113: Plan to Succeed like Alexine Mudawar

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Outreach, Proposify, and Terryberry. To learn more about them and all of our amazing sponsors, just click over to top1.fm/sponsors. 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 Visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Alexine Mudawar. Alexine was the company high achiever at Displayr in her role as a major account executive, and she did that as the newest member of the sales team. Welcome to the show, Alexine.

0:51 Alexine Mudawar: Hi everyone, so excited to be here. And Scott, thank you for having me on.

0:55 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Been wanting to do this for a while. You and I have been chatting about this and, and I knew that you would get off to an epic fast start, which you did. And this is not the first time that you have been at the top of the leaderboard. So let's get started like we always do and talk through the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your consistent success.

1:15 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so funny because I don't think that any of these have changed in the last 8 years in my sales career. So it's ironic that these are, you know, they just continue every single year. But, you know, number 1 on my list is definitely the fact… and I talk about this all the time… I'm half SDR, half AE. And I'll say that with very little ego. The reason… what I mean behind that is I'm a full-cycle sales rep. I came into my sales career as a full-cycle sales rep, and I've stayed that way. So I'm responsible for filling my pipeline. We have an SDR team, and whatever they schedule on top of that, that's kind of just gravy for me. But I really own my own number, and I'm very, very diligent about my prospecting, and I definitely own being, you know, part SDR every day. So I think that helped me a lot to just get up and running very quickly. The other piece that I talk a lot about is the sales business plan. So I create a formal business plan, 20 pages every single year, and it's basically built exactly like you would create a business plan for any company that you were launching. So I have an executive summary page, and this is something I started doing at the very beginning of my sales career as well. It was after I had actually had a degree in entrepreneurship, so I started to use kind of what I learned in that class and then apply it to sales somehow. So that's the other piece. And then the third is I'm a huge proponent of phone-based prospecting. So for me, the easiest way for me to learn and hit the ground running is really to hit the phones right away. So I'm very, I'm not one of those people who will wait a couple weeks until I get really comfortable with my talk track. The second I have my list, I start making calls and I learn on the go. So I'm very, I'm very much someone that likes to get in. I like for it to be uncomfortable and I like kind of running face first into a wall. And then I very quickly, it becomes, very comfortable and I start to get used to the talk track, but that's my way of just getting to know a new industry and a new company.

3:07 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. And I want to dig into each of those. Maybe, maybe we'll go backwards because it sounds like, and we'll definitely be talking about how you ramp so quickly, because it's not the first time that you have just bolted out of the gates to the top of the leaderboard. Is that just, I'm going to pick up the phone and I'm going to have conversations? Is that one of those core ingredients?

3:29 Alexine Mudawar: I don't know, and maybe not for everyone. And I think that it's very fair to say that. I think there's some people who are incredible emailers. I'm not one of those people. Email is my least preferred method of communication. So for me, I think it's just the simplest way for me to start a conversation and to start to hear some of the objections and to start to hear some of the business challenges. It's just the easiest way for me to start talking to people. And once I start talking to people, that's when I start to see parity between conversations. So I'll start to hear X company say the same thing as Y company, and then that objection starts to get a little bit more comfortable, a little bit easier. So for me, it's all about just getting through the most uncomfortable part of a new job, which is usually, you know, talking to prospects initially, especially when you don't know a ton. It's about me getting comfortable in that space as fast as possible.

4:17 Scott Ingram: And what does that sound like, especially in the early stages where it's not comfortable? How are you starting those conversations?

4:23 Alexine Mudawar: With a lot of questions, frankly. And I think this is the biggest miss, is people always think, you know, oh, if you do cold calls, you have to just, you know, have this like page-long thing ready to go and you're going to hit the prospect with it. And the reality is a lot of times, and this is why for me cold calling has actually, you know, become one of the most comfortable parts of my roles, is that I really have, you know, typically a couple sentences that are my reference point. Those are kind of my, my place that I go back to where I, where I'm kind of talking about what the organization does. But outside of that, I'm asking questions like I want to understand if the person I'm reaching out to is even the correct point of contact. I want to understand if, you know, you know, our product even aligns with what their role is. So it's just for me an easy way to start asking questions and then talk a little bit about my product and a little bit about my company, but it's mostly to learn about them and figure out if I'm even in the right place. And then from there, we start to branch out and I start to understand, you know, maybe the bigger, the bigger picture, you know, where does this person fit into their organization? What other teams do they have communication with? Where could this potentially overlap into those groups. So that's where I start to cast a little bit wider net.

5:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny when I started my sales career and my first real sales job, I was at ADP. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was I felt like I have to have the perfect thing. I had to be ready to make the perfect cold call before I started picking up the phone. And the reality is that all falls apart as soon as you're engaged in the conversation anyway. And I would have been so much better served by just picking up the dang phone and having conversations, right? They all start awkward and weird. So just do that. And then to your point, like leading with questions and working to understand is kind of the name of the game anyway.

6:07 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you if you want a story, I don't think I've ever told on any podcast, but my first manager who I'm still friends with remembers this. So the very first, and I don't know if this is like serendipitous, but the very first cold call I did, I scheduled a demo and that was my first cold call ever. I don't even know what I said. I think I blacked out completely because I was panicking. And the funniest part is, that I called. So this is back in the days when you kind of would have the gatekeeper, you know, pass you around. You couldn't really get direct lines. So I got passed over to this person. They agreed to do a demo. I got their email, but I never got their first and last name, and I never got their title because it was my first cold call ever, and you're just so excited. And so we actually had to run that demo without a first, really without a first name. So it was one of the most embarrassing experiences. I kind of had to like figure out a way to figure out their name during the demo because LinkedIn really wasn't where it was either. So just, you know, Those are the types of things. I mean, it just goes to show, like, clearly I was not at peak shape on my very first cold call, but I was still able to start a conversation. I was still able to at least somewhat describe what my product did at the time and then able to get some attention. So I think that sometimes we overthink it and we try to have these perfect conversations and we forget that we're talking to a human being. And what I've realized is a lot of times your tonality and just your energy, sometimes that's enough to get a meeting, which sounds crazy, but sometimes just the way that you're approaching people is enough to at least help you get a foot in the door. So I think we focus so much on the content and so little on the delivery and the tonality of it. And those are really important aspects that can help. So for me, I just, I just start having conversations. That's where I'm comfortable. And that's where, that's where I start to really get to know people. And that's, you know, that's where I live.

7:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And it's, it's that tonality piece. I mean, I, I've had so much success just by genuinely being confused and I'm trying to figure something out, right? Like, hey, I understand this about your organization or whatever it is, right? And you're just kind of asking somebody for help and guidance. And, you know, sure, it's still a cold call, but I'm getting information that's going to help me figure out who I need to be talking to in the first place or what their current situation is or any of those types of, of details. And again, it's, it's just a conversation.

8:20 Alexine Mudawar: Exactly. And part of it for me too, I'm super impatient. So for me, I want to get to the yes or no as fast as possible. Those are the 2 best case scenarios is yes or no. The worst case scenarios is like a maybe or a semi-information, or we kind of live in the abyss for, for a long time. So for me, Either one of those answers is acceptable, and either one of those is a pathway forward. It's either a no with someone and then a pivot in a different direction, or it's a yes with someone and we move towards a demo or a discovery conversation. But either way, you know, for me it's a step forward. So for me, the outcome is, is somewhat irrelevant. Either way, it's a good thing for me.

8:56 Scott Ingram: A great tool to help you get to that yes or no in a consistent way is with Outreach. Outreach is the number one sales engagement platform that helps companies significantly increase productivity and drive smarter, more insightful engagement with their customers. More than 4,000 companies, including Adobe, Tableau, Okta, Splunk, DocuSign, and SAP depend on Outreach's enterprise-scale, customer-driven, and robust AI-powered innovation. Visit top1.fm/outreach and learn how to close deals faster in today's remote sales world. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, we, we will definitely come back to prospecting for sure, but I want to talk about this business plan of yours. So what, Maybe talk about how that's structured. What, what are the pieces? How are you building this? How do you use this? Let's, let's really get into that.

9:47 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah. So I'll talk about kind of where it formed from first. So I'm, I'm very mathematically minded. So my dad teaches mechanical engineering at Purdue. I grew up playing the math game for fun. So, I mean, I had a very mathematical upbringing. So for me, when I got my very first quota, when I was starting out in sales, it's, it's difficult. You get this number, it's placed in front of you and you have no idea how to get there. And everybody's kind of telling you different things. Like run as many demos as you can or focus just on your top accounts. And so for me, it was just this information overload and I had no idea where to start. So the only way I could figure it out was to put it into this business plan format and basically mathematically break down how I was going to get to my number. So what it is, you know, it's a lot of different things. I mean, it's 20 pages, so there's a lot of different components and I put everything in here from how many books I'm going to read, how many webinars and podcasts I'm going to participate in, any kind of outside groups I'm going to participate in. What are some of the areas like discoveries calls, for instance, that I want to continue to improve my skill set on? What are some of the outside educational groups I want to focus on? So there's everything like that. I put different milestones, like financial milestones that I have in mind. And then, you know, the biggest piece of this plan though, and what really helps me is I create a massive chart that helps me back into my number. So basically at the bottom of the chart, I have either, you know, and I've done it a few different ways. Sometimes at the bottom of the chart, how many net new logos I want to capture, or it's how much revenue I want to capture. And then I have this whole chart that backs up into how I even got to that number. So I use whatever Salesforce data is available. So a lot of times if I'm newer in the role, I kind of have to work with whatever Salesforce dashboards say today. But after a year or 2 of being with a company, then I can use my existing numbers and it's easier to kind of put this together based on my actual ratios. But I actually back into, you know, how many demos I have to schedule, what percentage of my demos are typically converting according to proof of concept or a proposal. And then I estimate for how many proposals, you know, typically result in, into close one. And then, you know, before that point of even doing the, you know, getting the demo, it's like, how many cold calls am I typically averaging that will get me one demo? And so that's a number that's on there. So it's basically creating all of these different pieces in such a granular format that it's forcing almost a math equation to success. It's telling you if you do, you know, X plus Y must equal Z. And so obviously what, you know, The interesting thing, it's not obvious, but the most interesting thing that happens is throughout the year, I continue to track the results. And so a lot of times at the beginning of the year, for instance, I might say, you know, it takes me 50 touches between phone, you know, phone calls and emails to get to one demo scheduled. And then once I get, you know, into Q2 or Q3, suddenly that number becomes, you know, say 30. And then suddenly towards the end of the year, it's maybe it's 20. So you kind of can use this as a place to redo the math on some of this too throughout the year. But it gets really interesting to kind of watch some of the trends over time. But basically, usually Q1, I'm over-forecasting for all of the activity and all of the pipeline I have to build because not only is it going to take me less activity over time typically to get to more demos, but I'm also going to improve my close ratio as I continue to learn the product and learn the industry. So then I forecast for that. And I also am starting to learn, you know, how to disqualify, you know, who and what to disqualify. So then certain things aren't even getting, getting to steps in that process. So it's all about just creating a formula that you can follow follow and pace towards to break down a number rather than staring at $1 million and doing what every sales rep does, which is just chop it into 4 pieces and say, okay, my quota every quarter is $250,000. You know, here we go. This is a way to do this in a digestible format that isn't overwhelming.

13:35 Scott Ingram: And what's the number that you're starting with to back into? Are you, are you starting at 100% knowing that you'll get to the overachievement because you'll be able to improve your ratios over time? Or are you starting Are you backing into a number that's that's overplanned by some percentage? What what's your mindset around that?

13:51 Alexine Mudawar: So two things. So I'll actually create. I've been doing this actually since my first year in sales. I have my 100% target that that corresponds with my OT for my for my company, and then I also have a separate chart that I create for my stretch goals, which is usually 15 to 20% above whatever my company target is. And then that's kind of secretly my actual quota. Like that's what I hold myself accountable to. But then the company goal is sort of you know. Know, obviously where, where I want to land. So with this business plan, I over… I kind of over-index so that I make sure I hit the 100%. And that's why Q1 is usually super inflated. Like, it's like, you know, maybe I'm estimating 50 to 60 touches to even get to the one demo, and then I'm estimating like a, you know, a 5% close one rate, when in reality, you know, later in the year I realize it's like, you know, 20 or 25%, whatever it is. So it's, it's really overinflated initially because I'm trying to give myself some wiggle room to kind of kick the year off and, and make sure that I have a ton of pipeline so that the rest of the business plan just falls into place. So I intentionally kind of over-index, but I do like to create 2 different charts so that one stretch goals and one is actual OTE.

15:00 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. And then how are you tracking the actual numbers and ratios and all that stuff?

15:06 Alexine Mudawar: So I mean, I'm a big Salesforce.com. So my first sales manager, she actually became a Salesforce admin. So I grew up with this really, I don't know, aggressive need to understand Salesforce from the get-go. So I use dashboards a lot. I have personal dashboard that our sales ops team created for me that allows me to track in a really granular level, you know, all of my closes. And then I can really quickly figure out and determine what percentages those look like. And then I like to kind of use like a monthly checkpoint with myself, like kind of see where I'm at every single month and, and then sort of reforecast. Like if I'm, if my estimations were way off or if for some reason the math was broken, then I can kind of redo things. Like it doesn't have to be like this set chart that you, you, you know, you, you pace towards. But I do like to keep… what I do like to keep is the initial chart that I create at the beginning of the year, because it's fascinating to then cross-reference with what it ends up being at the very end of the year, because the, the numbers end up very, you know, somewhat different. So it's, it's interesting to track.

16:08 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. So it sounds… so you've got this executive summary. It sounds like you have a development plan that, that is part of your, your business plan. You've got a territory plan. You've got an activity plan. Is there anything else that that is part of this twenty-page document that you're building?

16:24 Alexine Mudawar: Tons. Yeah, I mean there's mentorship. Like there's it's like I think development is a really broad term, but I mean there's so much that goes into it. Like I put goals for myself. Like who do I want to mentor? What kind of leadership responsibilities internally do I want to take on? Do I want to be involved with employee resource groups? Like it's almost like cultural. Like how I'm going to culturally fit in with the company. How I'm going to help you know the company as a whole. Whole, I even have like personal goals in there as well, like personal financial goals. I always include something, you know, like, you know, pay off, you know, X amount of mortgage this year and like, you know, so that I can, you know, finish off my mortgage faster and things like that. Or if I have a large expense, I'll kind of factor that in even. So it's a super transparent, I mean, I put like health goals in there even, like, you know, I'm, I'm telling you, everything goes into this thing, but it's to help me figure out, you know, what I want to be by the end of the year. So it's not just about, So for me, that's why I call it the sales business plan. Like it's, it's sales related, but there's also some other components to it. So I think of myself as the CEO of my business, and then this, the sales is kind of one component of that, but there's all these other areas that I'm trying to focus on too. So there's a lot that goes into it. And then the executive summary, funny enough, is written exactly like an executive summary would be, would be on, you know, any type of business plan. But I will actually put on there what my overarching goal for the year is. Sometimes it's just a financial goal, like I want to make X amount of money by December 31st, you know, 2021. Sometimes it is a title, like I want to be team lead by June, you know, 2021, whatever it is. So I put quantifiable goals in there, and part of what that is, is I want to be able to kind of write my own promotions and write my own financial incentives. So if I'm able to share this with leadership, it's very clear to them what I'm trying to work towards, and I'm giving them a plan, like here's how I'm going to get here, here are the things and the steps I'm going to in between. Like, here are the areas I'm going to step up on internally, and if I do this, you know, this is my goal and I'm letting you guys know. And then you're kind of flipping it over to your company to decide, like, you know, then are you worthy? But I think it's a really good exercise to figure out, you know, especially with a lot of companies telling us, you know, that they're hiring us for these very clear career paths. It's a very easy way to kind of quantify that and say, okay, great, so I wrote my own business plan of how I'm going to get there. Does this align with what your expectations are? Yeah.

18:45 Scott Ingram: And is this just for you? Do you share this with others? Do you share parts of it? How do you use it?

18:51 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, so I do not share it with team members because it has financial information. It also shows like what my commission percentages and things like that are. So obviously we're all paid different, you know, base salaries. There's just different things that are kind of branched into there. So I do not share that information with my peers. However, I do share it with my direct leadership. And more interestingly, I use this as an opportunity at every single company to meet with my CEO or someone, at least someone on the C-team. Because what happens is, you know, if you're like, well, I created a 20-page business plan, I would love to sit down with you, you know, even if it's for 30 minutes and just show you what I put together, you would be hard-pressed to find a CEO, if you know, at any company who wouldn't be willing to take 30 minutes to read 20 pages of one of their employees', you know, well-thought-out kind of plan for the And then what's funny that's come out of this is now a couple of these business plans, I've had leadership actually, you know, with my permission, take segments of it to help raise funding, which is wild. So they were, you know, so even after we got funding at a couple of my companies, they actually reached back out to me later and were like, these were the pages that we took outta your plan. And then this helped our, you know, this helped us. So, so I think there's a broader, you know, there are broader purposes to some of these goals. Goals to some of these business plans. But I do think it's a really good opportunity, especially as an individual contributor, to get a chance to talk to some of your C-levels that you might not have access to normally.

20:16 Scott Ingram: That's brilliant. Can I ask what the overarching goal is for, for this year's plan?

20:21 Alexine Mudawar: So the overarching goal for this year is for me to start to move into leadership. I'm still kind of… we're, we're still ironing out some of the numbers for this year, but for me, I do want to start to make that pivot into leadership. And I was, you know, transparent about that during my interview process. So That's, you know, that's my goal and I'm going to push as hard as I can and do the things that I can to get there. So that's what a lot of my plan is going to be aligned to.

20:45 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. And then your first point was you are really big on being a full-cycle rep and building your own pipeline. What's behind that? Is there a philosophy that drives that? Why is that so important to your approach?

20:58 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, so I think being a full-cycle sales rep for me is really important for a number of reasons. I'm a little bit of a control freak, so I want to be able to control my own destiny. And be able to just determine what my paycheck is going to look like. And relying on another group or another individual to do that for me, for me is too anxiety-inducing. So part of the reason that I'm a big advocate of the full-cycle sales rep is selfishly so that I can kind of stay calm in what is a very stressful role for all of us. But I think one piece of this too is, you know, I always, I always make sure to reiterate this. I'm not discrediting the role of the BDR, SDR. What I think is beautiful is when you have this harmony of an AE who can source their own pipeline, who generates, you know, 75, 80% of their own pipeline. And then, you know, an SDR who comes in and maybe they do, you know, another 50%, and all of a sudden together you're at 130%. Or maybe I do 100% and they do 20%, now I'm at 120%. So for me, I see it as kind of this abundance mindset. Like it just can only help me get closer to my goal. And then hopefully along with that, there's some mentorship that I can do and pull that SDR with me me for certain deals and show them, you know, how they do this. But I also kind of want to help be a champion to sort of reset. Like, I feel like as account executives, we've taken a step back from prospecting, and we kind of get to this place where, you know, if people were SDRs, then they get promoted to AE, and then it feels like you're like above prospecting for some reason. And I'm very much against that mindset. I think that this is always going to be part of, or should always be part of, an account executive As you can tell, Alexine has an incredibly strong process through the full sales cycle.

22:37 Scott Ingram: One of the areas that a lot of people have a gap in their process though is at the proposal step, and Proposify can help. With Proposify, you can streamline the entire proposal process, understand how your proposal is being consumed, and continue to iterate based on their best practices and your own team's data. Click over to top1.fm/proposify and you can get their 2021 State of Proposals report. Proposals Report, which is eye-opening. They gather data across over 2.6 million proposals to assemble some serious insights. top1.fm/proposify. And now back to Alexine.

23:17 Alexine Mudawar: So I try to champion for that a lot, but mostly, you know, selfishly for me so that I can, you know, continue to fill my own pipeline and have control over what my income is going to be at the end of the year.

23:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's so great. Well, I suppose we should probably contextualize this. So why don't you talk about what is your role right now? Tell us about Displayr and how you got there.

23:36 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a major account executive at Displayr. It's interesting. So I started interviewing during one of the worst job markets. I mean, I decided that I wanted to leave during, you know, the… I guess it wasn't during the worst of the pandemic necessarily, but it was during summer. And so Displayr, interestingly enough, was the only company where I didn't have a connection to anyone. Every other company I was talking to, I I actually knew someone in sales leadership. So I had a lot of really cool companies that I was talking to at the time. And this was maybe, you know, the one just where I didn't know that many people and it could have been a little bit riskier, but I really liked the product. So what we sell is essentially a data analysis and reporting tool, but it's helping companies take complex datasets and then create really, you know, deliver insights from those, but also create really beautiful visualizations off of them. So for me, I'm very much a data-driven person and I'm, so for me, I understand it. It kind of clicks for me even though it's so different from what I do as a profession, it just makes sense for me to… when I'm selling it. So I really like the product. I really like the leadership team. We have a female co-founder, which for me was a really important part of the, the process as well. I wanted to see someone on the, you know, the C-suite that was actually female for the first time. So that was something that was interesting to me. But so far it's been a really incredible experience, and I have spent my whole career targeting startups, and there's a, you know, a very specific reason for that, in that, you know, I wanted to get as close to the business as possible. Both, both of my parents are entrepreneurs, so I kind of grew up in this entrepreneurial mindset. I have a degree in entrepreneurship from Purdue, so I did that whole program. And so it all kind of like makes me want to get closer to the business. And for some people, like the thought of getting, you know, getting to startups or getting to smaller companies, it, you know, some of it seems painful or you're kind of getting to see some things behind the scenes. For me, it's really exciting. You're getting in at a really pivotal time in the company. You can make a really strong impact. Impact and you can climb the ranks. And so all of that for me is really exciting, and that's what I wanted to find again. And part of what was really important to me in my job search too is I wanted to find a team that was really more of an outbound engine, like, you know, folks that were actually going to be prospecting. And we do team call blocks still twice a week. We'll do 2-hour call blocks with my entire team, and I like that. And I know some people that's kind of, you know, not their style, but for me it was really, you know, it was cool to get back to that. It was kind of some of the stuff that I hadn't revisited in a few years, and it kind of, it just got me excited about sales again. So those were some of the areas that really got me interested. But the company itself is incredible. We work with over 1,000 organizations, and even in these past few months, I've closed some of the coolest logos that I've ever worked with in my career. And it's just incredible to be able to think about that and just shut, you know, and it hasn't really been that long of a time. I'm not even at a full year yet, but to be able to work with some of these companies that in the past would've been a dream just to close one of them and to have closed a few of those in just the past couple months here is just an amazing feeling. So, so, so far so good.

26:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Why was the outbounding motion and focus so important to you?

26:40 Alexine Mudawar: I think so, you know, we talk about culture a lot and I think that, you know, we have the sales culture. For me, I want to be on a team where everybody's kind of swimming in the same direction. And so I don't want there to be necessarily like an ego about prospecting or I don't want, you know, just one person to be prospecting, nobody else is because I think for me sometimes it can have a little bit of a mental drain. Like it's hard for me to get more motivated, but if I'm around like-minded people, it's a lot easier for me to get in that headspace and just religiously do these activities and really be pushing towards the goal. So I just wanted to kind of be in the stream with fish that were kind of doing the same thing that I was.

27:17 Scott Ingram: So let's go back earlier. Your parents were entrepreneurs. You went to school for entrepreneurship. Why'd you end up in sales?

27:25 Alexine Mudawar: So funny enough, you know, much like every person you've interviewed, I'm sure none of us meant to end up in sales. But I actually went to school with the full intention of becoming a retail buyer. I thought that it was gonna be this really glamorous lifestyle and that I was gonna live on the road and travel abroad and look at, you know, fabrics in Milan. And so part of that process was I got a job with Neiman Marcus right, right outta college. And they had this buying program where you had to actually work in a storefront as a sales clerk for 6 months. And it was so funny because that was really my fir… one of my first experiences doing like a, a sales face-to-face role. And so I was just selling like a maniac because they actually had a commission plan at the time. And it was so weird because it was retail, but they had an actual commission plan, which was what I didn't realize at the time, really good for me to kind of get used to that idea. So I started doing this role. I was working towards a 6-month timeline that I was going to move into this buying program. And my manager at the time was actually one of the people, she pulled me aside and she was like, you know, you're having, you know, $20,000, sometimes $30,000 weeks here, which is crazy. She's like, these are not numbers that we would normally see from people. She's like, I think there's something else that you could explore here, and it's not this buy… it's not the buying side, it's the selling side. And, and that's what really kind of got me thinking. And then I started to do my research, and I realized, you know, selling isn't like used car salesperson, it's not necessarily retail, it's, you know, it's a bunch of different things. And so that kind of got me thinking about technology sales, and I didn't know anything about tech sales when I started started. And when I got to my very first job, I mean, I didn't know what an online platform was. I didn't know what a cold call was. Like, it was all brand new information for me, but something just clicked. And actually, at the time when I was interviewing for my very first company, they had like 12 or 13… I mean, it was a huge sales class, huge at the time sales class that they had already filled. And, you know, technically they didn't really have a spot left, but something about my background and just my attitude kind of gave a signal to the hiring manager and He was like, I'm just gonna throw you into the mix and we'll see what happens. And I ended up becoming their top sales rep within a year as well and surpassing actually their highest rep at the time. I basically doubled what they had done in revenue, and that was like the historical highest ever. So for me, it was just like a really exciting start in tech sales. And then I just stayed with it because it was so, you know, for me it was just really fascinating and really rewarding.

29:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So 2 things I wanna come back to. The first is, so you, you started researching sales, like you, you hadn't explored that. How did you do that? What, how does one research sales? Do you remember?

29:59 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, I mean, I do. I remember, like, using Monster and just, like, reading job descriptions. Like, I don't even know if people use Monster anymore, but I was reading job descriptions and trying to figure out what the role entailed, and I was cross-referencing. And then I would, like, look at LinkedIn sometimes and try to figure out, you know, what these salespeople were doing or, like, what it was. And I just… I don't know. I really didn't know a lot going into it. So I don't want to, like, overinflate what I knew going into what the role was, but I just knew that it felt to me, you know, I guess when you're in college or you're younger and you hear sales, you think of this used car salesperson and it's really icky. You get this icky image. And then when I started to kind of look around LinkedIn or I started to kind of look at different people, I realized that this was a really respectable role and this is something that I can make a lot of money at and something where I could talk to some of these companies that some of my friends that were in other industries may never have been able to access, you know, talking to lead leaders at Fortune 100 companies. So, for me, all of it just was really exciting. So, that's kind of what got me, that's what got me started.

31:01 Scott Ingram: Has there ever been a time that you joined a sales org and didn't somehow make your way to being at the top in the first year? Seems like this is your game.

31:09 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, of course. No, there's definitely been times and there's been missteps. Like, I want to be very, very honest that there have been times where I chose a company, I I've talked about this, that Amy Volas has a scorecard. So there have been times where, you know, frankly, I didn't ask the right questions and that I've kind of lived and learned and learned in interview processes, you know, what, what questions to ask and where to dig deeper. You know, there are certain companies where, you know, when you go to interview, they're like, yeah, everybody's pacing towards quota. And then you get to the company and like no one's sold anything and you realize you asked the wrong question. And so, so I definitely have had missteps and there's been misfirings and where I kind of picked a company where I regretted it later. But then if I think about it, I don't truly regret any of the decisions because even the roles where, you know, other people would be like, oh, I didn't like love that one or this or that, I still learned a lot from each of those. So I really don't have any where I'm like, man, I wish I never would've taken that role. I really truly felt like I learned something from every single company. And I felt like above and beyond, I also got to meet some really interesting people who have stayed with me through my career. So for me, everything's a learning lesson. Everything's, you know, something that I can take with me and, and get better because of.

32:22 Scott Ingram: Well, and I'm glad you mentioned Amy. I'm going to reach out to her because I have been threatening forever, and this is just never going to make it to the top of my priority list because I've wanted to build a kind of a due diligence document or process because it's so important that you ask those right questions and that you find the right place because it sucks when, when you're just in that wrong spot. And I think we've all done it, right? And, and to your point, I mean, you, you still learn things from those experiences, but man, if you could just skip it and have asked the right questions going in and, and done that due diligence properly. So I will follow up with Amy and I would love to see her, her scorecard. But if you could start over, I mean, so knowing all that you know now, if you were starting over in tech sales today, what would you do differently?

33:07 Alexine Mudawar: Oh my gosh, nothing. I would never have traded my first tech sales job for the world. It was like crazy. I was like sleeping 3 hours a night sometimes, doing emails at 4 AM. I was making like weird amounts of money. I was like 22 or 23 at the time. I bought my first condo a couple years later. Like, it was the most insane start ever. I was drinking, I remember at one point, 8 shots of espresso a day just to like contextualize visualize for listeners, but I wouldn't have traded anything. I mean, it was, it was a full cycle sales role, which I'm so grateful. And again, it's nothing against today's process where you start out as a BDR and then move into an AE, but it's so rare to find a tech role where you get to do the full cycle. So from day one, it was like whatever I scheduled, I was running. I actually conducted my own demos too. So I was conducting my own demo and then I was closing my own deals and then I was even managing At one point for the first year, so it was like SDR, AE, SC, AM, whatever CS. You know, you name it. Every acronym under the sun in one role. So it was busy and chaotic and super stressful, but super rewarding. So frankly, I would not shade that first role for the world, and I'm very grateful that I took it.

34:20 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. So the show is called Sales Success Stories, and I'm trying to do a better job of actually getting into specific sales stories. What's your favorite? Favorite, and and maybe it was a great outcome. Maybe it was just that you went down in flames and you learned a lot from it. What's your favorite sales story?

34:36 Alexine Mudawar: Oh man, yeah, there's a bunch. There's plenty that end where I went went down in flames too. But my favorite deal, I've talked about this one before. It ended up being my largest deal in my career, actually. And at the time, it was one of my actually my earliest cold calls too. It was really interesting. And I reached out to this company, and when I called the guy, he actually told me that. He, you know, that he didn't like the company. He didn't like our product. He had demoed it before, not interested. Thanks for reaching out. See ya. And so I literally was like working and coaxing this guy and I finally got him to agree to take a demo and that was like climbing Mount Everest. And I was so excited about that. And then we had so many false starts where we would like kind of, they had like a certain deal that we could have taken, but it wasn't our exact, like, you know, it wasn't in our wheelhouse exactly. It wasn't the perfect deal or it wasn't something that we were great at. So I kept having these opportunities to like close this deal. And so it took literally an entire year down to the exact week that I started cold calling him. And then we, I ended up closing it and it ended up almost making my quota for an entire year, which was incredible. And it was a massive deal, but it was just, it's like, I always laugh thinking about it because by the time it closed, it was so like anticlimactic in some ways because I'd already been up and down so many times where I was like, yeah, it's closing. Like, no, it's not. Yeah, it's closing. But what I realized is it was one of the most patient sales cycles, which patience is not my virtue. And it forced me to kind of wait and wait until there was a right opportunity and it was something that we were good at and then take and then kind of go in for this deal. So I think it was just a different type of sale, but it's just my favorite because I love a deal where they really don't like you initially. For some reason, those end up being the coolest clients, like the ones that right away tell you like, we don't want to work with you, or they, you know, they're sometimes they are very nice initially or something. For some reason, those end up being the best clients. And then a lot of times it's the other way around for some of your worst clients. So it's just so ironic how it works out.

36:36 Scott Ingram: I wonder why that is. Do you have any theories?

36:38 Alexine Mudawar: It's the same as when I meet people. Usually if someone irritates me a lot the first time I meet them, I'm going to like love them and I'm going to end up being friends with them. That's how every one of my good girlfriends is. They like… I couldn't stand them at first and then, and then like a week later I'm like, oh, this is now one of my best friends. And then the opposite is true. Like, sometimes when I like love people right off the bat, then I, you know, I get too jaded, you know, and then I realize like this isn't someone that necessarily is right for me to have in my life. So I don't know why it is. I think it's just psychological. We usually kind of repel the things that are similar to us, kind of like moms and daughters. We always bicker with each other because we're too similar. But I feel like it's like that. It's just like you have kind of like a similar wavelength, so they're kind of throwing back back, you know, objections at you, and then you're kind of responding, and you guys go back and forth and go toe-to-toe for a bit. But then it creates this weird sense of rapport, and then you end up having a stronger relationship. So it's just… I don't know, it's interesting. I'm sure there's something psychological there. I don't know what it is, but that's what's seemed to, to work out well for me with some of my clients, that they've just turned out to be really great, but we had a, you know, rough start sometimes.

37:42 Scott Ingram: Too funny, too funny. Well, maybe that just means you and I are on a really good trajectory because I, I basically put you off for 9 months or so. I think, I I think I owe Alex Smith a thank you. I think it was Alex that originally connected us and said, Scott, you have to interview Alexine. I'm like, yeah, but, you know, this doesn't look right right now. But I'm sure, I'm sure you'll get to that place where it's going to make sense for us to talk. And here you are.

38:04 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, I think we initially, when we got connected, I was like a month into a new job. And your email was so funny. You were like, let me know if in this past, you know, 30 days you've been able to become top salesperson. And then you were one of the first people I reached out to when I won the High Achiever Award. I was like, Scott, it's time. I could finally come to your show. So, so it's too funny how those things time out, but Alyce is great.

38:26 Scott Ingram: Good guy. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you have had a lot of success in a lot of different places and these, in these rapid rises. What are you most proud of?

38:36 Alexine Mudawar: Oh man. You know, I don't know if it's, it's just career success. Like some of the things I'm most proud of are some of the relationships I've formed along the way, whether it be with colleagues or with some of my mentees. I'm really proud of some of the teaching that I do on the side that isn't even directly related to what I do for work. I'm running women's groups on the side for women in sales. Like, that's where I really get like geeked out and excited is when I talk about kind of like especially women that are coming into the role of sales and they're in year 1 to 3. I have a really soft spot for that, and that's where I really, really get excited and, and kind of spend a lot of energy. So I mean, those are really the things I'm most proud of are some of the relationships I've made and some of the mentorship and teaching opportunities I've done. If I'm, if I'm really being honest.

39:19 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. What's the biggest challenge? Where do you still struggle the most?

39:24 Alexine Mudawar: Oh man. I mean, I think imposter syndrome is a really easy answer that I'm sure a lot of people go with, but I'm, you know, and anytime companies ask you that question, like, what's your biggest challenge? I'm like, I'm my, my own worst enemy. Like, I really beat myself up. Like, if I lose a deal, I really like simmer on it sometimes for a little bit and try to figure out what I could have done So my biggest challenge is constantly myself, like just trying to be appeased with my own results. Like the irony is I've never actually hit my personal goal because even when I have my stretch goals and they're 15% above whatever my actual target is, then I'll scratch that off on my chart and then I add another $15K and then I add another $20K and then I add another $50K. And so I never actually reach a goal and that's kind of my, you know, You know, that's a double-edged sword of who I am. But I'm trying to work on that, finding, you know, happiness in my achievements and just being grateful for where I'm at versus trying to constantly work towards the next thing, which is always going to be a work in progress, I think.

40:23 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like, though, if you were to erase all of the strikethroughs, you've probably gotten to your goal that you set at the beginning of the year before you altered the hell out of it.

40:32 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, but it's even like, you know, with my goal, I break it down into monthly increments typically. So even when I hit like my, you know, say my goal is $50,000 for the month, It's like once I hit my $50,000 and I have a week left in the month, then I'll be like, okay, well my new goal is $60,000. And then even if I hit that with 3 days left in the month, then I'm like, well now my goal's $67,000. You know, like it's never, I just keep pushing the carrot a little bit further out and running towards it. But that's really, you know, that's my, you know, it's both a weakness and a strength. I think psychologically probably not more of a weakness there. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely a difficult mindset and something that I battle battle against, but it's weird because it's also helped me a lot. So it's definitely a challenge.

41:13 Scott Ingram: I get that, I get that. Sometimes those of us who are hypercompetitive with ourselves aren't so good at rewarding ourselves. That's an area where maybe Terryberry can help. Terryberry is all about building great performance-based cultures through recognition programs. Top-performing organizations all over the world have turned to Terryberry and their award-winning 360 recognition platform to reward contributions If that's the type of culture you're looking to build, check out Terryberry. top1.fm/terryberry will take you straight there. And now back to Alexine. So you mentioned imposter syndrome, and I don't know that I've ever talked about this on the show. We've, we've dissected a little bit on Daily Sales Tips. How does that show up for you?

42:01 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, I mean, so the interesting thing about imposter syndrome, everybody faces imposter syndrome to some degree, but for women, especially in sales, you know, typically we're on predominantly predominantly male teams. I'm usually one of one or one of two. I think at one point I was one of like 4, and that was a miracle. But, you know, typically we're kind of up against the fact that we are, you know, one of the only of something on a team. And so you kind of have this second-guessing of yourself and your self-worth, and you're constantly sort of feeling the weight of not only hitting your own goals, but it also feels like almost like your gender is kind of sitting on your shoulders too, and you have to do it for all of womankind, you know, be successful. So for me, I have, you know, I definitely face imposter syndrome in the sense that, you know, no matter what, you know, positive thing or result, I kind of will second-guess, or, you know, why did I get that result, or why did I close that deal, or am I worthy enough to get this? So it's those kind of questions that you ask yourself that are really difficult, and it's a hard… imposter syndrome is really hard to overcome. And someone described this to me, Jenny Poore, I think, from Sprout Social was the one, but she described it as negative self-talk is sort of the symptom and imposter syndrome is the disease that it can grow into if you let the, if you kind of let it grow. So I think of it that like, I really liked that analogy and I think that that's true. It's, it's kind of this negative self-talk that we give ourselves every day, you know, regardless if we're doing well. And the irony for me is my imposter syndrome will always strike when I'm most successful. So I'll start to second guess myself usually when something really, really good that happens, I'm like, oh man, well what if that was just like, like if I won an award, I'm like, well maybe there was just like, you know, an accident or maybe someone else wasn't performing as well as they could have. Like it's just this weird thing you do inside of your head. So the thing that's helping me with imposter syndrome is I have a lot of these communities now with women in sales through like 6 different groups I think I have going on right now. And we talk about imposter syndrome and we talk about it as a group and we talk about, you know, what are the strategies we're doing. And so someone actually recommended it, but creating like an affirmations folder. So I have a folder in my iPhone now of like really kind comments or successes, or even like if someone sends me… like if my CEO sends me an awesome Slack, like I'll sometimes screenshot that, and it's just a place for me to revisit when I'm in kind of a headspace that I want to get out of. So that's been really helpful.

44:22 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Something I started doing years ago… I don't go into this folder enough, but I do have… well, I guess it's technically a label. So in Gmail email, I have a label called Kudos. So when somebody sends me a great note, I just try and capture it. And in theory, what I'm supposed to do is go look at that once a year when I'm doing, you know, annual performance reviews and those kinds of things, or I'm having a bad day, I go look at that. But I just like putting stuff in there even though I never…

44:49 Alexine Mudawar: that's great. Yeah, like same thing. Yeah, it's a great strategy. And like I used to, when we had physical desks at the offices once upon a time, I used to print out even like… there was like a really nice email once that one of my clients wrote me, a page-long email just about what a great salesperson I was and how caring I was through the process. So I printed that out and kept it in front of me. I'm a very visual person, so like if I can physically have stuff around me that reminds me of these, that's really helpful too. So now that we're kind of moving more towards digital and, you know, everybody's remote, that's where doing it on my phone's been really helpful. But yeah, I love the ideas, just, you know, reminding yourself through the lens of someone else that you're still worthy and that you've done these good things. I, I think it's really That's right.

45:30 Scott Ingram: That's right. So, those of you who have emailed me and said, hey, this show is is really impacting me, you're in the kudos folder. So, Alexine, let's talk about your routines and and kind of the way that you're structuring your day. And I know you listen to the show, so I always like to ask, you know, what time does your alarm clock go off? And literally give us the blow by blow until your head hits the pillow again.

45:54 Alexine Mudawar: Oh man, this is going to be the worst answer. Like everybody else, like if you had Morgan Ingram on or someone, they're going to be like, I woke up at five a.m. and So I am not a morning person, and I have owned this since the beginning of time, but I am a night person. So I usually get up around 8. So I get the other people get up at like 5:00 AM, whatever. I get up around 8. I grab whatever the closest, like oatmeal, something that's easy to eat, and then that's it. I just kind of start my day. I actually gave up caffeine over a year ago, so that was, that has been a, you know, probably a healthy life change, but also somewhat unpleasant. So that's kind of how I start my day. And then I usually start with, and I've talked about this before, I start with the hardest part of my day or whatever the most monotonous is, and that's cold calling. So I'll do my cold calls at the beginning of the day. I'll try to do a block, you know, right when we get started. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do a team call block for 2 hours. So that blitz is really helpful just to get a big chunk of prospecting outta my week. And then I typically have a ton of meetings, like usually, you know, a variety too. It could be demos. Like typically I'll have like 2 to 3 demos sometimes. Like I had days last week where I had 5 demos in the day, so it gets like a little bit crazy. But then I also have, you know, proof of concept calls, I have discovery conversations, I have final pricing conversations, you know, legal reviews, whatever it is. But my day is pretty packed throughout. If I have any pockets of time, I try to save them for either other, you know, specific blitzes, like one for certain accounts that I'm focused on and I want to just work on those accounts for an hour, then I'll make like a blitz there and just put it in my calendar. Calendar. So I'm pretty religious about whatever's on my calendar is what I do that day, and, and I finish it. But then I am also more of a night worker, so like 5 to 7 PM I'm still usually cruising through emails or doing some different things or figuring out admin stuff. I have a weird amount of success with like 5 PM to 6 PM cold call blocks. I'll usually be able to get demos, but I know that some people don't like that time interval. And And then typically, you know, you know, I'll hang out, like, watch, you know, watch TV, listen to podcasts, do whatever. I'm really into interior design, so sometimes I'll work on my interior design projects and different things. And then a lot of times I end up doing like a weird, you know, this is some other administrative emails, like at weird times. And I always warn my clients about this. I'm like, you'll randomly get email answers at like midnight. And just, and I don't know, they seem to it. Like, they're always happy that I get back to them. But things that other people probably would just delay until the next morning, I just like doing, you know, some of those right, you know, near the end of the night. So a little bit different setup than someone who probably has like a really healthy morning and goes for a walk or wakes up at 4:00 AM, but it's what works for me.

48:38 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's the thing, it's, it's what works for you. I did another iteration of my productivity presentation for Sales Hacker as, as part of their Beyond Quota virtual SKO thing. And if anybody wants to watch that, if you go to top1.fm/bq4p, so Beyond Quota, and then it's… I call it my 4P productivity process. Somebody asked in the Q&A, they said, I'm a night person, how do I become morning person? My answer is you don't. You just figure out how to be a great night person. And if that means you make cold calls from 5 to 6 PM, and you do additional work beyond that, because that's when your energy is high, do that. Don't try and wake up at 5:00 AM. You're gonna hate your life.

49:24 Alexine Mudawar: Yes. I wish more people would talk about that. And you're right. Like for the longest time, especially the first like 3 to 4 years of my career, every sales leader was like, if you just got up at 7:00 AM and did X, Y, and Z. I was like, I can't, I physically can't. And we, at one point here, we did territories at one of my companies and we kind of restructured and then we set it up. So everybody kind of took obviously their own chunks. So I had Northeast at one point. And we had a required start time. It was either 7 or 7:30, and you had to be in that, like, physically in the office. And for women, you know, we have makeup, we have all this other stuff we have to do. So that was brutal. And I ended up going to the West Coast territory. It ended up just happening naturally, I think, at some stage. But that was brutal for like a couple months, like getting in at 7:30. I was, I was suffering. Yeah.

50:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So I mean, to your point, there are a lot of morning people, and I am one of them. I am like a ridiculous morning people. Sleeping in for me sometimes is like 5:30 in the morning.

50:21 Alexine Mudawar: Oh my gosh.

50:22 Scott Ingram: And, but again, if, if that's not you, don't do that. Don't worry about it. Right there. There isn't one way. And if you're not a morning person, you're not going to be successful in sales. Alexine is a perfect example. You can be a night owl and you can do great. But you, you said that you are doing a lot of kind of, you live by your calendar. When do you set that up? Like, are there times, is there a time during the week where you're kind of like, okay, this is when I want to put those additional strategic call blocks in and things like that? When, how do you set it up and when do does that happen?

50:51 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, I mean, ideally Fridays, like end of day Friday when I'm doing all my admin run and I go through all my opportunities and clean stuff up in Salesforce. Ideally I kind of block off time. The team blocks that we have are actually great because they're already set as a team as invites in our calendar. So those are awesome. I mean, they're just kind of part of my week and I schedule around them now. I try to do the same thing. Sometimes it bleeds into Monday where I'll kind of set up my blocks, and then sometimes what happens is like a meeting shifts around and then I scoop up whatever that 1 hour is and just throw a block on it. Again, like, some of this is just ad hoc the day of where a meeting moves or something changes around, and then I can just quickly sneak something onto the calendar. But as soon as it's on the calendar, then I finish it. And I also have kind of like a task list, like a required task list of the day, and it's usually like follow up with this client, like see how this proof of concept is going, you know, whatever the, you know, whatever the task is. And those are kind of my non-negotiables for the day too. So I do those as little increments too, where it's like maybe a 5 to 10 minute checkpoint. And I kind of sprinkle those throughout the day too, but I have a list of required ones that I have to get through every single day. And I won't like finish my day until I do those.

52:01 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. So when do you negotiate your non-negotiables with yourself and where does that list live?

52:06 Alexine Mudawar: So the, this is, this I do not recommend. So I'm fearful to share it, but I actually use the time from basically like 3:00 AM on my calendar up until like 7:30 AM, I will use that. And so I have a bunch of like little increments and time slots that have my sort of my day-to-day tasks. And then as I finish them, I push them to like, you know, back to the top of my calendar. So they're kind of out of, out of my way. So it's basically like a checklist. I'm just taking my, my, these tiny blocks and then moving them to, you know, another part of my calendar where I don't see them anymore.

52:39 Scott Ingram: And do you create them in the future? So if you're like, hey, next Wednesday I need to make sure that, that I follow up with, with Alexine. So that, that's how you're kind of keeping it as a storehouse.

52:49 Alexine Mudawar: That, and I'm also extremely diligent in Salesforce. So I am a Salesforce freak. I'm in there like updating my tasks nonstop. I am a little bit different than other reps in that I don't work out of automation flow like GrooveFlows or anything like that. I do manually manage all all of my tasks, which helps me because it keeps me very hands-on and I know exactly what's going on with my deals because I'm forced to kind of go in and make these updates all the time. But basically I marry those 2. So it's like I have my task list in Salesforce and then I mimic whatever those really important… so it's not every sale. Like for instance, I could have 50 tasks in a day in Salesforce, but maybe I only have 8 on my actual calendar because those are the most important, like get final approval from XYZ company or whatever those tasks that are mission critical, those ones are on my calendar. And then everything else lives in my Salesforce daily task list. And then I can prioritize those by like high, medium, or high or low basically, and flag them if there's something that's important in there. But typically there's a lot of parity between my Salesforce tasks that are labeled as high and stuff that's on my That's awesome.

54:00 Scott Ingram: I'm going to so in the show notes for this episode, and it should be episode 113. So if you go to top1.fm/113 or top1.fm/alexine-mudwar, we will have these for you. I'm gonna find a post. It was Sahil Mansuri, who's the CEO of Bravado. He put a post right before the Super Bowl, and he was talking about the difference between Brady and Mahomes. And he's like, you know, Brady is the guy who. Is just this super diligent, great sales guy. Like, he's just all over… the CRM is totally updated, he's working with the team, he's collaborating great. He's like just the ultimate team player. The sales leadership loves him, he executes consistently, he's great. He's like, Mahomes is that like really charismatic, gets away with all kinds of garbage, just fly by the seat of his pants. And he's like, yeah, like they perform, they kind of look great on paper, but man, they're a pain in the butt and they're not helpful to the broader organization. So Sounds like my point is you are the Tom Brady of sales, Alexine.

55:05 Alexine Mudawar: Yes. And I think my manager would agree with that very much so. But part of it is because it can't… like some people are like trying to kind of figure out like, why are you, why do you use tasks? Like, why is that so important to you? But I get that question a lot. And the reason is because if you didn't come from an environment where you would actually lose a deal or get a deal pulled from you or lose $10,000 or $20,000 in commission if you didn't log something properly in Salesforce, then you maybe couldn't know that how important it is. But for me now, it's so second nature because I have lost deals because of not, you know, at the very, very beginning of my career, not logging something properly and then watched that commission go to somebody else. And when it's, you know, a deal that's the size of, you know, basically a car, then you don't make that mistake again. So I think that's where, that's where I'm very diligent because I had to be. And even like sometimes, especially with newer reps, like sometimes I'll be paired with them or help with mentoring or coaching, and I try to explain this, and they're like, I don't really get it, you know, whatever. And I'm like, uh, well, I hope you don't have to learn the way that I did, but let me use my example in hopes that it motivates you somehow. And if it does, great. But, but yeah, that's really the reason that I am built that way, is because I didn't really have a choice before, and I never want to, you know, have a negative result because of it. And I'm forgetful too. Like, I think that's a very fair point. Like, we as salespeople… and this was the biggest mistake at the beginning my career is depending on our memory to kind of like go through. Like we think like, oh, we have this call and we're gonna remember all this stuff. But when you have like a week like last week where I've, you know, you have 5 demos back to back in a row, you know, even if you think that you're gonna remember something, if I don't have it in the notes in my task, like it's gonna be gone. So it's mostly for me too to remind myself. And I keep like, if you open one of my tasks right now, it would look like a graphic novel. I mean, it's every single, you'd see like 2/9, you know, spoke with XYZ, talked about the pricing proposal, everything looks good, figure out next step is to figure out their legal review. And then you'd see like when I left my voicemail, you know, on Monday, and then you'd see, you know, the last conversation we had. But I'm extremely diligent for that reason too, just so I don't have to remember things and so that I can easily reflect back and figure out what was going on with the deal. And that way, if, if someone calls me up on on the phone, I can just pull up my task and start talking from there and be like, yeah, yeah, on the last call, you know, you mentioned X, Y, and Z. And they're like, thanks so much for remembering that. Like, people appreciate that, just knowing where things left off.

57:27 Scott Ingram: For sure. And it's very clear. I mean, you are using this as a tool to serve you, right? You have those notes, you know what happened, you're, you're on top of it, and you're able to understand all of your numbers and all of your ratios. So when you build that business plan, it's okay, well, this is my data, these are what my conversion ratios are. Maybe, maybe there's some part of my that I'm not converting the way I should and I need to work on that.

57:48 Alexine Mudawar: Exactly. It's very easy to tell where your break is when you start to calculate these percentages. Because you see, for instance, like if your discovery to demo is really low, then you realize like, well, whatever I'm scheduling for discoveries maybe isn't as qualified. Maybe I need to qualify things before I even allow it to get to a discovery call. And then that percentage starts to change. Or if you see from demo to proposal, all of a sudden there's like a massive drop-off, then we're losing them at the demo stage and something isn't clicking and those deals are falling off. So it's very easy then to like pinpoint exactly where in your sales process you're running into an issue, and then you can start to kind of break it down and figure out what's going on and dig deeper. But that's part of it too, is like, I just… again, I'm a control freak, so I just want to see exactly what's going on with everything and have oversight into what's going on with these deals so that there's no question. And also, frankly, you know, when you have sales leaders leadership, you know, the more you document, the more you, you know, carefully kind of input all these notes and have deal stages and update your opportunities, the less they're on your back. And so it's so funny because it's salespeople are always complaining about how manager… like, my manager is always on my back. Or the Sales Bro did that video and it was like funny. It was like him talking to his manager and he's like, yeah, I updated my pipeline or whatever in Salesforce. And the guys… and he's like, no, I forgot to update that one deal. But that's exactly why. Like it helps also, it helps your manager kind of focus on what they're supposed to focus on. It helps you focus what you're supposed to focus on, and then it just keeps everything moving.

59:18 Scott Ingram: I was just going to say, this may very well become the most manager-recommended episode ever because there, you must be a sales leader's dream, right? I mean, they, all the answers are right there. I don't even need to talk to Alexine. I know her pipeline's going to be perfect. I know all of the activities are there. I can understand at glance, and you've built killer dashboards for them to show like, okay, here's, here's what I'm doing, here's, here's how I'm executing my, my plan. And it's one of those things like if you have… I think it was Matt Du Pont who said if you have a disciplined process and your leadership can see that, you don't get any of the questions or any of the pressure because they can see like, okay, they… you're accountable to yourself, I don't need to worry about you.

1:00:02 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, it's a blessing. So I'm a blessing and a curse. I'm always very transparent about this because I, on one side, I'm very There's never any question about what I'm working on. I've never once had a manager ask me to prospect more or check in on my prospecting or whatever. I mean, that's not been a conversation that's come up much. So I'm very, very much self-managing, and that's feedback that I get a lot. On the other side of that, I also have the entrepreneurial brain, so I will see things, problems or issues in the sales process, which sounds great, but I also will kind of like escalate those sometimes. I'm like, here's this thing, like, how How can we fix this? And like, can we think of a solution? So in some ways it's good 'cause I'm usually able to identify things that are actually issues. But then some managers don't like that either. Like they sometimes, like people wanna kind of stay status quo. So for some managers who like having a rep who is really organized, who is diligent and can come up with creative ideas, that's great. But I think that's part of the reason I focused on startups is that is where my niche is because they like that it's someone that can kind of self-manage and self-handle their book of business and help some of the other reps kind of figure out their stuff. And then they like that you can also be a resource to help them identify some of these problems. Whereas like a large company, they're gonna be like, all right, thanks for letting us know. You know, it's not gonna have as much impact. So it's, so for me, that's why I focus specifically on startups and smaller organizations.

1:01:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I'm curious about how do you manage your manager relationship? What is that dynamic?

1:01:31 Alexine Mudawar: Super transparent. Like I think what's really important, and this took me years to realize, I think as soon as you get a new manager, whether you change companies or internally, if you get a new manager, the very first conversation that I think you should have is like super like cards on the table. How do you like to communicate? Here's how I like to communicate. And it's like everything down to like, do you prefer Slack or text? Like, I used to have a manager that would text all the time and it was like giving me anxiety. I was like, stop texting me on Saturdays about deals. It's things like that, you know. How do you prefer to be… to communicate? And then talking about motivators, like how does, you know, for your manager, like what, what your role? You know, what are some of your goals? Like, learning about what they're actually trying to do is really important too. And as salespeople, we never do that. But then also, like, here are my motivators, because what I want to shake up really quickly, especially if it's a new manager, is I'm not motivated… money is not my number one motivator. Success is. And then money comes with success. So that's just a side effect of me being successful. So for me, and I've said this in every single interview I've been in, if you were to hold President's Club Award in front of me and a $10,000 check, I would take the President's Club Award every single time. Because I'm already going to get the $10,000 check, so I'm not even thinking about it. But I think that's where these kind of conversations are really important. I want them to understand what makes me tick, and I'm very honest. I'm like, you know, I'm going to be super organized in Salesforce, but I'm also going to like think of some ideas sometimes. And sometimes you might think they're interesting and want to escalate them, and sometimes, you know, you can just tell me like, this is too soon, or like, we're not ready for this idea, or, you know, thanks for bringing it to me, but no. So I try to just have like a very transparent communication with them. So part of this too, I think being a female in sales, and I think the most recent statistic that came up was that I think it's 74.8% of sellers are male, for instance, something around there. And so I think sometimes there's this perception being a woman on a sales team that maybe as a manager we would want our feedback to be softened, or, you know, maybe that you can't give us transparent feedback. And I'm very much the opposite. I like very, very direct, clear feedback. What I don't like is if I could have found out and changed something 2 weeks ago and then hearing about it at a one-on-one weeks later, that's what really bothers me. So with my managers, I always make sure, please give me very transparent feedback. I will let you know if you're ever too direct with me, but I have yet to have to do that. I just like to have very open format communication and I don't like like there to be ambiguity. So I try to just set that expectation from the jump. And I think most of them appreciate that. And then we're able to kind of create a nice level playing field. But I do think the one piece with managers that we leave out as salespeople is understanding our manager's goals or what they're measured on. We just assume that if we sell, that they're doing well. And there are other components, like they may be working towards their own titles internally, or they they maybe have some kind of financial incentive that isn't just our quotas. Like maybe there's something else like a net new logo number or something like that that we're not even aware of. So if we're able to understand, you know, what drives our managers, I think that can create a really healthy relationship too. And it creates just more of an amicable manager-managee relationship.

1:04:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great stuff. I'm really glad I asked. I want to come back to just kind of habits and routines. Are there other things that you do consistently that are really central to your success?

1:04:56 Alexine Mudawar: So, you know, one thing that I do that, that took me like a few years too, is I know when I need to take a break. And that took me a long time. Like I used to just kind of power through when I was having like a really bad day or something, or I'd try to keep calling. What I've learned now is when to stop, like when it's too much and I need to just stop. And I think it's because, you know, we've started to have more conversations openly about, you know, mental health in sales and things like that. So I think for me, understanding, like, obviously if I have one bad phone call or someone's kind of mean on a cold call, maybe then, you know, maybe then it was them and I caught them on a bad day. But if I have a couple in a row, I'm like, you know what, time to go for a walk, time to go have a snack, time to go somewhere else and do something else. So I think, you know, for me, understanding myself and my moods and my, you know, what makes me tick and, and what makes me successful, I think has been really helpful, just doing kind of like some introspection over the years. I think the other thing that helps me, you know, be successful is gaining energy from the places that really get me excited. And that's where that mentorship, some of these women's groups, and the teaching outside of work, that energizes me. So that, for some people, that might be like an energy drain, but for me, I leave after teaching like a course on prospecting super energized, and I just feel a So I try to get replenished in these areas outside of work that are still related to what I do, but bring me joy. So I think that's helped me a lot too, to just kind of frame what success means. And it isn't necessarily just about my current role, it's also about the broader sales community as a whole. And then outside of that, I think just these day-to-day habits and blocks, things like that, obviously that we talked about, all of those are super important just to create some of these habits and make certain things religious. So for me, like, making the prospecting a non-negotiable, just putting stuff on my calendar and sticking to it, those are all areas that have really helped me, but I had to get really serious about. And then obviously all the other areas we talked about, like the Salesforce upkeep and the administrative duties that come along with this role, like really keeping that clean has been a godsend the last couple years, 'cause I did kind of try to go, initially when I started in sales, I wasn't as organized, and so that really made… it just created extra work that I didn't need to be focused on.

1:07:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You've mentioned a couple of times kind of the, the motivator being success. Talk about that a little bit more, and, and maybe it's in the way that you frame it to a manager. Like, when you're talking to a new manager and you're like, okay, here's, here's how you push my buttons, like, what does that sound like? What are you telling them?

1:07:30 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, so I mean, usually what I'll tell them is, you know, success for me isn't what it's going to be for other people on your team. I'm wired differently And I wanna make sure that's really transparent from the jump. So for me, success means that I'm hitting my personal goals and those personal goals probably don't even align with my OT. I have these stretch goals. At this point, I'll probably have shared my business plan as well, but I have these stretch goals that I'm working towards. I want you to be aware of them, but this is really what I'm pacing towards. I let them know I'm competing with myself. I've always been my greatest challenger, my greatest competitor. Competitor. And in some ways that's going to be great, and in other ways, you know, you may need to kind of like pull me back in and help me see kind of bigger picture. Like, hey, you're going too hard on yourself, or you're not giving yourself a break here. So I would love if you kind of jumped in at those places. And then success also means, you know, for me being, you know, a good team player, a good someone that contributes to the company, not just financially but also, you know, culturally, and helps, you know, for instance, I've founded 2 women's ERGs employee resource groups. So that was something that's been really important to me is to help, you know, not only shape our organization from a financial standpoint, but also help us grow and get better as a whole and mentor some of these younger reps or folks that are just getting their start or these SDRs and BDRs. You know, all of that for me plays into success. It's not just about me hitting my number and hitting my financial goal. I also wanna help other people hit their goals and then I derive satisfaction from that too, knowing that I had even played just the smallest part in someone doing something great, or maybe one of those SDRs gets promoted to an AE, and that's really exciting too. So I think there's a bunch of different areas, but I try to just be really transparent with those too, that, hey, just so you know, money is not going to be my only motivator, and I want us to have an open and honest dialogue about that, and for you to know that so you know what drives and what motivates me too.

1:09:26 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. I wonder if, has that ever hurt you in, in any way being this transparent and this open with your managers? Because I think a lot of people think, you know, I should hold this back. You know, it's kind of like almost a sandbagging mentality, right? Like, I don't necessarily want to share everything, whereas you're just laying it all on the table. Has there ever been any downside to that approach that you take?

1:09:49 Alexine Mudawar: Really good question. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Like, I've had managers who like, you know, first of all, I've really never had female leadership throughout my career. So usually I'll have, you know, managers who are like, you know, the guys on my team only care about money and I want, you know, just people who are just caring about money and that's what I want for my team. So sometimes it's an indication like this is maybe not the right organization for me, or this is not the right leader for me. And that's a signal to me that either I need to stay and figure out a different pathway internally, or it's time to, you know, as Gabrielle Blackwell says, vote with my feet and get out of that company. And I've done that before too. So I think, you know, has it come back to hurt me? No, because it either helped me push me, you know, somewhere else internally at the company, or it allowed me a pathway to get out of the company if it was something that I wasn't going to… if it was something that the leadership didn't like.

1:10:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's, that's great. I love that. What about your information diet? What are you reading, listening to, watching? When, when does that happen?

1:10:48 Alexine Mudawar: I'm big on I mean, it happens at random times, to answer the latter part of your question. It's just kind of when I can do something. For me, I like getting information from a variety of places. I'm like a very visual and audio kind of person. I'm not so much like, it's hard for me to like kind of sit through and read a book, but I will, like I have, you know, I'm sure every sales book under the sun. So I typically won't like read through it page for page, but I will look for like key themes and kind of skim it for lack of a better word, which I know is probably frown upon. I like podcasts. Like, I think there's some really good, you know, podcasts that are out there that I'll listen to. Like, if, like, Morgan has something going on, I'll listen to his. Or, you know, you have some great episodes. Like, there's just all these places where I can just kind of pick up and either just, like, listen in or watch, like, a recorded webinar. And then honestly, a lot of what I learn is live. I think that's a little bit different too. Like, I do a ton of speaking events, and, and Gabrielle Blackwell and I actually just launched this Clubhouse that's weekly where we meet for 2 hours every single week and it's focused on women in sales, but we have actually a lot of male leaders that are starting to attend as well. So I learn a lot in person and I'm kind of note-taking on the side or just sometimes I'm just actively listening and just trying to be really present in the conversation. But I learn a lot from people that way, just being part of these conversations, whether it be live, live, like in video or like through Clubhouse where I'm just kind of listening to, to some of the information and taking in that way. But that's really where I feel like I do most of my learning is actually through that forum.

1:12:18 Scott Ingram: And when is your Clubhouse if folks want to join you?

1:12:20 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, so it's 2:00 PM Central Time on Saturdays and it is the Women in Sales Club, which we are just inching towards 1,000 followers, which is crazy because we launched it like 2 weeks ago. So we're, I don't even totally know how to use Clubhouse yet, but that's been, you know, really cool to see. And, and I actually really like that we have a lot of male attendees as well. Well, because the purpose was never to just have this isolated conversation with women in the community, because we all kind of know what issues we all are facing, and it's interesting to talk about them and discuss different strategies, but it's great to see so many male leaders also stepping up and being part of the conversation too, and learning from some of our stories. And I've been getting a lot of messages behind the scenes, which has been really incredible. So that's really my favorite way to learn and obtain new information is through directly talking to people. And then sometimes too, like there are people, like I have my own mentors, you know, Amy Volas being one of them, you know, Scott Leese. I don't, I don't even think we have like a mentorship relationship established, but I do consider like, you know, his curriculum through Patreon to be something that is really resourceful. So I do have some Patreon communities too. Kevin Dorsey's as well that I follow. So those are all really good places for me to also get information. But similarly, it's all pretty much in real time. So I'm just kind of learning on the go. And maybe we have every week or every 2 weeks we'll have meetings, but it's all live.

1:13:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean, it's something that I'm really kind of trying to drive more of, right? Sure, you can learn asynchronously and you can listen to podcasts, but it is so much more powerful when you can engage and converse and, and really be present with a larger community and, and hear how other people are responding and their questions. You're like, oh man, I never would have thought to ask that, or, you know, I haven't had to face that situation or talking about your Clubhouse. I love that you're having more male sales leaders show up into that, right? Because gosh, you want to have more women on your team. Well, there's, there's a great resource and understand, you know, what those frustrations and what those challenges are because it's oftentimes eye-opening. It's like, oh my gosh. I mean, because obviously that's not my experience, but hearing it, that's half the battle, right? Just like understanding like, oh my gosh, who would have thought that you'd have to face those kinds of situations.

1:14:36 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, I'm like a very intellectually curious person. Like if I'm anywhere by myself, I'm like asking questions or I'm talking. Like it's been a running joke and my mom's the exact same way, but anywhere we go, if we're like in an Uber, we're talking to the driver. If we're, you know, hotel, we're talking to the person at the front desk. Like we're the, we're kind of the same way in that sense. But I learn a lot from questions and from talking to people. So that's why I think that's the most comfortable medium for me to kind of learn and intake information. Information. And I learn a lot from other people's questions too, because it helps me understand kind of how their brain ticks. And, you know, we're both hearing the same piece of information and then they generate a certain question. I'm like, wow, you know, I hadn't thought of this through that lens. So, so I think that's just the way that I sort of intake information and what's been really, you know, a good way for me to start to understand other people and their psyche.

1:15:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So besides Salesforce and your calendar, what are the tools and apps you can't live without?

1:15:29 Alexine Mudawar: Oh gosh, I'm the worst for this too. So I will tell you this, on my iPhone I have 2 pages total of apps, that's it. And one of them is like my homepage. So I don't use a ton of apps, but I do… the apps I do use, I love listening to podcasts because I can kind of zone out a little bit and still feel… it's like kind of like watching TV but you can zone out. So that Clubhouse lately has become a staple. Instagram I use a lot too, just because I kind of like… I like to flutter through all the random things that pop up. So not really like the necessarily productive hacks, but like Patreon, obviously that app is really helpful where I can look for different communities and whether it be sales focused or I have one that's supporting like an animal rescue. So I learn about stuff through there that isn't related to sales whatsoever. So those are kind of my main apps. And then I'm, again, not related to productivity necessarily, but I'm a big supporter of like small businesses are always fascinating to me. So I'm on Etsy probably more than most apps actually, interestingly enough. So I love finding like new creators and seeing what people are working on and just poking around on there. So usually when I'm bored, I'm actually combing Etsy more than Instagram, interestingly enough.

1:16:36 Scott Ingram: Very cool. Now, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:16:41 Alexine Mudawar: I do not. So this is one of those questions that has come back to bite me in an interview because I interviewed somewhere where they were 100% Sandler shop. And I was like, I don't subscribe to one methodology. And that very much mimics my personality. I'm not someone that lives in absolutes. So I think for me, I love pulling pieces of different methodologies. I believe in certain aspects of all these different philosophies, and then I kind of mush it all together and then create my Alexine philosophy from that. And a lot of it too is not even necessarily these methodologies we've been taught over the years. Some of it's just stuff I'm picking up, like Morgan Ingram. I'm learning about video through him, or, you know, I'm learning from other people, like certain strategies and different things, but some of it I'm just learning on the go. So it isn't even stuff that's listed out in a book or through, you know, some very specific training course. But very much my mindset is taking pieces of everything and people that I've met along the way, and then compiling that all together to create a methodology that works for me. And then marrying that with the methodology that I already have in place for myself. And then that kind of makes my holistic view of what sales is.

1:17:49 Scott Ingram: And are there kind of guiding philosophies or like really, really core parts of the amalgamated Alexine process?

1:17:57 Alexine Mudawar: I think for me, like the areas that I really focus on are like tactical. Like that's where I really like the kind of some of the higher level stuff is, is interesting. And I do like, you know, philosophies that are focused on like casting a wide net and looking at, you know, deals from multiple angles and finding different points of contact. Like those Those kinds of things are interesting for me. I'm very tactically driven. So that's what attracts me is when I see things that are focused on like, this is a tactical way that you could approach video prospecting, or this is a tactical way that you can set up some kind of process for cold calling or mapping out organizations, or here is something you can do within LinkedIn to source XYZ. That's what's really interesting to me. So there isn't like, and I know that's a crazy answer, I don't have a great answer for that question. It's just a combination of all of these different things I've learned along the way with the core principles being prospecting heavy and a relentless attitude towards wanting to be successful. And so that doesn't necessarily mean I'm following sales leaders. That could be other folks that aren't even in sales that just seem to be people that have had successful careers. And then I think the newer piece to my methodology that's coming about is more of this mindset piece. And applications that are focused on more of the mindset around being successful and things that can help me get towards that. That's what I'm really focused on right now.

1:19:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah, this isn't a different answer at all. In fact, it is by far and away the most common answer. I think of it as just being a student of sales, being a student of the craft, and you have to learn about a lot of different things. You have to try a lot of different things, and over time you kind of find your own way. It doesn't fit in… you don't have to go get in somebody else's box. You mentioned that you've really started to focus on the mindset piece. What is that? How are you thinking about that? I guess by definition, that is the definition, right? So what, what is the mindset? How are you working on that? What tools are you using? I'll just set you loose on that one.

1:19:53 Alexine Mudawar: I'm trying to think. That is my number one objective with mindset. But no, I think like part of mindset is thinking more in the lens of having this abundance, this growth mindset. Mindset, looking at materials that are focused on that, and looking for resources and mentors that are aligned with that kind of philosophy. So I think that's one piece of it. I think some of it is introspective and kind of studying yourself and your behaviors and what makes you tick, and understanding what has made you successful in the past and where your downfalls have been. So I think that's another component of mindset. And then I think another, I think for me it's 3 parts, and then the other part is shared mindset with like-minded groups. So like people that I'm connecting with outside of work and sharing our strategies and sharing, you know, our struggles and doing different things. I think that kind of helps me get more clarity around what I'm doing and my purpose and, you know, what I'm focusing on from the lens of someone else as well. So I think those are kind of the areas that feed into mindset for me, but it's definitely been something that I didn't focus on as much in the past and now it's kind of… I don't know what it is. It just feels like in the last couple years it's been a topic that's come up more often. So I've started to kind of want to dissect it further and understand what makes me tick and what, you know, what's going to help me become my best self.

1:21:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm with you on that, right? I think as the mental health conversation has emerged, and for me, just a lot of these conversations, right, like mindset is such a core, core component, but I don't know that it's one of those things that many of us have really thought a lot about in terms of the way that we think, right? And I think a lot of ways, like, it just is what it is, but really being more intentional about it and being thoughtful about the way that you're thinking and considering that is fascinating. I mean, it's something I've been working on and trying to dig into a little bit in ways that I really haven't at any other point in my career.

1:21:46 Alexine Mudawar: And I think part of it too is because, and this is probably similar for you. It's like, this is really one of the first times we're starting to get kind of a view of what other people are doing and what, what their strategies are through LinkedIn. So people are posting out their personal experiences and they're posting out, you know, strategies for mindset, all these different things. But it's the first time this last couple years where we're really getting a microscope into other people's lives. So I think LinkedIn is part of the reason that we're all kind of having, you know, if we are having more of this introspective, you know, mindset focus because we're learning about other people's mindset at a 50,000-foot glance. So, you know, I can see someone's post and I can see what they're talking about, what they're focusing on this week, and then that makes me think about what I'm focusing on this week, and then I share that with someone else who's then going to think about what they're focusing on. But it's creating this ability for us to kind of see inside other people's minds and in turn do an audit of our own. So it's been really interesting, but I think LinkedIn is a big factor in this too.

1:22:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and, and you're playing the LinkedIn game really well. Congrats on your top 100 showing on the LinkedIn Sales Stars list.

1:22:48 Alexine Mudawar: Oh yes, thank you. That was 4th. So 4th time's the charm. And yeah, that's an incredible, I mean, I don't know if people realize like the amount of work that goes into you actually compiling that list is insane. Like I was, I actually thought of you after you published that last one. I was like, I mean, how many hours must this take to compile all of these statistics? So incredible work from you. I did see, I, I thought at the end of your post you might've knocked yourself off. Your own list, but, you know, very selfless work that you are doing.

1:23:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, somebody, somebody said, I can't remember who, who said they nearly spit out their coffee because at one point I made a comment that, you know, this is legit when I didn't make my own freaking list.

1:23:24 Alexine Mudawar: Exactly. No, it is. And it's really interesting because you kind of are reshaping like how people are thinking. Like, it would be very easy to just look at likes, for instance, and then kind of base it off that. But what I've noticed is some of my favorite posts are ones where maybe I have like 50 likes, but then I have like 150 comments and we're just in it in the comments section and talking about all this different stuff. Those are actually my favorite posts. So it's so interesting because I just love the dialogue that actually happens in the comments section on LinkedIn. It's just fascinating to actually get, you know, get to know people that way. And it's really cool too, 'cause we're in just a different place right now. We're all remote and everybody's kind of, you know, on some level a little bit bored. Like we've all been locked in our houses for long enough at this point. So we're sort of trying to get to know people like we normally would at a networking event. LinkedIn is sort of the forum that's allowing us to do that. So there are people that I've met through LinkedIn now where, you know, I'm slowly becoming real-life friends with them because we've started to comment on each other's stuff and then it branches out from there and then we overlap in enough communities and then finally we, you know, at some point end up doing some webinars or FaceTime, whatever it is, and then they've become, you know, real-life friends. So it's been really cool to watch that too.

1:24:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and I think part of what's driving that kind of the formula that works on LinkedIn is just being insanely open and authentic and just, you know, sharing the good, bad, and the ugly, right? And just being the most raw version of yourself resonates, right? Because I think before, or not before, maybe on other platforms like the Facebooks and the Instagrams, it's so polished, right? Like, oh, we've got to have filters on and it's this, you know, just like, this isn't reality. And I think what has has really worked on LinkedIn is sharing that true kind of professional reality and just talking about like, here's the struggles, here's the thing I just totally stepped in and here's why that stunk and why I'm not going to do that again. And, you know, it's those, it's those kinds of things where, you know, I actually learned something from this experience and it's not just, oh, you know, theoretically this is the perfect right thing you should do. And let me speak in platitudes that, you know, that's, everybody's like, yeah, that's not interesting.

1:25:39 Alexine Mudawar: Exactly. It's like this real content we're learning from people about their, yeah, like you said, like we're learning about challenges, we're learning about successes, we're learning about it through a different lens. It's not like, you know, people aren't really posting like, hey, I won President's Club and I wanted to let my LinkedIn network know. It's like, all right, you know, awesome. That is awesome. But it's like, you know, but they're like, you know, if someone was to do a post like, you know, I won President's Club. Here's what that looked like behind the scenes, and here are the steps that I took to get there. Like, that's a post I want to read. And so I think people, you know, it's just such an interesting trend watching how LinkedIn has kind of morphed over the last few years. It's just been fascinating to watch and what people interact with. Because for me, I always know that I want to do a post when something's kind of itching at me and it's just like a topic that I'm thinking about. And some of the posts that have done really well have been shocking, where I'm like, that was just a random thought that I had and it just blew up and got several hundred likes. And then some things I spent a lot of time on and I think so carefully about and then it doesn't perform well and you're like, man, you know? So it's just, it's hit or miss. But I think, and I also think there's an algorithm that not one of us understands how it is set up or built, but it is interesting to watch some of these trends emerge and see what content resonates with who. And it's going to be interesting to watch too as we start to see some of these new players enter the space like Clubhouse Outreach and some of these other applications because we're seeing shifts in the way that people like to intake information and what they're sharing and reacting to and what's resonating with them. It's just kind of interesting to watch how it's all morphing over time.

1:27:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, it is. But it's at some level, I mean, it has been a tool for me to discover people. I was… if you go to top1.fm/2x, the number 2, the letter X, I I believe this was 4 years ago. 4 years ago, Kyle Gutzler wrote an article on LinkedIn about how he doubled his sales in 1 year. And it wasn't, hey, I'm this great hero, here's all that I did.

1:27:39 Alexine Mudawar: It…

1:27:39 Scott Ingram: what made it so compelling and so popular and, and get such great viral lift is because he really dug in and, and did the introspection around, okay, how did I actually do this, right? What, what did I do? What, what were the things, right? And then we, we brought him on the show and he spoke at the summit and I never would have found Kyle otherwise, right? It was because of that, because he, you know, took the time to, to share that kind of stuff. So anyway, it's, it's, I love the platform. I'm a conscientious Facebook objector, so I don't know what happens on Facebook. I haven't known in, in years and, you know, Twitter and Instagram and, and all the rest just don't hold my attention or, or interest or, or anything else. So it, it really, that is my my platform. Fortunately, this seems to be where, where my people are, so it seems to, to work well for me. But man, I'm having a ton of fun just learning from folks on, on LinkedIn and what they're doing. And you're, you're setting a great example there yourself.

1:28:32 Alexine Mudawar: Thank you. Yeah, great. I do, I love LinkedIn. I hope that it stays for a long time because I do really enjoy just learning about other people through that format and just getting to talk to people. And now, you know, slowly getting to meet some of these people in person too. I mean, Amy and I got connected 4 years ago, I think, because one of my old colleagues suggested introducing us and she thought we might get along. And then we just met over December. I mean, it was, you know, what, 2 months ago? And that was the first time in 4 years. But it's just so cool to kind of be able to make those connections in person. And like Gabrielle and I are running this sales group together and we just met for the first time this past weekend and we did our, you know, our session from, you know, from my place here. But it's just so cool to actually connect those 2 real-life, you know, relationships too and be able to meet some of these people and take it offline as well. So yeah, I mean, it's…

1:29:23 Scott Ingram: that's why I'm such a huge believer in live events. And they will come back and we will get together again. And my God, if, if we can't get together here in Austin in October for the Sales Success Summit, I'm going to lose my mind. But it's going to happen. I'm very, very confident. So, Alexine, this is the soapbox section. I wonder if there's something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy.

1:29:49 Alexine Mudawar: I'm sure there's tons of things. I think the main belief that I hold, which we've talked about, so I hate to, to reiterate it, is that you can be a successful full-cycle account executive. It is possible, and you can do it all. You can prospect and you can close business, and I very much believe that this is really the future that we're headed towards. Because as I was interviewing last year, this was a really big trend that was starting to emerge, where in the past, you know, a lot of companies would tout the fact that they have a lot of inbound leads or what, you know, da da da, and come work for us because we'll give you as many inbound leads as you want. This last interview cycle, every single company was asking about my prospecting capabilities. What are my favorite ways to prospect? What are my success rates typically? And so we were having conversations conversations very hyper-focused on prospecting and hunting, and those were conversations I haven't seen in a few years. So I very much believe that the full cycle sales rep is the future of sales, and I think that we're going to see a re-emergence of this too, where AEs are being asked to own more of their pipeline and actually source for themselves.

1:30:55 Scott Ingram: I totally agree with that. I think the pendulum is starting to swing back, and we saw it go to this kind of extreme compartmentalization of sales. And you called out all the acronyms earlier, right? It's like, well, you got the SDR and then it goes to the AE and then there's a sales engineer and then you got customer success and then you got an account manager and on and on it goes. I think there's a lot of value in having the full cycle relationship, the full cycle experience where there aren't all of these handoffs and all of these disparate relationships, you know, because if you think about it from a customer experience perspective, it just, it just makes sense. Like, okay, well, Alexine called me, we had this great conversation, she asked me some good questions, and then she's walking me through the demo and she remembers the stuff that, that I told her because she documented it all in Salesforce.

1:31:47 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah.

1:31:47 Scott Ingram: And it's just, it's seamless, right? And, and I think we've also overlooked the opportunity to generate referrals and, and have people introduce us. So we don't have to only make cold calls. We don't… this doesn't have to be super hard all the time.

1:32:03 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah. We made a sales process around ourselves and our goals as salespeople, and we didn't take into account what our prospects really want and need. And so I think we're seeing now, you know, we're kind of reacting to our buyers who are telling us, you know, you guys are… they kind of, you know, I see it this way. It's like a tennis match. Like we, we did the long sales cycle, we added multiple people into these steps, and then what did the buyers do? They added multiple people into their buying process. So they, they retorted us, and now we're, we're coming up against that. So I think that it's funny because I feel like we're always playing this like, you know, tennis, chess, whatever it is, match back and forth. But we are kind of, I think in some ways, I think just business in general has changed. But I do feel like there, we created a process around what works for us, and we didn't really take into account what our what our buyers want. And I think that there is something to be said about taking a buyer, you know, most of my larger deals have come from things that I've sourced, and I don't think that's an accident. I think that there is a fact to the matter that I started the conversation with them, I built rapport throughout the process, and then I'm able to get higher deal values out of that because I think I understand the organization better. And of course, I can do discovery on deals that have been set up for me, but there's just a different level of rapport when you start the deal off yourself. You know, I've tracked this for myself and my deals that I have self-sourced seem to perform, you know, the highest and to have, you know, higher close rates, but also have higher contract values attached to them. So it's going to be interesting to watch, but I do not see the full-cycle sales rep going anywhere. If anything, I think it's gonna, you know, rear its head in the next couple years here because companies are definitely looking for folks that Prospect, and the excuse of like I'm an AE and I I don't have time anymore. Like unless you have eight demos back to back for your entire day, like we just can't use the excuse anymore. It's not valid.

1:33:58 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Now what about the flip side? Is there something that the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

1:34:04 Alexine Mudawar: Yes, cold calling is dead. If I see every time I see a post on LinkedIn about like cold calling's dead, like stop you know stop. Stop calling, I feel like I lose a year off my life. I'm like, oh, I always like go to respond and then I'm like, I don't even have time. Like, I don't even want to indulge this because I so deeply don't believe in it. Like, the reality is I have scheduled for our sales team more demos than anyone else right now, and I'm leading the pack. And my goal is to schedule one demo per day. And on Monday, for instance, everybody tells you you don't cold call between 8 to 10 AM because everybody has meetings. My very first cold call I did at, I think, like 8:45 AM. I scheduled a demo and then we ran the demo, you know, right away. So it's, it's just interesting. I think we have this perception. I think we hear certain things like through LinkedIn or through the grapevine, and then we think that that's the Bible, that that's truth, and it's, it's not. And so every time we kind of move in that direction and we're like, cold Cold calling's dead, and then everybody kind of stops cold calling for a little while. That's when I'm like hitting the phones because I'm like, well, all of you are over here doing your emails, even though we know emails are up 40% or whatever right now and nobody is responding. I'm going to be cold calling over here and scheduling my meetings and then reading the posts on LinkedIn about cold calling being dead. So that's the one that always gets me and it always cracks me up because then people will also try to like rationalize to me sometimes why cold cold calling is dead while the bulk of my meetings that are scheduled are scheduled via cold call. So it's like very, like you can't really dissuade me as far as that because I'm doing it on a daily basis. So it's just such an interesting conversation that comes up every single year and everybody fights over it. And I think, you know, at its core, the reality is nobody is saying just cold call and never do anything else again. And this is where it always like, you know, always comes backs of this where people are like, I would do email if I had a choice. And I'm one of those people that say I'd do calls if I had a choice. But the reality is none of us are living in absolutes. Like, we're not all just cold calling, we're not all just cold emailing, we're not all social selling. We're doing a blend of all of it, and that's what's creating the results. So there is no success for me without email, and there's no success for me without social. So that's where I think it boils down to. Like, we all realize that we're doing all of these things most, you know, when we are successful, but we just, you know, get into this mindset where we think that one channel isn't working.

1:36:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. It sounds like you need to start some giant conspiracy about how cold calling doesn't work just so you can free up the lines so you can increase your conversion rates.

1:36:40 Alexine Mudawar: I love it. There was like a year and I don't remember, it was like maybe like 2 years, 2 or 3 years ago where all you saw on LinkedIn was about cold calling was dead. And I was just like, you know, booking meetings, like printing paper, because there was… nobody was cold calling because we all were under this, you know, perception that it was, it was dead because we were reading it everywhere. So I think like some of that is toned down and it hasn't been as, you know, vocalized, but I still see those posts every once in a while. So it's always funny because it's just this never-ending debate in sales and everybody's just been talking about it for years and it's, it's so polarizing. So I don't know, I just think it's funny at the end of the day.

1:37:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What is your cold calling process? So how are you setting up a coblets? How are you deciding who you're going to call? What research are you doing? I mean, let's get into just a little bit of the weeds on that.

1:37:28 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, and I'll walk you through this. I call it the triple touch, or everybody made up like different names for it, so I don't even know what the name is known as now. So I'll go through that. But as far as researching, and this is not going to be a popular opinion, I don't do a ton of research before I call people. What I do is actually keep their LinkedIn pulled up and then actually have it in front of me when I'm starting to have a So a lot of times what happens is people don't actually answer when you're calling them most of the time in the first ring. So I like to keep that pulled up. I like to have some background on their company. So I'll usually have 2 tabs open, the LinkedIn for the individual and then the LinkedIn for their company. And then if there's like any current news or stuff that pops up, that kind of helps, you know, helps me with my conversation too. But that's really most of what I have in front of me. As far as prioritization of like who I'm reaching out to, out to you. That's where my task management system comes in handy. So I have my high priority tasks. So obviously I'm going to hit all of those first. The other ones that I'll prioritize are if there's any kind of like marketing, any kind of like buyer intent, like such as people looking at purchasing information from the website or someone like, you know, looked at a lot of content and they have a high Pardot score or a high Marketo score. Those are ones that I would prioritize. So I actually have titles on all of my my tasks that help me indicate their priority level. So for certain tasks, they'll say SQL or MQL, or it'll say downloaded XYZ content, or it's basically helping me determine which ones I want to call first. And then I make sure to call through all of those because I want to make sure I hit the ones that are kind of higher priority. And then I have other accounts that are like a top-tier account. So like a VIP account. So I'll, you know, sometimes have those that I focus on and do a focus blitz just on those accounts. And then the other thing that I do is I will normally, especially because some of my accounts are like Fortune 500, you know, very large organizations, a lot of times if you go into an account on Salesforce, I'll have multiple tasks open because I have multiple people I'm reaching out to. Like, I'm not just going to reach out to like their CIO, for And then hope for the best. But I will usually have, you know, sometimes 5 points of contact and I have different tasks set up on each one of them. And those tasks could be different depending on if maybe they had some marketing activity or if I saw something on their LinkedIn that stuck out to me where I thought that was interesting. Maybe they listed out one of our competitors that they use in their LinkedIn profile that they're like proficient in XYZ tools. So then I can use that on my outreach. So I have just different little indicators within my task management system that tell me which tasks to prioritize and who to call first. And then the triple touch technique is what I've been doing for many years now. And this is usually when I teach sales classes, this is, you know, really watered down version of what I teach, but it's essentially when you are, my process goes like this. I'll pick up the phone to call. I'll have someone's LinkedIn profile pulled up. I have it set so that they can see that I'm viewing their LinkedIn profile. I want them to see that I clicked on them. And then most of the time they're not going to answer while I'm on the call. So I'm going to leave them a voicemail referencing an email that I'm then going to send. And then what that does is within this 2-minute span, they're going to see my face, hear my voice, and then read my writing. And part of this too that I've talked about before is, you know, they, I think it create, it pre-creates a sense of rapport because you're actually following through with something you said you were gonna do, but it also instills, you know, a small amount of urgency too, because they're like, who is Alexine and why did she both email me and leave me a voicemail? And sometimes they wanna reach out to you because they want you to not follow up. 'Cause that's like a pretty aggressive, you know, all-in-one touch. So it seems to get responses faster. And like I said earlier, I'm very impatient. So I like to get to my yes or no as fast as possible. But that's where that triple touch helps me out a lot is it allows me to get multiple touchpoints all at once and typically get answers faster too.

1:41:26 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Love it. What advice would you give to somebody that is just starting out in their sales career? And it sounds like you're already doing a lot of this mentoring. You're probably having a lot of these conversations. So what are you telling folks?

1:41:38 Alexine Mudawar: So there's a couple of things I'm telling folks. I mean, one of the biggest things is I work with a lot of folks that are, you know, 1 to 3 years out of school or maybe had a non-traditional traditional educational background or maybe have like a weird work history, you know, whatever they perceive it to be a weird work history. What I tell people is to own your story up to this point. I think that's a really important piece is there are ties to sales from all over the place. And usually in interviews, the stories that resonate with sales leaders that I've interviewed with have absolutely nothing to do with the actual roles that I've had in tech sales. They love hearing about stuff from my childhood. Like when I talk about where I used to go door to door and sell homemade potpourri. And then my dad would have to like walk me back around the neighborhood to return all the money because I made too much money too fast. Like, or when I used to do, you know, sales at my mom's restaurant as a little kid, and she would give me a box of jams to sell through in exchange for a Beanie Baby. Like, that was my first commission plan was the Beanie Babies. So those are the stories that like really resonate with people and like really are interesting. So one of the first things I tell people is just like own, own your your story, own what you've done up to this point, and really understand what skills you've learned from some of those experiences. One of the students, he worked at a luxury high-rise downtown, and so he's like, nobody wants to hear about that. I'm like, your customer support skills would be through the roof. That is something I would absolutely talk about on an interview, and some of maybe the difficult conversations and how you defuse those. All of those things are important to your story. So I think as you're kind of approaching interviews, especially if you're this year 1 to 3, you know, going into sales, I think, you know, own your story, really study what you've done up to this point and figure out how to make a story out of your life so far. And then I think once you actually get, you know, your first sales role, there's no silver bullet. I think everybody's always like, let me go sit with the top salesperson and then I'll just, you know, and I think it's important to understand like what they did. But sometimes like the number one salesperson did have a great process that led them to that point. Sometimes that person started 8 years ago and has had every account kept under them for many years. So maybe they aren't the best reference point. Maybe the second person down is actually like prospecting and building book. So I don't know what it is, but sometimes, you know, just, you definitely sit with people throughout the organization. Don't just go to the very top person, talk to the top 1 to 3 3 people, learn about their process, and then pull from that what makes sense for you. Like, you don't have to follow exactly what they did word for word. And I think that's the biggest mistake people make is, is try to just completely replicate someone's process A to Z, where you need to kind of blend in what works for you and what you're going to be successful with. So I think that, and then also documenting your journey, I think it's really important, whether it be via LinkedIn accomplishments It's such a simple thing to do, but I have this all the time where people will tell me, now I'm interviewing for a new sales role and I didn't really document anything. I don't even know what my numbers were. There's just stuff like that where it's kind of scary. So I think just document your journey, not only for the sake of accomplishments and awards and things like that, but also to kind of understand where you started and what's worked and what's been successful. And that's part of the reason I do that sales plan is to kind of document my my journey and look year over year to see what I've changed and what some of the areas I was working on and keep myself true to those. But I think those are some of the main things I would tell new salespeople to focus on. And then, and then I think find communities and find resources. We talk about mentorship a lot and we're leading a session on this this weekend. And I don't consider mentorship to be a one-to-one relationship necessarily in the way, the traditional sense that we think of it. I think of it as a group of people where I could easily reach out to someone and ask them a question and they can help me. Amy defines it as kind of having a personal board of directors, and I like that philosophy. So find kind of your board of directors or your group of people that you can go to when you have questions, or use them as resources, or use them to be sort of someone that you look up to in your career. But find multiple people. Don't just lean on one person to be kind of your guiding light. Find, find a of people that you can kind of follow suit. They don't have to be salespeople. Like they could be, one of my mentors was my CFO at one of my companies and he would go through my sales numbers every single quarter with me and sit down and help me figure out how I was gonna get to my plan. And we'd look at my business plan together. So I think don't discount people that are in different roles. There's a lot of merit to some of the roles that they're doing and just kind of try to find a web of people that you can learn from.

1:46:11 Scott Ingram: Awesome. I love the personal board of directors advice. And I think it's a lot about how I think about mentors as, as well, right? I, I don't know that I've ever had like a super formalized, like, Alexine, will you be my mentor? And we're gonna meet on a regular basis. And it's always much more informal, right? I, I learn from virtually everybody I talk to, right? And sometimes I'll, I'll know that, hey, Alexine is just the hero of the fast start. And maybe I'm starting in a new role and I'm gonna call Alexine and say, hey, how, how did you do this? And we're gonna have to come back to that. I'm nearly outta time and I feel like we didn't do that topic enough justice. So we're gonna have to do, we'll, we'll do a little bonus or, or something like that. But the other thing is just, again, this idea of community and surrounding yourself with these kinds of people who share this mindset, who are interested in helping. And just did a little sidebar with Alexine and she will very, very, very likely be joining us at the Sales Success Summit. Success Summit here in Austin this October, and as will so many people that you have heard on this podcast. And it's kind of the ultimate community. I mean, this is the opportunity to learn from the very best of the very best as they're learning from each other. I mean, that's my favorite part about this is just the level of humility that everybody brings to that event because I don't think any of us are done at being the best we can be. There's… I've still got a lot more work that I need to do on myself and a lot of ways that I can improve. So if you want to learn more about that, you can go to top1summit.com, T-O-P, the number 1, summit.com, and learn about that. And then, Alexine, we've talked about a lot of stuff, and I always try and make this as actionable as we can. So now we've had somebody who's listened to us for coming up on 2 hours, and what would you challenge them to do over the course of the next week or 2 to improve themselves and improve their own results?

1:48:11 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah, really good question. I would challenge them to look back, reflect at your last week, and really analyze how you used your time and figure out where there could have been pockets in there that you could have set aside for prospecting, for instance, and set aside time for mentorship opportunities, you know, whatever those things are, and then apply that to this week. Or if, you know, if you're too far into this week, you know, apply it to the next week, but actually look and reflect back on what you did one week and try to figure out how you can make that next week even better. And then I think the other piece of this would be to then reflect on your mindset and think about how you were feeling in the last week. What made you feel really good that you were working on? What didn't feel so good? And then try to get attuned with yourself and figure out, you know, how can I be the best version of myself this next week? But I think for anyone, I think just try to do a reset in this upcoming week and really, you know, make the best week possible and try to use some of these insights and ideas that we shared today to, you know, help level yourself up and, you know, even take one step forward.

1:49:13 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Alexine, this has been amazing. Thank you for taking so much time with me. I just, I can't thank you enough for all that you do and all that you give back to this community. It means a lot.

1:49:23 Alexine Mudawar: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. And thank you for those listening to us for almost 2 hours in here. We very much appreciate it and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or send over questions. If I can ever help, I'm always willing to.

1:49:35 Scott Ingram: So 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.