00:22:52 · Reggie Marable
[00:22:52] S0: Yeah. So we we don't have like a hunter farmer thing. It's it's it's an AE. Once they get the first lead to long term contract, they are aligned to that engagement for the life. Okay. Their job is not only to get the client to... Into a proof of concept, demonstrate the value, sign a long term contract. It's now how can we take this relationship to the next level? Hey, you wanted us to handle your customer service. How about we start working on some proactive sales use cases? How about we start closing deals for you? You're currently using chat. Let's let's take a look at using our voice solution. We have new features to the platform. We have this cool feature called agent data platform. We're now imbuing these agents with intelligence and memory and context. Let's explore that. So at the end of the day, a seller's responsibility is to become the front door of that client's experience and be the way that their customers are interacting with their brand. So it's not just selling one thing and moving on. It's like how do we build a long term relationship so our clients are happy, they're successful, they're connecting with more of their customers? And you can't do that if you're just... You're very... You know, if it's a transactional thing, come in and close a deal and move on. So hopefully that gives you some sense of how we go about our selling motion. Yeah. Definitely.
00:24:10 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:24:10] S1: I think it's interesting because in some companies, would see that you would have, let's say, like an AE team, and then you would have like the expansion team or like CS team sometimes that handles, you know, like customer expansion. But for you, it's like... Because it's such a long term relationship, you want each AE to basically, like, handle their accounts and also be able to also do the upsell because they're bringing more value on different use cases. Is that correct? [00:24:37] S0: That's exactly correct. So... Which is why when we're hiring for sellers, we look for, like, intellectual curiosity. We look for, creativity. We look for, people that have the the ability and the instincts to make things happen, people that know how to... They can... I can put them in the... In front of a CEO, but they can also go have a great conversation to build a relationship with a project leader. So you've gotta have AEs that are sophisticated, that work hard, that are very curious, And that's how you kind of come in and be a business consultant. And not a sales rep, but like a consultant. Like what can I do to make my client more successful? What can Sierra do to help them improve the way they interact with their with their customers and make, you know, better connections and more intimate relations with their customers. You have to have a you have to have a pretty unique seller to do that, which is why I'm very fortunate that we've
00:24:37 · Reggie Marable, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:24:37] S0: That's exactly correct. So... Which is why when we're hiring for sellers, we look for, like, intellectual curiosity. We look for, creativity. We look for, people that have the the ability and the instincts to make things happen, people that know how to... They can... I can put them in the... In front of a CEO, but they can also go have a great conversation to build a relationship with a project leader. So you've gotta have AEs that are sophisticated, that work hard, that are very curious, And that's how you kind of come in and be a business consultant. And not a sales rep, but like a consultant. Like what can I do to make my client more successful? What can Sierra do to help them improve the way they interact with their with their customers and make, you know, better connections and more intimate relations with their customers. You have to have a you have to have a pretty unique seller to do that, which is why I'm very fortunate that we've [00:25:29] S1: got some of the best sellers in the world at Sierra. Nice. And is there like a a particular deal you were like super excited to close or, like, a a funny story of... Is there the early days or with the team, like, a deal that was complex or an industry that you particularly liked?
00:25:48 · Reggie Marable
[00:25:48] S0: I think all of these deals are fun because we're selling... This is a completely brand new, technology that we're selling. Like, agents, didn't exist two years ago, so it's really fun. But I think all the deals are particular one, and I'll I'll keep the company name anonymous, but I remember, and this is the... This is due to the power and the beauty of our of our, selling model, is that we were, in the final stages of the proof of concept. The agent was live. It was delivering results. It was handling some really complex use cases. Our executive sponsor and our technical, executive sponsor both, were let go the ninth hour of a deal cycle... And by the way, this was the largest deal, at Sierra at the time. This is our first year out of stealth. And we're in q four, and we needed this deal to get, you know, to a particular revenue threshold. But because of the value of our technology, because, the client saw us as, like, part of them, we were integrated in all of the... You know, their technical team, their business operations team, The agent was performing. So when the new executives came in, was a pretty clear return on investment. They already saw how powerful the technology was. And also too, our account executive had done a great job of multithreading. So we had relationships with the COO, with the new CIO, with everyone on the project team. So when the new business and technology sponsor came aboard, it was a no brainer for them to continue the engagement. And you know this, Gene, when you lose your executive sponsor, at in, like, in the It gets harder. The final stage. Yeah. Your deal's done. Like, the deal disappears. But because of our business model and our selling motion, our go to market motion, we were able to survive that. And and if you would have told me during that period that we were gonna salvage that deal, I would
00:27:33 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:27:33] S1: have been like, there's no way this deal is done, but we were able to save it. Nice. No. That's that's really cool. And how how exactly do you, like, train people on on doing discovery call because it's a it's a new product, and it's a it's a new way of doing things? [00:27:50] S0: Yeah. So we have a very, very structured onboarding process. Shout out to Elliot Greenwald, who is our head of go to market operations. He's done an incredible job with our enablement. And then, we have this incredible leader. Her name is Lily Wang. She kind of runs our enablement. And essentially, what we do is we, have the, you know, cohort of sellers come on-site to our corporate headquarters in San Francisco, they spend a whole week together going through every aspect, every detail of our selling motion, how we prospect, how we run proof of concepts, how we do discovery, you know, how we pitch Sierra. They all have to certify, so they have to get in front of their peers and present the first call deck. And then we do ongoing training. So we have a very, very tight enablement process to make sure that we get people productive fast because we've got to hire a ton of people, we're growing really fast. The worst thing that we can do is bring on an AE and it takes them a while to get up to speed. So we spent a lot of time building out like a really, really stringent enablement process to get people productive fast. And like By the way, g, I I had to certify too, man. So
00:29:01 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:29:01] S1: And what's, like, the the conversion rate from people you hire to people, you know, like, who actually certify and are able to to join? Because I know in sales, like, one of the challenge is obviously, like, making sure you have, like, great sellers, especially in enterprise. Because as you mentioned, you know, you want people who are, like, curious, like, who can essentially, like, talk to, as you said, like CEOs up to project manager. So how do you make sure, you know, that the person is ready? And also, like, apart from the onboarding, what's kind of the conversion rate from, like, first hire to you're gonna be a full time hire, and we we know that you're good for as long as as you wanna stay?