SPEAKER_01: Welcome back
everyone.
My name is Seth Mars, and I'm
hosting the Innovative Revenue
Leader podcast.
And today I have the honor of
having Mike on.
And Mike and I worked together a
uh several different times when
he joined Everstage, but Mike
has 15 years in sales and he's
worked his way up as a sales
leader in companies like Bright
Edge, Verb, and now he's the
vice president of Global Sales
for a very fast-growing sales
performance management company,
which is turning now, as he'll
talk to a little bit into a CPQ
company as well.
So providing more services at
Everstage.
So Mike and I got to know each
other when he started there, and
we've crossed paths a lot.
He's somebody that I've always
been really impressed with, how
we engage with customers, how we
work with them.
It's it's a very unique culture.
And and Mike, it may be
something that we talk to that
you bring to sales on how you
engage that I've really always
always been impressed with.
So thanks, thanks for joining
and uh welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, thanks for
having me.
Thanks for the kind words, man.
I uh I definitely reciprocate
them back.
I think you're one of the best
minds in the space.
And um, you know, when I uh when
you asked me to kind of come on,
um, I was like, I hope I
hopefully I can live up to uh to
set.
Um so I'm excited to jump in,
man.
SPEAKER_01: Man, no, no doubt,
no doubt you will.
Um, so okay, so we'll we'll
we'll jump in.
So you're in sales performance
management, but I'd like you to
just caveat that because of the
pivot that you guys have made
recently.
You serve a pretty conservative
customer base.
And and I think going into CPQ,
as you'll talk about, is is also
a different one.
So what is also a conservative
base.
So when I evaluated this
customer is when I would ask,
you know, how are you using AI?
There wasn't much use of AI.
Most of them were still staying
away.
So the the report that that
we're going where we talked
through what CROs need to do to
drive growth with AI, we talked
about five different cell A
activities that can reduce this
5%.
When you think about these
conservative users, which one of
those five areas do you think
would most resonate with them?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think
about the conservative part of
it, like it's so true, man.
Uh, and and I'm sure it's like
this, you know, I think selling
what we sell and being the SBM
space, like it crosses all these
different industries and
verticals.
Um, and everybody for the most
part has different, you know,
maybe risk thresholds, but
they're all kind of concerned
about the same things, uh, you
know, at the end of the day, and
and you're spot on with them
being conservative for sure.
Um and I think from an AI
standpoint, it's kind of like
making sure that data doesn't go
rogue.
Um, you know, that's all
protected.
And I think that there's a um
for those conservative folks, a
lot of it is like automating
manual tasks still.
Um I certainly think there's
more to it.
Um, but you know, you you uh
obviously there's a lot of value
that AI can bring about
automating manual tasks.
And so, you know, one of the
things that stood out about your
report was um, you know, you
mentioned we started a CPQ.
It it uh certainly uh it was top
of mind about creating quotes
and proposals.
You know what I mean?
If you think about that process,
it's such a pivotal process of
every single business, right?
You know, are we charging the
right amount?
Are we getting the right
margins?
Um you know, and and are these
things uh a good representation
of our business in general?
Um it's really easy, you know,
to have the wrong uh product
skew in a quote, um, you know,
have the wrong address uh, you
know, on things, and then it
just looks sloppy.
Um and with conservative buyers,
that doesn't really play, right?
Uh you might only get one kind
of crack at it.
And so um we've seen that be a
big problem, as well as just
time consuming, right?
So it's like an accuracy issue,
it's a time consuming issue, and
it's not really a revenue
driving task, right?
It's more of kind of an
administrative task at its core.
And so, you know, one of the
things that that we built, um,
and I think it's one of the
benefits of being a little bit
newer of a player in a space in
today's day and age is that you
can kind of have AI be a
foundation of what you're doing,
right?
Um, which is really cool.
Um, and so you know, one of the
things that that we do is like
when you go to create a
proposal, um, you know, we can
go into Slack, we can go into
Teams, tell our Slack bot, hey,
I need to create a proposal for
X customer.
What it'll then do, it's gonna
go out and it's gonna crawl your
CRM, right?
So it's gonna understand you
know who, where, what, but it's
also crawling gong calls and
call recordings, right?
What product SKUs were
discussed, what quantities of
those product SKUs were
discussed, what uh length of
contract was discussed, um, and
essentially is getting you to a
point where the framework is
built.
Are you gonna come in and maybe
tweak some things?
Yeah, right, but it's literally
taking all that manual process
of selecting the SKUs and
filling out the person's
information, so on and so forth.
You just ask a question, it
provides you a document, and
then you're kind of fine-tuning,
sending off for approvals much
quicker than what you'd be doing
uh otherwise, right?
So that's kind of one example.
SPEAKER_01: So let me let me dig
a little deeper on that because
that's really interesting.
Because what you're saying right
now, if I understood it right,
is I'm a seller, I just had a
great conversation with a
customer.
The customer said, Hey, can you
give me a proposal?
And then you would go into
Everstage, click a button, and
say, I want to create a proposal
for X customer.
And the way you're building the
system is I don't do any
configuration initially.
The system goes back and looks
at all the phone calls, any data
that's basically connected to
your CRM or the tools that are
feeding into your CRM, and it
brings back kind of a draft
proposal based on everything it
knows today.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
And I'd even go one step
further.
There's also like a deal room
component too, right?
So, you know, uh, is there also
the call recording or what
materials do we have in our, you
know, our content management
system that we also want to
throw in there?
It's also like, you know,
essentially leveraging that sort
of uh intelligence to create
kind of the whole experience,
right?
Not just a proposal to deal room
too.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Everstage
had the deal room as well,
that's a part of this.
Yeah, part of CPQ, yeah.
Interesting.
So yeah, that's a so that pulls
everything together.
That's a good use of what you're
seeing with some of the Jan AI
stuff today.
And then the the salesperson
then adds, deletes, updates,
formalizes everything, and then
pushes it through.
That's really, really, really
interesting.
It seems like also that the I
mean the the AI use cases for
sales performance management are
much lower in in terms of like
the the difficulty or or the
willingness to accept just
because accuracy is so
critically important.
But it seems like going into CPQ
that opens up a whole level of
opportunity with AI because I
don't like in that example you
just gave, I don't have to be
perfect.
All I'm doing is try to get you
50% of the way there, so you
don't have to go look through
your notes.
You don't have to go do all that
stuff, you just kind of open it
up and I've got a draft.
It may not be perfect, but it
gets me there, has all of the
different details, and all I
need to do is maybe correct,
update, add, delete.
SPEAKER_00: Still have the
manual check before it goes to a
customer, which is the other
important part, like you brought
up, you know, in the SBN space,
calculations being so important
and accuracy being so important.
It's kind of removing that
barrier of risk, you know, to a
certain extent.
So, you know, we'd like to think
that that it's on the right
path, um, where it still gives a
protect per protection for the
conservative, you know, sort of
of user, um, but also provides a
lot of value too, right?
Um, and people like, right?
Um, so so yeah, totally uh
totally a thing.
SPEAKER_01: Cool, cool, very
cool.
So before we before we started
this, you and I were chatting,
and and one of the things that
you said is your team has been
using the CPQ product for about
a year, you said?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, over a
year at this point, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so like one of
the things that that comes up
with this is it sounds like
that's that that should be
creating some capacity within
your teams.
And one of the things that I
always see when you create that
capacity is in a lot of cases,
companies just leave it to their
sales reps to figure out what to
do with that capacity.
And that could be a great sales
rep, makes good use of it and
drives revenue.
And in another situation, they
kind of just take a little bit
more time off.
Um and the the company doesn't
necessarily have control over
that.
For you, it sounds like you
generated some capacity by
pulling this in.
Once you got it working, I'm
sure at some points it was a
little bit of hard work because
you were you were helping
develop with with your technical
team.
But when you started to get that
capacity, how how did you
redeploy those those pieces of
like extra time back to the
seller?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think um,
you know, one, I I kind of want
to speak about this at a little
bit more of a higher level
because I'm I'm just so
passionate about it.
So like the it really kind of
grinds my gears that we've
gotten to a point, especially
with prep, you know, I think
about like on-call prep, I think
about better productivity when
you know when I think about this
this scenario where it kind of
more is tailored to a seller in
general than it is the CPQ in
this particular instance.
But um the nature of it is is
that like you could become more
efficient, but if I'm getting
the same activity volume out,
then like what are we really
doing, right?
You're talking about taking the
time off.
Like it it doesn't make sense,
right?
Um, and so what I've really kind
of focused on with my teams are
like how can this not make you
quicker?
How can this actually like make
you better, right?
So like one of the examples is
prep, pre-call prep, right?
I think there's probably
majority of organizations are
using AI, it's gonna help you
prep a lot quicker.
But is it helping you go deeper,
not just in your prep, but also
during calls, right?
In discovery, can I actually go
deeper in discovery?
Can I have the customer feel the
benefit of the efficiency that
I've just experienced?
Right.
Another blocking tackling thing
is like tie backs, you know, is
what I call taking information
that a prospect shares with you,
providing value, specifically
tying it back to what they had
shared, right?
Are you opening up more brain
power to have more capacity to
really tailor and go deep in a
presentation around how this is
actually impactful for you?
Right.
And so um how you actually
action that is also there's a
level of AI that that I think is
really important.
And so when you think about
coaching, right?
I'm sitting in a one-on-one, you
know, and I really try to, it
doesn't happen all the time for
sure.
Um, but you really try to at
least like once a month, like
have like a hardcore, you know,
here's a call recording, here's
some like black and white, you
know, coaching around how we
could have gone deeper, how we
could have done those tiebacks,
using real life examples, right?
Um, and it's very personal to
that individual.
Um, but what I found, and this
is probably about like eight
months ago, um, where I wasn't
really like being a force
multiplier in those moments.
Like those are very one-to-one
sort of moments, and like a lot
of those situations apply across
the entire team, but like I'm
not able to kind of multiply
that.
And so I then put another layer
of AI on top of it where I'll
record those one-on-ones, uh,
turn them into battle cards very
quickly, very easily, share the
snippets of the call recording
and give us a sample of what the
scenario actually was, use case
was, industry, persona, size of
customer, you know, problem
area, you know, competitor that
we were competing against, so on
and so forth.
Throw all that into a catalog
and then apply alerts to the
team when those things have
happened.
So that way, when say that
coaching moment comes up again
with somebody else, I already
have some materials as well.
We still might have that
discussion, but now I'm force
multiplying, but there's also
some homework that you can do to
get better and better on your
own, right?
And so that's really where I
personally kind of leverage it,
seeing it, and like if I can
take that and have it be five
percent more capacity, awesome,
right?
Uh hopefully it's more than
that, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
It's it's interesting the way
that you're talking about it
because it's different than I
interpreted it to a certain
degree.
Like, I think capacity, like
typical like analytics nerd,
right?
The the time I save you you had
an hour, you did it in 50
minutes.
But you're not really talking
about that.
You're saying, okay, I I gave
you you you I took 10, 20
minutes off of your time, but I
still want you to spend an hour.
But my hypothesis is that you
didn't do enough, you didn't put
enough effort in building the
depths during that hour.
And instead of you spending more
time doing it, I want you to to
do more work before to get a lot
of things set up in a way that
the conversation is deeper.
You're able to, you're able to
use that time more wisely.
So that's really interesting.
And and I think the way that you
would, if I understand it right,
the way that you would see an
impact in that is your win
rates.
So you may not give time back,
and I may be working the same
deals, but my win rates are
going to go up because now I am
actually delivering a better
experience.
I'm going more in depth with the
product, I'm I'm better
positioning things than I did
before.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%, right?
You know, I think that there, I
think there's a lot of mentality
where it's like what you're
talking about, it's like time
efficiency, and what could I
then be doing with that time?
In the micro kind of uh, you
know, moment that I'm
explaining, it's call prep to
better close rates, right?
And so it doesn't necessarily
mean like call prep means I can
prep for more calls.
Like it's like how can I do
actually do that better in order
to quit you know improve close
rates?
You know what I'm saying?
One-on-one coaching moments,
like how can I actually do those
things better to get more
output, right?
Um and so it's uh uh uh it's not
always about like can I do more?
It's like can I maximize what
I'm actually doing too, you
know?
Awesome.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, that
makes that really interesting.
This kind of dovetails into the
the final question that I that I
had for you around around
enablement.
That's always been a tricky
beast to understand where am I
getting value from enablement.
It's it's very hard to measure.
Sounds like you've thought a lot
about this and and and put a lot
of work into trying to make that
visible for your teams.
When you think about driving ROI
for enablement, like and like
the adoption of training and
what you want them to do, those
things you were talking about
before around how you're
building this force multiplier
of what good looks like.
How do you think about that?
Like what what what what do you
do to understand whether the
enablement you're giving your
sales team is adding value or
delivering an ROI?
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, so it's um I
think that there's like micro
moments that lead up to ROI.
And that's really at least like
for the example that I gave,
where I really try to like focus
that, right?
Yeah, so you know, for example,
um, you know, hey, say we're
working on in this particular uh
you know feature of the product
against this particular
competitor, these are the
differentiators that we want to
land.
When we get this information
from Discovery, this is how
we're going to be tying it back,
right?
One of the cool things that AI
has really done is like
categorizing those things, then
you can put scoring measures to
those things.
You can actually really start to
uh you know see and and have a
quantifiable improvement metrics
on those little micro moments
that ultimately lead to close
rates, right?
But if I were to skew those
things and go just to close
rates, like am I actually
accomplishing what I know needs
to get there, right?
And so one of the things that I
subscribe to is like situational
coaching, right?
There's like S1 test four if
you're familiar with it.
And so not only will we like
this is what you know S4 kind of
looks like, this is where you're
at, mutual agreements to it.
Um, this is what you need in
order to kind of you know
improve and get to to that S4.
And here are some black and
white examples of how we've
actually done on call to get
there, all categorized, right?
All done without me having to do
a ton of manual work, right?
Do I get some help from from
sales enablement and rebots for
sure, right?
Um, you know, but uh a lot of
that work is is ultimately
getting automated.
Um, and I think in a lot of
those instances, like we're you
know, why it's an exciting time
uh, you know, with AI in those
instances, a lot of that was
just uh it was interpretation
both on the leader and on the
rep, right?
Like my interpretation is you're
getting better, or my
interpretation is that I'm
getting better if I'm speaking
as as the rep.
But it's like, are those things
aligned?
Is that actually providing the
output that we want?
Is that getting the responses
that we want?
Maybe, maybe not, right?
It's all interpretation, right?
So uh it helps kind of make the
the you know things a little bit
more quantifiable.
Um, and then you just stack
those things up, right?
You can go through your entire
presentation on call, off-call,
you know, what do things
actually need to look like in
order to you know get a deal in.
And uh and then you're also
focusing on on moments to get
positive momentum, right?
You know, it's one of the things
that I'm super passionate about
where it's like if I were to
just strictly gauge my
self-worth off of closed one,
like you lose more deals than
you win, right?
So like you're it's really easy
to be negative than it is
positive, but yes, positive
momentum, you know, when it
rains it's poor, is is real,
both positively and negatively.
And so, you know, maybe I'm not
seeing that end result quite
yet, but I'm building positive
juju by seeing these little
micro moments improve, knowing
that that big moment is going to
come while I'm I'm keeping my
you know my my mentality where
it needs to be.
You know what I mean?
So feel really strongly about
it.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you're
looking, forget the when like
here's the deal, and these are
the moments that happen in a
deal that matter, and I'm now
using AI to say, go listen for X
moment, Y moment, Z moment, and
then tell me how that looks.
And then if there's a good or
bad, if it's a really good
moment at a critical point, show
it so we can share it and and
and work with if it's a bad
moment, give it to me so I could
go help them.
But then you can see what those
moments look like and start
understanding what a one deal
looks like in those moments.
So it must also give you some
sort of like forewarning of
whoa, that that that didn't go
well.
I need to intervene because we
dropped the ball or we we didn't
do well on this.
This we need to do something to
try to get this part better.
SPEAKER_00: 100%, 100%, man.
So now taking it to like my
level, right, the macro level a
little bit, yeah, right.
I think that there's a ton of
these little trip wires that I
try to set up for myself.
Um, obviously, if you're just
focusing on like call recording
logic with your scorecard that
you set to it, it can not be
accurate 100% of the time,
right?
You know, one of the things that
I always always laugh about in
uh in in the ICM space in
particular is like we have a
competitor named exactly, right?
Think about how often the word
exactly is said.
Spiff, right?
You know, gets brought up.
It doesn't have anything to do
with the competitor, it just is
is nomenclature that gets
brought up.
And so there's also these little
micro moments uh of note-taking,
right?
Like, you know, I think that
like how I try to set it up is
you know, as as my job is to
help people see what they're not
seeing.
You know, I'm talking about I
was talking previously about
like sales execution, but now
talking about deal execution.
That's really where my job like
has to be, right?
I have to maximize the the money
that's coming in, right?
So um, how can I help reps kind
of you know see what's behind
the corner, what's coming up?
And so I've been really
strategic where uh I always kind
of laugh and I always make sure
that that uh I acknowledge the
fact that there are some notes
in the CRM that are for me,
right?
Like I'm sorry, uh, you know, um
there's ways that we can
automate filling them out, you
know, uh, but you know, there is
for a reason.
And so I can actually read, I
can have the these alerts that
I'm talking about, but I can
also read the notes and then I'm
having them fill out these
particular notes because I can
read the responses and now might
need to double click into there,
right?
If I see this competitor and
this is the pricing that we
shared and there's no next
meeting, boom, I need to go
check out the end of that call,
right?
Um, you know what I mean?
And so uh, you know, there's
these little moments where you
try to set up these little trip
wires for yourself because you
can't look at everything, you
can't see everything.
And so um something I'm always
trying to improve too.
I don't I don't think I'm uh an
expert in that by any means, but
try to improve.
SPEAKER_01: Seems like you're
doing a lot with it, though.
Very cool.
All right.
Well, yeah, Mike, once again,
thanks for thanks for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Great insight, and yeah, I uh
look forward to talking to you
again.
Awesome, thanks, Dad.