102: Hitting Life's Bullseye with Adobe's David Schwartz

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0:26 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:41 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is David Schwartz. Dave is a top senior account executive at Adobe and a really good friend I've wanted to bring onto the show for years. Dave, really good to be with you.

0:53 David Schwartz: Yeah, likewise. Definitely something I've been wanting to do, frankly, since you started it.

0:57 Scott Ingram: So Yeah, we'll talk about the history. I mean, you've known about this show since before it was a show, so we'll definitely go and dig into that backstory a little bit, but we have to start off with some immediate value like we always do. So let's talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success, especially recently.

1:18 David Schwartz: Yeah, sure. Active listening is probably the top thing, and I think that's become even more important in this environment, right? We're all working from home. I'm having, frankly, I'm having Zooms with the CEO of Box and it's just very bizarre. So you really have to actively listen because you can't, sometimes they're not on video, so you can't see their reactions. And as salespeople, I think everybody knows when you're in a room with folks, you can see body language. You can see when the message isn't resonating. So I think active listening is probably the top thing. And I'm sure that's probably important for everybody who's struggling in the current COVID environment. The second thing is I really have adopted, and I wouldn't say I've adopted every last little bit of the Challenger Sale, but going in with a point of view after learning about a client's business. And this is where I think, frankly, my background… I was a finance guy for a very long time, and we can talk about how I got into sales, but I think that helps me understand their business and have an intelligent conversation and stimulate conversations around problems, and then ultimately we get to solutions, right? So I think that's another important part of that. And I think the third thing is, and this has become really important at Adobe because there's a lot of people that work together to make these sales happen. So leveraging my larger ecosystem has really been an important piece, particularly this quarter where we had a lot of big deals, a lot of complicated deals and clients who again, sort of have been trained to sweat us out to the end of the quarter. So I think that's monumentally important now that I have… I'm selling software because I came from an advertising background. So great stuff.

3:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's put this in perspective. Just talk a little bit about your role at Adobe.

3:09 David Schwartz: Yeah, sure. So my role at Adobe, I'm what they call a sales specialist. So I am responsible for selling the, what we call the data and insight products at Adobe. So think Audience Manager, which is our data management platform, Adobe Target, which is our personalization engine, Adobe Analytics, which probably most people are familiar with, and then our sort of bright new shiny object, which is Adobe Experience Platform. So I work very closely with the named account managers who are responsible for the overall relationships with these clients. They get me access to power. They line up the conversations that I need to have to figure out, okay, what solutions are going to map to the problems or challenges that these clients have? And then I also work with customer success managers, product marketing folks, product folks. All these folks help me sell in our larger software packages, right? And I can't do that without them. I think I mentioned that earlier, that the most important thing, or one of the most important things is leveraging that ecosystem. So that's what I do in a nutshell. Very different than my prior job, to be totally honest, 100% different.

4:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, we'll come back to some of that history. First, why don't we quantify your results a little bit? And I'm going to say kind of on the front end of this, I know you had a killer quarter, right? You were named the Specialist of the Quarter. And one of the things I've really started to look for here recently is you know, somebody who was number 1 in 2019, while great, I'm really starting to focus even more on folks that are finding success here in the second half or Q2, Q3 of 2020 because the reality is it's just a different world. And you alluded to it a little bit earlier. I know we'll dig a lot deeper into it in terms of, you know, your travel is significantly reduced from what it was and your ability to be face-to-face. But before we go there, again, just kind of put this all in perspective. Walk us through kind of your year and your most recent quarter and where you're at.

5:17 David Schwartz: Yeah, so I mean, I think it goes without saying, and this is probably true for most folks, but our Q1s are typically slow because frankly we almost lose a month between our sales kickoff and the holidays in December. We have a sort of unusual fiscal year for a software company, our fiscal year ends November 30th. And typically we've had lots of account shifts and frankly things didn't really start until January, right? So COVID started being on radar screens, I would say minimally, probably January, February. And then February, I remember traveling and it sort of became more of an issue. And then once we kind of hit March, you know, sales for us were tough. I would say my team, and I was probably in this bucket too, were hovering 30, 40%. And I think we all had to adjust to the new environment, a new way of selling, new problems for companies that didn't exist, probably wouldn't exist without COVID, right? So we're trying to solve those problems. And I finally got to a point where I understood, okay, what companies in my book are frankly just not going to have the dollars to do anything, right? These people were furloughing folks, laying off folks. Some of the people that were responsible for the products that we'd already sold them were laid off. So it became pretty tough, but you had to identify the companies that made sense to follow, right? And to work with. So this past quarter, Q3, I hit 252% of my goal. And what that meant for year to date is I'm probably at about 112% once we audit everything for year to date. Right. And I have a really nice pipeline for Q4, and that has all been worked on throughout the year. And you mentioned travel and lack of travel. And I remember my last trip, actually, I was speaking at my alma mater in Indiana, talking about my sales career. And I was supposed to fly from there to San Francisco for a meeting. And I was literally at the airport and got the email from Adobe that said, go home, don't travel. And fortunately for me, I am very loyal to Alaska. So I was flying through Seattle. So I just flew to Seattle, got off and didn't use the rest of the ticket. And that was the last business trip I took. And I bring that up because I think Not being able to get in front of clients has added 6 to 8 weeks easily to our sales cycles.

7:54 Scott Ingram: Let's talk more about that, right? What are the ways that you have had to adapt and really make this work and break through? I mean, obviously focusing on the accounts that are still in a strong position, right, or, and are likely to buy is the first part that you sort of alluded to. What else have you had to do to really break through and find, you know, good levels of success and performance?

8:18 David Schwartz: Yeah, I think one of the things that I found is we have to keep people engaged with us, right? Because we can't take them out to dinner, we can't meet them face to face. So more than ever, I have had to work with our marketing folks to figure out what events, what webinars, what things can I leverage to keep these people engaged, right? And we've upped our game with some of the, you know, gifts that we send online or virtual wine tastings, things like that. That's probably been the biggest thing is how do I keep these folks engaged, right? And I also don't know who else are they talking to, right? You always got a feel for, are they talking to competitors and are competitors making inroads, right? Clients are always more frank, to be honest, when you meet them in person or you take them out to dinner. So I think that's the biggest thing is just how do I keep these clients engaged with Adobe, right? There's only so many times we can talk about analytics or Audience Manager. How's this problem going to get solved? So it's, it's just figuring out ways to make sure you're on the radar screen to keep these conversations going, right? Because if you're not, these conversations go by the wayside very quickly. 'Cause you don't have a way to control that in the same way you did when you were able to travel.

9:39 Scott Ingram: One of the ways that you can keep your clients and prospects engaged is with the personalized gifting platform that Alyce offers. Alyce helps you build deeper relationships by creating a personal experience that's relatable, relevant, and respectful through one-to-one gifting. Whether you're looking to open new doors and new relationships or solidify the ones you have, you can learn more about how Alyce is helping enterprise sales, marketing, and customer success teams teams create personal bonds with everyone they do business with at top1.fm/Alyce. That's top1.fm/A-L-Y-C-E. Now back to David and his thoughts on how he's communicating differently now that all of his conversations are happening virtually instead of face-to-face. So to the, you know, kind of more transparent, like, you know, person-to-person type of conversation and just dropping a lot of the formality that you're able to do when, when you are face-to-face.

10:39 David Schwartz: Yeah, it's interesting. I have found myself, and this might be part of my East Coast upbringing, but I find myself being far more blunt with customers, right? You could be a little more nuanced when you're meeting in person, and obviously you want to be closing, but on these calls, I'm pretty blunt. I mean, when I hear somebody kind of on the fence, I just put it right to them and say, listen, do we have a tech win here or are we not solving the business issue? Tell us what we can do to win your business. Right. And those conversations are always a little bit more nuanced, but you just don't have time when you're on Zoom, when you have 30 Zoom calls in a week, and then you're on internal calls that are on Zoom, you just got to cut to the chase these days, I've found. But you have to bring value, right? And current environment has allowed us, and Adobe has provided us some very interesting ways to get clients to do business with us in this environment, right? Because we recognize that it's a challenge, budgets have been cut, but what can we do to continue to drive value? And there's been some interesting deal structures that have allowed us to do that, that I've been able to leverage too.

11:54 Scott Ingram: So Dave, I know we can't get into too much depth and specifics around what the particulars of those offerings and structures are, but as much as you can, and I know you've got kind of a specific deal you did in this last quarter where that really came into play and made a difference. And part of it was really what you were doing to make this all come together and work.

12:14 David Schwartz: Yeah. So to your point, I don't want to get fired, so I won't get too in depth. But what I would say is this deal started out probably a third of the size it actually landed on. So it was a $1.3 million deal. I can't say the client, but the skills, some of the skills that I talked about earlier, the top 3, you know, real active listening led to me leveraging some of the skills I had as a finance guy, right? So I had an MBA in finance and was doing that for a number of years and just using those skills. And that acumen to say, okay, wait a minute, let's step back. If you're planning to do X, Y, and Z over the next 3 years, let's see if we can craft a deal that would make sense for those 3 years instead of let's just focus on what you're doing over the next 12 months. Right. And for this client, it was a really big deal because they typically did not sign 3-year deals with any vendor. So it was really putting all those skills together and again, leveraging the ecosystem to present something that was so compelling. Frankly, they couldn't say no. And it was the first time I'd ever gone through a deal cycle where price was not even touched by procurement. Amazing. And I think the reason for that was frankly, it was so compelling and they probably knew that We're not gonna budge because we, we gave them something that was amazing. And that was the biggest deal in my quarter.

13:46 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's get into a little bit of just the backstory and connect some of the dots between this finance work that you did. What is the origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

13:58 David Schwartz: I don't think I've even told you this story as a friend. So let's see. So I graduated a long time ago. From business school. And my first job was with Sabre, which was the GDS that American Airlines had owned for a long time. And I continued my finance career, went to Best Buy corporate, and then I moved across the country to Seattle and worked at Microsoft for a number of years. Now, Microsoft is really where things started getting interesting for me. So I was supporting at the time, And don't make fun of these products, but at the time when Microsoft had, you know, they called it Windows Live Messenger and Spaces, which was their attempt at sort of MySpace back in the day, and Hotmail. And I supported the advertising businesses that all the salespeople who sold those products. And over time, I could see myself being more and more fascinated with how do you sell this to somebody, right? What does that look like? And then I got into a business development role, still focused on advertising. And then in 2009, things got a little hairy. There were rumors about layoffs at Microsoft. I was worried about my team because they were sort of pulling away from the advertising business. And ironically, I actually missed an opportunity back then to go to Facebook when they really didn't have an ad business. And the guy who wanted to get me over there is now one of, I don't know, like the 6 people that Mark Zuckerberg always travels with. So a little bit of a career miss there, I would say. But in 2009, I got laid off. Microsoft laid off my entire team. And I knew a guy who turned out to be an amazing boss, amazing mentor who worked at United Online at the time. And it was a tough interview. He basically made me sell myself. And I remember putting together a PowerPoint deck and saying, all right, here's how I would run your business. 30, 60, 90. Here's why you should hire me, even though I have no sales experience. And he took a chance on me and I outperformed every single quarter there. And that was really the beginning of my sales career, but I stuck with advertising for quite a long time, as you know. I mean, the first time you and I met was when I was a startup called Bizo and you were at Eloqua. And then Bizo got bought by LinkedIn. Ironically, I was on vacation at the time, so I was hoping I would come back and still have a job. And then I spent 5 years selling advertising at LinkedIn. And then I got into software sales, which is obviously 100% different than selling advertising. And there's definitely some challenges and lessons that I've learned doing that. It's very different.

16:54 Scott Ingram: Well, let's talk about that, right? What is the difference?

16:57 David Schwartz: Well, one of the big differences is it's a team sale, right? So for me, I was used to being the quarterback, right? I'm the one that would go meet clients with my customer success manager. I was the one selling them everything, building the relationships. Getting access to power, and then you go sell software and you realize, wow, this is a very different sale. Lots of team selling. You need much higher levels of access to power. And the budgetary, you know, kind of not constraints, but concerns are so much different when you're selling, you know, millions of dollars worth of software. Versus selling 2 $300,000 advertising campaigns. So that was probably one of the biggest challenges for me was adjusting to not being the quarterback, right? I kind of liked being in that role, doing all the selling, managing all those relationships. So that was probably one of the biggest adjustments for me. And also learning that there is a very different set of constituents here.

18:06 Scott Ingram: How have you adapted? Like, what did you have to do to make that transition as well as have and find the success that you have?

18:13 David Schwartz: Yeah, so it was interesting. My first year, I remember coming in and it was very bizarre because the person who was hiring me, as soon as I got on, I was told, well, I'm not really going to be your manager. I was assigned a new manager almost right away. First-time manager, young guy. He was in Canada actually, which gave me a nice excuse to go to Toronto. But I spent the first 2 months, I probably listened to 100 calls in 2 months. And I'm sure all the reps got sick of me reaching out and saying, hey, can I join your calls? And what I was trying to do was figure out what do these conversations look like? What do they sound like? Who are they talking to? And I just kind of made a roadmap for myself, right? I made a list of, okay, these are the people that are typically influencers. These are the people signing the checks. How much do we deal with procurement and what kinds of things are they gonna poke at to get their pound of flesh? So it was really, I spent those first 2 months learning the products and just trying to figure out how different are these conversations from the conversations I was used to having, right? I mean, I had not had any conversations with CIOs or anybody in IT because I wasn't selling that, right? I was selling advertising. So at best I was talking to CMOs and that I think was a big pivot too, is, and I think it's a big pivot for Adobe too, because typically we've always, all of us have always been talking there and the new products that we have, the Adobe Experience Platform really demand us to be talking to or require us to be talking to the CIO. Right. And that's a very, different conversation than typically the CMO.

20:00 Scott Ingram: So in a lot of ways, I mean, it sounds like you're kind of studying film, right? It was, let me listen to conversations to understand how these conversations are playing out, how people are having these conversations and finding success or not, what is and what isn't working to really inform your own style, your own approach.

20:18 David Schwartz: Yeah, I would say that's true. And frankly, I was listening to folks on your podcast to get an understanding of what are they doing to, with these enterprise type sales, right? I mean, it was really studying film and that's typically the best way I learn personally is, is just get in there and learn by fire. I mean, I was taking calls in the, like my second week there. And sometimes I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. And then there were other times where I was glad my boss was on the phone. And I have no issue with making mistakes, you know, learning from those mistakes. And, you know, there's a great story that maybe we have a chance to talk about back in my LinkedIn career that really, I think that was the pivotal moment for me to learn how to be prepared in these jobs, right? That's kind of my most important mantra is to be prepared so your boss never has a surprise.

21:17 Scott Ingram: Let's go there. What is that story?

21:19 David Schwartz: Yeah, sure. So I think I told you, so I was on vacation in Hawaii and Bizo got bought by LinkedIn. And my second week on the job after getting back from that, my boss told me, hey, we're trying to crack into 3M, which was one of my biggest, in terms of, you know, brand, it was probably my biggest account. Now, in terms of LinkedIn spending, these folks spent $30,000 on LinkedIn. So think about that. $30 billion company spending $30,000 on the biggest sort of content marketing platform out there. That blew people away. So I knew right away, I said, you know what? This is a great target account. And it was my second week or third week. We went up to 3M and I was supposed to present, you know, kind of a why LinkedIn, right? Why content marketing on LinkedIn? And knowing that the vast majority of these people thought of LinkedIn only as a job board, right? Not a place to do advertising, not a place to get engagement with content, things like that. So I frankly bombed that meeting. There were 30 people there, including the global head of social, the brand CMO. And I knew when I walked out of that room, that I had completely and utterly missed the mark. And that feedback got back to my boss almost right away. I think, I think we landed in Chicago and already she had an email from the global head of social saying, you know, Dave needs to work on his understanding of content marketing. And frankly, it was great feedback because I didn't know anything about content marketing. I knew how to sell advertising. And I didn't really understand, you know, what are the metrics that people look at for content marketing? What is content marketing from, you know, an advertising perspective? Why do companies care about content marketing? And so that was probably the biggest wake-up call I had. And I'll tell you what, I went back and I read every, literally anything I could get my hands on about the importance of content marketing in the B2B world. And over the next 6 months, I went up to 3M probably 6 or 7 times. I was invited probably after the 10th time, I was invited to speak in front of 150 global executives about the importance of social networks for content marketing. So I had built up so much credibility In a very short amount of time. And at the end of that year, they ended up spending more than $300,000 on LinkedIn. And by the time I handed off that account at the end of that next year, they were up to $1 million. And what I learned from all that was it's okay to make mistakes, but you gotta take something away. That was the biggest… I hate making mistakes. I hate being unprepared. And I can tell you, I've never been unprepared for a meeting since that day. I make sure that I know exactly what my talk track is gonna be. I know how I'm gonna pivot if I have to, but I'm not gonna have somebody tell me, you don't know the product, you don't understand our business, you're not prepared. That won't happen again.

24:45 Scott Ingram: Love it. Specifically to the business side of things, right? I can understand how you prepared in terms of learning about content marketing and the industry. And that particular space, but what research did you do to understand sort of how that was going to apply in 3M's eyes?

25:04 David Schwartz: Yeah, so I did a lot of work on my own, you know, using investor presentations to understand what their priorities were for the year, going back to them with that challenger selling approach. But the biggest thing for me was starting to learn about their KPIs, right? What matters? What's gonna drive your business? And for marketers, in that position, it's typically about leads. So how do we get more quality leads? And then how do we potentially just get more engagement? We've spent all this money to create this content. Well, how do we get it in the right hands? Right. And that was LinkedIn's sweet spot because using our targeting, which is essentially everybody's online business card, if you will, that really is what got them over the hump to say, listen, This is not just a job board. This is a place where people literally every single day come to engage with the best content. And if you're not going to be out there, guess what? They're going to engage with your competitors. So understanding their KPIs and getting them sort of creating, if you will, a compelling event for them saying, if you're not doing this, you're missing out. You're not talking to the people that are gonna matter for your business. And all of that came from, I probably spent more time in Minneapolis. I think people probably thought I had a secret life in Minneapolis. I was up there so many times, but just meeting with these people, right. And having really intelligent conversations, not trying to sell them. I didn't wanna be a vendor. I wanted to be a true partner. And that comes from not just asking questions, but it also comes from teaching them. You know, they called me at the end of my run of O3M, they called me the professor of LinkedIn. So imagine going from this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, maybe get him off the account, to I'm the professor of LinkedIn. I thought that was a big success.

27:06 Scott Ingram: Well, this is probably as good a place as any for me to kind of tease the connection to the Sales Success Summit that we're rolling up to, because a lot of these things specifically are areas where I think we're going to dive deeper, right? Evan Kelsay is going to be talking about demystifying the 10-K for sales professionals, right? And really getting into the ways that you can research a company to understand them and their perspective and what they care about and what their language is. And then Lisa Palmer is going to be talking about the way that you actually pull off some of this team selling and the collaboration that you do with clients to get to the gigantic enterprise deal. She's got a process that she calls visual dartboarding that's pretty fascinating that I can't wait for her to dig into. And I'm really, really looking forward to the talk that you're going to do, Dave, but I don't want to talk about that part here too much because I think it's really important that you be able to provide the full context around your story and your background around mental health and mindset and what you're going to be talking about in that presentation. So this will be interesting because as much as I like to dig deep and understand kind of the full story, there's the one piece I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna leave out and encourage people to join the live stream, which is free thanks to some great, great sponsors. You can go to top1summit.com, sign up, and you'll be able to watch Dave present on this. So again, it'll be interesting to kind of skirt around a little bit of your backstory, particularly from the last year or so. But the one thing I wanted to come back to is You've had a pretty broad base of experience in your career, right? Having gone from finance and then selling advertising and now selling software. Looking back on that, if you were starting over knowing what you know now, how would you approach your career? Before I let Dave answer that question, let me just quickly mention our friends at Vidyard. Vidyard is sponsoring both this podcast and the Sales Success Summit, and I want to encourage you to see Vidyard in action. If you'll register for the Sales Success Summit at top1summit.com, right after you click submit, you'll receive a welcome email from me that includes a Vidyard video. It only took me about 5 minutes to create that video, and you can see the cool animated GIF that it created as part of that process. Then when you watch the video, I'm going to get a notification that you did. So once you check that out, I want to encourage you to try Vidyard out for yourself. You can get started for free at top1.fm/v. Check it out and let me know what you think. Maybe even send me your own video. I'd love to hear from you. Let's get back to Dave and his thoughts on how he might manage his career differently knowing what he knows now.

29:58 David Schwartz: Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I think for me, I was afraid to get out of my comfort zone, and I think I would encourage people to It's interesting. I did this. I mean, I did a whole inventory of, you know, what do I need my role to look like? What things do I not want my role to look like and I can't tolerate? And I frankly knew pretty early on in my finance career that I didn't want to do finance. I mean, it was like, I don't want to be an Excel jockey. I was good at it, but it didn't feel satisfying to me. So I think one piece of advice I'd give to somebody just starting out is be brutally honest with yourself. And this carries, you know, across the numerous elements of your life, but from a career perspective, don't do what you quote unquote think you should be doing, or, oh, I have a finance degree, so this is what finance people do. No, you can do basically anything you want. I think an MBA you know, opens up doors for me that may not have been open generally, but it doesn't pigeonhole me. And I think that was the thing. I was just afraid to get out of my comfort zone. I think from a sales career perspective, I wish I had gone kind of up the ladder a little bit differently, like started doing BDR stuff and ISR stuff and knowing what that looked like, right? Because I rely heavily on my BDRs and my ISRs. And, you know, frankly, I end up coaching them, right? Because they're looking to move up. But I wish sometimes I would've done some of that because I struggled a little bit initially. I was at Bizo, right? So a startup. And I mean, we literally would take meetings with anybody who would talk to us, and I did not excel at you know, cold calling and cold reachouts and things like that until I got to LinkedIn. Now, obviously I learned how to use Sales Nav and effective InMails and all those things when I got to LinkedIn. But yeah, I kind of wish I had gone through the sort of typical process just to learn some of those skills a little bit better. Right. Cause I went from finance guy to salesperson and like I was running the show and I just, I didn't get some of those things that I think would have accelerated my career a little bit until later on.

32:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this seems like an appropriate time and I'm just curious from your perspective, talk about when we met.

32:37 David Schwartz: Yeah. So, I mean, it seems like forever ago, but it wasn't frankly that long ago.

32:42 Scott Ingram: It was kind of a long time ago. I was just looking at LinkedIn when we connected. Yeah. It was like 2013. Yeah.

32:46 David Schwartz: I don't know. Everything kind of blurs to me. I think that was 20… when was that? 2014?

32:51 Scott Ingram: 2013. I was just looking at LinkedIn.

32:52 David Schwartz: 2013. Yeah, so I was at Bizo and we had this product called BMN and it was essentially like sequential retargeting, but we had a great partnership with Eloqua and that's where you were at that time. And I remember us meeting a couple of times in Chicago and just hitting it off. And I think we had similar views around sales and I don't know, you were just one of those people that I'm like, man, this is somebody I need to make sure I keep in touch with. And through, you know, we just have seemed to keep in touch, you know, events that you have in Chicago. I met you in Austin a couple of times and it's just been a really great friendship. And obviously we, you know, like you said, I knew this podcast before it was a podcast and same with the Sales Summit. And these are things that you and I, I think are really passionate about. And, and frankly, you know, I'm honored to be part of the Sales Success Summit and having a speaking role. I think it's something I'm passionate about, but I didn't think it would materialize that way. And I'm, you know, it kind of materialized in an odd kind of way, as you alluded to, but I think it's an important topic. So, you know, I'm really glad that we've met and kept in touch and been able to maintain a friendship outside of some of these things too. And like I said, it's just an honor for me to, one, to be on the podcast. And 2, to be part of the Sales Success Summit.

34:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, fun backstory. I mean, I remember somehow or other we got onto the topic of my vision for the podcast, and this is, I don't know how long before the podcast even existed. I mean, this might have been a year or 2. I mean, it was well ahead of schedule, and I just, I saw your eyes light up. And to your point, I think we have very similar philosophies on a lot of things, and, you know, you ended up being just an incredible sounding board as I was working through this process and figuring out, okay, what is this thing going to be, right? What is the structure? How's it going to work? And same thing with the summit. So just excited that you're here and we get to have this particular conversation. And it's fun for me. I mean, I know a lot of different stories of yours. You have one of the craziest 9/11 stories I have ever heard.

35:02 David Schwartz: Yes.

35:03 Scott Ingram: But that would take… I don't know that you could do that in less than 30 minutes. So folks will have to corner you at a future summit to get that out of you. Why don't we dig into just the habit and routine stuff that I love to get into so much? And I know, again, that's probably changed for you. So maybe you can kind of put it into that kind of context as well. Walk us through your day.

35:24 David Schwartz: Yeah. I mean, as you said, I think my routine is not much of a routine anymore, to be honest. I mean, there's so many things that I have to balance now. That I didn't really have to balance before because I could get out of the house. I could go to Regus for the day. I was traveling probably 2 or 3 days a week. So I've really had to adapt my routine. So I have typically been getting up now around 6:00 AM. I am very, and you'll hear more about this, I'm a very big believer in doing meditation in the morning. So I'll do my, you know, Calm. I have Calm and Headspace, so I'll kind of alternate between those 2. And then I just generally, I have the advantage that most of my clients happen to be on the West Coast, so I can get an early start. And I typically now, because we seem to be so intense about having internal meetings on Zoom, I honestly try and figure out which ones, if I miss them, the world's not going to end. Because my calendar now looks ridiculous. So I try and clear up some time where I can work on clients. And I literally, every single day, I go through my list of clients that have active deals and decide, okay, what 2 or 3 things can I do for each one of these clients to try and move things forward? Whether it's getting them involved in a webinar, whether it's getting them on a drip that will talk to them about products that we're trying to sell them. Can I dig a little bit deeper to try and figure out, are there other problems? And this summer I've tried to religiously have lunch with my kids and my wife and then go back to it. And I have been really fairly strict about ending my day at 5:00, 5:30 to make sure that I like cooking. So I wanna make sure that I can cook dinner for my family. And make sure I can spend time with them because you can really get lost. And I was definitely getting lost when we first were kind of officially working from home. I was spending, you know, 14-hour days because I lost track of time. I didn't set any boundaries, things like that. So my routine, I had a much more structured routine when I knew what was happening and kids were in school and not everybody was home all the time. So It's not as structured as it used to be from, I'm carving out this time for email and I'm doing this and I'm doing that. I'm more about start and finish time and setting boundaries for myself, because this is a really difficult situation we're in here. You know, luckily my kids are older, but I can't imagine if my kids were younger, how do you deal with this? How do you deal with this situation? And I mean, I'm extremely sympathetic. To people, like if we're on meetings and kids are going bananas, all right, whatever. I'll call you back. This doesn't need to happen right now. So I think that's the other thing. And I'll probably talk a little bit about this during the Sales Success Summit. All of this, and maybe this is something we talk about here, has given me a very different perspective on work and life and what's important. And I don't think that's a bad thing. To be totally honest with you.

38:44 Scott Ingram: For sure. For sure. Let's talk about some of it, right? Because I mean, it's been interesting for me watching you kind of work through this and settle into a new approach and having the boundaries and that kind of thing. So I think we'll, we'll save the deeper backstory for the summit, but let's just get into kind of some of the details around how you have found that balance and what the difference is. I mean, I think it's, it's interesting that you're performing as well or even better than, than you ever had while you have also found this space.

39:18 David Schwartz: Yeah, I have thought a lot about this and I thought you might ask me about that. I think for me, it's, I envision life as a dartboard.

39:29 Scott Ingram: Okay.

39:30 David Schwartz: And if you know what a dartboard looks like, you know, you got those 2 outer rings and then you got that very, very, very tiny bullseye. And, you know, again, we'll get to some of the backstory, but what I learned last year when things were not great and coming out of that was the way for me to adapt. And I mean, immediately I had to kind of put this back in serious play when, when COVID hit, is that that dartboard represents life and that bullseye represents the things that I can control directly. And that second ring is sort of the ring of influence, right? Things that are influencing me, but can't really control. And then the biggest part of that dartboard, guess what? That's everything you can't control. And I really had to start believing that and living that. And I think for work, the reason I'm able to perform really well and not, I'm not working, you know, 15, 16, sometimes the end of the quarter, I will admit I was up till midnight. But the way I do that is kind of working smarter and not necessarily working harder, like understanding what things are actually gonna move the needle, understanding what clients are… yeah, they're talking a big game, but they don't have the budget, so they're not gonna do anything this quarter. And disqualifying clients, right? I think we all make some of the mistakes of not disqualifying soon enough. And then we spin wheels and use lots of cycles to have conversations that ultimately don't go anywhere. So I have just really doubled down on the philosophy and that's kind of what got me through the serious situation last year was getting perspective on what matters. Right. And, you know, you mentioned 9/11, that's coming up next week and obviously a very challenging, difficult day for me. But I managed to take that day back in many, many ways. And again, it's also a reminder to me to make sure I'm focusing on the things that matter. Yes, I like, you know, killing it at work, but my life is not defined by my job. And I think I finally got to a happy place around that. And the irony is getting to that place has actually led to me doing better, you know? And I will also say I'd be, naive and almost disrespectful not to say that my boss, he's amazing. He's exactly the type of manager I need. And I think I felt more empowered by him than any manager I've ever had potentially. Right. So that has been a large part of it, but also focusing on that bullseye. That's what's gotten me there.

42:16 Scott Ingram: We've been talking a lot about performance here, and this is probably the best time for me to mention our 3rd and final sponsor of this episode and another huge supporter of the summit, and that's Terryberry. Terryberry is all about rewarding this type of performance. Recognition drives performance, and Terryberry understands that what gets recognized gets done. Organizations all over the world have turned to Terryberry and their award-winning 360 recognition platform to recognize people for their contributions towards success. If you understand that a powerful recognition solution can help you drive the success you're looking for, let Terryberry help you build a culture of performance and recognition today. You can learn more at top1.fm/Terryberry. That's T-E-R-R-Y-B-E-R-R-Y. This is so good, man, because there's a few things in that. I mean, you have just the depth of… and this is a really consistent thing that I see and hear among those that are just such strong performers… is this level of self-awareness, right? And I think totally your ability to articulate that with kind of the dartboard analogy and what we're up against. And, you know, one of the other conversations I've been having a lot, unfortunately, we had to switch out one of our speakers just because of some issues. But so we won't talk about it quite as explicitly as I had hoped, but this idea that you are not your job, more importantly, you are not your number because yeah, exactly. The risk is if you hang everything on that. If you hang it on, I always overperform, right? I'm always above my number. I always make President's Club. I'm always in the top and all of those things. Your dartboard's perfect, right? Sometimes there is stuff that is just going to throw you for a loop that is completely out of your control. And if you don't make that disassociation, man, you're going to set yourself up to really mess with yourself.

44:21 David Schwartz: Well, so I was looking at your questions here. You had one about, you know, it sort of ties into 2 of them. So what have been the most important decisions you've made or lessons you've had to learn? And then the next one, which is what advice you would give to somebody just starting out. And I mean, listen, dude, I had some really shitty quarters at LinkedIn, but I was doing the things that… I just had a shitty account list, right? So I was gonna talk about, you know, hey, listen, you know, you should examine the behaviors. Are you doing the right things but not getting the results? And sometimes that is, okay, I need to refine some of the things that I'm doing. And sometimes you just have a bad account list and don't go down the path. And this is something that happened to me is I kind of had imposter syndrome at that point. I was like, fuck, did I just like, did I have a run of like 4 years and I just got lucky and now I'm just, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You know, it's like, what? And then I think what I had to do was examine, okay, like timeout. Am I doing the things that I can control that would move the needle for these clients? And are they just not ready? Are they, maybe they're just not ready to use LinkedIn or they don't have budget. And these are things that are outside in that second and third ring, right? And I can't do anything about that. I'm doing what I can do. And that's how I kept my job, right? Because my bosses knew that I was doing the right thing. So I think that's the thing. Like, you don't want to get discouraged when you have a shitty quarter or two. And then on the flip side, you don't want to get cocky when you have a great quarter, right? Celebrate it. But don't take it for granted. Don't get lazy. Make sure you continue the same behaviors that got you there, because if you let your guard down, you know, you could be back in another shitty quarter. So yeah, if you want me to talk about it, that's fine. If you want to talk about something else, that's totally fine too.

46:19 Scott Ingram: So man, you're making it pretty easy for me and asking my own questions of yourself and then just rolling with it. Why don't we talk a little bit about your information diet? Because I know you are just kind of a consummate student of sales, of business, of your clients. So what informs that? What are you reading, listening to, and watching? And when does that typically happen?

46:43 David Schwartz: Yeah, it's a great question. And frankly, I kind of did an information diet audit, I would say, through COVID. And I typically do these things in the morning, like early, or sometimes if I'm listening to podcast at night. One thing, obviously the podcast here is definitely part of my information diet. I really like Scott Galloway's weekly musings about business and marketing. I've actually found that to be very helpful in conversations with my clients, believe it or not. I've been reading a lot of books lately, and those books typically are not sales books. But they're books that I think add skills or give me skills that would help me in sales. So especially now, right? Deep Work. I've reread that a couple of times to really get myself into that mindset. And I think that honestly, I think that has helped me immensely in the kind of work smarter mode, right? If anybody hasn't read that, I would suggest, particularly in the environment we're in right now, definitely read that book. The other one lately has been Atomic Habits, and there are definitely little things that I think sometimes keep me back from being an even better performer. And I'm just trying to break some of those habits and learn some new ones. Right. So that's been a great book. I've really cut out, honestly, I used to read a lot of blogs about sales, but my information diet's pretty slim. I mean, I read Harvard Business Review. There's a lot of good articles about Sales in there. And I've really trimmed it down because a lot of it's been noise for me. I read more about the companies that I am chasing down than probably anything else, right? I'm religiously reading their 10-Qs, their 10-Ks, investor presentations. If they do webinars, I sign up for them just to see what they're talking about. And then of course, LinkedIn, right? I mean, you know me, I'm probably a LinkedIn junkie. But I found that the people I'm connected with put out some amazing content, right? Like Jamal Reimer, I'm gonna sign up for his, how do you close a big whale kind of deal, right? I think that's great stuff that somebody's putting out there. So LinkedIn has also been a huge source of information for me in the last couple of months. But, but yeah, I've really trimmed down my information diet. I know maybe it's not as exciting as you hoped it would be.

49:15 Scott Ingram: Well, it's easier to document in the show notes. So Deep Work by Cal Newport is a fantastic book and I should probably, should probably read that again. I actually listened to that. Gosh, this is one on one of those business trips I was driving around all over California for some meetings early in the year. This is probably January timeframe. And I listened to, I think I listened to Daniel Pink's Win, W-H-E-N.

49:37 David Schwartz: Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

49:38 Scott Ingram: So I set myself up listening to that and then transitioned to Deep Work by Cal Newport. So great. Great couple set of books. And I'm sort of with you. I'm taking on a very similar approach where it's like, gosh, I just… I don't need more inputs. I feel like more and more I have a lot of the answers. I know the things I should be doing. It's really just doing the work to assimilate the right things and improve myself, right? I don't need more freaking things to try and incorporate into what it is that I'm doing, right?

50:09 David Schwartz: Well, I think… I think for me, what ended up happening. And, you know, this is part of what I'm going to talk about at the Sales Summit, but I mean, I have an anxious brain and I think having too much consumption of info for me, frankly, in some cases would lead to my anxiety being triggered because I'm just trying to figure out, all right, what's important, what's important. And that happens at work too. We get bombarded with enablement and trainings and videos and takeaway decks and everything else. And sometimes trying to make sense of that stuff is very challenging, especially for me with, with an anxious brain. So I have to sort through using that dartboard analogy again. Okay. What, what's really going to move the needle here and what's just kind of noise for, for things that we need to create, right? Is it something, you know, really client-facing?

51:04 Scott Ingram: Okay.

51:05 David Schwartz: Not really. So move on. But I think that's been, I don't look, I have Facebook, but I don't look at it anymore for a number of different reasons. But I found that to be kind of toxic. I don't really look at Twitter anymore. I've really cut down on sort of my electronic information diet with the exception of LinkedIn. I probably will always be on LinkedIn for reasons, you know, obvious. I've been there for 5 years at one point, but I just find it so much more interesting. And the content that people put out now is… it's so useful. So I won't go back from that. But like I said, just my anxious brain doesn't like that information overload, so that's why I restructured it.

51:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And it sounds like you, in a lot of ways, you're kind of asking yourself the question constantly, like, does this matter? Is this important? With sort of everything, right? Information is just one of… one of those things, just a be able to stay in control and sort of live within the bullseye. Yes.

52:04 David Schwartz: And again, I won't like, you know, prematurely give away too much here, but last year, I mean, okay, so 9/11, probably the first transformational event of my life. And I learned a lot of lessons there. And 9/11, it's funny, like, you know, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day is usually people's annual reset. For me, 9/11 is the reset, right? So that's coming up, you know, next week or whenever this is released. And I think the other transformational thing was what happened last year, as you well know. You know, long and short of it is I was in the hospital for 3 weeks and, and not at work for almost 4 months. And coming out of that, and I think you, you have noticed this as we talk all the time about just about life that, yeah, it gave me a whole different perspective on life. And I don't want to get too preachy here, but frankly, we only have one go-around here and you got to make it count. And whether that's, you know, focusing on your career, if that's your thing, if solely, if you want to focus on, you know, whatever it is, you only got one chance to do it. So I think the biggest lesson I learned, you know, that's why I don't, I just don't waste time with stuff that doesn't matter because it doesn't matter. Right. There's other things to worry about. And I think if you spend time on things that don't matter, you know, you think about that dartboard, you're kind of wasting time, you're wasting years. And I think that's what I realized too, that I had been in many cases, in some ways, allowing my illness to waste years. So. So yeah, I don't want to give away too much, but I think it was important to say that.

53:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. All the more reason to join us. I mean, it is going to be such an important conversation. I know I was nervous asking you because I'm asking you to go to an insanely vulnerable place that I don't think many people would be willing to. So the fact that you're willing to go there is super impressive and I don't want to talk about it anymore. They're going to have to just come, come see and watch.

54:09 David Schwartz: Come to the summit. Come to the summit or watch the summit.

54:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Got to be on. I want to go back to LinkedIn. I'm also just a super fan, right? It's my usage of LinkedIn has evolved a lot. Really in the last year. I mean, I've always been on that platform. You know, it's relationships and network and community is such an important part of my own approach to everything. I'm curious about, are there ways that you use LinkedIn that might surprise people or things that you've picked up, especially having been on the inside and worked within the organization that you've kind of taken away and have something that might be valuable for the rest of us?

54:44 David Schwartz: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. So first off, you would be amazed at the lack of quality of some people's profiles, right? Even at like executive levels, like just, just horrible pictures. I've seen pictures of people in their cars doing a selfie. I mean, make sure your profile is tip-top. And what I mean by that Professional picture, more important than anything else, believe it or not. I mean, that's, we did studies about that. So make sure you get a professional headshot, but number 2, don't list your experience. Please don't list your experience like a resume. Like so many people cut and paste bullet points from their resume and they attach that to each job they have. Don't do that. What you want to do there is you really want to talk about what did you do in sort of a narrative. What were you excited about? What got you out of bed in the morning for any of those individual jobs? And I will tell you, in your summary section, some people write a novel. Don't write a novel. Just tell them, you know, what you're passionate about overall. And I promise you, when you start sending InMails to people and they start looking, you know, who is this guy calling me from Adobe? And then they look at your profile and they say, wow, okay, this guy actually knows What he's talking about sounds credible. I'll respond to that. Right. So I can't stress the importance of having a high quality profile. And frankly, I need to go back and do some work on mine. But once you do that, when you start using Sales Navigator, and I know not everybody has access to Sales Navigator, but it's probably the one tool on LinkedIn you can't do without. So if your company doesn't have it, Have them get you a license. So even a single license is not that expensive, but I'm telling you, it will help you build the organization, you know, to help you build. I think it literally now you can classify people as influencer, decision maker, and put them into those buckets. And it syncs with Salesforce and other CRMs, and it'll really help you build a map to how do I get access to power at these accounts? But again, what you're going to start doing is you're going to start sending InMails to people or getting introductions. Leverage that network. So many people on LinkedIn think it's all about, all right, how many connections can I get? Right. And if you don't put out content, this is the other thing I would say. If you're not nurturing your network and what I mean by nurturing your network, and this is where I think, you know, Scott, you're amazing with this, even outside the scope of the podcast is put out content or engage with your network, comment on posts, start conversations. Because if you're not doing that, when you reach out to somebody like that you connected to at an event 3 years ago, they're not going to have a clue who you are. Right. And I was reaching out to Scott. We kept a great relationship. I know you gave me several references to people, introduced me to people, but that only comes with Nurturing that network and having a great profile, building credibility. So that would be my advice on LinkedIn. I know there's other stuff I could probably drone on about, but you know what, I'm thinking it through now. Maybe something we could do is I have a couple of things I can share about rocking your profile. Maybe you can put that on the site for people to take away.

58:15 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Absolutely. So top1.fm/whatever the heck this episode number is, because once again, I've lost track. Also top1.fm forward slash, we'll set it up both ways, either Dave Schwartz or David Schwartz. We'll have it work in both ways. I know we're professionally trending toward David, but you're a friend, so I'm just going to call you Dave. You can.

58:35 David Schwartz: It's funny, my wife and I had a conversation about this. She only usually calls me David when she's mad, but she also said David sounds like much more like professional and present. And I'm like, really? Like Dave doesn't? What do I sound like? So. I thought it was an interesting conversation, but you can call me whatever you like. I don't care.

58:53 Scott Ingram: Fascinating stuff. I'm glad my name is just Scott and I don't have to think about these, these types of, these types of things. So beyond LinkedIn, I mean, what are the core tools and apps that just, you can't live without? Oh yeah.

59:05 David Schwartz: Good ones. I have to tell you, Clari, which is, you know, plugs into Salesforce and I really love that app because when I was traveling, it was the easiest way for me to update opportunities. Like as soon as I came outta the meeting, bang, get on my phone. Get on Clari, good to go, right? I could update opportunities literally in real time. So I love that app. I use Wunderlist to keep track of my to-dos. I don't know why I like that app in particular, but it's always stuck with me. I do use Evernote as well. That's been very helpful in just keeping notes organized and things like that. And I use… this is an interesting one. You might find this somewhat amusing, but I've noticed Alaska Airlines playing music more often, like, you know, contemporary current music. And I'm using Shazam again to figure out what songs are playing on the, over the PA as I'm boarding. 'Cause sometimes I'm like, oh, that's a cool song. I want to hear what that is. But, and then I use the Salesforce app all the time to keep track of all my opportunities on the go. So it's just interesting because a lot of those apps now I'm not using. Because I'm at home. Sometimes I wonder, you know, what does that look like for a lot of these apps? Where are they seeing usage down? Because half these things I don't use because I'm, I'm just on the road all the time unless we're, you know, going away for the weekend and I got to update something. But it's, it's interesting. I use a lot less apps now. I'm trying to think of… sorry, shitty answer because I just, I don't use a lot of stuff right now because every day I'm in front of my desktop, you know?

1:00:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. It's interesting, like how much of it was travel-centric, right?

1:00:43 David Schwartz: Yeah, I mean, very travel-centric, you know, I mean, I just use a few things to keep organized. I would say the biggest form of communication at our company is Slack, and I didn't really know much about how to use it, but I'll tell you what, that has been the number one productivity driver for me at Adobe because I can get very quick answers to product questions. A lot of times there's threads that already exist about questions that I'm asking. And it's the best way for us to communicate very quickly in real time when we're on calls, things like that. And I have one NAM who just refuses to get on there. He likes to text me and I have gotten to the point where I'm telling him I'm not talking to him unless he gets on Slack. So there you go. But yeah, Slack is huge for me.

1:01:33 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. Nice. So last thing that maybe kind of falls back into the, into the mindset category, but But let's think about motivation and maybe again, how that's evolved for you. Like what drives you now?

1:01:47 David Schwartz: This is a very, very timely question because I just had a career conversation with my boss last week. He had asked me, do I have interest in being a manager? It's funny. I had long thought about, okay, what would that look like? I think I'd be a really good manager, right? I like to coach. I like to mentor and I like to help people get where they want to be. But I also know that those types of roles, especially at big companies, come with a lot of administrative work, right? And a lot of managing up. And frankly, I kind of suck at those things, right? Like sometimes I'm the last one to update my notes for the week in Salesforce, right? I'm really good at selling, but I find administrative tasks kind of outside the circle for me that I outlined earlier. So I think what motivates me now is I really enjoy seeing customers be satisfied, right? I love seeing us solve really challenging problems and seeing it in real life, right? Like I worked with some travel companies last year. And I know the things that we were doing and I, I could see those things on their site and know full well that that was us putting that stuff in place. So I think it's really customers is my main motivation. It used to be very different for me. It used to be, I want to be number one. I want to move up. I want to be a VP of sales. I want to do this. I want to do that. And like I said, last year, those events have given me a lot of perspective and I really, frankly, and maybe I'm committing career suicide on your, on your podcast here, but I don't think I want to be a VP of sales. I don't think I want to manage people. I think I want to be an individual contributor and I want to be in a position where I can do some of the managerial things that people really enjoy doing, the coaching and the mentoring. And I mentor a couple of my BDRs and ISRs because they want to get into field sales. That to me is probably more satisfying than if I was in a manager role because I can do it on my terms. Right. And it's very different. And some people might disagree that are listening here, but my perception of managerial roles, at least at Adobe, it comes with some additional challenges that I know I won't enjoy. Right. I really enjoy, and I think you can hear it. I enjoy what I do. And part of that is being surrounded by amazing teammates, an amazing manager, but overall a culture, especially, I mean, maybe we talk about this a little bit, a culture that has been so supportive and adaptive during this time that has really made people feel empowered to do their jobs, even in a very challenging environment. So yeah, love it. Love it. Does that sound reasonable?

1:04:52 Scott Ingram: I love hearing that, right? Because I feel like in some way we have sort of created and allowed that to be an okay thing. I've virtually coined the term. I think at one point I, you know, put intentional individual contributor in quotes in Google and virtually nothing came up. And, you know, this idea of, hey, it is okay To want to be great at the thing that you do. And, you know, I'll just add kind of 2 things just from my own perspective. One, it's kind of exactly what you described. It's just so fulfilling, right? I love impacting my customers, my clients, the individuals. It's the company, sure, right? Of course, we want to drive the KPIs and the results and the business, but I also want to impact the people that I work with on a day-to-day basis. And that's both in my sales role and then, oh my gosh, is it fulfilling to hear the stories from the people who reach out because they have become fans and students of this podcast and have gotten engaged with the summit. I mean, the way that we have been able to, in some ways, like change the trajectory of people's careers, whether they did decide to go into leadership or they realized it's okay to be in this space. And the other thing I think about a lot is you don't have to have a leadership title to be a leader.

1:06:20 David Schwartz: Completely.

1:06:21 Scott Ingram: I think of my role and the work that I do as leading from the field. So if I want to coach somebody and mentor somebody and bring some ideas to product, to marketing, to other parts of the organization, I feel like I actually have more ability to do that because I don't have to work within some like political constraint or anything else. I can just do it. I can drive the change and work on the things that I want to work on as I have the time, as I have that bandwidth, without it becoming a burden and something I have to do.

1:06:56 David Schwartz: No, I think that's a great point. And the way you said that, it's interesting. My boss is just amazing, okay? He knows that I'm able to do my job with autonomy, but he also knows that I want to do some of the things that you just said, right? Like, I want to be able to coach people and mentor people. So the great thing about having a situation like I have is I know for a fact that my boss deals with, you know, there's lots of things being thrown at him, lots of things that he could easily kind of, you know, drop down on the team, but he keeps that stuff away from me, right? And I think this is a great point also to bring up that In my opinion, most people will leave jobs because of managers. They won't leave the job. Right. So I think that's another piece of advice I would give people starting out in their career is when you're interviewing, make sure that you're talking to the person who's going to manage you, because that person is probably the most important component of your success, of your learning. Of your ability to, you know, really master the job or not. And again, I can't tout that what you said is so true. You don't have to be, have a title to be a sales leader. You can really be viewed. And I think in many ways I was viewed that way at LinkedIn because, I mean, I took on a whole team of people to mentor and I'll tell you what, doing that and also doing new hire training. 2 of the literally most satisfying things in my career, not just at LinkedIn. Like, I almost thought I was like, wow, maybe I should go into sales enablement. I mean, I loved those 5 days more than any other 5-day stretch I had at any job ever. So sometimes you stumble upon things that matter to you, right? Or things that you're really good at. And I think part of the reason my motivation, the way I've thought of my motivation, is there's some pretty serious things outside of work that I want to focus on. And I'll kind of give you the breaking news here. I am actually considering running for elected office in 2 years and taking on our, my local representative, who I just, I just don't think he's the guy. And I've had a couple of people reach out to me and suggest I do it who are connected with some of the local political party, and I'm considering that, right? And I need to make sure that I have runway to be able to do that. So that's breaking news for you.

1:09:34 Scott Ingram: Wow. Vote for Dave.

1:09:36 David Schwartz: Well, you got to move to Washington first, but man, that's awesome.

1:09:41 Scott Ingram: I love that, right? And again, it's just this being aware of what are the things that are meaningful for you and giving that some thought and, you know, charting your own path and figuring out, you know, what it is that works for you.

1:09:54 David Schwartz: But people are afraid to do that, right? I think I was afraid. I think people are afraid to take risk, and especially right now, right? I understand that. But I think if you don't take risk at some point, you end up thinking what could have been, right? Not necessarily regrets, but could I have had a different path? Could I have gotten there faster? So I think I've gotten a lot better at calculated risk, obviously not sort of careless risk. But I just feel like I'm outside my comfort zone. Like, I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to talk to a bunch of top sellers about what is generally a pretty touchy subject, right? Mental health. And I'm not going to turn it into an hour-long therapy session, but I really want people to understand, like, it's okay to, like, take a pause, ask for help, do those things. So I'm really excited about that. As we're talking now, I'm just… I'm getting more pumped about being able to share that with folks. And I really, really wish we could do it in… obviously we can't, but I really wish we could do it in person because I would just love that interaction with people. But we'll figure it out.

1:11:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think it's an ongoing conversation, right? It's not a single point-in-time thing, right? You have to… oh yeah, of course, you have to work on and manage your health on an ongoing basis. So I could easily see this conversation rolling into and through 2021 and what we do there. So Dave, let's talk about… I mean, speaking of beliefs and things of that nature, is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

1:11:29 David Schwartz: That's a great question. I think what I would say there is it's okay to say no more than you say yes to a client. And I think we've all kind of been programmed to, you know, do everything for a client, try and sell them everything. Oh, okay, looks like we can do this. That it's okay, in my experience, You say no, you actually gain respect from your clients. That's when you become, you go from vendor to partner. And some of my best sales started with us saying, I hear what you're saying, but this is not a good idea, or this is not a fit. Right. And you do that and clients are like, wait, what? Like what sales guy says no? And I think the sales guy that says no is the sales guy who wants to be outside that vendor box. Who understands their business well enough to say, this is not a good use of your money. If I'm being a steward of your budget, this is not what you want to do right now. And sometimes that's hard to say because you have people who are trying to do projects that would set them up for, you know, a promotion or something like that. So, and it's not just about saying no, it's saying no and then saying no, but, and the but is, well, have you thought about this? What about this approach? Well, does this KPI really make sense? Is that what you're going to measure? So those conversations, and I think, you know, especially people starting out, I don't think they say no enough. And maybe, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's not something that the average rep would think is crazy, but I don't think that's the norm, I would say.

1:13:06 Scott Ingram: Well, and I think it goes back to what you were talking about earlier in terms of the qualifying, right? Like just making the decision that, you know what, this isn't real. I'm just going to be wasting cycles. And that's a no too.

1:13:16 David Schwartz: You gotta cut bait sometimes.

1:13:17 Scott Ingram: Right. Right. So I want to ask a little bit different question than I normally ask, and that is, is there something you used to believe that you now think is pretty crazy?

1:13:26 David Schwartz: Yeah, I think the biggest thing was just because you sign a big deal with somebody doesn't mean they're happy necessarily. So don't take the renewal for granted. And I think there were times in my career where I just assumed that, you know, a million-dollar client unless they said something otherwise, was happy. And I think what I've discovered, especially now at Adobe, is you're going to put in as much work on a renewal as you are on a new sale. And I think people are sometimes surprised by that, especially people, you know, potentially are my BDRs and ISRs. They don't really understand that to, in this environment in particular, it involves a lot of effort to keep clients from moving to cheaper alternatives, right? We are not the cheapest game in town, but I would argue we have the most value. So that's been a definite pivot point for me.

1:14:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's an interesting one. So we touched on this a little bit earlier, but let's come back to it and officially address it. And I always like to ask what advice you would give to somebody that's just getting started in their sales career today?

1:14:40 David Schwartz: Great question. I think the one thing I would say is, I know we say ABC, always be closing. I would say always be curious, always be learning, always try to improve your skillset. And most of all, don't be afraid to make mistakes. We all make mistakes. I think the difference is if you are accountable for your mistake, and you learn something from your mistakes, then I'll tell you what, as you progress along your career, you're gonna be a rock star, 100%, because you're gonna know… you'll know when you made a mistake, but you're gonna know what to do to correct that. And I think that's the biggest piece of advice. You just gotta always be learning. Learn about your clients, learn about the business, learn about what I can do as a salesperson. I mean, there's so much resource out there these days. And frankly, I'll tell you what, Scott, I mean, this is not, you know, kind of touting you as a friend. I have learned something from every single episode. There's always a nugget that I can take away and try and implement and try and improve myself. And that's, that's what I would say to folks starting out in sales. Like, there's never been more resources for you to try and learn. So always be learning and always be curious.

1:15:56 Scott Ingram: Love it. Now, what about for somebody that's a little bit further in? And maybe we can put a little bit of your spin on this in terms of, you know, they've been at this game for a while and maybe they're just kind of struggling, you know, either they're struggling or they've gotten to good, but they haven't figured out how to break through to great.

1:16:13 David Schwartz: Yeah, no, that's a good one because I've probably been in that position, right, where I was good, but I could have been doing a lot more. And I think for me, it was a real sort of brutally honest view of, are the activities that I'm doing, are they helping my clients? Are they helping move the sales cycle, moving the needle? And being really real about that, right? And being honest, like, am I not doing enough? And sometimes, frankly, like I said, you could be doing all the right activities and you just might have a book of business that's just, they're not going to do anything this year. And that's okay. And I think people who struggle sometimes get into this mindset of, and I think I mentioned this earlier, this sort of imposter syndrome, right? Like, okay, I've been doing this for 5, 10 years. I've had a great success and now I'm hitting a bunch of stumbling blocks and it's okay. What happened here? Have I just gotten lucky? Have I faked it till I made it? And now all of a sudden I'm being discovered that I don't know what I'm actually doing. And I think for people who are in that boat, I was in that boat. I had some horrible quarters at LinkedIn, you know, like 40%, 50%, 2 quarters in a row. And that's when I kind of did this exercise. So I would say, just make sure that you're doing all the right things, the things that matter the most to you. And I would also say, you know, at some point, sometimes you gotta be ready for a change. And I left LinkedIn after my best quarter ever there. And I did that for a couple of reasons. One, I always wanted to leave on top. And I also had to leave because they wouldn't let me work. Ironically, they wouldn't let me work remote at the time because I wanted to move to Washington. But I also knew that I had kind of mastered that job. And I think sometimes after mastery of a job can come some complacency, or sometimes you just, you don't care as much because there's not enough growth intellectually for you, and just chasing the dollars isn't enough. So I would say, you know, be very honest with yourself and assess those kinds of variables. Sometimes it's time for a change. Sometimes you need to add activities to what you need, and sometimes you're focusing on stuff that's kind of nonsensical. So does that make sense?

1:18:39 Scott Ingram: Yep, yep, totally, totally. And you know, it's funny, I'll tell… I don't even know if I've shared this story on the podcast before, kind of connecting a couple of dots here to your point earlier about, you know, oftentimes people will leave managers, not their companies. And the job I had before the one that I'm in, that, oh my gosh, I'm coming up on 5 years, which is just amazing to me. I had one of those managers, and I was also I don't know if it's hard to remember exactly what was going on at the time. I don't know if I wasn't doing as well. I'm sure I wasn't doing as well as I thought I could be. And then also had just, you know, micromanager headaches going on. And I really feel like I lost a sense of my own value. And it wasn't until I was in an Oracle QBR. And this is funny because the VP, or maybe he was an RVP at the time, the guy leading that QBR is my current boss. I brought him over a couple of years ago, and the only other non-Oracle person in that meeting is my current CEO. And I was kind of sharing with them, because they're both good friends, I'd worked with both of them in the past, and I was kind of sharing with them what was going on. I was working through a particularly challenging and frustrating situation that day. And my now CEO said, Scott, and I had drafted this email, just kind of dealing with this situation. And he said, Scott, tell you what, why don't you let me take you to dinner and buy you, you know, 3 or 4 drinks. And when we're done with that, you can delete that email that you have drafted and you can send the email that I think you'd really like to send. And I'll write you an offer letter tonight. And it was that that sort of snapped me out of the funk that I was in. And I went, oh, and I didn't take him up on that offer exactly. It took me another couple of months to kind of do it in the right way and work through some other things. But again, it was that realization that, you know what, this isn't me. It's the situation that I'm in. And I had to sort of be snapped out of that and have somebody with some objective view who'd worked with me in the past and knew what I was capable of and who I was. To say, yeah, Scott, you don't have to sit in that spot. We can fix this.

1:20:57 David Schwartz: Yeah. And I think that goes back to, like you said, the importance of a manager. And maybe that's another piece of advice I would give to even people further along or starting out is, you know, always make sure that you know who your manager is going to be, but you also ask the important questions of that person, right? Like, I don't know how people feel, you know, who go through interviews, but I kind of love interviewing and I'll tell you why, because at the end of the day, like you have an opportunity to grill them pretty hard. And I almost feel like if you don't, they kind of frown upon that. Right. And I'm not saying in a rude, disrespectful way, but you need to make sure you understand how your manager is going to manage. Ask hard questions of those people. And I think people starting out in their career are afraid to do that. I am not afraid to do that, as you well know. Because I just think it's so important, right? Like, you're gonna know, do these people have your back? Are they going to help you learn? Are they going to empower you? Or are they going to step all over you, micromanage you, not give you autonomy? And then that's when you end up feeling like you're stuck, you're trapped. What did I do? Is it me? And you just got to get out of that mindset, right? And I think it's important. And like, listen, as you well know, there are sales managers and roles that they shouldn't be in those roles. You know, they got promoted into them because they spent X amount of time on the job and boom, they got a promotion. And some people are great, turn out to be great, and some people are just… they're not ready to be in those roles. So I think it's important stuff that you, you bring up there.

1:22:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now I know you have listened to a lot of these episodes, but I'm curious what you would want to know about top sellers and other organizations that maybe I don't cover in these conversations. Yeah.

1:22:41 David Schwartz: I mean, you kind of hinted about it in a couple of episodes, but I'm really looking forward to learning more from folks about how do you get that whale, right? Like I've had some sharks, some great whites, but certainly not a whale yet. And I'm trying to figure out, all right, how am I going to get that? Like just a solution that's just going to blow people away and it's going to be a big ticket and it's going to take 6, 8, 9 months to get it done. But I'm really trying to figure out how do I uncover those, right? I've had a couple of them kind of come to me like that were transitioned, let's say, from prior years. But I want to start from scratch and figure out how do I identify those, right? Just haven't gotten there yet. And maybe it's a function of, you know, I don't sell the whole Adobe stack, but I do want to figure out, you know, how do I do this huge multimillion dollar deal? I haven't done one of those yet. Well, I kind of did with this year and in this quarter, but nothing I would say is a whale. So that's probably the biggest thing I'm looking forward to talking to folks about, you know, at the summit is like, tell me about your whale. How'd you get there? What'd you have to do to identify?

1:23:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Lisa Palmer is going to touch on some of that for us. And the other resource that I'll point folks to that I created here recently, if you go to top1.fm/enterprise, I've collected all of the true kind of enterprise sales conversations that I've had, folks that are doing 7 and more often 8-figure scale deals. So there's some just insane conversations in there along those lines. Dave, this has been so much fun. I mean, you and I have had many, many, many conversations over the years, but it's fun to kind of go through the more or less standard question set. And I learned a lot about you that I didn't know before. I mean, a lot I already did, but yeah, it's fun to go through this. And you know, I always try and end on something that is actionable. So what would you challenge our listener to do now that they've listened to us ramble on for a long time? What would you have them do to improve themselves and improve their results over the course of the next just 1 or 2 weeks? Something digestible.

1:24:47 David Schwartz: All right, so can I give people 2 challenges here?

1:24:50 Scott Ingram: Of course.

1:24:51 David Schwartz: All right, so the first one, maybe it's a little unorthodox, but I would challenge everybody to do some form of meditation every single day for, let's say, the next 2 weeks. And I'll tell you, it won't be easy. Even if you start out with a 5-minute one on Calm or Headspace, it's going to feel like the longest 5 minutes of your life. I get it. But I would suggest if you stick with that for 2 weeks, you are going to feel like a different human being and you're going to feel very calm and you're Just your mental acuity, I guarantee you, is going to be more sharp and it'll result in, I mean, immediate results for you, right? Like crisper emails, crisper responses, things will just feel clearer to you. So that would be my first challenge. I think the second challenge is for the next 2 weeks, take a look at your sort of, I wouldn't say patterns of behavior, but your activities and write them down. Like make sure you, you know, just keep like a journal of your activities for the next 2 weeks. And take a look at, you know, what things can I potentially eliminate? What things are not like working smarter, right? So you can figure out how do I balance my days? Because I think right now with people with families and kids and other responsibilities, you gotta really figure out what's gonna move your needle and move on from everything else. So I would challenge you to do that. You know, in fact, I'm gonna do that again for the next 2 weeks. Writing down all my activities and see, you know, what things can I continue to eliminate or just put to the side or get to later. And internal meetings, like which ones can I skip? Because there's really no, you know, I'm not speaking. There's not necessarily value for me. Things like that. And I don't have a problem telling my boss that, by the way. He knows that I do that, but that would be my challenge and I'll participate in it too.

1:26:41 Scott Ingram: Wonderful. Wonderful. Dave, thank you, my friend.

1:26:44 David Schwartz: Scott, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making this happen. I did want to say one last thing, if I may. With 9/11 coming up, I will probably share something on LinkedIn about my experience, but suffice to say it was a, a life changer. And I would encourage you all to… I know especially things the way things are right now, it seems very difficult to do something good in the world, but I would strongly encourage you on 9/11 to do something good, random act of kindness. I have typically visited firehouses local to me and that were around LinkedIn and in Chicago. I used to have dinners at random firehouses. I know we can't necessarily do that right now, but I would just encourage people to do something good on Friday because it's a tough day for all of us, but I think the world needs a little more good these days. So I encourage everybody to do something particularly on that day. Thanks for letting me say that.

1:27:39 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So this will actually release after 9/11, but that's okay because what we will do is we'll put a link to your post in the show notes, and I would encourage folks to, you know, pick a day, right? Doesn't obviously… yeah, it doesn't have to be too late to have been 9/11, but pick a day and take that action. And Dave, thanks again for your time in this conversation, and we'll talk to you lots, lots more, particularly on October 12th and 13th.

1:28:03 David Schwartz: Yeah, thanks, Scott. I hope everybody gets something out of the episode. I can't tell you how much fun, and I can't tell you how much I thank you for, for making it happen. Seriously. It really means something important to me. So thank you. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.