IRL - Kyle Smith
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Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovative Revenue Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Marrs. Join me as we deliver practical insights to help B2B CROs Find new and innovative ways to grow in this fast changing environment. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a triad company, empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the craft of selling at all levels.
Seth Marrs: I am super excited to have on the show a B2B sales leader, revenue operations strategist and, and Go-to-market advisor. He's, he advises sales, marketing and customer success teams on pipeline generation conversion and revenue performance. And his worked with a hundred plus B2B companies to deliver strategic assessments, sales, playbooks, and interim and interim leadership.
His current position is managing partner at The Bridge Group. Kyle Smith, welcome.
Kyle Smith: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Seth Marrs: Great to have you. So the, the first question we ask every guest I in this environment with so many things changing and going on, is just if [00:01:00] you're a CRO out there, like what is the most like, so they can understand what's going on?
What's the most innovative thing you've seen in B2B right now?
Kyle Smith: The most innovative thing I've seen in B2B right now is, uh, not. Getting entirely wrapped up and fully distracted by ai,
Seth Marrs: Oh my God, that's a great answer.
Kyle Smith: uh, people who focus on yes. Leveraging AI as part of the sales process, finding ways to make your team more efficient, service more. interesting information to them. Reduce administrative load, uh, create efficiencies and operational processes. Sure, but not completely revamping the entire sales strategy and re-imagining the way that you're gonna structure your team because you have a magic AI solution.
That's gonna mean you can cut 30% of your headcount, but need to retrain the 70%. For 60 hours in a quarter, uh, and ultimately miss your number as a result. I saw that happen way too frequently last year. Some good sales leaders got fired as a result, [00:02:00] um, which is really sad to see. People who are innovative are the ones who are saying the non-sexy thing in front of the board, which is we are gonna focus on AI adoption, but we are not completely ripping out everything that makes our sales process work.
Seth Marrs: couldn't agree more. And you see it happening so often because you have executives involved. Like how are you counseling people to talk to that, to have that courage in front of 'em? 'cause I'm sure they're calling you and saying, help back me up with information, what you're seeing in the market, that type of stuff.
Like how do you counsel someone to, to get, to go to their board and proactively say, look, this isn't a. Like, let's do this the right way for the right reasons, rather than just do AI for AI's sake.
Kyle Smith: yeah, I think it's about starting off with the diagnostic step. Just saying, where are we at? And so what, when you're thinking about what's the current technology we have in place, are we maxing out the capability capabilities of things that are not necessarily AI native, but some of the vendors that have been around forever?
[00:03:00] I don't care if it's Salesforce. Like what? What function are. Functionality are you leveraging from a SaaS platform that your team lives in already where they are deploying on a daily basis, AI functionality, rather than where are we gonna go out and look at third party providers that are exclusively AI tech or fully agentic and say, where are we gonna plug them in to do salespeople's jobs for them?
So. Maximizing capabilities and understanding where there are gaps in inefficiencies in the tech stack that currently exists. identifying process inefficiencies, identifying, uh, customer friction points. And so if we look at, at a minimum, those three things, and then say, where is there an opportunity for AI to help us? Then we're much better suited to come up with the answer rather than skipping over that step and just saying, AI's available. Where can we jam it in? To what they say they do. What, where can we just take this and say, great, they do this thing well, we're gonna do that now because this AI technology exists.
It's like, well, how does it fit into everything else that we already do? And [00:04:00] the nature of our customer interactions and the solution we sell in the market we're trying to engage with and what we are already using. Um, so I think it's. My advice is usually slow down and let's see where does it actually make sense?
Rather than just take a square peg and jam it into that round hole as hard as we possibly can.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, so A actually have a, have a solution that have it identified and linked to something that could actually make something better, rather than assuming it's going to make some, just buy it and then assume it's gonna make something better. 'cause everyone else is telling you it's.
Kyle Smith: Correct. And build an operating plan that says everything's gonna be better fire salespeople because you don't need them anymore. And then also have to retrain all of your existing team, which creates a massive distraction and there's an adoption gap, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, we missed the number.
How you are like, well. What did you,
Of course.
You, you thought you were gonna get the, that much of an instantaneous impact.
Seth Marrs: Yeah. It's crazy. Well, I mean, you guys do one of [00:05:00] the, like one of the cool the things we'll talk about is you do a BDR report every year. Uh, or every other year that around. And it's, I would say it's the most con, it's the, it's like, to me, the Bible, like I've used, I've looked at a lot of BDR R reports, but yours provides the most consistent analysis of what's going on over time with the BDR.
Uh, but one thing is the BDR is also this. Role that seems to be at the center of what you are talking about, like they're constantly replaced to BDR I meet, I meet fairly often with CMOs and CSOs and they're coming to me going, how do I talk to my CEO who keeps telling me I need to replace my BDR with a, with with ai?
And it's not. Even physically possible to do unless you have a really bad BDR team that basically just sends out emails. When you are, when you're talking about that, what guidance, what guidance before we jump into the report or, or kind of some of the [00:06:00] structure and stuff from the report, what, like what guidance do you give when you get that one in particular?
Because it seems to be happening everywhere. The marketing side of techno AI technology and B2B has seemed to really got a nar seems to really have a narrative around this particular role.
Kyle Smith: This is like we're going on a decade of every single Q4, at least one client, usually multiple, are saying, do we need this team?
And that's, that's been happening long before a, this ai, uh, blow up. And so that conversation is the same. And so this one is, is different in many ways in that you actually can replace a lot of the steps that are happening on the BDR.
You can. And so it's less about do we need this or not? And where I try to resear the conversation is, where is a human being owning top of funnel pipeline creation? Going to add the most value,
Not duplicate something that you can do with technology really cheaply. Oh, nobody wants to do that. It's the [00:07:00] same thing if I say I'm gonna route single lead to one BDR. That BDR is going to look at the lead and based off of the criteria, decide which other one of their peers they're going to send it to. You'd say that's stupid and doesn't make any sense. Like there are clear criteria, there's territories, there's account ownership tiers, and so if we know what the criteria are, then something as simple as a marketing automation solution can route those in an automated fashion.
And a human being doesn't need to do that.
Okay we started doing that. From my knowledge, like 10 years ago, eight years ago, that started becoming a thing. And so if I take that as one example that everyone knows started happening a long time ago, well now there's other versions of that. And so now you say, well, you're gonna do three minutes of pre-call planning to identify relevant pieces of information that you can use to customize a message, you're going to search these three sources and then populate the information into the CRM. You say, well, if a piece of technology can do that. For me and surface that information to me so that I can [00:08:00] then contextualize it and have a more meaningful conversation with them. That's great. So great. You just start lopping off things that it doesn't make sense to have a human do, but there's still a place to have good quality conversations that drive, uh, good top of funnel opportunities. The other thing I would say is, uh, there are spots where it doesn't make sense to have them.
Seth Marrs: Yeah.
Kyle Smith: Like if you sell a $5,000 widget, I don't know that you should have an SDR team like the unit economics just aren't there.
Seth Marrs: yeah. It's so, it's so interesting. Use it to, it kind of goes right back to the point you were talking about, if there's tons of things you can do to make the. SDR more efficient, lopping them off and then just expecting the, the technology to do it for them is probably the worst way.
Instead of taking 'em and making them so hyper efficient that they could grow more, that seems like the logical path.
Kyle Smith: Of course, and you're always, you're also playing this game where buyers are, and sellers. Were cyclical, and we do this [00:09:00] thing where we adopt a new process or a new way of engaging with them. Then everyone adopts it, and then it becomes less effective, and then all of a sudden that comes back. And so having good quality conversations has been the one thing that's never gone out of style and seems to be the thing that actually drives meaningful pipeline that converts to revenue. And so figuring out if I'm gonna invest a lot of money in human capital, I'm gonna spend $85,000 on an SDR plus 28% of, uh, benefits and taxes And so on, employer side costs.
And then I'm gonna add one eighth of a fully loaded manager's cost. Like that's a lot of money to spend on that person. So yes, you everyone should be asking how do I optimize the actual incremental value add of that headcount
And were what markets do I point them at and the types of accounts that I'm asking 'em to source opportunities in it.
And where is the human element of the process, which is slow and cumbersome, actually valuable? Like you [00:10:00] should ask those questions, but you should ask that all the time. AI got to the point of evolution that it's at now and, and still today.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, exactly. Now your report does a lot of, this gives a lot of data around these things you're talking about. So I, I'm gonna just walk through some of 'em. 'cause the, the, one of the ways you, you. One of the things you lay out pretty clearly here is just on the organizational side. I remember like when I was at, when I was at Forrester, it there was, it was an acquisition from SIR Decisions and it's so very marketing related.
And I remember, I remember pulling, uh, asking like, where do SDRs live? Sales or marketing? And the whole team was mostly marketing. So it's of course, it's, it's all marketing related. So I'm like, is that real? And I pulled up the pressure report I'm like, no, it's like 60. It's like 60% I, in your opinion, does it matter where they live?
Like should, should they be in sales, should they be in marketing? Or does it, [00:11:00] does it really matter? Like in what you've seen over time and working with companies on this?
Kyle Smith: It matters a lot, but there's not one answer.
Seth Marrs: Say more.
Kyle Smith: So it definitely matters, but it's different for every company and it's different as you go through different stages of evolution. And so really what I'm looking for is two things. What percentage of the SDR team's time is going to be spent on inbound lead management? And then two, who knows the most about what if, what is required to actually operate a best in class? Sales development function. And so I'll give you two scenarios. early stage company with no inbound to be spoken of, a marketing leader who's focused on building a brand and name recognition in the space and doing some lead gen. I don't know if the SDR team's gonna be best suited there, where we have a top a hundred list of prospects that are lookalikes of the first 20 customers that we've gotten. The SDR can add some significant value. It should probably be more closely aligned with sales. They're gonna need to be nimble.
They're gonna maybe take things [00:12:00] further in the sales process than I would like if I was designing the team like that makes. It's a no-brainer. I would want that group to be sales aligned because they're gonna need to be tight and they're gonna need to be able to move fast and there's not some really well-defined process where they're gonna pick up inbound leads and partner with marketing to support field marketing events and push things across the line over to sales. And another scenario, you might have a really robust inbound engine that's pushing 1200 MQ ls a month are perfectly aligned to the ICP or is as close as it's humanly possible. And all we're trying to do is book introductory meetings because our ICP is extremely well defined. We sell into a commoditized space and they are just churning through these inbound leads and maximizing the conversion rate and a one, one and a half percent difference on conversion rate is a massive difference on total source pipeline from the group. an instance like that, I might say. Okay. Yeah. Like and the marketing leader like know, has had an SDR team [00:13:00] before, knows how to get them to be efficient and, and cares about coaching and professional development in that group. Sure. Align it to marketing it does matter. It matters a lot because could dump them on somebody who doesn't want them and doesn't know what they do, you're destining the group for failure. But there's not a rule. I wouldn't say it should always report to sales or it should always report to marketing.
Seth Marrs: But it's contextually where it makes the most sense based on the way your Go-to-market engine is built,
And the people, which I know as a consultant, nobody would expect the answer from me, which is like rules based. Uh, but who are the people? Has the person that you're gonna have them reporting up to ever managed the BDR function? Do they believe in it? Like we've had a, we've had, uh, I had a 15 I SDR team reporting up to a leader who thought that, uh, SDRs didn't make any sense. How do you think that team is gonna do, like
Won't fail.
Kyle Smith: That story written, Is. we where this is going.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, it's a really [00:14:00] interesting take and it makes a ton of sense, but what I usually see in, in talking with companies, it's, it's more of a power battle on who gets 'em than it is what's right for the business based on what you just lined out, which makes a whole heck of a lot more sense why you would shift them across versus, I want the team because I think they're better in my team than your team, which seems to be the normal ebb and flow that you get with these organizations.
Kyle Smith: we know that revenue leaders move a lot. I. When you do the army that you built, seems to be one of the things that people like to hang their hat on.
Seth Marrs: Yeah,
Kyle Smith: I manage the team of a hundred.
Seth Marrs: So true.
Kyle Smith: Well, so if you can add 20 to your un under your name, then you, oh, I manage the team of 120 globally. Right. And so I understand it.
I, I say it tongue in cheek, but I do understand why that is important and sometimes it's not as. Simple as that. And it is, I think we can create better sales marketing alignment or sales, sales development alignment if I own them. And I, I understand that, but no, you, you [00:15:00] gotta figure out who's actually best suited to lead this team and have a really difficult conversation.
And that can change over 18 months.
Seth Marrs: Yeah.
Kyle Smith: companies move fast. Like it might make, uh, you might make a different decision 18 months from now. Don't get married to it. Just do what makes sense. 18 months is a lifetime. Six quarters in a SaaS business is a long time.
Seth Marrs: Yeah. And it's getting even shorter. It's even longer in an AI company, right? Like, it's like say, I mean, I, I think that's a huge guidance and I wanna repeat it. I mean, make the decision on where they sit. Based on the mo. What's most advantageous for your company? Kind of logical but isn't really used a lot.
There's usually walls up and teams. Yeah. So it's, it's great guidance. Another thing you provide in the report is really good ratios to help people understand what's the typical SDR ratio I should have. So when I'm hiring, I look at my team size as you're doing this, I know you did the report in 2025, which was like two years into ai, into like this AI boom, two or three years.[00:16:00]
Are you seeing that shift? Like are are ratios going up, down, like, or is it holding things steady?
Kyle Smith: holding steady. More so we're seeing SDR teams not supporting certain AEs.
And so whereas before, let's just say we had a 10 person SDR team and a 30, 30 to 35 person AE team. That'd be your standard ratio. It's like, great, you have a one to three, one to three and a half ratio, SDR to ae. Very, normal. You could, uh, you might assume that with the adoption of ai, you're gonna say, well, great, we need less SDRs, And so we're gonna go down to seven or eight SDRs. And those seven or eight are still gonna support 30 to 35. But that's not what we've seen happen. And so we have seen teams go down to seven or eight, but they don't support the 30 to 35 anymore. They no longer support the SMB market because now they're just saying, well instead of having the SDRs continue to support SMB and have that ratio grow where then it's [00:17:00] one to five instead, we're just not supporting SMB. We're giving SMB AEs. We're equipping them with the AI technology that we are everyone else.
And so now they can self source and generate a lot of their own pipeline and maybe need less top of funnel support. And instead, we are pointing now the smaller, more refined and more productive group at just the market segments or industries or whatever it is for that company where we feel like the human element is, is significantly adding value.
Seth Marrs: So if the ratio's changing, it's just because the ratio is staying the same for the places where an SDR supports, but you're seeing some that are getting carved off and no longer supported by SDRs. Oh, very good thing.
Kyle Smith: And that might change over the, the, You know, the end of this year. Who know? I don't know what's going to happen. That's just what I've seen over the last year, year and a half.
Seth Marrs: another thing about SDRs is like in your report you showed experience, like the average experience level of an SDR dropping and dropping. I keep hearing and, and I feel it in my day-to-day work. I don't know if you feel it as well, like, ar, ai makes my [00:18:00] job harder. Like it more brain intensive, like there's just a lot more to it.
And so you're hearing a lot of talk around, I need SDRs that are a lot more experienced or that are a lot, are a lot more capable than the ones I have before. Do you see it that way or, and do you, if so, like do you think that this is gonna rise over time as AI kind of, you talked about it a little, like brings these teams together and they start supporting the, these other groups.
Like are you gonna need a more experienced SDR in the future or do you think it'll stay the same?
Kyle Smith: Maybe the issue is, is that the unit economics where the comp that the company is evaluated on haven't really changed maybe a little. And so you can only afford to spend so much per pipeline dollar because you can't have, you can't have a never ending escalation of cac, and if you can't afford to spend way more to produce a dollar a pipeline, then I don't see the cost of a three year tenured SDR coming [00:19:00] down. I think if anything that's gonna continue to grow up, go up. And so really you're just trying to play the game of, I think about like wins above replacement, like a baseball stat. Which is like if I hire a three year tenured SDR at 110, or I hire a recent college grad at 75, 80. How much more productive is my three-year tenured person gonna be, and is that going to be worth the incremental cost?
And really, I don't want only one or the other, I want a mix of all the above. But I, I think the reason why we're seeing experience required at Higher consistently come down is that demand for quality sales talent got really tight and then people started. Extending offers to people who are less experienced. we saw that go the other direction, where then the job market kind of bottomed out in 23 and 24, and then you could kind of pluck whoever you wanted. You got 120 applications to a job where like you get like 12.
Um, but [00:20:00] the reason why we're seeing it stay low is because people realize that they can still have really high levels of success, hiring potentially less experienced people, which typically costs less money. And because you're equipping them with all this technology and like specific to the SDR function, a recent college grad, SDR today is not the same as it was five years ago.
Seth Marrs: That makes sense
Kyle Smith: Not even close. And so it depends on also where you're recruiting from. So like I do a bunch of work with, uh, my alma mater, UMass Amherst.
They don't have a sales minor yet, although hopefully soon. They do have a sales club. And the sales club is probably 50 strong. And these are people who. Volunteer effectively their own time, they get no credits, they get no money, And so they're going there nights and weekends to take part in a sales club to develop skills so that they can ultimately enter in into the profession of sales. They do sales competitions, which are like super stressful environment, and they learn how to [00:21:00] navigate A CRM in a basic way. They understand the mechanics of sales process and they run. A gazillion simulated cold calls. And so you take them recent college grad versus me with a degree in biology who was like, oh shoot, I don't know what I want to do.
I'll try sales, which is like, was was more the norm. Like they are so much better than I was at graduation. They are not, we were not the same
like, Yeah.
And so I have interns now who will graduate in May having done six at a minimum sales competitions. Made at least 1500, 2000 cold calls, like booked meetings and source pipeline.
So it's like they are, they have no experience, no professional experience post grad that is not a recent college grad that we used to look at five years ago.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, because they have tons of experience in executing the thing you're hiring 'em to do.
Kyle Smith: Yeah, there's so many programs like that, and UMass is in its infancy, theres other places with majors.
Seth Marrs: yeah. You see [00:22:00] like Baylor has one Houston like, yeah.
Kyle Smith: And um, Bentley by us, they just built a four story building that's like a sales innovation hub, and they have like all these meeting rooms with a ton of recording equipment so they can do breakdowns after the fact and do a ton of AI and analytical, uh, scoring of role plays happening across like 12 rooms. It's incredible how much investment and respect the profession of sales has. Built up over the last decade. And so I think what you're seeing is recent college grad isn't what it used to be, And so you can actually get a really high quality candidate coming in with what looks like far as our report is concerned, less experience. They have less experience, but they're better than they were.
Seth Marrs: yeah, that makes total sense. So. One thing that's come up a lot, and I'm, I'm wondering your take on this is like the, the, a lot of companies will say, well, what's gonna happen if the SDR role go role goes away because that's my bench to becoming an ae.
But in, in your report you showed that that [00:23:00] pathway combined, like declining and then I, I've been around a long time and before the BDR and there was no problem getting AEs in, like, how big of a deal is that to how big of a a, a, how important is it to have a SDR group as your talent to become your AEs, like in your opinion?
Kyle Smith: It depends. What are you selling?
And so I get it, like sales managers, like the shortcut. I'm a sales manager and I'm hiring somebody, somebody who I've known for a year and a half who's been sourcing opportunities for my AE team, who knows my market, my buyers and my product like, and they're decent at qualification. Which could lead you to believe they'd be decent at discovery. Like I can teach you how to navigate the last three stages of the sales process, super easy. I feel like I could ramp you to productivity inside of 60 days. So I get it, like, it feels like a shortcut. It's like a known entity. They show up to work, like You know them as a human being and as a professional.[00:24:00]
And they have some, some built in knowledge of product and market. So like that, that piece I get, um, losing that is at the end of the world. I don't know. It depends on when. I think if you evaluate it right now and you say, we don't need a bench because we can go out and get any ae we want, uh, let's just say in a magical world, uh, fed drops the base rate back to zero tomorrow, and we're back in late money on fire, boom times. The competition for talent is gonna be insanely high. And then what are you going to do? Are you gonna go pay an a, an, uh, mid-market ae with a 800 K quota, 400 grand?
Seth Marrs: It was happening. It
was happening,
Kyle Smith: it was, remember It was crazy.
Seth Marrs: Yeah.
Kyle Smith: Um. That, that's where like, don't be a prisoner of the moment too much and just say, Hey, we're gonna break all these systems that work really well over long periods of time because right now we can go out and pluck anybody we want because it's an employer friendly [00:25:00] market, uh, that can change fairly quickly. And so I just, I think the farm team thing does work and there's merit there. Now, if you sell a two and a half million dollar ERP. Uh, that doesn't work. And so like, it depends on what, what do you sell and, and is it actually a farm team?
Seth Marrs: One of the things I thought was like, I've spent a, you spent a lot of time talking with people around, like I've spent a lot of time talking to people around qualification. What is qualification? It was really interesting to see like you. Kind of tier this out in the report, but the, the level of qualification that is acceptable seems to be dropping, which was, was a, was a surprise.
'cause I would think people will be trying to make this better. So like, do you see that holding over time? Are, are companies looking? And, because I always see it as kind of an acceptance, right? You should set the criteria for what your qualification is, and then you set the bar and have your, have your BD or your SDRs hit it.
But with this decline, I mean, is that just the trend in [00:26:00] companies being willing to accept more opportunity or lower quality opportunities into your SDR team, like, or into your sales team?
Kyle Smith: It's a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Okay.
We saw win rates decline because of macro pressure. we're not seeing worse sales, we weren't seeing worse sales execution, just macro pressure. Win rate came down. win rate for a decade was like 25% in general was like a fair number that you could throw out there. You are gonna win 25% of the deals, which means, although it's not exactly like this, but let's just say for simple math, you need four x coverage. Well then we saw win rate drop to 18%. Let's call it 20. now you need five x.
And so you know, hey, we saw a win rate decrease, so we need more pipeline. But the answer was not, or the response was not to actually increase. More of the same pipeline. It was to just move the goalpost. It was just, we'll just get more [00:27:00] opportunities in the door. Well, how do we get more opportunities in the door? There might be eight things that we're doing, but one of them is we'll just book the meeting sooner. Just get them in front of the AE faster because we need more pipeline. And then the win rate goes down even more. And then, so that's what I, when I say it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's what, I saw happening. so I think there's merit to getting. It depends on what's happening. Go listen to I, I like inspection first.
Like, I don't jump to conclusions like, yeah, sure, we do these benchmarking reports and I have a solid idea of where I think you should be, but I need to know what's going on in the organization.
Go listen to uh, 50 qualification and discovery calls.
And sometimes I'll listen to qualification calls and be like, whoa, we have SDR teams trying to be AEs today, and they're talking themselves out of opportunities because they're not there yet. And they took the conversation three steps past where it should have gone and. book the meeting as a result because they weren't equipped to go where they were trying to take the call in that instance. Sure. Like I, I'm gonna [00:28:00] walk back qualification and be like, Hey, listen, like we gotta get them over the line sooner. Or you're introducing budget conversations, which is unnatural as part, like, they, it doesn't make sense to bring it up.
Then this is, this feels. Weird and uncomfortable and clearly is not appropriate for that stage of the sales process for your product. And so yeah, I've walked back qualification plenty of times, but that's not what I saw happening at the, on the larger scale is just, Hey, we need five x now, so get more ops.
Seth Marrs: It's kind of measuring the wrong thing, right? Like if you're trying to get pipeline, that's very easy to get to your point, like to me like locking in what the conversion rate is. You should only be able to get pipeline if you could see, keep the same conversion. If your conversion starts dropping, then.
You, you, you're over inflating your pipeline. Like, it, it, the math starts not, it's not mathing anymore. Like you're, you're, it goes back to what you talked about earlier. Then the justification. Even though you're generating more pipeline, you're generating less revenue. Or the same revenue that BDR team generating all that pipeline [00:29:00] is now worth less if they can't generate good pipeline to push through at the right conversion rate.
It's interesting, but it happens all the time.
Kyle Smith: And if you are in a super well-defined market, like I have a company right now who sells to a TAM of I think 6,000 accounts, and it's really only three titles. And so they are purpose built to have an introductory meeting model, which is no qualification. Like if it's one of those three titles at one of those companies, and you get them to agree to a calendar invite. Like, we're going full force on onto it, and I don't care. I don't need any a band. I, I need nothing. It's like, just give me the at bat, because we're, listen, we, there's only so many of these people and we want to put our best people in front of every single one of them. And then there's other ones where it's like, yeah, you sell a $15,000 thing in an emerging market to. [00:30:00] who are early adopters and you're like, yeah, we probably want a little bit of qualification here.
Seth Marrs: yeah. It makes total sense. So let's talk about you a little bit. Like when you were growing up, did you see like a life of a consultant is in your future? Like this is the thing you wanted to do?
Kyle Smith: Uh, definitely not.
Seth Marrs: No.
Kyle Smith: No. Uh, I thought I wanted to be a doctor.
Seth Marrs: That's right. You said you had a degree. You have a degree in biology, right?
Kyle Smith: I do. Yeah. I quickly realized I was definitely not my path. Um, but I do, I, I just loved life sciences.
Like, I found them super interesting. I loved every single class I took, like I found it extremely interesting, uh, but not something I wanted to pursue professionally.
And basically I knew I wasn't gonna go to med school, uh, and I knew I wasn't gonna do the PhD route and I was really sick of being poor. So, uh, I called, uh, Trish Bertuzzi, who was the founder of the Bridge Group and my aunt, and I said what should I do? said, why don't you try sales? And so I [00:31:00] applied to five companies, three of which she recommended, a job at one of them, uh, which was an outsourced lead gen firm.
And I was addicted after a week.
Seth Marrs: That is awesome.
Kyle Smith: Yeah,
Seth Marrs: I, I was one of those kids that wanted to be a consultant when I grew up. 'cause that's, that's probably worse.
Kyle Smith: No, I, I had no idea. I just, I panicked. I I was genuinely panicked. I said I have built really not even four, like six years around this pursuit, like starting a AP classes. I took in high school through four years of undergrad and one year of post grad in the lab. And I was like, ah. I, just spent six years building a really a thing that only works for like one path and I don't want it.
So what now
Seth Marrs: let's, let's go back to that, right? So when you graduated with those and, and you were in that state, if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice at that time that you think would've been most beneficial, what would you do? What would you say to yourself?
Kyle Smith: [00:32:00] relax.
Seth Marrs: just let it happen.
Kyle Smith: It is not that big a deal. You'll figure it out.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, just keep kind of plotting forward. It'll happen for you
Kyle Smith: Yeah. Focus on two things, like still care about your network, which, um, I did not in a way that, not in a way of like, it's gonna serve me in some way, shape, or form but just like care about people. If you care about people and you're good to people, you work hard and you like learning, uh, everything's gonna be fine.
Seth Marrs: Yeah, it'll take care of itself. That's, that's actually really good advice for right now, right? With all this stuff happening in ai.
Kyle Smith: Yeah, be good to people. learning. Uh, don't be stagnant and the, and work hard, and you'll be fine.
Seth Marrs: It'll all work out. So tell, like, tell me a little bit more about the Bridge Group and the audience that's listening, like what you guys do, a little bit about how, and then maybe a little bit about how people could reach you or reach the Bridge group.
Kyle Smith: Uh, we're a sales consulting organization. We work. Almost exclusively with B2B high tech, although we've done a lot outside of [00:33:00] that in the last couple years. And we do strategy work, so help design, Go-to-market functions. A lot of benchmarking tied to our research reports. do interim management, uh, we do some like playbooks and enablement type stuff, but mostly we do the strategy work and, uh, fractional leadership type stuff. Um. So if it's revenue generating, it's close to us and then it gets pretty bespoke from there. And if you want to get in contact with us, hit me up on LinkedIn, out on the website, contact us for 'em. We're pretty easy to get ahold of.
Seth Marrs: Awesome. It, it is been so great having you on. I love the report that you do and also getting to talk to you. Uh, thank you very much for joining.
Kyle Smith: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I.
Outro: And that wraps up another episode. Thank you for joining. For show notes and other episodes, visit us@innovativerevenueleader.ai. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a Trilia company. Sandler provides top corporate sales and business development training while empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the graph of selling at all [00:34:00] levels.