The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:33:43 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:33:43] S1: Chad Pete said on the show, legendary sales leader, said that young people just don't wanna work and that there is a different appreciation for why they wanna work from home. They want work life balance. They want mission. They get burnt out. They want kombucha. Is he right? [00:34:00] S0: I love Chad. He's a beast. I love Dagnon too. That was a fun show. I think he's right. It's a bit provocative, but there are plenty of young professionals that do want to go all in, and you have to find them. And it's on you to build the culture internally to make sure people want to come into the office every single day. We have younger sellers in their career that badge in on Saturdays and Sundays nobody's asking them to do that. But if you create that culture, it's super infectious and the beauty of that culture is it sniffs out people that do come in that don't want to adhere to that. Like look, if you want to work remote, you want to make calls for four hours a day, other ICs in the business are just not gonna let that permeate throughout our org. [00:34:44] S1: Help me understand. I'm delighted to accept your offer. Thank you so much, Max. What have been your biggest lessons on how to onboard new reps effectively?
00:34:53 · Max Freeman
[00:34:53] S0: So early stage, you're all locked into a room, okay? You're going through four very key components. The first of which is the product and the technology that you're selling. The second, the buyer personas that you're selling into. The third is the competitive landscape. And the fourth is just like the internal operating chaos of how your systems run and what you need to know as a seller. And so on point one, in the age of AI, and especially as the next generation of buyers sit and seat, they have what I would describe as bullshit repellent. They are direct, they could get answers quickly, and so the expectation is if they're talking to a seller, they need answers quickly too. And so if you're not technically proficient in your product offering, you're fairly useless as a seller. The second is the buyer personas that you're selling into. This is really important. You need to know what their priorities are. You need to understand their challenges. And it differs if you're talking to a CFO of a venture backed software company, that conversation is going to be a hell of a lot different than if you're talking to the senior accountant of a construction business. And you need to know that too. Like one is going to be super high level, they are trying to drive positive business outcomes. The accountant might need one workflow that is tied to the month end close that is creating a lot of laborious chaos for them, and you need to have that context switching capability. The third, the competitive landscape. We obviously play in an incredibly saturated market. A lot of players claim to do many of the same things. You need to study these businesses, you need to understand their weaknesses, and you need to expose them in a diplomatic way where you're positioning your product to be as perfect as possible for the buyer in question.
00:36:35 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:36:35] S1: Do you have a boot camp where you go through these stages? We do. Can you walk me through that? Like, how long is it? Who leads it? What materials are there? Like [00:36:44] S0: Yeah. In the boot camp specifically, depending on the segment, it's going to be sixty to ninety days. First four weeks is fairly rigorous with many milestones that you need to hit. Some of this is intense hands on keyboards. Some of it is, you know, self guided skills that our enablement team has created across all of these different topics. And then the milestones, there's a lot of rigor that goes into this. You need to complete a DISCO certification and you need to be excellent. You need to complete a demo certification and you need to be excellent. I like to pop into these periodically. And if you don't complete them, you don't get turned on in the router. You don't get your accounts. And so it's existential that you perform well, otherwise your ability to ramp and become a successful seller is contained. [00:37:31] S1: How long before I start speaking to clients or customers on my own? [00:37:35] S0: Two to four weeks depending on your segment. [00:37:37] S1: Wow. We try and [00:37:37] S0: make it as quick as possible. [00:37:39] S1: And I'm gonna be listening to a load of Gong calls before that to really try and understand the cadence, the language, the pattern.
00:37:39 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:37:39] S1: And I'm gonna be listening to a load of Gong calls before that to really try and understand the cadence, the language, the pattern. [00:37:46] S0: Absolutely. You're gonna be listening to Gong calls. You're gonna be joining live calls. You're going to be in team meetings, listening to pipeline reviews and forecasting calls and everything in between. And then guess what? After your first call, your leader is responsible for riding shotgun and making sure they're supporting you from start to finish. If you're running a big sales team and you're just dependent on enablement, you're gonna die. You need your frontline leaders to lean in aggressively and also be as deep in the weeds as possible with new new hires onboarding. [00:38:21] S1: It's one of those ones which sounds obvious, but it's hard when you are a leader to, like, delve down into the... I didn't mean it awfully, but it's kind of like intern batches in venture funds where you're like A 100%. Wants to help young people, but, like, I gotta close the big fucking whale of a deal. [00:38:36] S0: A 100%. But you have to do both. Yeah. Of course. You have a number that you're responsible for. And so, yeah, if there's a big swing deal and you're a frontline leader, yeah, you're all hands on deck. At the same time, guess what? Your number's gonna keep going up sequentially month over month, quarter over quarter as these new sellers ramp up. And so you're directly incentivized to make sure that they're coming into the system to be killers. Otherwise, you're gonna be in trouble as a leader.
00:38:36 · Max Freeman, Harry Stebbings
[00:38:36] S0: A 100%. But you have to do both. Yeah. Of course. You have a number that you're responsible for. And so, yeah, if there's a big swing deal and you're a frontline leader, yeah, you're all hands on deck. At the same time, guess what? Your number's gonna keep going up sequentially month over month, quarter over quarter as these new sellers ramp up. And so you're directly incentivized to make sure that they're coming into the system to be killers. Otherwise, you're gonna be in trouble as a leader. [00:39:00] S1: What percent of first calls do you think you're impressed by versus disappointed by? [00:39:06] S0: Seventy thirty. 70 in the camp of I'm impressed. 30 in the camp of this is just not to our standard. And and so what happens in the 30%? I'm actually fairly in the weeds on this where I'm reviewing and watching a lot of Gong calls, specifically with new hires. Candidly, even more of our our tenured reps. And if it's not to our standard, I'm pulling them in in our leader, and we're gonna talk [00:39:28] S1: about It's tough. [00:39:29] S0: It's tough, but it's right. If you join a sales team that doesn't have your leader or your SVP that into the weeds holding you accountable, that's probably a bad sign.
00:39:29 · Max Freeman, Harry Stebbings
[00:39:29] S0: It's tough, but it's right. If you join a sales team that doesn't have your leader or your SVP that into the weeds holding you accountable, that's probably a bad sign. [00:39:43] S1: Talk about holding you to account. Let's say I come out of these ninety days. Okay? I'm ready. I'm unleashed in the wild. Carlos, who was the head of sales at Eleven Labs, said that they get 20 x quota. Now it was a slightly slightly popular clip. How do you feel about that? What is, like, good to you? And how would you advise founders listening? [00:40:05] S0: I sort of lean in the camp of Degman on this one, where if you're that efficient, you're probably leaving money on the table and you need more reps. Now, I think the old school thought, you know, that the snowflakes and the mongos used to run of, you know, four to one or five to one, that's too low. I think depending on our segments at ramp, it's anywhere from seven to 12. I think that's pretty healthy. [00:40:29] S1: It's a lot. I want you to pay me more if I was doing 12 to one, dude. [00:40:33] S0: I know. We might have to cut that Pay [00:40:35] S1: me pay me double, and then it'll be six to one. I know. I agree. [00:40:38] S0: We we might have to cut that part out. I don't know if our inside sales reps actually know that some of them are, like, 14 to one.