IRL - Curtis Schroeder
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovative Revenue Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Mars. 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_2_06-05-2026_092457: Hello, everyone. I'm excited to bring back this guest to talk about measuring sales performance, which is an area that's been a huge focus at Sandler, and I'm looking forward to dig in, to dig, to dig in with him. He's a sales strategist, PhD professor, and research leader. Spent five years as an adjunct professor sales-- for sales, marketing, and management at Baylor, all whilst on the team and slowly building his career in the corporate world.
He has shaped sales strategies for Fortune One Hundred companies, including a stint as managing director of strategic sales at Oracle. recently earned his PhD from [00:01:00] Oklahoma State, and his current position is head of research and insight at Varicent. Curtis, welcome back.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Uh, thanks Seth. Uh, glad to be back.
with you again. These are always, uh, fun conversations to have for sure
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. And, and we have these both in these settings and then off of these settings. And I think the, uh, conversation today is really the culmination of a lot of work we've
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: The scenes, so I'm really looking forward to
it
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Me too. Me too. Thanks for the invite
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. So ju- just starting out, like what, what's the most innovative thing that you've seen in B2B right now?
Like, a- as, as you're, as you're going through things, you work a lot with customers, a lot in with academics. a little bit about what you're seeing.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: yeah
I might answer that question away from B2B to begin, uh, and then, and then bring it back. And so I'm actually-- I'll, I'll speak to-- Every- everybody's talking AI, so it's no surprise that I'll speak about something related to AI. But, um, the World Cup is coming up And I saw, I think it was the, the chief
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yep
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: operating officer of, uh, US Soccer [00:02:00] on some podcast or videocast or something like that, but he was talking about the implications of AI for soccer, and he basically goes into this whole, um, a- analysis very, very positively about how AI is being used to help them scout players anywhere on the planet through, through video and how this is just a huge leap, right?
Like, you think about that, that role of, of the scout in any major sport. You're on planes, you're, you're watching film and these kinds of things. Like, you're, you are very much limited in that capacity by, uh, the cost and the resource of the individual human. But, but AI, they basically can watch any game from around the world.
They can key in on the specific kinds of skills that they're looking to, to fill gaps on their own teams, um, a- and even read a lot of the things that, that, that you may not pick up with, with your eye, the patterns of a player over time and how they perform at different points in the match and that kind of thing, and against different kinds of competition.
So of, of course, like any good B2B leader, you, you, you see the whole [00:03:00] world through the lens of, uh, of your B2B sales, and that'd be like the, the nat- most natural thing, but I truly mean it. But c- but the part of, um, that video that stood out to me was that he actually pivoted at the end and he said, "What this means, though, isn't that the, the scout becomes less valuable to us.
The scout actually becomes incredibly valuable to us in a different way because, uh, it, it allows us, that scout, to then key in on the intangibles," basically. Like, how, how does the, the, the player take coaching? What's their body language after a bad play? And, and like any, uh, coach or, or, or managing director of, of, of a team's looking at, you're going like, that's really...
There's a lot of those X factors that you're never gonna be able to quantify or, or see. And so as I think about what that means and even some of the, the conversations you and I have and the research that, that we've been doing, you know, the, the implication that AI is just going to remove the salesperson or re-remove so much of the, the human, I think i- is totally wrong.
And I believe that, [00:04:00] that, that in this world, like the human becomes even more valuable because the AI is making those measurable, those patterns, those kinds of things cheap. The, the unmeasurable things becomes the whole ballgame for, for them. And so to me, I guess the, the innovative thing that I'm seeing and it's spending a lot of time in my head on is, is, is a reversal of how sales technology's always worked.
It's, it's, it's actually looking at how do we justify, um, even more and amplify the value of the human in a more empathetic and, and, and real way to be able to, to take advantage of what the human does versus the technology and really how those two work together. So I'm not sure if that was how you intended.
Uh, maybe I can come up with a more concrete example of, of one company, but that was something that was really resonating with me this week.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: No, it also brings a lot of stuff home too, right? Because you think of that scout, and you could say the same thing, like can make that conversion from a scout to a sales manager, and a sales manager now can see all of the calls that are happening, just like a scout could-- will be able to see so much more.
So the inputs [00:05:00] coming back to them are gonna be vast,
and it's gonna require them to not do things that they did before and do other things that they did. And I think that's a lot of what people misunderstand, and it's, it's scary, right? Because you don't-- y-you're used to doing things one way, and there's this new way that nobody knows how it's going to be.
But that to me brings home like how some of the new ways are gonna happen. If I could see every athlete in the world and watch all of their games simultaneously and instead of... Or, or have someone watch all those games simultaneously, simultaneously, what do I bring back? What do I tell-- What do I have this system tell me to look at?
And then how do I take that massive ins- in-influx of knowledge to be able to make better decisions
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah
Well, and it, it becomes good for the manager, for more senior leaders, but it comes better for the salesperson too, which I imagine as from a Sandler perspective as you, you see this every day. It's like if you think about everything that I do as an individual as part of this, this human [00:06:00] performance, uh, mechanism that I'm bringing to my work, like then every piece of it matters.
Like maybe this is a little too trite, but it's like if, if you start thinking about your, your, your Apple Watch, your Garmin, whatever it is, like we actually have all these other, this other kind of data on the human too, like, uh, that, that allows us to understand our own performance, our sleep patterns and our schedules and our, our energy, our heart rate, these kinds of things.
Like you pair that with, uh, all of the, the great things that we see and know from Gong or from, from your conversational intelligence and from, uh, what you can see and what we capture in other ways, like that's a pretty robust way of looking at, as a salesperson, how I can continue to elevate and how I can continue to improve and what skills I need to invest in more, and as a manager, how to look at that more for patterns across teams to know where to elevate in, in more, um, scalable ways, those kinds of things.
So to me, this is all exciting. I think for some people it's, it's, it is scary. I tend to have a pretty low bar for, for privacy and and, and those sorts of things because I think the upside of me [00:07:00] being able to understand things more holistically always outweighs, uh, most of the time outweighs, uh, the, the, the kind of privacy or the individualism that I'm giving up.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, it's a great segue in what we're gonna talk about because, like, th- there's, uh, what you're trying to accomplish, and then there's how do I measure whether I've accomplished it or not? And a lot of times those things get conflated, right? Like you're... I'm tracking all that stuff on my phone because I wanna make sure I'm healthy because I wanna live longer,
or I wanna have a better quality of life, or I want-- those are my outcome measures that I have.
then I have all these other things that we're doing. Like, one of the things that we're doing with Sandler is we believe the skills we give you allow you to sell more.
So the, the interesting part is sell more is actually a really hard thing to define, as we'll talk about as we go forward, because it's, it...
The companies have a million different ways to do it. Most of them aren't very good or very, or they're very tailored to specific needs, or they're an input metric, not an output metric.
So, uh, that's... If, [00:08:00] if, if you think, like, as you know, like we, we... Sandler's releasing a new solution. It's called the Sales Performance Ecosystem, it enables companies to ensure the adoption of their training and make sure that the skills they invest in convert into revenue.
Now, the, the challenge with this is that's great, like, we make it visible, but what's that end metric? Like,
what's the metric that is a true measure of performance? And you and I spent a ton of time hammering things out, really looking at it, and trying to figure out what those are. So I, I wanna dig into that.
And I think a good starting point for this is for us to talk through some of the obvious ones that people use every day and the, the reason why we didn't select them. So let's start with the most, like, the, the most used one, which is quota attainment. So from your perspective, like, talk me through why...
Like, let's talk a little bit about why that just is not an optimal measure.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Well, [00:09:00] we first, let me say as you're bringing that up and, and how we came to this measure.
I, I literally looked the other day, I was going through emails to find something else, and I found the first email you sent me on this, uh, a little over a year ago. So this is, this truly has been a conversation you and I have been having for, for over a year, which in some regards, when we talk about the simplicity of where we landed, um, i- is really juxtaposed against the complexity that, that you're working against when you're trying to find one number.
But, but quota attainment in particular, um, I've become really passionate about quota attainment in the sense that the more that you dig into it, And I, I think most people probably believe this, but it, it's, it's, it's a pretty, um, uh, uh, an imperfect number maybe is a, is a h- is a, a kind way to say it. But you realize,
like, it, it basically it's, it's really two numbers that are, are kind of hidden under one thing, I think.
It, it's showing you or it's trying to tell you how good the salesperson is, but then also how good of a guess the setting of the quota was. And you can never really pull those two apart. [00:10:00] And so when most sellers have a quota that, that doesn't fit a lot of the, the c- you
know, the, the, the characteristics of their territory or the characteristics of the deals that they're, they're, uh, uh, up against, or the shape of their, of their way they perform, attainment's mostly grading the people who set the quotas, not the people that are actually carrying them.
So i- to me, quota attainment
really is only a, a good measurement of how good your planning team is at guessing the number. It doesn't really tell you how good your salespeople are. In fact, one, one-- in some of our, our research at Varicent over the last year, we, we found this, this statistic that only about sixty-nine percent of sellers are carrying a quota that doesn't match the opportunity in their territory.
So there's a huge mismatch i- in even in the quota world, uh, that attainment is built on a number that's wrong most of the time, and it doesn't account for a lot of the conditions that, that really go into it.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. I mean, it, companies, it's not an easy thing to do, but companies are perpetually bad at it, and there's a spectrum. So there's this assumption with quota attainment that [00:11:00] everybody sets quota at the same level, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. Yeah. So it's like, why introduce a variable that on the seller that has nothing to do with the seller?
So like that, that, that to me as we were going through it, in, in having done a ton of analysis around quota attainment numbers, it is so true what you said. It is the person setting the number that is much, much more likely to ensure its accuracy. Like I had companies that were within like or minus 5% of their quotas and others that were plus or minus 150% of of quota.
So it's, it's... Yeah. So X that one off if you're using that. There is, there are very clear reasons why to do quota we won't get into on this call. You want your quotas, but really the reason that you have quotas ideally is to be able to deploy the, the potential in your company
from I get a number I have to hit, I have to deploy it to my sales team, and ideally you, you deploy it [00:12:00] favorably.
That, that's the reason there. But it is not the best way to tangibly see if a seller is producing at the level that allows you to, uh, that, that says whether they're a good or a bad seller.
So,
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: That's right.
That's right
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Let's go to another one that comes up fairly often. Win rate. Like
win rate, like that... Shouldn't that one be, like that one, that one makes sense, right?
If I could win more than my, the rest of the group, then why would I not use that one?
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: I like, obviously I like quota because for the right reasons. I like win rates for the right reasons, but not for the reason that of, of measuring and, and understanding seller performance. Because I think it, it, it's rewarding the, the, the seller or the organization or however you wanna look at it for the picking easier fights instead of actually creating value in the customer.
And oftentimes it's masking the, the rep who takes that big hard strategic deal and wins half of them by, by somehow quantifying and saying that they're, they [00:13:00] can be worth way more than one winning nine out of 10 small ones or something like that, or more, more worth less than that individual, right? So it, it's, it's just wins divided by number of tries.
You can make it go up by trying a few or harder things. I- if you chase only the small, like easy deals and your win rate looks great while your revenue's dropping, that's not good either. Uh, and so any measure where you can have that level of manipulation in it, I guess, that can't be your individual measure, measure of performance.
That to me, that alone disqualifies it from individual seller performance.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah, and I think both of us have seen those situations where I, I've seen it with companies that are like, "Oh, I'm gonna measure on win rates." And then all of a sudden you see the, the, the percentage of opportunities in your pipeline drop
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Oh, that's the game we're playing. Okay.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: I mean, that, that, that by itself, if you go back to what we talked about on quota attainment, the seller can control their own destiny on things that are not really winning for the company. then also this, it, while it's good, [00:14:00] you also made another point that I wanna kind of expand on, which is you pick smaller, easier to win deals rather than the deals you need to win.
That matters a lot on win rate, and if you're focused there, you are likely gonna pick the easy deals. So this one just kind of does not... It, it, it, it, it doesn't really work.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yep
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: the next one, pipeline creation. So this is one that comes up all the time. Executives care deeply about pipeline creation. What, what's the reason why?
Like, what are some of the, the, the challenges that kept us from going with this one? Let's, let's start with that.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Well, again, again, the characteristic across all these three is that they're not-- It's not that they're not important, they're just important in, in other ways. And pipeline, of course, is an, is
an, important. part of, of the sales function, but it's measuring what people say they're going to do, not what they did.
And, and to the similar point about win rate, you can stuff the pipeline in about five minutes or, or refine your pipeline of [00:15:00] about five minutes to make it seem better or, or, or worse than it, than it truly was, right? So, um, there are ways that people try to get around that with weighting or, or, you know, burying it in your-- burying things in a forecast.
But we needed a measure of what people actually did, how they performed, and pipeline just didn't get us there
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. I mean, y-you, uh, it's weird. People have these, these visions of pipeline glory, but I mean, to a, to a certain extent, like in many companies, pipeline isn't even visible until you
get to the later stages. It's
just a massive guess,
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Right
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: and ver- like you said, very easy to manipulate. And if you don't have a velocity measure, it's even easier and there's tons of dead pipeline in it.
Like it's, it's just a very non-tangible pathway to success.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: so those are like the big three. I don't know if there's any other ones we want to go into, but I think that gives you an example of some of the... I think those are kind of some of the big hitters that
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Excluded. We excluded several others,
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Sure.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: That's, yeah.
those three for sure
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: landed, Yeah. So I mean, one [00:16:00] thing we found also is there's really no perfect measure, but the, the place we landed and it, it was on revenue per rep. And I think that there's a moment happening with just revenue per employee right now with, with AI. A lot of companies are looking at that right now because you're seeing these tech companies that are growing and hitting record numbers but reducing headcounts.
There's a lot of focus. But revenue per rep was the one that we landed on. Now, there's a bunch of structure that we put into it to make sure that it can be used correctly. But like, give me your perspective on, on, on revenue per rep and why you think that was the best measure
in
in look, it's, it's-- I, I think we will explain why it's not maybe as simple as, as it sounds, but also why it's, it's probably the best starting point. And to me, it's the closest that we've got to actually being able to quantify what a, a seller contributed. And there's a, a few reasons I feel like that is true.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: And first is that it's a result, it's [00:17:00] not an input. So it's like a couple that we were talking before. You can't, you can't stuff it, you can't game it like, like other kinds of re- Like, it is, it is the outcome. Um, the other one, I think this one was, might have been the, the, the most important to me at least.
It's measured in the main thing that the business cares about. It, it's dollars and then divided by the, the, the unit that produces them, the rep. So to me, it's, it, it, it's the meaningful outcome by the meaningful unit. Um, and then I think important, it's, uh, it's, it's fairly simple. I think a chief revenue officer, a head of sales gets it.
Uh, the CFO would probably get it as well. You don't need a, a stats degree or, or a certificate to, to trust, to be able to trust it and understand it. So to me, there's a, a beautiful simplicity to it. Um, but for those that might write it off, I think we'll probably get into why and how we can make it even feel a little bit more robust and, and helpful for understanding, too.
Is that, is that how you were thinking about it as well?
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. Y-yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's, it-- the, the, [00:18:00] the result measure is really important. It takes, like, if you take quota attainment and you pull out people, like you pull out the end, like the, you pull out the variable that is another person, so it's
much more pure. A lot of people would say, and you and I have this debate, well, some people get better territories than others.
there is, okay, well, if you're getting that much revenue, usually it's the sales leader doing it, and if they're giving you a bigger territory it's 'cause they think that you're a, a better seller. Um, like I said, not perfect, and that may or may not be true, but it truly lands to the value of that seller and their contrib-contribution to, to revenue growth.
Like that's just, I mean, at, at its bare minimum, that's what it is. And, and I also wanna double-click on the simplicity side. One thing that I struggled with in working with companies to do evaluations on seller performance around compensation was access. Like how
do... It's not easy to get reporting around quota attainment.
That's held under lock and key in a
lot of cases, as it should be. Revenue per rep is [00:19:00] actually fairly straightforward to do. Like that's just won opportunities and I can, I can get a fairly good understanding of what that looks like. So it's, it's a good measure in, in, in those ways. Like I said, nothing's perfect, but, um, it, it's, yeah, it, it's one that we really, really like.
So we chose it. when, when we, when we talked about this, we actually went down a fairly deep path around the complexity of this number. So there were things we had to account for to be able to make it work. Let's talk through some of those, like starting with like a classic one, which is different sellers, right?
We have, we have a, a hunter is not the exact same revenue per rep as a farmer. So if you tried to complay-- if you tried to look at them and say, well, then every farmer would be the greatest sales rep in a company, and all the hunters wouldn't be any good. So talk a little bit about that.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah, I think what you're trying to do with any raw number like this is, is one, recognize it's loaded with things that, that have nothing to do [00:20:00] with how, how good the seller is. So you're trying to remove some of that variability to the best you can, and also recognizing that it's not going to be ever perfect, right?
So, but you're, you're mentioning the, the roles that are different. If you've got, um, a farmer role that's sitting on a very mature book of business, that's definitely going to outperform a hunter who's building from nothing every time, right? It's, it's, it, it's some similar skills, but very different, uh, foundations that they're building from.
So, uh, we, we will talk about this and how we kind of, um, make this more comparable, but you do have to account for the fact that roles are different. The raw number is super important. Um, uh, and maybe, I don't know if this is one you were gonna go talk to, to next as well, but the team size.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: It here.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: The, the team size is, is an important part of this too, right?
Like, it, it
warps the average of, of, of the, that rep too. If you've got two people on your team versus 20, you don't necessarily have comparable numbers either. But anyway, tho- those are two. I know there's more, but the, the roles that are very different that, that might kind of mask the [00:21:00] ability to compare and then the, the size of the team.
What, what are your thoughts on some of that?
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah, and like I-- what I'll do is just kind of walk through kind of how we thought about it, right? Like, the
size of the team, the, the, the different variables between a hunter and farmer, the way that we look at that is we review them, the delta, like the difference between the sellers based on the average in there.
if a hunter, if the average sale is a million dollars and you're a hunter that's at one point two, then you're plus two hundred.
And if you're a farmer, you're... So if we allow it within that, what we call a revenue responsibility, we look at it, and
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yep
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: normalizing that to a percentage.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yes
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: you get it to a percentage, I can look at a hunter and a farmer in the, in the same way in our analysis.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yep,
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: So
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: that's right
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: that is, that, that's how we're covering for that. that also helps us a ton on the small team side, because by, by doing that, like we broke revenue per rep pretty quickly and trying to use it as a pure measure when we were looking at like a plus minus between the two.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Because [00:22:00] if you do that and you have two people, then it makes...
Like imagine if you had two people in an organization and the average, and they're like five hundred K over the average or fifty K over the average, and then you look at a farmer or a hunter that's l- It just, it would, it, you would see that smaller number would create vast differences and make a seller that was just in a small team look way better than they did in a, than the people in the big team who has a more distributed set of revenue.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: That's right. That's right. Which, these are the realities of, of sales teams, right? Like, you, you, you have the two-team rep, the, the, or the two-person team. You have the, the, the 10-person team. Like, you have the 1,000-person team. Like, so, so to try to say that one number is the silver bullet across all of them, you're never gonna get to that.
However, how do you try to reduce the variability that allows you... And, and it's, it's, it's about understanding. It's about, uh, trying to get to something that you can understand, explain, and do something with, not just report on it, right?
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah, and that was our huge challenge too, is normalizing to that. How do you normalize to a [00:23:00] small team to make sure that it looks and feels the same? Then how do you normalize to the different responsibilities? Um, the other thing that we were looking at was like the tenure of a seller. And let's just take this kind of through a little bit.
The-- 'cause it kind of goes into just because you're not a top performer doesn't mean you're a bad performer.
So let's talk a little bit about the, like a new starter like that, that comes into an organization. Why do you think it's okay for them at, to be at the bottom of an org, I think when, when, uh, when they come in and
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Well,
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: not a bad,
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah. I would say for sure. Like, a, a rep who hasn't finished ramping up is more than likely going to be below average. And so to me, what this does is allows you not to think about a moment in time as the end result. It's, it's allowing you to look at a trajectory of sorts too, right? Like what, what you really care about with any new rep, whether they have a short tenure to, to, [00:24:00] to, to sales in general or a, a shorter tenure to moving from a mid-market type company to an enterprise company or moving just between companies or between different product, whatever it might be.
Like, what you care about is whether or not that rep is climbing over time, not, not where they are at one point in time. And so if you, if you are punishing them at all or, or trying to categorize them being early or, or mid-ramp, you're, you're actually basing your, your understanding on, on a calendar problem, not, not really what the-- has happening with that person.
And so the revenue per rep piece allows you, again, in comparison and with using averages and these kinds of things, to be able to understand the trajectory over time and start to put some like parameters in place for your thinking as well. Like if, if that person is flagged as a new starter, sure, they, they might have a, a ramped quota, they might have these kinds of things, but you are-- If you can look at revenue per rep and what you're trying to do holistically across a group, a compared like group [00:25:00] over time, you're moving that person closer to the average and hopefully over the average over time if you want, if they're gonna be a, a top performer in your organization.
So it's about the trajectory, not a point in time. And this allows you to have a little bit more context to that as well, removing the noise of quota and those kinds of things around it too.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. Because the question I get is, "Well, this makes my, my new sellers look bad." And, and we account for it by, we, we accounted for it by going monthly and saying, "Okay, well, I'm only gonna look at the seven months that are actually working." But to your point with ramp, they're still gonna look bad, and that's true.
They are bad. So if you're a rep that's not delivering revenue in the business, you are not performing at the same level as your established reps.
The difference in the mind shift is that doesn't mean you're a bad rep. It means you're on a ramp,
and you would actually be looking at progression rather than like, "Oh, this person's in the bottom quartile."
What do, what... The, the answer to that is we've got to keep ramping them and keep moving them, not they're a bad seller and [00:26:00] we need to let them go. And I think that gets mixed in people's minds, and the way we're looking at it is, yep, if you look at the performance-wise, they're not delivering revenue for the business.
So yeah, they are in the bottom part of the group. That doesn't mean they're a bad seller, it just means that they need to improve to be able to get to delivering for the business at, at the level of others
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Well, and that's what I think you, you talked about the ecosystem piece. Like you're looking-- it's, it's looking at what are the right skills for this role at our company and for our product set and having clarity on that and how they, how they're performing against those. Like you-- there is time, uh, aspect of this as well, like the companies I've worked at where you have a sales cycle time of 12 to, to 14 months or something like that.
Like that's gonna play into the revenue they're able to close, uh, potentially as well, especially if they're, uh, starting earlier in a deal versus being able to jump in midstream. So there's a lot of factors, but at, at the end of the day, to me, it's like if you just, if you just try to classify them as, as a bad rep or a low performing rep, low performing is different than like bad, [00:27:00] bad rep.
This-- there's a lot more to it, and at least this allows you to start to think about the trajectory and how do you-- what are the surrounding conditions, characteristics, skills that they need to build on to be able to look more like a higher performing rep?
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. Like, just to round this out, th-that's why we're tying them to skills, right? So if you're-- When we talk about the performance ecosystem, we have, these are the skills that we want a great seller to have. So as you're ramping with that revenue, those skills become better. We wanna give you visibility to how they're performing in those skills and ramping in that skill environment so that, that you can start seeing the dollars go with it.
So you'll see those things hand in hand to be able to pull that rep
up,
um, and continue to progress them. Whereas in the past, it'd be very, very hard to see that on a continual basis. 'Cause of AI, your ability to see what's going on in calls, and they turn that into insights, you're, you're able to do significantly more.
So let's turn a little bit to you. Like, you're a PhD in sales, so you've, you've spent the-- Like, [00:28:00] your career is very much focused on the sales industry, the craft of it. If we were to go back, um, I know the answer to this 'cause we've had these conversations before. I mean, sales as a... Like, when you were a kid, do you-- And, and when you were coming out, like, of college, do you see sales as being like, "That's where I wanna be when I-- Like, this is where I wanna go"?
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: I would say no. Uh, but I w- I was, I was thinking about this the other day. Like, one of my, one of my favorite, um, family pictures of all times, and really one of my favorite memories of all time was I think I was six years old, seven years old. My dad was a B2B sales rep for Neutrogena back in the, in the '90s, and so he had his, his book of business at were, were grocery stores and, and smaller, uh, consumer goods stores in Colorado where we grew up.
And so Yeah, Denver. Yeah, right. And, and so he took me on one of his trips. Uh, and so we drove from Denver to [00:29:00] Grand Junction, Colorado, a few hours away. And this photo that I was looking at the other day is, is me standing with my dad outside his car. I think it was like a Safeway parking lot, and I'm, I'm in a, a six-year-old dressed in a, You know, a white shirt and a tie and in dark slacks, these sorts of things.
And so, like, uh, uh, my, my exposure to sales was a lot earlier than I even remembered for myself. Um, but I d- I will say for, for a number of reasons, I was, I was never super keen towards sales until later. And there's a, there's a couple reasons for that. One, uh, well, a couple reasons why I came back to it, let me say.
One, I do f- I do feel like sales in general, the more that I get into it, it, it, it can get clouded by, uh, the bad apples and the bad perceptions of sales in general. But truly at the heart of sales is how do I create value for other people? It's a, it's a service role at, at its core. And so I think when I, when I think about jobs or areas of, of my interest and my focus that allow me to, to express and [00:30:00] use my values in a way that'll, that, that, that is meaningful to me and hopefully meaningful to others, sales is a conduit for that.
It's why I've always enjoyed it. And so you, you hopefully can get passionate about, uh, an industry, a market. You can get passionate about a set of products. You can get passionate about those kinds of things when you recognize the value that it creates for, for other people. And so that's-- It's one way that I've kind of come back to, um, understanding and really in a, in a much, much deeper way connected to my values, appreciating sales as, as the opportunity and vehicle for that.
And then I'll say, too, like the second part of it is that, um, for me, curiosity has always been a career strategy, not just a, a trait for me. And so when I, I, I've carried a bag. I've, I've done the role itself. But to me, the, the greater interest for me and the greater value is when I can actually, um, dig deeper into why things are happening and help other people and, and myself and other people get better at that thing that we all love doing and that area that we love to have value.
So, you know, [00:31:00] you, you, you, you say PhD, you say we're, we're talking about statistics and these kinds of things, like it can, it can feel very in the weeds and nerdy, but at the core of that is just curiosity. I wanna have a, a compelling mechanism, way, foundation to understand and keep asking that why question so that we can all figure out how do we, how do we get better?
How do we help make our companies better? How do we help make our customers better? How we help develop meaningful, uh, and, and, and high-performing careers. That's, that's what I'm after.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Yeah. It's, it's always interesting, right? I mean, your story's similar in that, uh, uh, sales kind of comes late. It's, it's a lot more professionalized than it was before. A lot
of colleges and stuff are, are allowing you to learn a lot quicker. But I mean, you start realizing how valuable it is and the
impact you can have both for your company and for your customers.
It, it... There really is nothing like it
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah
that's right. I think I would say all, all, uh, all college graduates should-- and, and college, uh, programs should have a sales as, as a mandated, uh, requirement. One of my, one of my [00:32:00] favorite, uh, classes that I ever taught was an intro to profession- professional selling for non-business majors. And so you had fashion apparel, merchandising, journalism, all these people who walked in with this perception that sales doesn't matter, and I'm doing this for, uh, uh, an extracurricular credit, basically.
Um, and, and they c- and they leave hopefully with, "This is my life. Every part of my world is sales." I don't care what discipline you're in. So I think, I think it, to your point, it's becoming more professionalized, but it's also just super true to who we are as humans and, and something that we can use with persuasion and value creation for other people.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Totally. Totally agree. Okay. So tell-- Let's, uh... Tell me a little bit about, like Varicent, um, a little bit about-- and then a little bit more about how people could find you and, and Varicent if they're looking to learn more
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Yeah
So Varicent i-is a, a leading sales performance management, uh, uh, technology provider. And, but really what that means, if, if you get beyond the features and function of the technology, is that we sit at the heart of the, the go-to-market ecosystem of [00:33:00] how organizations plan and execute their go-to-market strategies.
And so you think about the core aspects of your compensation design and strategy, the core aspects of territory design, quota design, um, capacity planning, all these kinds of things. These are, these are the areas that really set the foundation and the trajectory of the sales organization any, any year.
And, and historically, those are, are decisions and plans that are made in annual ways with imperfect process and imperfect data. Um, the pace of that decision-making is, is closing, right? So, uh, you know, with, with companies a lot moving to plans on the half, some companies moving towards plans on the quarter, adjusting to macroeconomic conditions, um, these kinds of things.
Like, those decisions, those changes are happening much more frequently. And so, uh, the same way where we're talking about metrics, you can't just layer a metric on top of, of, uh, of, of your-- what you're trying to understand and assume it's gonna solve for. You can't just layer technology on top of any process.
You have to fix the process. But at the end of the [00:34:00] day, what we're trying to do at Varicent is help revenue leaders hit their number more effectively. That's what it is. And we truly believe that the-- one of the core ways that you do that is by designing compensation that motivates teams more effectively, and you have the ability to, to manage and move those levers in the ways that you need to.
You design territories that are more equitable, effective, and, and, and really represent, um, both the needs of your team and the needs and the opportunity in the market, and then quotas that kind of connect the dots across all of those areas. So, um, that's what our, our technology does, but really it's about value to, uh, the revenue leader.
Uh, in terms of, of finding me, and, uh, this is my, my role at Varicent is really to kind of speak, uh, and connect with, with people to better understand what's going on, to do research that helps us explain and understand what's happening in the world that, uh, of revenue leaders. So, you know, obviously, I'm active on LinkedIn.
Uh, I, I love having conversations just like this and so invite that, that kind of conversation as well. But would love to, to learn more and, and connect with folks [00:35:00] who want to talk more about these, these, these topics for sure.
seth-marrs_2_06-05-2026_092457: Fantastic. As always, great talking to you. Thanks, Firas.
squadcaster-f146_1_06-05-2026_082457: Thank you Seth
Speaker: 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 levels.