:38
really exciting, because, I mean, I was being challenged in
43:41
so many different ways, and learning on the fly. And I would
43:44
wake up sometimes at like five in the morning to take calls
43:47
with clients who were in Europe, and then I'd be on the phone
43:51
with people in Australia that night, like 8pm and so I think I
43:57
learned a ton, because I was doing so much, and we didn't, we
44:00
didn't have our European office yet, so I was just going, going,
44:03
going, it was great. It was, it was, for sure, being on a rocket
44:07
ship. Um, yeah, good time. Good time. Had by all. I liked
44:12
working at Gong. I learned, I learned, and I was celebrated.
44:17
And I think those are two things that companies should always,
44:19
always do. It
44:20
mark ackers: sounds like the key to at least the first six, nine,
44:24
maybe 12 months was the manager, was the investment in you and
44:29
your development, was the coaching, the constant feedback.
44:33
And that can do nothing but just accelerate you towards your
44:39
goals, your potential, and it's great to you got so much of
44:43
that. Do you think without that, let's just say you had the same
44:47
manager, take the manager from the previous job, drop them into
44:50
Gong. Do you think you'd have been successful there? I might
44:53
sarah brazier: have been, like, mildly successful, because Gong,
44:57
as a company, knew who they were selling to a lot more and. And I
45:00
could go and listen to calls, but no, I don't. I don't think
45:03
so. I i 100% believe that it takes a village, and that you
45:09
can have the most talented person in the world, but if you
45:12
put them in a disparaging environment, and you don't teach
45:16
them, and you don't invest in them, then you're not going to
45:19
get the same output. And I get, I get a little miffed sometimes
45:24
when I talk to sales leaders and I tell, I tell them that story
45:29
maybe condensed, and they go, Oh, well, Sarah, you're just
45:31
different. You know, you're just really hard working, you're just
45:34
gritty. Not a lot of people are like you. And I'm like, that's
45:38
not true. Maybe that's not true. There's lots of people who want
45:41
it, and they just need they need the guardrails, they need the
45:46
training wheels. They need some help. They need some guidance.
45:49
And if you can put people in an environment where they can,
45:52
they're not being told, they're not being forced, you have to
45:54
write this email this exact way, but they're being they're being
45:57
told, these are ways that you can write an email. And that was
46:01
a really good first attempt. How can we tweak this and make it
46:04
better? And you're treating your subordinates as equals, and
46:09
you're creating together, instead of, you know, bossing,
46:15
you're going to have a way better experience, and you're
46:17
going to have people perform much better. So, yeah, I think
46:23
Tanner. Tanner was a big difference. He's like, I said,
46:25
he's great and and gone get a really good job of hiring people
46:29
like Tanner who wanted to make, to make their their sales reps,
46:32
fantastic. So when I interviewed to be an AE, there's a guy named
46:36
Eric baliche, and he spent every week he met with me to practice
46:40
my discovery call. I asked him for a rubric for what what do I
46:43
have to say in this interview? Tell me exactly what I have to
46:46
get right in this mock discovery call to get promoted. Because I
46:50
didn't get promoted the first time I interviewed. And so we
46:52
went through and we literally, I was like, we're just going to
46:55
practice the opening bit until you think it's good enough for
46:58
me to get hired. Now we're going to do the painful, but we're
47:01
just going to practice that, and then we'll combine them like and
47:05
having that kind of which I learned through speech and
47:07
debate and acting like, just Repetition Repetition, until
47:10
it's good and it's believable and like, you can do it in your
47:13
sleep. I was like, we're going to do that, and you're going to
47:17
help me, because I'm going to make you a bunch of money, but I
47:20
just need you to get me there. And if you and the managers were
47:24
like, Yeah, I'll get you there. I'm ready to, I'm ready to spend
47:28
a lot of hours with you sucking, so that you can be good one day.
47:37
mark ackers: I love it sounds like what they were really
47:39
hiring for was managers that just would coach. They knew the
47:43
impact of coaching. They carved time out their day for one to
47:47
one coaching, group coaching. Really invest in our workforce,
47:51
but also you create a personal brand. And I can't remember the
47:57
video at all, but I do remember the first time I saw a video of
48:01
you, and it's kind of like you were walking through the gong
48:04
office. I can't I can't recall it, but I'm sure you can't
48:08
either. But I remember thinking like, Who's this? What's going
48:12
on here? Because, like, again, I appreciate you might not realize
48:15
this, but we, I used to work for companies that compete against
48:18
Gong in certain deals, etc. I remember seeing you come online
48:21
this video, I don't think, like, they've hired an actor here and,
48:24
like, what? Well,
48:25
sarah brazier: I was an actor. No,
48:26
mark ackers: I know, but that's, that's what I've always thought.
48:28
They've hired an actor in a sales role. But talk to you
48:30
about, like, building that personal brand. How, how did
48:34
you, I suppose, what I'm trying Did you realize just how much it
48:38
would take off? Like, if I was to say to you, that first post,
48:42
you're gonna amass 80,000 LinkedIn followers, and
48:45
obviously it's only gonna go in one direction. Did you think
48:48
that was what would happen? Like, what was the aim?
48:50
sarah brazier: No, and there was no aim. It was to have fun.
48:54
Like, every job that I do, I want to be having fun. If sales,
48:58
sales is gonna be miserable sometimes. But you know,
49:01
overall, it's fun, like you get these adrenaline blasts, you get
49:04
to compete, you get to think creatively, you get to tell
49:07
stories. If you're only thinking of your job in sales as KPIs,
49:11
then it's going to suck and it's not going to be fun. So you have
49:14
to think about all the other stuff you get to do that makes
49:17
it fun. But the thing so that what happened was I had been on
49:24
a cold call with a VP of sales, and he was a beginning of q4 and
49:29
he said something like, Don't you realize it's q4 you
49:32
shouldn't be calling people call me in q1 and I was like, What
49:38
aren't you trying to close deals in q4 and it was even the
49:41
beginning of q4 It wasn't even the end. There's plenty of time
49:44
for us to have a conversation and help him close more deals in
49:48
q4 if he wanted to. And I just thought, oh, what irony, calling
49:54
someone in sales in q4 and them telling you not to call people
49:58
in q4 so I wrote a. Post about it and that that's like the
50:01
first thing that went viral. And if you look, if you scroll back,
50:04
you know, five or six years, and you look at all of my posts
50:09
before that, I maybe made like, three posts, and they have,
50:12
like, maybe one like, from, you know, someone at Gong, or
50:14
someone I worked with. But that took off, and it had like, 2
50:19
million impressions and 10,000 engagements. And I thought it
50:24
was going to be the best post that I've ever done, ever and it
50:27
was, until the the one that I did most recently last week,
50:30
when, when we launched demo. But yeah, so I did that, and
50:37
everyone was really happy for me and there, and I thought, well,
50:39
I'll just keep posting. And back then the algorithm with
50:42
LinkedIn, if you had that one viral post, they would really
50:46
push your other one. So I just kept getting more and more
50:49
viral. You know, I would post on a given day and have 500 you
50:54
know, comp likes on on a post. So all that is to say, it really
51:00
helped me prospect as an SDR, because I was getting a ton of
51:03
sales leaders commenting, and I just talked about being an SDR,
51:08
and it was, it just became part of my strategy at 11 o'clock,
51:13
make a LinkedIn post, go eat lunch, come back, prospect Off
51:15
the post, and I'd still do all my cold calls in the morning,
51:18
and I'd still send my emails In the afternoon, but I had this
51:21
extra source of finding leads, finding little, little golden
51:25
threads in the haystack. So that happened. And then when it came
51:28
to the video stuff I was in, I was getting coffee in the
51:32
morning, and I ran into a meet the CEO of Gong, and he said,
51:35
what'd you do this weekend, Sarah? And I said, Oh, I was
51:38
actually hosting a show. Because that was the show I was I was
51:40
producing a show at the time. It was really fun. I'd go on and
51:43
introduce the different acts and just be, like, absolutely
51:46
ridiculous. And he said, you're hosting a show. Why aren't you
51:50
hosting a show for Gong? And I said, I don't know. I don't know
51:53
why you guys haven't put me on the camera yet. And he said,
51:56
Well, you need to go talk to marketing, and you need to make
51:59
a show. And I said, Okay. And then I ran into him, like, an
52:03
hour later, and he's like, have you talked to marketing yet? And
52:06
I said, No, because I had to go make my cold calls. And he was
52:10
like, come with me. And he marched me across the office to
52:13
Udi, who was the Chief Marketing Officer at the time, and he
52:17
said, Udi SaaS, going to make a show for Gong. And Udi said,
52:21
Okay, what's the show going to be about? And I said, I don't
52:24
know. He said, Well, go figure that out. Write a draft and work
52:29
with Devin reed on it. And I said, Okay. I thought, well,
52:32
what's something that I could talk about that people would
52:35
find interesting, would be valuable to Gong's audience, and
52:38
wouldn't feel like I was, you know, reaching, reaching above,
52:42
above my station. I just really didn't want to be someone who
52:45
was trying to talk big, like I knew the game when I didn't. So
52:49
I thought, well, I'm at the point where I'm getting close to
52:54
closing, closer to being qualified to be promoted to an
52:56
account executive. Is that what I want to do? What happens after
53:01
you've been in SDR, what is your life? So I came up with the idea
53:05
of life after SDR, really simple. What do people do once
53:10
they've been in SDR, and what are the other options, aside
53:13
from AE? Because I think that a lot of people are in sale or,
53:16
you know, join as an SDR, especially straight out of
53:19
college. They go. This isn't for me. I don't like the
53:21
competition, I don't like the high pressure. I want something
53:23
else. Get me out, then they don't know where else to go. So
53:27
I thought if I could just put together a series of interviews
53:29
with people who have done this job, but now they work in
53:32
marketing. Now they work in Customer Success, now they work
53:35
in HR, and figure out how they navigated that path that would
53:39
be so valuable. And it was a question that I was asking
53:42
myself too, do I want to be an account executive, or do I want
53:45
to do something else? So I told Devin, and he was like, great.
53:50
Go find some people to interview. And I said, Great.
53:53
And then I just shot a series, and we'd have a video crew come
53:57
in to film some other stuff. And so they just give me, like, a 15
54:01
minute slot, and I'd interview people about, how'd you get into
54:05
recruiting, how, like, How'd you negotiate that? How'd you become
54:09
an AE? How'd you, you know, how'd you ace your interview to
54:12
get that job? And, yeah, it was really fun, but I didn't think
54:17
it was gonna be, like, wildly successful, and that I would
54:20
have, you know, 10s of 1000s of followers on LinkedIn. I
54:24
thought, I want to find out what I should do next, and might as
54:28
well put it on camera, because that's fun. And then I could
54:31
practice writing, and I could be in front of people, and, you
54:34
know, it'd be one, it'd be something to look forward to in
54:36
mark ackers: the week. So, Sarah, here's the thing, lots of
54:38
people be listening to that, and they'll be posting content on
54:41
LinkedIn, and they just won't get an ounce of the traction
54:44
that you're getting. What advice would you give to a young SDR, a
54:50
new AE that's trying to post on LinkedIn? And they are, again,
54:54
what used to get those three likes, the odd comment
54:57
colleague, and they want more. What? What advice would you give
55:01
them?
55:01
sarah brazier: Yeah, so first of all, the sad reality is that
55:05
LinkedIn algorithm works differently, and so even even
55:09
the majority of my posts don't perform as well as they did when
55:13
I was an SDR in 2019, 2020, so you're just not going to get
55:18
that same traction. Is number one. Number two is you should
55:24
ask yourself, Am I doing this consistently enough? And for me,
55:27
if you don't post, if you don't post every day, or at least
55:30
every weekday, you're gonna lose any of the traction that you're
55:33
building the day before. Like it seems to me, and I could be off
55:36
base, but it seems to me like LinkedIn algorithm is
55:39
encouraging that kind of volume play, whereas for a while, I
55:42
could go a couple days between posting and still get a ton of
55:46
likes. Now it's like I really have to be aggressively posting
55:50
continuously. So those are two things, just to keep in mind,
55:53
like, it's hard, it's hard to get traction, and it's very
55:57
unclear what it is that the algorithm promotes or does not
56:00
promote. The third thing is that you should look at the content
56:05
that you're actually producing, and you should ask yourself two
56:09
questions, why am I writing this? And why would someone want
56:12
to read this? And if the answer is, I'm writing this because I
56:17
want people to follow me on LinkedIn, then you might want to
56:22
re evaluate the kind of content you're producing. And if the
56:26
answer is, I'm not sure why someone would read this, then
56:29
you might want to re evaluate the content that you're
56:32
producing, because you should have some kind of thematic
56:36
motivation between your posts to actually create a brand. So you
56:41
should say, what is it that I write? Why do I write it? And
56:45
then you should also ask yourself, what is it that I want
56:47
my audience to take away on a regular basis? For me, I want my
56:51
audience to either laugh and go, yep, that's my life. That's my
56:56
life in sales, that happens to me or feel some kind of
57:03
empathetic way. Yeah, that does suck. I have experienced that I
57:07
was crap at sales too, or I am crap at sales, but there's a
57:10
path forward. So like a way for us to commiserate together, or I
57:14
want to provide some kind of tactical action that they can
57:17
take, saying, Hey, I tried this. It worked for me. In this way,
57:21
you can try to if you want. I never want to tell people that
57:25
I'm like the rightist, or they have to do it my way, because I
57:28
think there's more than one way to skin a cat, there's more than
57:30
one way to start a cold call, there's more one than one way to
57:33
write an email. But if you're looking for some structure,
57:36
which I lacked so much in the first nine months of me selling,
57:40
if you're looking for someone to give you a formula. This is a
57:43
formula you could apply, and it might help. And then the last
57:48
thing is, just like, I write posts every so often, especially
57:51
when I was in SDR, that were my punch up posts, and I think
57:56
you're like, you're at the bottom of the totem poles in
57:58
SDR, and everybody's the meanest to you, and everybody blames you
58:02
for everything that a lot of times isn't your fault, that it
58:06
sometimes it is your fault, but a lot of times it's not like,
58:08
did I suck at did I suck at sales in my first job? Because I
58:12
was a bad SCR probably I started getting a bad attitude, and I
58:16
probably could have been nicer on the phone, and I probably
58:18
could have worked hard on my emails. But also there were,
58:22
like, systematic issues with how that organization was running
58:26
their SDR team, that if they had improved, it could have gone
58:29
differently. And every once in a while, if you call out that
58:33
stuff in a tasteful way, people are like, Yeah, and so I call
58:38
those punch up posts, but that's like calling out the sales
58:42
leader who was mad at me for calling you in q4 it's like, no,
58:47
no way. You're dumb. You're dumb right now. You're just in a bad
58:51
mood and you're being dumb. I'm gonna call you again in three
58:54
weeks. You're gonna forget about yelling at me and you're gonna
58:56
take the meeting. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna try
58:59
differently. But that response was dumb, and everyone can
59:03
collectively be like, yeah, that was dumb. Gosh.
59:08
mark ackers: So let's, um, let's talk about your game today. What
59:14
do you feel like is your biggest weakness? Right? We could all
59:17
continue to improve. What's your biggest weakness in your game
59:21
today?
59:23
sarah brazier: Oh, man, there's tons of things. Like, I still
59:26
get happy. Years as a rep, I always get anxious about
59:30
negotiating deals. Like, being like, Nope, that's the price.
59:36
That's so hard, even though it's the price and it's not my money,
59:39
you know, there's, there's tons of, tons of, you know,
59:41
psychological reasons why talking about money is scary.
59:45
And I totally still feel those, um, and then, uh, handling
59:50
contentious conversations is always, I mean, they're like,
59:53
I'm telling you a million things, but I hate disappointing
59:56
people. I'm the middle of seven kids. Um. Yeah. So I, in some
1:00:01
ways, that makes me kind of like, go along to get along,
1:00:03
unless things are really stupid and then I get mad. But like, if
1:00:12
I'm trying to, if I'm trying to sell something, or if I want
1:00:14
that person to, like me, delivering disappointing news,
1:00:18
telling them that we can't do the thing that they want to do,
1:00:20
telling them that I could I can't get that, like, discount
1:00:24
approved, all of that I hate, and those conversations get me
1:00:30
the most anxious. So I, I will sit down with a manager, and I,
1:00:33
I'll be like, can we just practice that? Can I just hear
1:00:36
how you'd say that? And those are the times when I have, like,
1:00:39
the least confidence in my communication skills and the
1:00:42
least confidence in being able to navigate the call, because my
1:00:47
fear is that I'll freeze and I won't be able to keep talking or
1:00:51
find a path forward. I'll just freeze and I'll be like, Yeah,
1:00:55
you're right. I do suck. I do suck, and we should give you the
1:00:58
discount, but I can't.
1:01:02
mark ackers: I so what I love, though, right, is you're still
1:01:05
working on these things, like you are seeking that coaching.
1:01:08
You're seeking that development. So I am conscious. I literally
1:01:13
could extend this conversation by another hour, but let's,
1:01:17
let's sort of suppose I'm conscious you've got a call
1:01:20
coming up as well. Always selling. Tell us about demo that
1:01:25
sounds really exciting. So you've gone off, gone off and
1:01:29
created your own business with some co founders, demo. Tell us
1:01:32
about the problems that demo solve and tell us all about
1:01:37
sarah brazier: Yeah, so I don't think it's a secret right now
1:01:40
that top of funnel is really hard, and that the motion of
1:01:45
getting a bunch of college graduates into a room to dial in
1:01:50
a boiler room isn't working, and the stats are all different
1:01:57
depending on what source you're looking at, but what used to
1:01:59
Take maybe four touches to book a meeting is now upwards from
1:02:03
anywhere from 15 to 30. At the same time, buyer behavior has
1:02:07
changed a lot. You know, 80% of the sales cycle happens when the
1:02:10
sales reps not in the room. Buyers are coming to customers a
1:02:13
lot more informed, and buyers don't necessarily want to talk
1:02:18
to sales until they're actually ready to buy. And so those
1:02:21
exploratory conversations are happening far less frequently,
1:02:26
because 45% of decision makers are millennials, and they want
1:02:30
to be independent and do things on their own and do research by
1:02:34
themselves before they have to have a conversation. So all it
1:02:38
is to say when you're doing a sales cycle, a lot of times,
1:02:42
people will come in and they'll say, I just want to see a demo.
1:02:45
And by the point they get to you, the account executive,
1:02:48
they're already pretty frustrated because they wanted
1:02:51
to see a demo, so they went to your website, but they couldn't
1:02:53
find one, and then they had to fill out a bunch of forms. And
1:02:57
then two days later, an SDR called them and asked them a
1:02:59
bunch of questions, and then they finally got on the phone
1:03:02
with the account executive, and the account executive doesn't
1:03:04
want to show them a demo yet, they want to ask the same
1:03:07
questions the SCR just asked all so you can watch a demo and
1:03:11
decide, yeah, I think that might solve my problem, or that's not
1:03:15
really for me. So Troy Munson and Lucas wurtzberg And I built
1:03:21
demo, and it is a marketplace where you as a buyer, can come
1:03:25
in and watch demos of SaaS, and you can go, yeah, that looks
1:03:30
interesting. And then if you want to talk to sales, you can
1:03:33
click a button and you can literally ask them a question
1:03:35
and you'll get an email back with an answer. Or if you want
1:03:38
to actually see an in depth demo around a particular problem that
1:03:42
you're interested in solving for your business. You can request
1:03:45
that, or you can go down the demo chain. And so I think
1:03:49
that's one piece of what we're doing. The other piece is, I
1:03:51
think it kind of democratizes your actual research, because
1:03:55
the companies that you see at the top of your Google search
1:03:58
are paid ads. It's Seo. You know, whoever is has the biggest
1:04:02
budget to spend on advertisements, and so you're
1:04:05
missing a lot of small companies that are building something
1:04:09
really cool, or building and solving the problem differently
1:04:12
that you might not get. So when you go to demos website, you can
1:04:15
type in your use case or your challenge, and then you'll be
1:04:19
surfaced up all the different products that could solve solve
1:04:22
your challenges. So I think it's beneficial, both for companies
1:04:25
and for buyers. Buyers can skip a bunch of the process, and then
1:04:29
companies who are struggling to get top of funnel, all of a
1:04:32
sudden can be talking to actually engaged buyers who have
1:04:35
already seen the demo. They know they are interested in moving
1:04:38
forward in the buying decision. And so I think it'll eventually
1:04:41
increase win rates as well, because you'll be talking to
1:04:44
qualified interested buyers, instead of some guy who just
1:04:47
wants to see a
1:04:50
mark ackers: demo. Amazing. That sounds really exciting. I've
1:04:53
certainly registered my sales coach to be on the website, so I
1:04:57
look forward to hearing back. Sarah, thanks so much. Much I've
1:05:00
really enjoyed having a podcast. I'd love to have you back on the
1:05:03
podcast in the in the future, because there's just so much
1:05:05
more we could talk about. But yeah, thanks very much. Really
1:05:08
enjoyed it.