Shawn Cruise, VP Sales at RSA Security | High Performance Leadership Habits

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth and 10x businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders to dissect what's work for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome back to sales versus marketing. I'm sitting down with VP of sales for RSA security, Sean Cruz. RSA security, if you don't know who they are, they are a cybersecurity market leader. They are at the forefront of cybersecurity technology and they help businesses go through their digital transformations safely and securely. They are a network security company with a focus on encryption and encryption standards and a couple of fun facts. They were actually acquired in 2006. They were founded in 1982 but they were acquired in 2006 by EMC for 2.1 billion and as we all know, EMC was later acquired by Dell. So RSA is a subsidiary of Dell, obviously a name that we all know and a very, very large company. RSA exclusively has over 3,000 employees. Very excited to be sitting down with Sean as he is their VP of sales. I'm going to let Sean give you a little bit of background about what he's done. But to list off the companies that he's worked for, starting off with Corel going through to QNX, NetManage, Adobe, TIPCO and then most recently RSA, Sean has over 30 years of sales experience. So I'm sure he will give us a lot of great insight and knowledge but looking forward to looking forward to this session. So my name is Sean Cruz. I'm the vice president of sales for RSA Canada. We are a major division of the Dell EMC family focused on digital risk management. So we as an organization, you may be familiar with what's called tokens, RSA tokens, encryption. So we're a historical leader in the encryption space, particularly around identities. That's where our company was born. That's our heritage. Over the last 25, 30 odd years, we've developed a very broad suite of technology offerings focused on digital risk management. And if you take a step back, what is digital risk management? Well, it's a broad series of things. If you think of the world going through major digital transformation where businesses are transforming user experience, mobile apps, they're changing the interfaces to their customers, they're reorganizing workflows and processes from the edge where customers are being engaged, applying digital marketing, all new types of things into their business which go right back into the core of how organizations work. That's digital transformation. Digital risk management is the parallel best practice on how organizations manage risk associated with this transformation. And that can mean anything from compliance to things like GDPR, health compliance, federal compliance in the financial industry, write down to things like threat detection, cybersecurity, incident response. It's a very broad suite of capabilities that we bring to the market tied to the best practice of digital risk management while you're transforming your business. It's quite large. It's fairly new to our company and it's new to the globe. We started this user experience transformation five, six, seven, eight, nine years ago when mobile devices really became powerful. And now transitioning and as the world tips and we see more digital technology, people are starting to realize that with that benefit comes a lot of risk and that's where we fit into the model. What I find interesting is you're playing in a large company but you're playing in a space where you just mentioned people are still going through their digital transformation but you're selling a product that's something like almost like an extra layer, an extra step on top of a company's digital transformation so just to sort of frame it for people that are listening, how does RSA properly or most effectively engage with customers when a lot of them are still understanding how to properly go through a digital transformation and that could be something like a small mom and pop all the way to Fortune 500, Fortune 100. It's almost a different talk track for the size of business that you're in so when you think of small to medium enterprise, the reality is digital transformation means something different to local businesses that it does to large scale enterprises like banks, insurance, big public sector entities. So let's separate those two because I think it's important to have a distinction on those small to medium enterprise typically doesn't have massive legacy business processes. They don't have these massive sets of technologies that they need to manage. Digital transformation could be as simple as changing my website interfaces, opening up some new channels of communication to my consumers whether that be online or different types. In that context, there's a risk associated with people piggybacking on mobile users that are coming onto your sites. There's all kinds of different things that are unique about a small to medium enterprise from a risk standpoint. They're really facing different challenges, so fishing attacks, mobile users, a whole suite of other kind of what I would call risks. Typically the small to medium enterprise may not also have as much public sector policy or compliance issues as perhaps some of the larger industries. So they need to think about things like general data protection or privacy in different ways. When you compare that to say manufacturing, public sector, big banks and insurance companies, they've got massive armies of people, huge infrastructures of data. They've got dozens and dozens of ways that people can interact with them. The threat landscape for a large enterprise is much different than a smaller one. So local stores that are changing their online presence don't have the same level of risk from a threat standpoint as the larger landscape of say a big enterprise. So it's quite a bit different and what we provide is the ability to look at your digital transformation as a maturity model. Think of it as some businesses are only four years old and other businesses are 20 years old and the requirements of those two are quite different. So when you look at the maturity of your digital footprint, what are your risks? So first being able to identify perhaps what are the risks associated with how you're using digital technologies and then be able to figure out what types of solutions would apply. That would be a best practice for say a small to medium enterprise. When you compare that to a large scale bank or insurance company, public sector agency, crown corporation, it's way different. As I said, the amount of ways people can communicate with those entities, the amount of data that they're collecting, the amount of people that are involved, because there's different types of threats. So when you look at that, the methodology that you would apply would be quite different. It would be much larger. You need to really isolate each element of your business and look underneath to figure out kind of what are my risk touch points here and ideally, which is the opportunity is that you're rolling risk management at the same time you're completing transformation. If you're dealing with new mobile applications, we'll apply the thought process right there and build it in. So it's designed in versus what has happened over the last five to 10 years, which is we put some stuff out and we think about risk or security afterwards. It's a way different conversation and talk track. And how do you as so you're your VP of sales or area VP of sales? What is first of all, what is your role within the company and how do you properly in your role? I have a rather large team I'm assuming that would sell underneath you. How do you properly manage that level of or that variance of different type of customer sets amongst your team? Well, you know, it's interesting, you know, any sales rep, you know, there's different types of sales roles in our organization. You know, any large territory or large organization would typically have, you know, what are called, you know, focused account managers or named account managers or territory managers. You likely have product specialists that are tied to specific technology. Anytime you're in the level of complexity of technology, like the RSA offering, you're going to have multiple roles involved in customer engagements. You know, you will have field engineers and specialized engineers. It's a large team approach to selling and each person has a different role or responsibility in that team approach. So when you look at an entity like Canada, typically, you know, starting from one coast and going to the other, the DNA of an account in BC is way different than the type of buyer in Alberta, which is different than the type of buyer in the central prairies, which is different than the person that you're dealing with in Toronto. Likewise in Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City. So you're ideally aligning your resources to the same style of territory that they're covering. You would not typically have somebody flying in from Toronto to go sell into Calgary. That's not in your best interest, you know, it's just not the way things are done there. So the idea is, first off, making sure that you're aligned into the region. So my responsibility is to look at the overall country, take our solution sets and technologies, line them into whatever territory model that makes sense, ensure that those models have the proper resources underneath them and then apply marketing and communication strategies, selling methodologies to really do everything within the context of a sales cycle, early stage demand generation, business development, mid range sales methodology and cycles to press opportunities into the closed process. And then, of course, the fun stuff, which is contract negotiation, targeted closing and others. So as a sales leader in this role, it's quite complex because on any given Sunday, I can find myself doing just about anything in the organization. Anyone that is really functioning in this role, you know, I am a legal consultant, a marketing consultant. Yeah. Operations consultant, a commission's consultant, you know, like the idea of being effective here, if you're going to really succeed in this industry, in this role, you need to have a broad range of expertise and experience, which is, you know, something I've been fortunate enough to develop over the 30 years of my career to where I am right now, it's, it's, it's fun. What it's complicated. Yeah. No, that's, it's really interesting and just the complexity, not only of the sale, but of the, of your role is, it's definitely a lot as a sales leader take that on and obviously execute efficiently. So you mentioned like you've had 30 years of experiences, led you to be able to be successful in this role. So let's, let's go into like, like, who are you, what's your, you know, what's your past? Like, how did you get to where you are today? All that fun stuff. So, you know, I, I don't have the luxury of a university degree and my path to where I am today is quite, you know, it's, it's quite unique, but I would say that I, I locked out to a certain extent into the tech sector back in the late 80s. I had an opportunity to, to go, you know, at 20 years old and, and fold boxes in the shipping room of a startup at the time called Correl Corporation, which is the early graphics technology provider for those that, you know, that know the company, you know, Correl draw back in, back in the early 90s, was it from a graphics package standpoint? That's going back and they're not such a startup anymore. No, no, no, no, so, you know, I had, I spent a couple of years there and, you know, really learned the kind of the back end at that time, technology was delivered in manuals, technology was delivered on, on disks and, and putting a package together required, you know, somebody to put, you know, five and a quarter or three and a half floppies with some books, it's straight to happen, put a label on it and send it to somebody and, you know, in learning that part of the business, when, when I left Correl, I went to another startup called Q and X software in, in Canada outside of Ottawa and that, you know, that was my first, first opportunity in a smaller organization around customer service, telemarketing and tele-sales. So I, I, I got hired at Q and X to work in the production area, which is, you know, folding boxes and making labels and, and, and within short order, one of the vice presidents, Mike Hornby, who is one of my mentors, gave me an opportunity to get on the phones and talk to customers and it was like, it was like, you know, the lights went off. I was at home, you know, my, my, my, my understanding of the back end infrastructure of what went into a box and what we shipped and how we shipped really provided me a viewpoint on the customer service calls that we were getting to really learn from the ground up. And, you know, it took about two years and kind of tele-sales and inside sales, I, I spent, you know, two, three, four years kind of just cutting my teeth, made lots of mistakes, you know, it was, it was in, it was in an early industry where there was no such thing as anyone mature because everybody was in their 20s and 30s and, you know, there were, there were sales leaders, but they were coming out of the, you know, the hardware environments and mainframe and the tech sector didn't exist. So I, you know, I spent almost eight years at Q and X and, you know, I ended up, you know, traveling around the US and going all over and, you know, through my late 20s, I really developed kind of the rudimentary selling capabilities there and, you know, there was, there was no doubt, once I, once I got my first commission check, it was over. I understood the concept of what that meant. And, you know, from there, I spent a long time, you know, forging my way in an industry that was growing throughout. So I spent, you know, 70 years at Q and X, I had the good fortune of doing a startup at Fastlane Technologies, which eventually sold to another provider, spent some time with NetManage, which was early web technologies. And I would say my career really, really kicked into gear in 2005 when I joined Adobe and, you know, entered into what I would call one of the coolest companies, cool technologies in the world doing cutting edge user experience and creativity. And, you know, Adobe really offered me an opportunity to develop my leadership skills and, you know, really grow with an organization that was, you know, we were seeing 40, 30, 40, 50 percent growth within my territory year over year consistently for almost 10 years. It was, it was a really exciting time. Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's, that's crazy. So after, after Adobe, where did you go after that? Because that's where you, I guess, first we're in like a sales leadership management position. I did sales. So I did management at a company called NetManage in 2000 to 2000. That was my first, that was my first real leadership role. So I spent almost four and a half years doing both a direct sales leadership position, as well as running North American systems integrators for NetManage. So we were a legacy mainframe technology with a emerging opportunity around helping these kind of legacy iron companies get to the web. The product was called on web. So that was my first opportunity at it. You know, I really honed to this skill at Adobe over 10 years. And in, in, in 2015, you know, at the top of my gang, we just closed one of the biggest deals in, you know, Canadian, you know, the Canadian ecosystem. I was leading in terms of regional performance out of Adobe. There was a lot of great things going on. And I just, I felt like, you know, I had been there over 10 years. I wanted to try something new. So I left Adobe and started my own consulting, consulting organization. And really, I spent the next couple of years working within, you know, different startups trying to raise money. I tried my own startup for a while. Frankly, I failed miserably at a bunch of groups and did okay, it's a mother. And I didn't make any money through those couple of years. But I really enjoyed, it was a significant learning experience for me. It gave me an opportunity to lead a company out of Proma, which was a, which was a great experience. It gave me an opportunity to do financial raises and deal with some different entities. I did a, you know, a trade mission over to Ukraine. I did a trade mission into the EU and NATO and attended some shows there. A ton of really interesting people, you know, after four years of doing that and living without, you know, benefits and just on a chugging my way, I decided to come back into the, come back into the into the leadership arena, moved from Ottawa to Toronto a year ago to kind of reset my, reset my opportunities and see what could happen here. And that's what led me to the RSA opportunity. So that's a great story. And that's like your, your experience is just, is super, super impressive. Out of, you know, you've made a lot of moves over your career. You've moved from, you've moved from all these different individual contributor roles to sales leadership to entrepreneur back into, to leadership. If you were going to say like your lessons learned, like just to put it in perspective for people that are more junior in their career, to get to where you are today, what lessons would you tell your 20 year old self or like the most integral to, to get to where you are, I guess, as efficiently or as effectively or as quick or as it even beneficial to get there quick, maybe it's, maybe it's good to, you know, take the route you took, try some things, fail, learn all these different things that sort of make you who you are. So I'd love to sort of get your input on that. Sure. There's, you know, in answering that question, we have to kind of step back. And so, and when I, when I engage in, and I, you know, I, I mentor a lot of junior sales people, inside sales people, people that I've touched over my career, we still talk regularly. While we were talking, I had a text from one of the telemarketers that I know that worked with me for me in a past. There's no easy answer to that question. There's no, you know, you can't, you can't look at sales as, you can't, there's no quick, I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's no quick way to become highly skilled at this experience and time are really the things that matter. And, you know, it takes time to develop relationships. It takes experience to be able to, you know, be ninja like in the sales arena. So if I were to answer the question, what would I tell myself? You know, the reality is, just keep taking every opportunity you have. Yeah. Make the most of it. And I guarantee you, you're going to fail at a bunch of things. And I guarantee you're going to succeed at some stuff. And you use those and don't look at any individual feeling, selling is really hard. It's tough. And selling in this day and age is even harder because it's harder and harder to separate yourself. You know, walk on to any trade show floor and you'll see a hundred vendors and they all look and feel the same because there's very little differentiator. 20 years ago, there was a ton of market differentiators. It's really hard right now. So the differentiator is people and the differentiator of people is your own personal reputation and style. I don't think there's an easy path to get to become a enterprise sales person. It's no different than a path to become a judge or a highly skilled heart surgeon. You know, the reality is that there's no school for it anymore. There's no school. There's school for all those things. There's no school for sale or I guess there's some programs now, but there really isn't that many in comparison. No, there's, you know, there's, there's, there's really not, but you know, there is the school of hard knocks, which is when I, when I look at the most successful sales people, they all have a common, there's a common element to all of them. And that common element is their willingness to do just about any role as part of an engagement. And you know, that common element is also their reputation. The best sales people in the industry carry great reputations and people that tarnish the reputations young by acting inappropriately and doing, you know, different things. It's going to carry with you and it's going to limit your ability later in life. You know, so the, the answer your question number one is take every opportunity and learn from it. And, and number two, don't expect this to be a two or four of your paths. It's going to take five years for you to mature and go through the first set of gates. It's probably going to take another five years for you to pass through the second after 10 years. Now you become a highly skilled salesperson and, and get into a position. Now, there are the exceptions. Some people accelerate and move through this, but generally speaking, it's going to take time. So, so my question to you is as a sales leader, I'm going to, I'm going to have two questions. So I'm going to first start with how do you find good people? And then this follow-up to that will be how do you find good people that are ambitious enough to want to move up and to want to learn, but are patient enough to understand that it's still a waiting game to get those skill sets. You know, it's really a good question. I think the funny thing about finding good people is some of the best people in sales have come from the craziest to backgrounds. And I think, you know, I'm going to tell you a story about, you know, one of the best sales people that I know or one of the best inside sales people that I know actually served me at a bar in, in a, in a local restaurant that I went to frequently having pints after work and, you know, the thing that, you know, in getting to know this person, you know, we have a ton of people that have university degrees or different types of degrees that end up working in the service industry along the way. And one of the things about that service industry is you get used to approaching people and communicating with people because you're constantly working for the tips. And that fundamental skill is something that I've seen over and over again as the foundation to make great sales people. So you find sales people all over the place on LinkedIn. You can find them anywhere, but the places where I find them best are some of the most weirdest locations retail outlets. When you go in and you talk to somebody, you see someone with a really good skill, you know, in this day and age, we have to be ready as sales leaders to bring those people in at entry level inside sales and other positions and turn them into the types that we want. The three most successful people that have worked for me that I know all come from that same type of background. Random, you know, one guy who was by far and away the most successful sales person that's ever worked with me made seven figures multiple times comes from a furniture background. And those fundamental skills on the retail floor are what transitioned and allowed that person to grow into an enterprise class, technology person. A lot of great stories in this industry like that. No, that's that's good. But and you bring these people on and they're not they're not in sales or not in tech. So how do you how do you successfully transition them into a role so that they can be successful? Because yes, they do have to, you know, they do have to learn somewhere, but obviously there's some portion of coaching or mentoring that plays a part two in their success. It's another good question. I you know, I may and I do this all the time with junior and inside it's it's kind of a home. So let's sit down. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what's happening. Let's talk about what's going to happen when you go out on your own. And then I put my hand on their back and push them out the door and say come back in a couple of days and let's talk about what happens. So, you know, in a in a in a perfect training environment, you kind of have three elements. There's corporate methodology because you need to have, you know, corporate training to understand the company and how the company. So that's one element. The second element is the mentorship and and leadership of a sales leader or someone that you can attach someone to that can provide that. And then the third element is just go try and the go try part is the biggest part of it. So what we need to do, you know, there's a there's a game called rebound. It's a, I don't know, you know, it's still in the markets, little marbles and you're and they bounce up such a board. Yeah. I always say to junior sales people, my job is to provide you the boundaries so you can bounce back and forth so you don't hurt yourself. But the best person to help you is yourself. Take this methodology, which is the corporate side to learn from it. Take what I provide you and learn from it and then go out and learn and practice and skill and and see how that develops and then do it again. It's like a constant cycle. Do you find do you find that sales reps or it could be coming from the coming from sales and coming from tech or people to their company outside. Do you find that they try and default onto you as like a resource that they should be using a little bit less, but they try and use more than they should be sort of like they're just like always coming back, always asking questions, scared to vote on their own when you when you try that. Well, I think, you know, part of part of what we need to do with sales leaders is be prepared to make tough decisions about personalities, right? I've met a lot of great people that are in the wrong positions and that's not a statement on, you know, someone's value, it's a statement on the fact that we put you in the wrong position. So let's find a good spot. So, you know, there's no bad questions and there's no bad engagement with a sales leader unless it happens 100 times. If it's constant and consistent, so what what I look for is, you know, incremental development because it takes time. You know, if you ask me the same question three or four times, I'm okay with that because I want you to be really good at that and and part of my job is to when you ask me a question three times, I'm going to apply that to you and see if you're learning over time. If you ask me the same question eight or nine times, maybe that's, you know, maybe that's an indicator that we should look at elements. So it's the balance between the two. There's no right and wrong answer there because sometimes you have to be patient, that little extra bit with certain people, others go fast, others go slow, you kind of have to just watch and see because not everybody matures at the same pace and you know, I've seen some really great sales people mature just beyond the point where people were ready to move them into some other role and they just needed that extra little. So being, you know, the difference between being a good sales leader and a great sales leader is figuring out when you put too much in and you may need to make a move versus when you're right close to having someone be the person that you've been training them for. And how do you how do you see that? Like how do you see if somebody is because obviously you want to try and push those people into the right position when you're hiring and onboarding them because you don't, it's expensive to to let them flounder and a role for like a significant period of time. So what what are the person? Well, I guess you kind of mentioned the personality traits, but what other what other items would you look for outside of just almost like um like I'm blanking on the word just like a very charismatic individual who is okay at approaching people. What other traits would you look for in somebody when you are bringing them on that would support their their success outside of just just their personality? Well, I think, you know, you know, personality is is top of mind, but I think certainly kind of appearance. So the the second thing you want to look for is is, you know, how does somebody appear, you know, they present themselves, yeah, you know, and sometimes simple things, you know, personal hygiene, you know, how does somebody carry themself in the con or their hands clean, like simple things that you can pay attention to over time and you know, are they dressed well, nice, you know, different things like that and that's not always a perfect indicator, but certainly, you know, personality is number one, you know, appearance is number two because the other, you know, you can you can train somebody and teach somebody on technology, you can teach them methodology, but you can't teach them, you know, personality and you can't teach them hygiene and personal presentation and just professional professional appearance and whatnot. Exactly. So, so that's great. So let's talk more um, so we sort of spoken on on hiring and what to look for outside of the traditional norm. We've spoken about like, like coaching and accountability for an individual to be effective, obviously, it depends on the market, but for sale strategy, how do you, what type of sale strategy does RFA or do you subscribe to when actually interacting and dealing with customers? Is there a certain one that like it is like is it Sandler or is it challenge or is it just like that we focus on solving solutions and identifying pain points and it's more like a high level like what is what is your your thought on that? Well, I think it um, every organization will have a variation of its own sales methodology. So we here at RSA use force management, you know, in in previous lives, we've used Sandler, Bosworth, you know, at the end of the day as a sales leader over the course of your career, you're going to get exposed to different methodologies. So, you know, I think out of that methodology, you know, great, great sales leaders incorporate multiple elements as part of a regional development strategy. So one of the things that always frustrated me throughout my career is that we take salespeople, drop them into a territory and then a year later wonder why they haven't been successful because if you're in sales, you should just go sell, right? The reality is, you know, organizations need to take a significant level of accountability and I, I, I talked to my sales team about this and I talked to my sales leaders. I believe the corporation generally should provide you 50% of the in-region kind of support and when I say, you know, when I use that number, you know, so as a sales leader, I, I look to bring in partners, bring in channel, bring in my field marketing, bring in my own network and rolodex and others into a region, into a territory to help my rep create demand. It's my job to help that early funnel and develop that early funnel with the sales rep in every region that I manage and I think if I am accountable for half, we'll guess who's accountable for the other half. And I think, you know, given the amount of investment that we make in selecting somebody and training them, we spend a year, year and a half, now it behooves us as an organization to invest intelligently in the development of the territory in support of the goals of the territory. So I, I apply a really somewhat unique model in the sense that I actually carve the, the, the, the, the business plan for lack of a better description into two elements. Here's what I'm going to do in your territory. Here are the things that we as a company are going to provide to you field marketing, channel development, different resources, events, workshops, business development, there's our half. Now let's look at the work that you're doing to accelerate what we're providing and create the other half of your pipeline. And I think that's something that, you know, a lot of sales leaders don't really because it means I'm accountable to my team across the board in individual elements. And I think, you know, that's one of the areas that I think every company can improve on is really understand like we owe our teams and our individuals effort. We owe them investment. We're accountable to assist. You know, so I'm responsible for vision. I'm responsible for strategy. I'm responsible for resourcing and a bunch of other elements to help you. So now that you got all these tools, how are you going to then take these tools and give me the other half? It almost, it almost helps make the accountability place on the on the rep a little bit more easy to swallow because now they know that you're coming to bat for them. And I think it's, I think that's a really good point that a lot of, a lot of organizations don't do this well because how many times and it's ridiculous because they invest thousands, hundreds of thousands in training development. Then it's like sinker swim by here's the foam book go sell, which doesn't really make any sense because I've already invested thousands of dollars in you as a rep. So why wouldn't I support you to the best of my ability? That's a, that's a really, it's a really strong point. And I think that more organizations, that's probably why as a sales leader as an organization, you are successful because you don't have that, you know, just sinker swim mentality. You kind of, you really do support. No, that's, I think just to add to that in, you know, one of the things that anyone in sales, when you're going through the interview process, very often we don't spend enough time asking questions about the company's thought process around in region development. How much field marketing has been applied into the region over the last year? How many workshops have the company done? How many executives have visited into the territory? How many customers are there? There's a whole series of really great questions that should be asked in an interview process of sales people to really understand what you're getting into. It doesn't mean you don't take the job if those things aren't there. What it does mean is that you really understand the situation you're entering into and it allows you to then go back and go, okay, so we talked about this in the interview. You said, you know, there was no field marketing for the last year. How are we going to increase that? Because that's 15% of my business development number. What about this? What about that? And I think, you know, some advice that I can give to anyone, whether you're a sales leader or someone that's going through an interview process, it doesn't really matter. That's a really healthy conversation to have. What are we doing within these eight regions, these 10 regions? Let's pair each one off and look at Ottawa. What's going on in Ottawa? The numbers last time and executive was there. What relationships do we have? There's a lot of really great questions that are really simple and very often we're afraid to ask them because people, because if I ask, I might do accountable for something afterwards. But you know, it's a good point because maybe you don't want to be with an organization that doesn't hold their leadership accountable to providing for the sales rep. So maybe that's a great indication of a good and strong organization versus somebody who you don't want to work with. So it's, you know, in the interview process with RSA with my current leadership, you know, one of the things that we had a conversation about. So what would this look like? And I drew out my strategy and said, this is what's going to happen. These are all the pieces. This is how it would flow. This is what it would look like. Are you okay with that? Do you see this? Does it make sense to you? You know, do you buy into this? Because that's what I'm going to employ. Yeah. I'm the successful candidate. And I want to make sure that we understand and agree with each other that this is what we want. Because we want this, this, and this. And if you can have that conversation in the interview process and look someone in the eye, you're going to know really quickly whether or not it's the right type of place. Because you're going to get a reaction of, that's awesome. Tell me more about all these things. Or you're going to get the glassy-eyed kind of empty space look. And literally, that's an indicator that maybe what you're being offered is not really kind of the right type of place for you. And I think it's really important that we ask these questions on both sides. So we understand what we're doing. Yeah. No, that's, that's very good. Because if you have somebody who's not put into your vision, and then, you know, six months down the road when, when you're, when you're rolling this out and you're implementing it, it's like you're a leader. So you're, you're doing your thing, you're, you're executing. And then they don't understand why the results aren't coming, or they don't understand what you're doing, or they're, you know, they're cutting you off at the knees. That's, uh, listen, it's not helping anybody, so. My, my, you know, to that point, my one, you know, I've had many bad experiences selling throughout my careers, any good salesperson or sales leader will tell you, the one organization that I regret joining that situation was exactly how it worked. We presented here's the plan. Here's what we're going to do. We all agree. We laid an agreement out on a six month period and a month in there like, yeah, no, we're just kidding. We're not going to do all that. We're going to do all this and it's way over to the left. And that relationship broke up really quickly. Yeah. And that, that's a, you know, the reality is what you just describe happens all the time. It does happen. And it's unfortunate because I think that people hire, um, you know, the average tenure of a, of a sales leader of VP sales is like 18 months or something like that. It's like, and it's getting even shorter. And it's because you can't, you can't even miss one year. So is that because it's that because VP's all over the place are bad at their job or is it because that they're they're not setting the right expectations? And I think it's probably probably a little bit of, you know, there are some bad VP's out there, but that's not the majority. I think it's a, you know, it's a really great segue, you know, the reality is that's a combination of the sales leader not properly articulating kind of the plan. And it's a, it's a, you know, a symptom of short-sighted companies who don't really appreciate the impact of that. And it, you know, it spins out of control and, you know, tons of friends that come, you know, one of the things that I say to people all the time is, are you sure you want to go into sales management? Yeah. We don't make less money, take all the knocks, be a count of, like, there's a whole bunch of things that happened. And, you know, some people do it anyway. Yeah. No, it's, you know, it's definitely less, less stress. And I think that, you know, you always want more, right? You're, you're an ISR, you're an inside rep, you want to move to an account executive, you want to move to a manager, a director of VP, but it doesn't, it doesn't get easy. And it, like, once your, once your VP level, I think you realize that, um, being, being an individual contributor is sometimes a lot less headache and not, not much less money if, if anything, maybe sometimes a bit more. It depends on who you sell for. Um, but, uh, okay. So, um, that was really good. And I, that was a, that was a really good talk. I guess, um, you've been on the industry for a long time, uh, in sales. So your input on this would be, would be really great. What are some of the worst sales habits that you've seen? It could be for individual contributors or, and, you know, we've, again, touched on some, uh, here and there, but like, the things that you wish would just stop and people would stop doing it and other managers and leaders would stop training, um, just because they're so ineffective or ludicrous or outdated. You know, it's funny. Uh, in the last couple of years, I've seen this over and over again, and it, it constantly shocks me. You know, I can't tell you the amount of people that I've seen that go into sales calls without no pads or pens and don't have the courtesy, even if you don't take notes to open up the book and lay the pen down. There's a, there's a, um, you know, there's an opportunity for a, you know, sales 101 professionalism course around how to act inside of a meeting. And I think, you know, millennials are, are worse, you know, because they pick those devices up and go into texting in the middle of, and, you know, these things need to be shut off and face down and when you have the courtesy of getting an opportunity to communicate with someone who is a decision maker, and it's happened to me where people are selling to me, where they're texting or doing stuff. You're done. You're done with it because it, you know, so I wish people would take the time to really think about an engagement that drives me nuts. It's a second. Oh, go ahead, sorry, sorry, no, go ahead. No, I was going to say just that it's a, it's a poor habit of, of the same type of individual that also wants to jump from job to job to job. It's like that, like that, uh, that need for immediate gratification. That, that thing is, is plaguing, uh, this generation, younger generations. So I think it, it's not only in, in their progression through their career and their lack of ability to stay in one job more than six months. It's also with their interactions with people in real life, lack of patience, lack of just slowing things down, which hurts, but, yeah. Yeah, no totally. And, you know, to add to that, I think the, you know, preparation is, is a lost heart. You know, we, we, we, we, we apply some level of thought process, but, you know, generally speaking, I think we don't really prepare well for sales calls and, and then more importantly, we don't prepare well for follow up and outcomes. And I think, you know, in addition to professional selling 101, which is how do I look and act in a meeting? You know, there's more work to be done on preparation. And preparation is some really simple things. You know, I, you know, and, and I did this with you. I went into your LinkedIn. I looked it kind of down your bio to get some background. So if we had conversations, they would be relevant. There's a bunch of really simple one-on-one type things that you can do that make you more knowledgeable going into a meeting. And there's, there's more complex things like reading CEO targets and, and, you know, the material and in media and press, you can find out a lot about what's going on inside of an organization without touching anything. Just go on to the media and the press. And if you really want to impress me, you know, take a, take a client that you're selling to and go look at their competitors. Yeah. And look at what competitors are doing because that makes you even more knowledgeable on how they're being positioned against themselves. So I think preparation is something that, you know, we all need to do a better job of. And I, and I think corporations, companies, you know, we're guilty of it to an extent. We talk about preparation. We talk about readiness. We talk about all these things. And then boom, when the sales cycle hits, everybody runs and let's go close a deal, right? Yeah. And nobody actually does the work ahead of time. Exactly. You had a second point, too, to the worst sales practices. Yeah. I kind of tied the two together. Okay. The preparation, the no no pad and, you know, but organizationally, I think the, the, the thing that the industry really needs to stop doing is, you know, we as an industry, we oversell and under deliver. And I think, you know, when you look at the statistics on failed projects within technology, they're staggering. You know, look at Canada's federal government, their statistics. You look at statistics for, you know, if you really dig into, you know, insurance and banking and financial and retail, the statistics are terrible. And that, that's a symptom of organizations not staying with their clients to ensure that they achieved a value of what was promised. And I think as an industry, if we're going to, you know, do one thing better, we need to mature our ability to help customers realize the value of what we provide, what we sell. And I think, you know, customers, so I think clients should demand more. And it's, it's, you know, it's always surprising to me that not as many customers as you think demand, you know, value realization or ROI documentation in, you know, in my 30 years, you know, RSA does it well. I think there's some other companies that aren't that have done it well, but fundamentally, overselling under delivering is like the technology industry's flu. Everybody's got it. Everyone suffers from it from one quarter to the next. And you can take a bit of medicine for it, but we go right back to our previous behavior. We're not helping ourselves in the industry. Do you think that's regional to Canada, North America? I think it's, I think it's generally organizationally across the board. And I think it gets, you know, there are companies in our industry that are worse than others. But I fundamentally would tell you that I don't, you know, I don't know or I'd be hard pressed to say to you, here's an example of an organization that was consistently and constantly delivering high value realization material to customers to understand the value of what was sold in the first place. So if you, if you want to differentiate yourself as a sales rep and if you want to make really big money in this industry, which you can being able to deliver that to your customers, it will set you apart from any other organization, any other sales rep. So if you want to learn a skill, that's one that I think most people don't have enough of. And you could even, you know, speaking to the accountability piece I spoke about before, hold your organization accountable to helping you deliver those and measuring and tracking those that ROI realization after the project is done. So you're not just walking away. Your organization is not just walking away. That's really good. So that's really all I really wanted to cover. I think that we, you know, we covered a lot and it was really, really, it was really great talking. So thank you. Is there anything that I didn't mention that that you'd want to bring up about sales, anything in particular? You know, I, I'll just close with this. Okay. You know, it, it, it, um, sales in the tech industry, sales in this field is significantly different than car sales, real estate sales, insurance sales, you know, this industry is unique. It offers an opportunity to, you know, make, you know, the kind of money that very few in the world have the ability to make. And I think, you know, it, it, it is a incredible environment to work in and learn in. And I wish more people would take the time to let their careers develop into this industry. And I think, you know, there's, there's, there's an enormous opportunity right now for the next generation of young salespeople to really be highly impactful. There's so much cool stuff going on. And I just hope everyone is patient enough to kind of allow to develop and develop it in, in, in my opinion, my recommendation. If you can stay with your first company for five years, it allows you two or three full sales cycles so that you can actually cut your teeth in an environment before you go out and do selling it. It would be a piece of advice that I would recommend to any junior inside sales or other. Let yourself get through a couple of full on sales cycles within your first environment, because that's going to set you up for success later. That's great. Okay. So just to close this off, you know, you've, you've obviously had a great career. Other, other people in, in your life and your career mentors that you would think people should follow or engage with like, where do you get your learnings from? And it doesn't have to be anybody flashy. It could be an industry expert. It could be, it could be somebody who has been an author or anything like that. You know, I follow everybody and everyone and anyone I read the, you know, I stay current on the news. There's not one, there's not one person that I point to that I would say this person stands out. And not because there's not people that don't stand out in my life, because there's lots of them, right? I think the reality is you have to just connect everywhere. Use all the social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, like all those communities and connect with as many people as you can. You know, you, you cold called me on LinkedIn. I was like, yeah, let's talk because what you're doing is really cool. And you know, that's, I just, I, I believe take one minute to communicate and read and look and, and you'll never know what you're going to find. No, I don't have any one specific person that I follow. I, I follow like 10,000 people. Do you have, do you have any like books or resources that you, you go to? You know, I've read all the books, you know, seven habits of good sellers, you know, the art of war, Sunsu. I read, I read as much as I can. And I, you know, there are, you know, there are a few places, you know, I recommend you follow, find and follow sales VP. So Chris Renelli, my boss here at RSA, he's a great person to follow on LinkedIn because he's, he's putting a lot of content out. He's, you know, he's been in the industry a while. He's, you know, younger than I am. So he's got a viewpoint that's, you know, different that I am. And, and, and I think he's, you know, a good example of it. There's others like that. I think identify companies that are doing cool things. Yeah. You know, the heads of Adobe sales are really cool to follow and a few others because they're constantly posting and putting new stuff out there. I think you just got to be, you just got to be putting yourself out there. And, and, you know, I remembered what the, what the second point was that I forgot to mention was lack of curiosity. Uh, okay. So there that lens cadence to that then. Yeah. Yeah. We, we as people are not curious enough, ask questions, get out, go to an event and try and meet 100 people within 15 minutes. Yeah. Because that means you're working in and, you know, it's all good. No, Sean, that was great. Thank you. So that's all I have. Just to wrap it up, thanks again, Sean, for taking a second to sit down and talk. Very impressive. You're background. And I really do hope the people that we're listening had a pen and paper down and we're taking some notes because 30 years of sales experience shows and the insights were incredible. If anybody who is listening would like to meet or engage or interact with Sean in any way, he is on LinkedIn LinkedIn.com slash in slash Sean dash cruise 519 9803 slash. Uh, this is how I reach out to Sean to originally schedule him for the interview. So obviously he's open to connect. Um, so reach out to him there. Um, but outside of that, uh, thanks again for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. Uh, check the show notes for everything we spoke about here and more. And I look forward to speaking to you next time. Cheers. Bye. So this is my favorite part of the podcast. Scott's thoughts where I talk about some of the points that Sean discussed and really just provide some context and let you know why these are so important in your role in your business. Um, so Sean brought up a couple a ton of great stuff. Um, and it's really hard to, uh, sort of whittle it down to the key takeaways. Um, but one thing that I really, really wanted to drive home for people that are listening, uh, that are maybe a little bit more junior in their career and some of these obviously do apply to sales leaders as well. One thing that I thought was really great was that the onus of 50% of sales support that the organization, uh, brings to the table. Oh, excuse me, rather, the organization, there's an onus on them to bring up to 50% of the sales support in a territory. Uh, this onus is on the organization. Uh, so they're, you know, when Sean, uh, when Sean is running an organization, he's bringing marketing. He's making sure there's executive visits in the territory. He's making sure there's trade shows, uh, vendor partners, lead generation, all these things that can support sales efforts and build out that initial funnel. Um, Sean is making sure that the organization is pulling its way because obviously when you hire and you train and you onboard somebody, it's very expensive to bring them into the fold and then just let them go on their own, uh, and have a sink or swim mentality. So one thing that I really liked that he that he brought up was the fact that, uh, he makes it a point to bring a lot of resources to the table to support sales. And that's something that, uh, companies should hold a standard to. And also he mentioned that, uh, if you are interviewing for a job, this is something that you should discuss with the person who's hiring you, uh, just because it's so relevant to your own success as an individual contributor. Um, he also brought, he brought great points for a hiring and training and what his process was. So he broke it down into three specific points as to how an individual should be trained properly for success. So the first was obviously the corporate training, uh, you know, you dot, dotting your eyes and crossing your teas. Then there was the coaching and the mentoring, which the sales leader brings to the table, uh, through their own experience. And lastly, it's pushing them out the door and letting them go do it. And it's okay if they fail, they have to learn somehow, but it's really getting them to go do it. Um, once they have, of course, all the resources and the training and the preparation. So that was really great. He also mentioned, uh, that it's okay to ask questions, um, but you want to make sure that, uh, you aren't asking the same question again and again and again once it's been clearly delivered to you if you are the right person for the job. Uh, so he wants you to learn on your own, ask questions when you can't come to the conclusion on your own, uh, but at least show an improvement, uh, baby steps, marginal improvement is really good, uh, as long as it's moving in the right direction. Another thing, uh, Sean brought up for, for managers that are looking to hire, you don't always have to hire within, uh, the context of the sales environment or the sales arena, was Sean highlighted was some of the best people that had worked for him came from non sales, non traditional sales roles, uh, especially non technical roles. And he learned to identify proper personality types that could make connections, could establish meaningful relations with people, um, even if they weren't slotted into a sales role, one example he brought up was somebody who was a really outgoing, a personable, uh, uh, waiter or waitress, um, and they were able to successfully transition into a sales role. And they were one of the most successful just because of the personality skills that they've built. So again, it's, it's bringing it back to being able to establish that level of trust and how else do you do that? Well, by being a very authentic and real and engaging human being, and those people can learn the technology, they can learn the process on how to sell, uh, but the, the, the actual personality is the hardest part to actually, uh, train someone. So that's why he's been so successful finding it elsewhere and then teaching the parts that were, that he's very capable of teaching, um, as, as sort of addons and, and other things that will help them be successful, but the personality is the core. Um, he also, uh, last but certainly not least, highlighted, uh, some of the major issues he sees with sales reps today. And if you are an individual contributor or if you're managing a team, these are good things to pay attention to. Uh, so always be more curious, um, just, just look more, do more research. Uh, you want to, if you're having an interview or if you're getting, uh, in front of a stakeholder or a decision maker, you want to be able to be prepared. So go do your research, understand what their organization does, what their role does, what they do go to LinkedIn. There's so many places where you can go for information. Um, it's, it's not in 2019, you're at a serious disadvantage. If you haven't done your proper research ahead of engaging with somebody who you're going to have a conversation with, uh, be professional and present well. Uh, so these are like the bare minimums and it's unfortunately something that he, he has to point out and it's too bad because it really shouldn't be something that you have to point out. These should be things that are, are almost like the status quo. Um, but they're not. So be professional and present well. It goes a long way. Uh, and also outside of doing your research, uh, in a sales context, uh, uh, being prepared, uh, and being professional, when you're in the actual engagement and you're trying to sell something, uh, yourself or a product, you want to, you want to be there, you want to be present, you want to take notes, you want to, you have this golden opportunity presented to yourself and a lot of people squander these opportunities by playing around on their cell phone or texting or just being distracted, uh, whereas they should be completely 100% focused on the person they're speaking to. Um, and, and that's going to really drive their success and obviously make the person who they're engaged with feel like they actually care and they actually want to be there and they actually want to solve the problem and they're not confused or, or, or, uh, distracted by their phone or their, their friend that's texting or an email that just came in. Those things could all be handled later, um, when you're in the moment, be in the moment. So, uh, those are, those are great takeaways for both sales leaders and, uh, individual contributors, sales reps. Um, as always, I really do hope that you enjoyed this podcast. Sean brought a ton to the table way more than I can just, uh, quickly review now. There's so many points. So go back and listen again with a, with a, with a note pad or the pen and paper, if you, if you haven't already, um, I really, really am glad I had the chance to speak to him, uh, and always leave some feedback, leave some comments. Let me know what you liked, what you didn't like and, uh, if you have any other suggestions for people that I should bring on the show or other topics that you'd like to hear about, please leave a comment in the description below and I'll be sure to feature those, those people or those, uh, topics on future episodes. Uh, if you haven't already, hit like, uh, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe, or you can always get this podcast wherever you can download podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, uh, Google, um, any, any podcast outlet where you download podcasts, I'd really appreciate it if you could subscribe, um, and always share with your friends, share with your colleagues. I would mean so much to me. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you tuning into the sales versus marketing podcast, have a great day, have a great week ahead of you, and talk soon. Bye now. Taming to the sales versus marketing podcast brought to you by ROI overload, delivering strategy, technology, and insights to both sales and marketing leaders and teams. Globalize.