115: Irfan Jafar - A Top VMware Sales Specialist on Building a Disciplined Lifestyle

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Outreach, Proposify, and Alyce. To learn more about them and all of our sponsors, just click over to top1.fm/sponsors.

0:21 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve.

0:29 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Irfan Jafar. Irfan is the top account executive at VMware. Welcome to the show, Irfan.

0:44 Irfan Jafar: Thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

0:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah, likewise. We have had a chance to do a couple of short preparatory conversations, and I am so excited to dig into this. But 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, because there's… this certainly isn't the first time you've been a top performer.

1:08 Irfan Jafar: Right. So, for me, top 3 things that I believe that have allowed me to get to stay on top. Number 1, be passionate and exceptional. And I combine these. And what I mean by this is when you get to work for a company, and represent products and solutions that you are passionate about. And when that passion blends with the desire to be exceptional in anything you do in life, not just sales, you will most likely achieve results that you can only dream of. And that has been my story for the last many years, and that has played a significant role in my journey in becoming a consistent top performer. The second thing is daily discipline, habits, and focus. I don't think one can find long-term success if they don't have the daily discipline, good habits, and focus. And for me, that's the key, building a disciplined lifestyle. And that's not easy as it may sound. It requires a lot of sacrifice, self-control, and hard work to stay focused and disciplined and to build great habits that lead to success. Scott, I truly believe in the saying, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. So I try to live by this daily. And the third thing for me is anything that I start, anything that I begin, it's always about beginning everything with the end in mind. And you'll hear me talk about it over and over again. I practice a lot of visualization. And I live the future outcomes and targets in my mind months, or if not years in advance. As an example, at the beginning of each year, I write my goals and I imagine and I visualize myself being a top performer. And then in real life, work towards executing my plan to get to that vision I created. So, starting with the end in mind and dreaming big has absolutely, has absolutely played a huge role in my success.

3:16 Scott Ingram: I love these. Very, very Stephen Covey on the, on the last one, I assume.

3:20 Irfan Jafar: I'm a big believer of Stephen Covey.

3:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's maybe go through these in, in reverse order a little bit. So when you're beginning with that end in mind and you're visualizing being a top performer, where and how are you setting the bar for yourself as, as you start a fiscal year?

3:37 Irfan Jafar: Right. So what I do is I write down my goals, not just the numbers, right? So I would say 300% of my numbers, this is what I want to hit. And I would write down how many executive meetings I want to have all at the beginning of the year. And I would write down that I want to be rep of the year. I want to be the most valuable player. I'll write down all these things down. And I will also write down, since I have named accounts, I'll also write down customers that are going to be my top priority. And for certain reasons that I've already gathered, And then I work my plan backwards on how I'm gonna embark that journey because you cannot start a long journey with hurdles all the way from start to finish and not knowing what that end is gonna be. And if you have not created that end in your mind, there are times you're gonna lose focus. There are times you're gonna, you wanna feel like that you wanna give up. There are times you will just won't be able to sustain And you will have a potential to failure. But when you keep your mind and everything focused on that end that you have created, it's just so much easier to stay focused on your priorities. It's just so much focus to just keep on going, even if your body and mind on certain days would say that I cannot.

5:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that leads me back to the phrase that you use that I love, and I know we're going to tear this apart, is this idea of a building a disciplined lifestyle. Talk about that. I mean, at a high level, what is… what does that look like? What does that mean?

5:22 Irfan Jafar: So for me, Scott, so maybe I should talk about how I start my day because that's where, you know, the daily discipline core comes in. And I start my day 4:15 AM every morning, Scott. I'm not just talking Monday to Friday, I'm talking weekends. Because if you do not have the daily discipline of doing or living your life the way you want to live, not just your career, right? These things are integrated in my mind. Then you cannot build anything on top of it. Because again, as I said earlier, daily discipline, habits, and focus in my mind, they all go hand in hand. But you have to have the daily discipline of getting out of the bed early in the morning, even if you don't want to, But you have that bigger picture in your head, like the end in mind, right? So it helps you to stay focused. And then once you have that daily discipline of getting up early and chasing your goals and being an exceptional person, then you surround yourself with those habits. As I said earlier, you know, we are what we repeatedly do, right? So that's where the daily discipline that I have becomes a lot easier. It was not always the case, I'll be honest. But once I became that person where I knew that this is what I really need to be successful, it was not just about learning about products or doing certain things. If you're not doing it consistently, if you do not have the discipline, you're leaving it to chance.

6:59 Scott Ingram: Man, this is going to be an incredible conversation. I can tell already. So, the first one was being passionate and exceptional. Let's just round that off and talk about what does that mean and how does that show up for you every day?

7:14 Irfan Jafar: Yeah. So, first of all, you know, you have to pick a company that you're really passionate about, right? So, if you don't believe in your company, if you do not believe in the products that you have, then I think you start there. You have to find maybe a different employer or a different company to work for. And sometimes hard, but strive to find a company that you believe in and products that you really believe in. The products that I sell, I really, truly, honestly believe in those products. So that's where my… when you're talking about my professional life, that's where my passion comes, because I know we have absolutely the best solution in the market. And I know that those solutions will make a huge difference for my customers as far as how they can be a better organization. And that passion I combined with my desire to be exceptional. Again, I know what failure looks like too, right? Many, many years ago, I've failed multiple times, Scott. But if you want to be exceptional, then you're gonna do things that you don't wanna do, hard things, right? Sometimes you just have to just be quiet and swallow your pride. Maybe as an example, you're in a customer meeting and you know what you are gonna say is right, but the customer wants to get something off their chest and they are in an emotional mood at the point. So Just be, just be quiet, just listen. And that's, that's part of being exceptional too, right? Exceptional is not just getting up early in the morning, as I was saying, but being exceptional is a lot of things. May it be learning about your products, may it be how you carry yourself, may it be how you are really helping your customers. Because for me, one of the things being exceptional is, am I giving the best that I can to my customers? In terms of knowledge, in terms of solution we can bring to them, because I understand their problems, right? As much the more I talk to them. So that's where the passion and the desire to be exceptional, when they collide, magic happens.

9:30 Scott Ingram: Love it.

9:30 Irfan Jafar: Love it.

9:31 Scott Ingram: Well, let's contextualize this a little bit, and I'll just have you kind of talk about what is your role? Who are you selling to? How many named accounts are you managing? What is kind of that world? Before I let Irfan answer that question, and speaking of exceptional, as all of our sponsors are, or I wouldn't working with them, let me tell you about Proposify. There's a pretty good chance right now that you have an opportunity to improve your sales process and increase your win rate with Proposify. With their templates and reusable components, you'll be able to build proposals faster, and the experience is so much better for your clients. You can even allow recipients to electronically sign your proposal in one frictionless motion. Check out Proposify at top1.fm/proposify. And now back to Irfan and the specifics of his role.

10:23 Irfan Jafar: Absolutely. So, as you said, I work for VMware. I'm a senior account executive, and I cover large enterprise accounts here in Silicon Valley Bay Area, representing end-user computing products. I have right now close to 15 to 20 named accounts. We have a great culture and leadership team, and I feel extremely blessed to be part of VMware family. And I absolutely enjoy my products that I represent, and my role has given me a tremendous opportunity to help my customers to achieve their goals and initiatives.

10:57 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then let's put your results in perspective. What have you done, not just this last year, but, but over the last number of years?

11:03 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, so the last many years, if you average my numbers, I've been averaging way over 200% and a consistent top performer every year.

11:14 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. That's one of the things I always look for is not just what I think of as winning the sales lottery, right? It's not impossible to have a great year in sales. I think what is much more challenging is to be consistently great and a consistent top performer. So, I appreciate that. And quick shout out here to Laura Lane on your team. Who has been a fan of the show for for quite some time and certainly recommended a while ago. It took us it took us a bit to connect. That's on me to bring you on, but she's a big big fan.

11:45 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, thank you. Laura has been a great help, and she's she's one of the best we have.

11:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So where did all of this start? What is your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

11:56 Irfan Jafar: Yes. So you're gonna take me back in time. So I moved to Silicon Valley. From Texas many years ago after I finished my college. I started my career in sales operations with a small technology startup company that was focused on selling client-server computing software and thin clients and point-of-sale devices. As a part of a small startup, many of us who were working there were exposed to tasks outside of our specific roles. That also gave me personally an opportunity to work closely with our CEO and CTO and gave me visibility into how the C-staff thinks and acts. I also had up-close exposure to direct sales team, and I could see that it was something that I would love to do as well. And many years, or a few years actually after that, I moved into pure sales role, and I never looked back.

12:48 Scott Ingram: That's amazing. I wonder if… I want to come back to this idea of just kind of the difference of working for, or working in a startup environment versus an enterprise public company. Environment, but I wonder if you were starting over today, is there anything that you would've done differently from a career perspective?

13:06 Irfan Jafar: So, let me think. Well, I would say, I think we all understand that we can learn a lot from our mistakes, and those mistakes and failures are opportunities for us to become better and smarter. Part of my tenacity and hunger to be exceptional has to do a little bit with my past failures as well. If I If we're starting today, first thing I would do differently is to not have self-doubt in my abilities and what I can achieve and how I will get it. I remember when I first started in sales, a senior coworker of mine told me that I will never be successful in sales. And I'll be honest, that impacted me and, and my self-confidence for a while.

13:50 Scott Ingram: You've mentioned a couple of times kind of the failures. What were those? And it sounds like maybe they were fairly instructive in what you've been able to build upon.

13:59 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, so failure, when I talk about failure, I just don't talk about failure just in sales, but I'll give you a sales-specific example, right? I made a choice to leave a large software company that I was working for. It was a relatively comfortable job, and I took a huge risk. To join a startup company in security space. This is many, many years ago. And within 2 weeks of after I was hired, they laid us all off. The sales team, the marketing team, you know, you name it, operations, everyone was let go. And that was a huge shock. You know, we had just joined the company. We found out in 2 weeks that, okay, they're not gonna secure the next round of funding. And I took responsibility because that was my decision to leave a large software company that was well known in the industry and joined some startup that nobody knew about. And maybe I could have done more due diligence, but with the same token, many of us were just blinded. And for me personally, in 2 weeks I was out of job and that failure actually took me back to my childhood memories where, because I had to find strength on where to go from that failure, right? And it has taken me back to my childhood in other occasions as well, not just sales setbacks where I failed. And I remember as a young child, I got sick multiple times and I was very weak and small compared to my my peers. And the other impact was that I was then academically had to catch up because you're not going to school, you've been on sick leave for extended period of time, for months, so on and so forth. But I got physically also very weak. And I decided that I wanted to change that after, you know, I started to get better. And I still have photos from those times where I'm this, Skinny, weak kid picking up dumbbells, just working out and just focused on changing my outcome. I was not ready to accept how things were. And anytime I had a setback, the example that I gave also took me back to my childhood memories. And I said, look, my health is fine. Overall, I'm okay. So, When I was putting it in perspective, I said, all that has happened is I've just lost a job and maybe partly because I made a bad decision. So let's gather myself and do my homework and let's find something that's gonna be better and a better fit. And I was able to do that in the following few months.

16:52 Scott Ingram: So you talked earlier about something that I absolutely believe in, which is this idea that you have to be selling for a company and be selling a product that you truly believe in. How do you come to that? What advice do you have for folks to find that? Because I'm passionate enough about that concept that if you don't believe in what you sell, I don't think you can ever find extraordinary levels of success. And you have to get into that position, either change your mind. And sometimes that's possible if you talk to enough successful customers And really become passionate about what you're selling, or if you can't get there, you just have to find that other thing that you're really excited about.

17:35 Irfan Jafar: Right. That's absolutely the case, right? You know, so, and for me, it's based on personal experience, right? I have had a successful career, but not a top performer, consistent top performer that I am today for last many years. And I, and when I look back, and again, giving an example of a large software company, I was relatively successful, but the products that I was selling, I was just looking at them as a product, means to an end. And just, I wasn't really, let's say, connected to those solutions myself in a way that this is the best product, this is the best solution. And for me it was, I was, I had a hard time making that leap that Okay, let's find out maybe how much my customers are passionate about it, and maybe that's where I can drive my passion. That's a harder route. I think it's easier if you really truly believe in the company and the solution, and both go hand in hand, right? It's not just about the products. You know, you have to find company and leadership in that company that you believe in. So, some of that was not there in my journey early, earlier in my career. And I could see the difference day and night in the type of energy and focus that I would then bring to my customer meeting and then become contagious, right? When you show up that way in front of your customers, they feel it. They start believing in you and your products as well. Because part of it is customers, do they believe in you or not, right? And in sales, you know, and especially nowadays in technology, I feel for our customers because they have so many solutions and options. To go through and it gets very difficult for them to make that the right choice. But if you come along and you have a true belief in your solution, you're so much passionate about it and you present as such, then I think your customers, they just get in line with you and they believe in your solutions as well. And that's how you are able to win, you know, their Their minds as well.

19:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Another of our sponsors that I absolutely believe in because of who they are is Outreach. Their leadership and culture translates directly into the experience that their customers have with their product, and hopefully you're already familiar with that product. Outreach is the number one sales engagement platform that helps companies significantly increase productivity and drive smarter, more insightful engagements with their customers. 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 Outreach can help you. I want to come back to the startup versus enterprise kind of public company space. How do you think about… I mean, they're very, very different things. They're very different environments to kind of operate within. What's your experience been there? How do you think about the differences?

20:42 Irfan Jafar: Right. So, I think each experienced individual that you'll talk to, their journey's gonna be a little bit different. Their experiences are gonna be different. In my personal experience, the startup company that I've worked in the past, actually, I started my career working for a small startup company, right? The good thing about smaller startup companies is everything moves so fast. Right? There's not much bureaucracy. You wanna get the product out of the door. You can just cut through so much red tape and everyone's just so much sometimes focused and passionate about it because if it's a smaller group and they all believe in it, it's easier to see that everyone's such a big believer in it, right? And they have one common goal and they wanna make that company or the product extremely successful. So, there's a lot more energy at times when you are in a smaller company, but then they have challenges around cash flows or funding that obviously in my example, you know, caused me trouble in one of the jobs that I was… I signed up for. In a larger company, especially in my space, a software company, navigating how things work internally, finding the right resources that can help you. Because if you are selling enterprise software to another large company, which, you know, which I do, the decisions are not made at my level versus startup company. There are 5 people, me and the CEO can go and talk to the customer and we can do the deal. But if you're working for an organization where you have 40,000 employees and you're selling to an organization and they have 150,000 employees, then you have to understand how the internal selling's gonna happen, right? I need to find out about the executives who can really help me with the sales cycle. Not just any executive, not just looking at the org chart in the organization and say, hey, no, this is the right title, let's bring them, right? I work closely with the product team and the BU where I have a good understanding of our leadership folks and which individual to bring from that group at what time. And that is not an easy thing when you are trying to sell enterprise software, which has, which is tied to multiple other softwares that your company is selling. And also then selling it to the customer where now you have to do ladder alignment with those execs to your execs. It's not an easy thing, but I think in a larger company, that's something you have to do when you're working on a large complex sales cycle. And the sooner you do it, the better, because you're gonna shorten the sales cycle so much. If you start the journey just walking on the analogy, I would go like, say, you know, I'm just running a marathon on my own, right? Just on my feet. I'm just running 26.5 miles or 26.2 versus somebody just puts me in a car with the execs and now we just get to the finish line in, you know, maybe a few minutes.

23:58 Scott Ingram: I love it. You've given me sort of this epiphany. I wonder if the primary difference from a sales perspective is the larger the organization. This also goes with the level of complexity of the deals, but we'll kind of set that aside for for now, let's just think about this as enterprise sales. The larger the organization you're working in, maybe the more time that you have to spend selling internally. Is that a fair way to think about this?

24:23 Irfan Jafar: Absolutely. You know, the internal selling is the key, and that's where your brand comes into play. Because if you do not have a strong brand within your organization, you cannot just go to your GM each time and say, hey, you know, I need you in that meeting, because you have to prove to themselves as well early that I'm bringing you in good meetings and I'm aligning you to an exec who's also interested in talking to you. And I've done that multiple times. So now it's very easy for me that I can reach out to anybody in the BU and they don't even ask me 30 questions. Like many years ago when I would make that outreach, there would be a list of questions, fill this document out. What is this meeting gonna be about? You know, go through 20 questions. You, you know, big organization, you have formal documents, but now I can just even send a text message to our senior execs and they'll know that if it's coming from me, then we are going to be fine because I've done it so many times.

25:20 Scott Ingram: But that's huge, right? It's the reputation that you've built. And to your point, that internal brand, I wonder, and maybe you can talk about this as it's evolved over time, what percentage of your time do you feel like is, is focused on the internal sales effort versus the customer-level sales effort?

25:37 Irfan Jafar: It's happening in parallel at every stage of my sales journey. The large deals that I work on, I would say it's from a time spent perspective, I would say 60/40, 60% customer engagement, 40% internal engagement. Even when I have to put executive briefings together with our customers. Now, today we are doing it virtually and I find a way to do it successfully. But doing those preparations, so let's say you're doing a 5-hour executive briefing and you're gonna bring 5 execs from your side because there's gonna be 5 different sections during the EBC, you know, 1 hour for each. Have to do a lot of prep for that. So I would say from start to finish on a large complex sales cycle, and when you look back how much time you were spending internally and externally, I would say a good amount of 40%, probably if not even more sometimes, it's going to be internal.

26:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. My experience has been, again, once you get to those very large, very complex types of experiences, it gets pretty close to 50/50. There's just, especially inside of a larger organization, there's just so much, so much work to coordinate. And you just opened the door on something I've been so eager to talk with you about because I know you've had so much success with it. Not, not just over these last number of years, but through the pandemic in the way that you leverage executive briefings. Can you talk about that?

27:06 Irfan Jafar: Yeah. So, I think our world changed, right? It was not just in sales. It was not just one country. The whole world changed a little over 12 months ago, around 12 months ago. And I remember it was April last year, and I was sitting back and I was thinking about it from a professional standpoint. And I said, you know, if I don't act fast now, if I don't start to do things differently, then I'm gonna miss out a huge opportunity. Because everybody else, maybe my competitor or someone else, they haven't figured this out. So the faster you figure it out, the faster you will have the opportunity to make an impact for your customer. And then obviously, you know, work on your sales cycle. So, what I started to do is I used a couple of the champions or the mobilizers in the accounts that I knew of, and I started socializing them that, look, you know, we were gonna do a briefing, but let's just do it virtually. But this is gonna be an opportunity for us to bring more stakeholders from your side, but also frankly, from our side as well. And maybe I can even have my CEO join for a few minutes for a specific session and bring a couple other CXOs in the same briefing, which typically, if you're doing it in person, and Scott, you work for a large software company, it's very hard if you're doing it in person and you want to bring so many execs from both sides and folks have to fly in and then they all have to meet at a certain time. And then sometimes Things are not going according to the plan. People are getting stuck in the traffic. All these things come into play. But I started socializing to my mobilizer that let's do it virtually. And in this way, actually, we will be able to have a much more meaningful conversation instead of starting the conversation in a negative way that, hey, you know, things are just so bad now, right? Yeah. I had to put a positive… not only I would say a spin, but a genuine positive thought to it on how we can do it. And then we started creating these agendas around virtual briefings. And then I started to socialize to the internal execs again, as I was talking about internal selling, like, look, customer's leaning in, but we need to lean in as much. And then I would take that information back to the customer, say, hey, you know, I have actually 5 of my senior execs ready to be on that virtual briefing. Can you also extend this to a few other execs from your side? And since I gave myself enough time to do planning, because planning's the key part of it, I scheduled it, let's say, I think around the first one, around 60 days out from the initial conversation. And we gave ourselves enough time that we started the EBC with 10 folks in mind that these 10 people need to be there. And from there, we, by the time it was the day of the briefing, we had signed up 30 people from the customer side, and I think 25 showed up. And it was more impactful. And after that, we took the same message to my other customer. We did the same thing. And I think I did like 10 or 11 virtual briefings last year.

30:18 Scott Ingram: That's incredible. And I know when we talked, you, you had said the previous year, maybe you did 6. And just to define the term, so EBC is an executive briefing center. So, a lot of larger companies will have oftentimes entire buildings sort of dedicated to different rooms and meetings. And I was actually thinking this morning about, I've had the opportunity to spend some time in a number of EBCs. I've been in Oracle's and CA Technologies. And I think my favorite is 3M has an innovation center. It's fascinating. They've got so much stuff in there. So, it's, they're fun places, right? Because it's not just meeting space, but it's like, this is where we oftentimes house our senior executives. It's where we entertain other executives and we want to show off. Like, this is our technologies. Emerson's got a great one here in town, and they've got all kinds of different, you know, little mini power plant sort of things they can set up. It's pretty wild. But this idea that you were able to take that concept to virtual and some of the advantages of that, of being able to involve more stakeholders than maybe even your EBC could accommodate physically in the world before.

31:24 Irfan Jafar: Oh, that's a great point, right? You know, because as you know, when you're doing these in-person briefings and the briefing room or rooms, you know, they're different, right, in each organization. And you have to pre-book a room with a certain capacity. And once that room is locked in, and let's say if the capacity is 15 people, now you are stuck. You cannot bring more than 15 people. So that was not the case if you're doing it virtually, right? There's no limit. And that was a huge advantage, not just from bring 30 people, but now bring different stakeholders who have different mental model, right? Now you can bring folks who are part of the CIO's organization, part of the CISO organization, part of the HR organization, and work on that collective learning, right? Because you have that larger audience who tend to have a different mental model. But when that collective learning happens, in that setting, now that common ground among them continues to grow. And that was a huge advantage in the virtual briefing setting because in, in the past when we were doing it in person, we could only bring the core set of folks who were tied to our solution, right? And we couldn't really socialize our solution to folks that we wanted to, but those folks wouldn't make a commitment to drive or fly and sit in a meeting where there was a possibility that they might be interested.

32:53 Scott Ingram: Well, and I think I'm really interested in your perspective on how you carry this forward, especially as we start to go back to a place where we're traveling again and we're meeting in person again, because just the commitment level, right? I mean, to do this the old way, you're basically asking a senior executive to give up 2 days to take part in an executive briefing.

33:16 Irfan Jafar: Yes, absolutely. And they are flying, right? You're not flying in. You are asking them to make a commitment to fly in. And that's minimum of a 2-day commitment. It's a huge commitment. And, and that's why you just, in the past, you could only do few. But the impact on the business and looking back, like, wow, you know, we can do so much more now. And for me, I'm just gonna stick to the new model, but you have to figure out how to implement the new model successfully. And if you're not listening and communicating to your champions or your mobilizers in the account, and if you're again, going back to that passion and showing them the end in mind, not sharing that common vision, you're not gonna be able to motivate them enough. So, you have a bigger responsibility to find your champions and mobilizers and motivate them enough that they will carry that message to the other folks within the organization. Because if it was the old ways of doing virtual briefings, your customers are used to it, you are used to it, you'll make an ask, you'll get a few EBCs, and you'll think you have done your job, right? That's how it was done. But now you have to be more creative. Now you really have to think it through. Now you have to take charge and really help the customer on how this is gonna happen, right? So, I tend to over-socialize with my customers on how are we gonna do it. I go into the agenda planning and each sessions, and I explain them what we, why this session's gonna be so much more beneficial for, let's say, the security group in your organization or the experience group in your organization. So this way throughout the agenda, the folks that we are targeting, they can also then pick and choose which sessions they will sit in.

35:08 Scott Ingram: Whether you're hosting senior executives in your own EBC or just looking to make a lasting impression on key customer or prospect contacts, take a look at Alyce. They help create personal bonds through one-to-one gifting and what they call their personal experience platform. They'll help you scale a recipient-first approach to B2B gifting that creates attention and action. You can learn more at top1.fm/alice. That's A-L-Y-C-E. And now back to my conversation with Irfan about these massively impactful meetings. You know, it's funny, as you say that, I'm thinking that the key to the whole thing, obviously there's all of the planning, but you're essentially selling a meeting, right? You have to sell this meeting to all of the participants, and then it's your job to execute that meeting and deliver on the value of the meeting that you sold. It's kind of a sale within a sale.

36:05 Irfan Jafar: It is. It is. I didn't put it in words like this when I'm doing these briefings, but that's exactly what it is, right? You have to sell them this idea that this briefing is gonna be that much more valuable for them, right? And that's where that planning and paying attention to details come into play. And by the way, then you're selling this to your internal execs as well. They are busy folks too. So, again, going back to the internal-external selling, which you said 50/50, I tend to agree with that too. I said 60/40. That's where that planning comes into play as well. Where you are selling it internally and externally.

36:47 Scott Ingram: Well, and one of the things that factors into that is dry runs. And I know that's a huge part of the way that you're building up towards these executive briefings. Can you talk about kind of how you're planning for those, preparing those, and kind of working through timelines and everything else?

37:03 Irfan Jafar: Right. So, again, I look at it from a customer's perspective, right, Scott? So, if your customer is willing to make a commitment, even if it's virtual and 4 or 5 hours, you have to be respectful of their time. You, you have to provide them value for the time that they're spending with you. And that's where I do a lot of internal preparation and dry runs where I coach even our senior execs on this is where the customer is in their journey. This is what their business is like today. This is where they want to be. These are their top 3 initiatives. Forget products. This is where they want to be as an organization. So, keep that in mind is what I tell my execs. And I, and I write and I send them a detailed email after the dry runs as well. And this is what the outcome should be. So, I give them the background, I give them where things are headed. I give them information on what the current implementation may, may look like, but then I also define where this is going and how it ties to the other 4 presenters who are gonna be presenting at the same day. So I do a lot of dry runs as well, where we get on and we role-play or discuss how the meeting should go. And then post-dry run, I send a detailed document on everything we spoke about and what are the top few things that we want to achieve after the EBC is done or during the course of the EBC.

38:39 Scott Ingram: I'm realizing it might help if we contextualize this just a little bit more. What kind of deal size are we talking about here as you're pulling together these types of briefings?

38:47 Irfan Jafar: Yes. So that's, that's a good question, right? Because there are folks who are in different space, commercial accounts, enterprise accounts, different products. We are talking about software sales and we are talking deal sizes that are multimillion dollar in ARR.

39:05 Scott Ingram: Right, right.

39:06 Irfan Jafar: $3, $4 million in annual recurring revenue.

39:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, I mean, these are obviously very impactful deals for VMware, for your customers, and kind of the scale of decisions that they're looking to make and those types of things. One of the, one of the things Just for listeners that are interested in this, if you are in enterprise sales or you're interested in these, these very large deals, couple of resources. One I may actually share as a bonus episode either before or after this episode. Lisa Palmer presented at the last Sales Success Summit. We just did an encore series earlier this month where she has just this brilliant, what she calls visual dartboarding and sort of bringing a visual starting point, sort of a visual idea. As a means to begin collaboration and conversation around a particular topic or around a particular solution. So really amazing stuff. And if you go to top1.fm/enterprise, I've got all of the more enterprise-focused episodes there. One of the other ones that has made a, just a massive impact on me and changed the way, frankly, I've sold in certain dimensions is Brandon Fluharty's episode. Brandon at LivePerson did $11 million in ARR over the course of 2 years at the point that we did that episode. And he has this, this memo process that I think is just, is so brilliant. And I've used parts of that in some really, really impactful ways. So if you wanted to dig deeper into this topic, I'd encourage you to check out those resources. Of course, we'll have notes and links and all the things related to this episode and the conversation with Irfan Irfan at top1.fm/whatever the episode number is. I'm pretty sure it's going to be 115, but you may want to double-check me on that. Irfan, I wonder if you have a particular deal story or sales story that either you're super proud of, or maybe it just went down in flames and you've learned something from that experience that you apply to every deal now going forward.

41:07 Irfan Jafar: Is there something that jumps out to you in that Scott, I got lots of stories. Maybe we should do a podcast just on stories, but it's hard to pick one, but let me go with one of my favorite stories. And what we did is, in this case, we were able to align ourselves with our customer's IT security and IT modernization initiative early on, right? And we were then able to deliver on the desired business outcome. So, we gave ourselves enough time. We found about customers' initiatives early on just by being engaged with them early. And it was a 12-month sales cycle with lots of moving parts and severe competition. And as simple as it sounds, one of the lessons that I learned and my team learned that it's never about your products, but about the goals, right? And it sounds redundant, but, you know, a lot of times we forget that. And we really focused on the initiatives and pain points that this customer had. But to do that, we had to be a very good listener with the intent to truly understand what the customer's trying to achieve. Because what I found, and I've fallen a victim of this as well, where, you know, you come out of sales kickoff, you learn about a new solution, and you go in front of your customer. And as they are sharing their story and their pain points with you, half of the time you're not even paying that much attention, right? So, in this sales cycle, we, we did a great job of being a good listener. So, that was very helpful. The other thing we did well, after we understood what the customer's goals and objectives were, we took charge and control to guide the customers on how we can get to their desired state. This required creative ways of third-party software integration with our product. And product features and enhancement requests to our engineering team and deliver on a solution that would not only align to customers' business outcomes, but would do even more than what the customer had initially set as a high bar. So, in that situation, we became such a unique solution to them because we learned throughout the journey what their pain points were. But as we became almost like an extension to their team, they started to share more with us and we were bringing them good information. May it be, as I said, integrating with third-party software solutions or going back to my engineering team, my internal stakeholders, and asking them that these are the things that we need to develop in the product to make it that much more valuable to our customer. But remember, it was a long sales cycle. So, we worked from, I wouldn't say day one, but early on that the executives on both sides were also aligned throughout the process and they were talking to each other and both sides on, at the leadership level were committed to make it a successful venture. And Scott, these large complex deals, they don't happen at my level. And ultimately, you know, the deal was done at the C-level. And executives on both sides talking to each other. My job in this sales cycle, outside of just being, you know, my title, which is sales, is to be a great orchestrator and a great project manager, great project manager throughout the process. And I had to have a really good vision in my mind what that end state's gonna look like and bring the right resources at the right time. But with the right message and make it a winning proposition for both sides in a timely manner. And that's what we did.

44:52 Scott Ingram: That is so awesome to hear you say that. I called this out one other time that, again, I feel like one of my strengths is even though I don't have any formal training, it's that project manager stuff, right? It's really just thinking through what's the timeline, right? What's the end date? What's the compelling event? What are we driving towards? Why is that important? And then, what are all the critical path items? What are all the things that has to happen? What are the things that you have to do? What are the things that we have to do? Who are all the people that are involved in just making sure that all of those different things, because there's lots of things happening in parallel, we got to make sure that they stay on schedule and the right meetings are happening, the right conversations are happening, the right activities are happening. So, it's so cool that you called that out and orchestration is a much better word for what I describe as cat herding.

45:45 Irfan Jafar: I think I love that term too, by the way. I'll steal it from you. But if we don't do this, Scott, just think about it, right? If we are not good project managers of the sales cycle, and we call it sales cycle, I actually look at it more from a perspective of, now, what's the outcome that I'm going to deliver to the customer, right? And of course, then they have to buy our product. But what's that ultimate outcome that I can deliver to my customer that's gonna define their organization as well and make them more successful? But part of that project manager role within your role is to keep that momentum, keep that momentum, right? If, because you cannot have, you have to find that chain reaction of good events continue to happen. Throughout that sales cycle. You cannot let them get distracted. Just like when we talk about that, hey, no, stay focused. You know, it doesn't matter what you do. You could be an engineer, it could be somebody else. We all get distracted. So, it's extremely difficult to make sure that everyone is focused and also motivated. And that's where, you know, when you're bringing the right message at the right time throughout this, the journey, is that much more critical because you, you having these moments of small victories before the actual, you know, the finish line. You have to have those small moments like, hey, you know, this integration's now working. High five. Now this meeting took place between these 2 execs. They like each other. They, they have a common vision. High five, right? It's good for them. It's good for us. So, you have to keep that momentum. If you lose momentum, you can potentially lose the deal and it's not good for you. And I don't think it's good for my customers because as I said, in my mind, we have the best solution in the marketplace. And if I fail to deliver that message and if the customer then fails to understand that they missed out on a big opportunity of implementing such a great solution, That's a failure on my behalf. So momentum is key. That's what keeps everyone focused.

47:54 Scott Ingram: That's such a great callout. I love it. The momentum and then the focus, like the focus on both sides, right? So keeping them focused, but we also may have to maintain our focus, which is probably a great transition to really digging deeper into your morning routine. So the 4:15, I'm a 4:30 to 5:30 guy, but not every day. You know, we're talking on Saturday. I slept till 8 this morning. So, I want to hear more about this. The way I usually ask the question is, you know, what time does the alarm clock go off? Give us kind of the blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow. So, we know this all starts at 4:15. Walk us through kind of the process and the way that you're structuring your day.

48:35 Irfan Jafar: Okay. First, let me say this. There's no alarm clock.

48:38 Scott Ingram: Oh, say more.

48:40 Irfan Jafar: There is no alarm clock. It just happens. It's all automatic by now.

48:45 Scott Ingram: Wow. So when did this start? Because you alluded to the fact that it wasn't always easy. So was there a time? How did this start? Yes.

48:52 Irfan Jafar: So I always used to get up early, but more in line of, you know, 5:30 or, you know, 6. But I would say this started to happen maybe around 7 years ago. And since then it has been a progression, right? It used to be 4:30 and now it has changed to 4:15 for the last 3 years. And I'm sticking to 4:15 or 4:30 because that extra 15 minutes is becoming extremely critical for me is what I'm finding. So there's no alarm clock. Once you've done it for such a long time, it's just you, that's how your body works, right? So I start my day at 4:15, weekday, weekends, doesn't matter. And I get up, I do a small pre-workout meal and a drink. I don't want to make it a fitness podcast, but I'm just going to walk you through my day.

49:43 Scott Ingram: I want it all. I want to know what's in the drink.

49:47 Irfan Jafar: Well, so there's whey protein and I mix some green tea in there as well for some caffeine, right? I just mix it together. So there's the pre-workout meal and drink, and then I do 30 minutes of reading a podcast while the pre-workout drink and meal kicks in, right? You gotta give your caffeine some time to kick in. So now I have that 30 minutes or so where I can start catching up on my learnings. And I'm on Audibles all the time and podcasts. So do a good 30 minutes of reading, maybe work-related or sales-related. And I do lots of non-sales-related stuff as well. And maybe you'll find out soon. In this podcast. And after that, I get a solid workout for 45 minutes. Now, obviously I'm not going to the gym, but I have plenty of weights and a vest with 30 pounds. So I got a good solid workout for 45 minutes. After the workout, once I get ready, I write down my top 3 priorities of the day. These top 3 priorities are not the 3 escalations of the day. Big difference, because those escalations are dictated by your inbox. These top 3 priorities are dictated by me. These are the things that I need to do. So let's say one of the top priorities would be that during the day, first I'll write it down, right? But one of the priorities could be make sure that an email from your GM goes out to an email to the CXO at this customer that you are engaged with. Now, this can happen throughout the day, but you cannot finish your day if you have not delivered on your 3 priorities.

51:36 Scott Ingram: And are those 3 priorities, is that only work? Because earlier you talked about kind of life integration. So, is, could that be something that you need to do for your family?

51:46 Irfan Jafar: No. So, these 3 top priorities are work-related.

51:50 Scott Ingram: Okay.

51:50 Irfan Jafar: So, when I get into those priorities as separate in the personal stuff, but these 3 priorities of the day that I write down are work-related, but these are not time-bound. Keep that in mind, right? Because I'm not working on any escalation. These are critical things that need to happen, but they're not time-bound as such that has to happen 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM, but it has to happen before the day is over. So, a big difference between priorities and escalations. And in my personal life, I keep my priorities separate, but I would say this though, I try to minimize my personal engagement during my core working hours, and I've been able to do that successfully to the most part.

52:34 Scott Ingram: So, keep going. What happens after you do the… you define your top 3 priorities, those get written down.

52:40 Irfan Jafar: Right, right. And then what I do is, again, it's gonna be a little bit repetitive here, but then I truly then imagine and visualize a day that will go really well and go great. So I put myself in a state of mind that's positive and I try to gather as much energy as well, right? So I visualize that the day's gonna go great because the inbox will come with emails where you will be dealing with issues. That's just given. You cannot just sit and hope that today is gonna be one of those days where I'm not gonna get those emails, where there's gonna be some escalation, right? So don't even think about that. Just visualize and think about that when you are done, today's gonna be a great day. So I do that and then I go through my calendar and my calendar's color coded. So all my customer-facing meetings are a certain color. Internal management meetings or internal meetings are a certain color, but a meeting with a partner is a different color. And if I have a personal meeting on my calendar, that's gonna be another color. Now, how it comes into play, just, just think about it. You open your calendar and you're looking at not just the day, but the week, because I look at the entire week, how much customer-facing time you already have on your calendar. You don't have to calculate, right? Your calendar will show you how much time you're going to be spending with your customers.

54:07 Scott Ingram: And Irfan, let's take a quick break because you showed this to me. This was so cool. Maybe talk about what those colors, because it's a very, very visual process. I mean, I saw this, it was immediate to understand, you know, your level of productivity in terms of what you have on the calendar.

54:21 Irfan Jafar: Right. So let's say, you know, all my customer-facing meetings would be color-coded green. All my just internal meetings would be color-coded red. And then any meeting which is a hybrid of a meeting which is related to customer engagements, maybe with your partner or your SE where you are working towards, or it's a part of the deal that you're working on, that's gonna be color-coded yellow. So these are the 3 main colors, green, yellow, red. And if my color is looking red and my calendar's not looking green and yellow, that means I'm definitely not on the right track. So, it gives me a good snapshot right away every week and actually throughout the month, and I can see it. And that's where I make conscious effort to make sure I'm in the green zone.

55:10 Scott Ingram: I love that. So, how are you kind of managing? What do you do when it does get out of whack, right? If you're looking at next week and you're like, oh, this is, this is a red week. How do you course correct?

55:20 Irfan Jafar: Right. So, if you look at my calendar, there's going to be an overlap of meetings. So there's a lot of red, meaning internal meetings that are just going to be thrown on my calendar. So anybody who's working for a large software sales company, they would relate to this a lot more, that there's a lot of meetings that are going to be put on your calendar that sometimes you just have to pick and choose which one you can attend live, which one would have a recording available, which one you can skip and just excuse yourself. And find out later what happened. So I tend to not let things get out of control, Scott. That's just the reality because I'm planning weeks and months in advance. I gave examples of briefings. Those are planned months in advance. Other engagements, those are planned weeks in advance. There's never anything that's just a knee-jerk. Every now and then there's going to be a meeting with a customer that's just going to be, hey, you know, we need to talk right now. And those are typically not good meetings. So it usually stays pretty consistent on the green, meaning customer-facing meeting, yellow, meaning also important internal meeting, which are related to customer engagements. And it usually stays that way. And then I tend to skip meetings where I have to skip internal meetings where, you know, my time management probably would say that, you know, you're better off to being obviously a customer-facing meeting versus an internal meeting. So, it makes it really clear and also gives me an ability to communicate with my leadership. And if I'll be talking to my boss, I'll just share my screen and say, look, this is what my calendar looks like. And I don't have to say much after that, right?

57:02 Scott Ingram: Nope. It was very clear to me.

57:05 Irfan Jafar: Yeah.

57:05 Scott Ingram: So, how are you then managing the escalations and your inbox and all the other stuff that's coming at you?

57:11 Irfan Jafar: Right. So now remember these 3 priorities that you have, they're not time-bound, but the escalation might be. But what happens if you don't have your 3 priorities written down? You can just get so consumed with the escalation that by the time you are done, as an example, now you don't have the energy to get that email out to your exec that you have to send this message to that exec. The customer CXO. So that's how you manage the escalations. And then I, in my role, I lean on my extended team as well. So I have to be a good quarterback as well. In my large accounts, I'll have a customer success team, a support organization, and even my leadership, my direct manager, right? I would distribute the escalations. I would not try to just take everything on my shoulders. For me, it's, you know, when you're working as a team, you're just going to be able to do a lot more, a lot more effectively.

58:15 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. I love the team sort of approach and mindset there, right? Because we are stronger together when we act in that way. You know, I wonder, because this is kind of the reason why I get up so early is when you think about those top priorities, I have to imagine you're, you're typically able to crank those out before most people start a normal workday, right? Is… are you taking advantage of that quiet and using that opportunity to cut? Maybe a different way of thinking that is like, at what point in a typical day have you knocked out your top 3?

58:50 Irfan Jafar: Well, it's gonna depend on those 3 priorities, but I would say Most effective work, I'm talking effective, but not most work is done by 9:00 AM. All right. So may it be drafting an email with the right message. And you know this though, that can take hours if you want to have the right message with everything in place. It may be 2 paragraphs, but it takes time. To craft that message. So 2 of those priorities, 1 or 2 of those priorities will be done by 9:00 AM. And that would be, that would set the tone for the day, right? Because now you have already done 1 important thing or 2 important things. Now you only got 1 more to knock out. And the 3rd priorities or the 3rd priority could be more around just keeping up with your learning, so it might not be as critical as the other 2, but it has to be a balance of 3 priorities because you always have to find balance in, in how you move forward. May it be reaching out to the execs, may it be providing some content to your customers, may it be internal engagement, may it be even working on yourself. It has to be a good balance, but I would say when you start that early, during the day and you're not getting that many emails or folks are not putting meetings on your calendar at that time. Now, granted, you know, my customers are global. So some of them, you know, sometimes you'll have 6:00 AM meetings as well, but that's when I think the work that I put in at, in the morning hours is that much more impactful. And I focus on impact, right? It's not the the hours that you're putting in.

1:00:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that is so good. And I think a lot of the same way, right? I try and… I mean, people often look at me and like, Scott, how the heck are you doing all of this? And it's a very similar process, right? It's really getting clear and focused and doing that prioritization work. And, you know, if you can knock out the most important things by 9 o'clock, and that's almost the way I think about it, right? If the work that I get done before 9 or noon is probably the same as what an average person does who isn't focused and isn't disciplined. And then everything else I get done, that's just gravy. That's bonus.

1:01:15 Irfan Jafar: Exactly. And think about this, Scott. If you don't do it that way, what's gonna happen? You're just gonna be reacting. You're just gonna be reacting all day, and then you're gonna be hoping that I will get to what I really want to get to. And then you don't get to it. You don't get to it. And it starts to compound every day, right? You know, you, if that's your, that's your trend, I mean, what is your trajectory gonna look like?

1:01:45 Scott Ingram: Right, right. That line's not going in the right direction.

1:01:48 Irfan Jafar: Right. It's, it's not going in the right direction. And, and now not only the line is not going in the right direction, now it's gonna, you're gonna compound the problem because now you are more in a panic more, that 6 months have gone by, I haven't performed, so what should I do? And if you've been a reactive person for the last 6 months, now that reactive nature's gonna go in high gear and your activity level may go in high gear activity from your perspective, but you might be just doing all the wrong things at that time. So, you know, it's as, again, as simple as it sounds, Because it's not complicated, right? It's very simple, but people get stuck in reactive mode. People get stuck in, you know, you'll hear me talk about this as well, you know, the Stephen Covey quadrant, right? Which I call quadrant of success. Now I modified a little bit. People are stuck in quadrant 1, which is urgent and important. I'm mostly in quadrant 2, which is urgent, but not… sorry, quadrant 2 is important, but not urgent because You have more time to yourself. And quadrant 2 is which, where you're doing planning, 3 priorities, building relationships. And my quadrant 1, which is urgent and important, starts to minimize because this is where all the escalations, the firefighting things, all the emails that need to be responded by a certain time on that day, they fall in. But the larger your quadrant 2 is, which is important, not urgent, the smaller the quadrant 1 gets, and then smaller the quadrant 3 and 4 get, which are even more irrelevant, right? So people who are reactive, they are stuck in quadrant 1 or quadrant 2 and 3, and those quadrants are not even important or urgent. So as simple as it sounds, it's very important to have that discipline and start early. And, you know, by the time noon comes around, as you said, majority of, if not all of the most important work of the day is already done. Now you are into more taking those emails and planning and looking at tomorrow and again orchestrating bigger, better things with a clear mind.

1:04:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And we'll find those quadrants for folks who aren't familiar. We'll try and put an image of that in the show notes. So top1.fm for forward slash Irfan Jafar will dash Jafar will will get you directly there. So even if I don't have the number right, that's the other way. Irfan, when are you sort of evaluating that? When are you looking at how you're spending your time considering those quadrants, doing your planning? Because it takes work and effort and time to get to this proactive state.

1:04:36 Irfan Jafar: Right. So we've been talking for over an hour now, I guess, and and you probably have seen there's a theme going on, right? And everything is interconnected and everything sounds very simple to whoever's listening in right now. And it is simple, but it's the execution. But all these things are connected. Like, you know, your daily discipline, you getting up at a certain time, you having your top priorities written down, your calendar's color-coded, you're orchestrating these virtual briefings a month in advance, you being a trusted advisor to your customer in that sense with the agenda and and delivering that outcome ahead of time, that this is what the endgame's gonna be for you and for us as well. So, all of these things, they happen in almost just, they're all connected, right? And when you put it in the perspective of quadrant, that really helps to simplify how you're gonna lead your day, your week, your year, and you're technically, or potentially how you live. And then, and that's how I do it. So I used to have this quadrant printed out and stuck on my desk next to me, and I would look at it every day. And now, now it's just, it's automatic, right? I already know which one's in what, and I still have a soft copy of it in my iPad and my desktop that I look at, but it's part of my daily living, right? How much time am I really spending on building good quality relationships? How much time am I, am I really spending in planning? How much time I'm really spending being, going upstream, right? Being proactive. So, and I put 70% in that quadrant, right? I've written down 70%. So I have to find 70% of my time to be in that quadrant too, which is marked as we discussed, important but not super time sensitive. And then that connects to everything else that we talked about. The daily discipline, the managing the calendar, managing your engagement, preparation, dry runs, they're all connected. Does that make sense, Scott?

1:06:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it does. Why don't we wrap this up with just the way that you then wrap things up? So how does your day conclude? When does that typically happen? And then, and then what happens until your head hits the pillow?

1:07:02 Irfan Jafar: So, I've been putting a lot of hours lately. I'm not going to say that I'm putting 40 hours or 50 hours. I'm putting a lot more hours. Where we are in our journey as an organization, where I am with some of the journeys that I've embarked with my customers, there's a lot of commitment on both sides. And that commitment requires a lot of time as well. So I typically finish off by, by 5:00, 5:30, spend some time with my family, have dinner. And then by 7:00 or so, I will catch up again with some of the emails that were not super critical and some of the emails that I just had to quickly review and then just Just clean my inbox and just have a quick look at what tomorrow's gonna be, even though I've already looked at it in the morning. I still review my, my week every night before I go to bed. And then, you know, get ready and put my earbuds and try to spend another 30, 40 minutes listening to a podcast or Audibles. So And this way, at least I get 1 hour of combined reading or listening on a specific day. And then by 9:30, I'm in the bed. I don't have… and it may sound a little bit boring to most, but I don't spend a lot of time watching TV, Scott. I don't have any favorite shows. I don't watch lots of news. That's most of it, if it's just repetitive anyway, right? If you've already caught up with some of the news and you don't have to go and go through the, the opinion section of the news, right, and spend hours on that. So I don't watch that much TV, or if any, any TV. So I've, I have a benefit of having that time to myself. But by 9:30, I try to be in the bed because I try to get at least 7 hours of sleep.

1:09:04 Scott Ingram: Perfect. I wonder what podcasts are you listening to? What have been kind of the most impactful books of late that you've listened to?

1:09:12 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, so podcasts, you know, I'm enjoying your podcast right now, and that's the first one that came to my mind because the last few weeks I've been spending a lot of time listening to your podcast. We have our internal podcast as well that I've been spending a lot of time on, and I'm spending a lot of time reading books. The book that I'm reading right now, and maybe you are not expecting this type of response on a sales podcast, but I spend a lot of time reading non-sales books. So currently the book that I'm reading is called The Philosopher's Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room. It's an interesting read, but again, anything that we do in life and whatever our profession is, I think these things actually show up. So that's the book that I'm currently reading. I'm a huge fan of Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I read that book all the time. I also recently finished the book called Mindset. That was a great read. The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer. I'm rereading those again. The list goes on. Build a Better Brain is another interesting one from Great Courses. So, it's an interesting collection of reading that I'm doing, and I love it. I love educating myself.

1:10:26 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. What motivates this? How do you think about motivation? What ultimately drives you?

1:10:32 Irfan Jafar: So my motivation is that I want to be exceptional in what I do, right? May it be professionally or personal life. So to be an exceptional individual is what drives me. And then the results that I can get by being exceptional can get me resources that ultimately, ultimately in the long run, I will be able to give back more to my family, my friends, and to the community, because I keep a close eye on those things as well. And I want to be in a situation once, you know, I'm towards the end of my career that I'm able to contribute a lot more back to our community.

1:11:16 Scott Ingram: How do you think your career concludes, right? As you look forward, I mean, I talk about being an intentional individual contributor. Is that your path? Do you have leadership aspirations? Like, what's, what's next from a career perspective for you?

1:11:30 Irfan Jafar: So, it's an interesting question that you ask, right? Because a lot of us actually are in a leadership position without being managers. But they're 2 different things, leaders and managers. Now, if your question would be, do I want to be a manager? I would give you a different answer. But your question was around leadership. And I find myself lucky the last few years that I have been a leader in my organization where I've been invited in several meetings, may it be our vice president's all-hands meeting in a different group, not even my direct group, right? I've been invited as a guest to speak, talk about best practices, talk about Sales in general. So, I've been lucky enough to be able to lead, and that's extremely gratifying because you can, when you can give back all your learnings, right? So, I'm lucky enough to be a leader. As far as being a manager, I've thought about it. We are having those conversations internally as well. But when I want to do that, I wouldn't say that next year when we will talk, I will be talking to you as a manager managing a team because I plan my journey at least 2 years out. And in software sales, you know, you cannot really these days plan 5 years out. So when I'm looking at next year or year and a half from now, I already know where I'm going, what I want. And in that journey, I need to stay focused on what I'm currently doing.

1:13:11 Scott Ingram: Great answer. Great answer. What about, are there kind of tools, apps, or technologies that are core to your process and the things that you do?

1:13:19 Irfan Jafar: Now you're going to find out things that I'm hooked on. Excellent. Yes. So, I would say my iPhone and my iPad are my, my go-to devices. I cannot live without my iPhone and my iPad. And I cannot imagine living without apps like Audible. I already gave example of all the reading or listening that I've been doing is mostly on Audible. Enjoy Podcast as well as one of my go-to apps. And honestly, you know, since I spend so much time at work, I also love our product Workspace ONE. It's our product. It's a great product that keeps me productive and focused. On how I need to get access all my apps or resources in a very simple way. And that's also a product that I sell. So I'm lucky enough to be putting my product in my top 3 apps that I use that I also happen to be selling. But those would be my top go-to devices and apps that I go to. And, and let's not forget Amazon Prime for most of us, right?

1:14:27 Scott Ingram: That's right. I went a week without Prime while we had these storms in Texas. It was the strangest thing. No deliveries for a week. They piled up for a bit. Almost ran out of coffee. It was a little tense there for a minute.

1:14:41 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, but think about that for a second though. Why do we love Amazon Prime so much? It's about that experience that we get, is that they've set the bar so high now that like, you know, our expectations are so high. And we keep on going back to, obviously, you, in this case, we were talking about Amazon Prime, right? When you exceed expectations, you're going to have loyalty, right?

1:15:07 Scott Ingram: I think it's more than that too, right? It's not just the expectation and the experience. I think part of what makes Amazon so powerful, what makes Apple so powerful is it's the lack of friction. You know, it's just, it's easy. And I think a lot about this in terms of the experience that we provide our customers. Like, are there things in, in our process, you know, if we go back to the sales process, are there things that just are tedious and in the way and frustrating for our customers that we can get out?

1:15:41 Irfan Jafar: Right. You hit it. And you almost sounded like if you were talking to a customer who was looking into Workspace ONE, the product, our platform that I was giving an example of, because part of what our solution does, it's a B2B solution, of course, is to remove that friction and make these experiences that much more engaging. And when you start with a frictionless, engaging experience, now you're more productive. Now you can focus on things that you really need to focus on. Maybe you should be in my team, Scott.

1:16:12 Scott Ingram: Well, This may be an interesting setup then, given what I think, I think your answer might be here, but I'm curious if you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy.

1:16:25 Irfan Jafar: I do. When I was answering the question about books that I read, now I've done lots of sales trainings in the past, but I've been gravitating more towards Challenger Sales and Challenger Customer, which was a follow-up book to that. And the difference is the Challenger Customer teaches you how your customers buy versus, you know, how you sell. And I use those methodologies in those books as part of my core methodology.

1:16:52 Scott Ingram: Now, how would you describe your style within a challenger-centric approach?

1:16:58 Irfan Jafar: Well, I would say, so as far as my style, I'm not trying to put my style into that specific methodology. My style is who I am, and who I am is I'm empathetic and curious, and I'm just a passionate person. It may be, you know, working out. There are things that I like that I truly believe make a difference. So, I'm very curious in learning new things, may it be sales-related or non-sales-related, and really try to understand the other side, right? Empathy is not an easy thing to have, and I put conscious effort to really understand the other individual because it's very difficult for us to understand somebody else with a different background, different age group, different upbringing. And when you become empathetic or you try to, then the person across the table or across the aisle would say, they know you, this person really truly understands what I'm saying, because what the words may, the interpretation may be different, but I try to be very empathetic.

1:18:14 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. I'm curious. I wanted to go back. I meant to ask this earlier. I mean, you mentioned you've been digging into this podcast. Is there a particular episode or, you know, somebody's story that has really resonated with you so far?

1:18:27 Irfan Jafar: Well, there were quite a few. I don't remember the names of the storytellers right now, Scott, but there was an individual who shared his story about… he worked at LinkedIn and he wrote a blog and that blog became the most viewed blog related to sales. The blog was posted on LinkedIn as well. And that individual then got so many calls from outsiders, other companies, and they wanted to recruit him. And I was going through that podcast and I'm like, you know, these are those micro moments where you can literally change the trajectory, right? A lot of folks talk about luck and all those things, but there are certain things that When you do, then you have no idea what the outcome could be in a good way, in a good way. And I've seen that happen to me, right? I threw my hat in the ring for go in front of the audience and talk about my best practices. So, my organization gave me the platform. I was at our sales kickoff a couple of years ago. I was up on stage in front of more than 1,000 people live. This is before pandemic, right? So, in Vegas, up on stage. And that experience then gave me exposure to other leaders within our organization. And that was a snowball effect of many things that happened since then as well. So, that was a smaller example, but that podcast about that individual writing up a blog, posting it on LinkedIn, and then the chain reaction of good things that happened after that was just amazing. So, these are Things that can change your trajectory so much. And I love that story. Yeah. Yeah.

1:20:15 Scott Ingram: So I'm sure that was Kyle Gutzler. And if folks want to see that article, if you go to top1.fm/2x, the number 2, the letter X, it'll take you to that post because he talked about how he doubled his income in a year, doubled his sales in a year. You know, what's… what really resonated with me in that though, because I've been thinking about this word a lot, is trajectory. And it's become more and more core to kind of my vision for what this podcast is, what this community is, what the Sales Success Summit is, because I'm seeing more and more examples. I probably get 1 or 2 people a week who reach out to me where, you know, they started listening to the podcast maybe a couple of years ago, and it's impacted the way that they're acting and behaving and the way that they're approaching sales. And man, if we can meaningfully change the trajectory of people's careers, that is the greatest feeling on the planet.

1:21:12 Irfan Jafar: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and that's something that's been one of my… part of my recent motivation as well, right? I talked about what motivates me, and I was saying that being able to make a difference as well, because when you reach a certain point in your career where it's not just about, it becomes more about giving back as well, right? And when you are in that position to be able to give back and change trajectories for others in their journey, they may be new in their journey, they may be doing it for a while, but somehow, you know, they're struggling, right? So that's a great feeling if you can make an impact and change their trajectory. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

1:21:54 Scott Ingram: You know, it's what's really interesting. You're reminding me of a mentor and friend of mine. I'm not a particularly religious person, but he had a saying that I absolutely love and have found to be so, so true is that when you give back, when, when you're mentoring and when you're helping other people, you can't outgive God. Meaning that there's so much more benefit from doing it. It's incredible. It's just a really incredible thing. So that quote, that line. Has, has always really kind of stuck with me.

1:22:23 Irfan Jafar: Absolutely. I agree with that.

1:22:25 Scott Ingram: So, Irfan, is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

1:22:31 Irfan Jafar: Interesting part of the podcast, huh?

1:22:33 Scott Ingram: My favorite part. Well, I have lots of favorite parts, but.

1:22:37 Irfan Jafar: All right. I think part of what we already discussed and folks listening in, they probably picked on that and probably thought about it a little bit of being too much, which I think some folks that I talk to may not buy into the idea of starting the day at 4:15 AM in the morning and may find the idea a bit too much and perhaps a bit too crazy if you want to use that term. But for me, and think about that, right? Folks listening in, but for me to achieve high level of success or a high level of greatness, if you want to call that, that you want to achieve, you, you have to sacrifice. And but you have to sacrifice with a genuine smile on your face. And you have to do that because you have to understand the meaning of that sacrifice and how that will translate into what you are really after. Because what you're really after, you cannot achieve that without sacrifice. You just cannot. So When you put that in perspective, is getting up 4:15 AM in the morning really that challenging? Look, every 6 months we change the clock. People have no difficulty following the rule of all of a sudden getting 1 hour early when that happens, right? So it's just building that habit. So I think for many reps listening in, starting a day super early in the morning and, and making that sacrifice. Maybe they may find it too much, but I think if you really put it in perspective, that when you do make that sacrifice, the journey that you are on and how that journey is going to end, it'll be that much more rewarding and it's going to give you real joy. A difference between real joy versus just you know, a short-term pleasure-seeking activity, right? Yeah, no big difference.

1:24:40 Scott Ingram: I love that. What, what about the flip side? Is there something the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

1:24:47 Irfan Jafar: I think, again, generalization is… I try to stay away from, but I think many people, many reps in general, are afraid to dream big and, and set mega goals. Would you agree? I think people are just afraid to dream big and set big goals. The interesting thing is you can just set a goal. No one's stopping you. But again, a lot of people start to say that, hey, you know, I'm a realist. I'm like, no one's stopping you to be, you know, look at the reality, but even more so to be putting those big goals out there.

1:25:26 Scott Ingram: Right? Yeah. So almost limiting yourself from before you even started.

1:25:30 Irfan Jafar: Right, right. So if you haven't written your big dreams, what makes you think that that big dream is not supposed to be average? It's only looking like a big dream because you've never achieved it. But if that was you every year or 5 years in a row, that's your normal. So maybe there's something even more that you can do. So I think a lot of times, People are afraid to dream big, but I'll also say they might not admit, they might argue, no, that's not true. But I think some of it, it is, and that's limiting their imagination and dreams. Look, look, your mind is a very interesting thing. I read a lot on neuroscience as well and those books, and I enjoy that type of material as well. But your mind is a very interesting thing. I can close my eyes right now and I can imagine and start visualizing that I'm having the best time of my life. I will be able to change my attitude to a certain degree even right now, and then I can feed off that energy. So I think a lot of, a lot of the reps, I think, don't, don't dare to do that. And, and then when they don't dare to do that, they don't write down their big goals. Let's say, you know, X percent of the number that I wanna achieve as a target for this year. And they don't write down certain other things that they think are not possible. But if you don't write it down and you don't try to work it backwards, then you're gonna fail. But the flip side is when you do, then all of a sudden it seems humanly possible because what's stopping them to dream big, it's like, oh, it's not humanly possible. So, I think that's one distinction. And again, as simple as it may sound, and not that many people will come forward and would agree that, hey, you know, I don't dream big, but, you know, they're there.

1:27:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:27:25 Irfan Jafar: Yeah.

1:27:26 Scott Ingram: What have been the most important decisions you've made, or lessons you've had to learn to get to this level, to get where you are today?

1:27:34 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, I think so. Some of the things that we already discussed, right? May it be setback in my childhood, you know, getting sick or deciding to join a company, a startup company that closed doors within 2 weeks after I joined. And the most important thing that I have learned throughout my journey, and it, you know, once I was far removed from my childhood, it was just not on the forefront, but the most important decision that I've made is an honest commitment to myself, an honest commitment to myself that I will always strive to be exceptional in what I do. And I don't wanna make excuses and put all the blame on the circumstances around me. So it was not a decision around, hey, I joined a certain company, but it was a decision around making a commitment to myself. And after I made that commitment, then everything that we talked about for the last hour and a half or so, again, these things are connected. Going back to that extreme discipline, being consistent, being focused, knowing the end and how you're gonna get there and the sacrifices that you're gonna make throughout the journey to get there. So that's the decision that I made, Scott, is that I need to be exceptional.

1:29:00 Scott Ingram: And I thought I was hearing that earlier in our conversation as well, that it felt like… it sounds like there was almost a switch, but you just made this binary choice that said, you know what, I'm going to fully commit. I'm going all in. And maybe you hadn't experienced nearly the same degree of success before that.

1:29:17 Irfan Jafar: No, I would say when I share my story, it may seem that way. Right now that there was a morning I woke up and I flipped the switch and I was a new man, but it wasn't like this, right? So it was a progression where I started to do the right things and finding success throughout my career. But how, how do you find, find the success where you are at the top of the top? Consistently. And that was somewhat of a progression, like example of going from 4:30 AM to 4:15 AM. That's a progression, right? 3 years ago, my answer would have been 4:30. So things have evolved, but I've been making commitments to myself that I need to get better is what I used to say to myself. But my commitment has been the last few years That how do you stay exceptional? And I don't look at being exceptional from just from a numbers perspective. So my take on sales is a little bit different, Scott. I'm not just looking at, you know, I'm gonna get to a certain number. That's given. I write down my goals and everything. My commitment to myself is that everything else that I'm doing, can I be really good at it? Can I be exceptional? And then again, going back to be able to make a bigger difference for, for others as well and give back the learnings that I have, all the scars that I have had from my learnings. Now, maybe others don't have to go through it. Maybe there's a shortcut if, you know, if I can provide that through my learnings.

1:30:55 Scott Ingram: Let's talk about the shortcut if there is such a thing. And I always like to ask what advice you would give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today.

1:31:03 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, extremely good question. Right. So I think number one thing you have to do is don't be afraid of failure and believe in yourself. Now, they may have heard this a gazillion times from others as well, but what you do is you support your belief with hard work, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice. I, when I look at myself coming out of college, you know, I didn't really have my priorities as clearly defined. And written down and what I needed 5 years from that day. I was just lucky that I found a job right away, right? And sometimes that's the case, you're happy, but that's an opportunity as well for you to see that you were able to get that job. So, and then start believing in yourself and always prepare, especially when you are new and it's your first job, you need to prepare even more because there's so much for you to learn and experience can only come with time. So start focusing on things that don't come with time, but you can do today. Learn how to be a really good listener in any interaction, in any interaction, especially with your customers. It's going to pay you big dividends both in short and long term. And the other thing I would say, and I did not have this when I first came out and And tech industry was very different back then, Scott, as you could relate to. But now it's a lot easier to be able to seek a mentor within your organization or outside. There are more programs now and take advantage of those programs. So definitely seek a mentor, learn from their success, how they did it and how they're doing it.

1:32:48 Scott Ingram: Irfan, who, who are your mentors?

1:32:50 Irfan Jafar: Well, You know, so Stephen Covey is one of my mentors, right? Now I talk about, you know, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People all the time, and younger folks dialing in and who may have not heard about Dr. Covey, but that book is timeless, right? And then those principles are even more relevant today than ever, or they always stay relevant. And you won't find me pick a self… a new self-help book every year. If I'm picking a different self-help book each year, that means I'm really not helping myself, or whoever's doing it, you're really not helping yourself. That means you're really not applying the learnings. So, implication of the learnings is the key. So I see, you know, late Dr. Covey as one of my mentors, even though we never met in person, but I think had a lot of influence on me and how I live. I also admire Steve Jobs a lot. And as humans, we all are flawed, but I mean, I'm looking at the impact that Steve Jobs made.

1:34:12 Scott Ingram: Right?

1:34:13 Irfan Jafar: He pretty much changed how we live is how I can put it in the, in the shortest way possible. Right? And I have great admiration for Steve Jobs as well.

1:34:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess maybe you can set me straight on this. I think it was maybe written by Stephen Covey's son, also named Stephen Covey. But The Speed of Trust is a book that I like quite a lot. Have you read that?

1:34:36 Irfan Jafar: I have not. I think it was his son, but Let me take a note of that one as well. What did you like about it?

1:34:42 Scott Ingram: It goes back to just this concept of trust, right? So, the idea that, and I just, I so believe this about sales and you talked about it earlier, it's, this is a human game, right? And there's such a high degree of the importance of relationship and relationship really comes down to Do we trust each other? I have a personal rule, call it a rule of Scott, that if I feel like I have to put a legal agreement in place to protect myself, I shouldn't be doing that deal.

1:35:19 Irfan Jafar: Right?

1:35:20 Scott Ingram: Right. It's like there has to be like, yeah, we have agreements just to kind of make sure that we were on sort of the same page. And it's in my mind, if we're doing business right, it's a formality, but it's, it's not the end-all be-all. And, and it's just, it's, it's a great, great book. I, I love Seven Habits, is a fantastic book. And, and apparently the apple didn't fall too far from the tree, but it's, it's complicated. And it's been a while since I read the book because I'm pretty sure it is his son. So Stephen R. Covey wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Stephen M.R. Covey wrote The Speed of Trust. So, have fun sorting through that.

1:36:00 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, you know, great examples and you hit on it, right? Trust, that moves mountains at speed. It does. And if you go back to our conversation, what we've been talking about is, you know, how do you connect with individuals? Leave sales aside, right? How do we connect with individuals? How do we find out what their problems are? And how do we, in our capacity, can help them to solve their problems in a genuine manner? So, you build that trust, and when they see that, and when that connection builds, then everything moves at a speed of light.

1:36:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, that's it. And you're able to clear all that weird, silly, tactical, technical stuff when the underlying foundation is that trust. If you don't have that trust, it can become an impossibility.

1:36:49 Irfan Jafar: Right. Absolutely. And look, you have to be genuine about it. You cannot just say, hey, you know, it's Monday morning. Now I'm going to put a sales hat on and I'm just going to put this fake smile on my face and I'm just going to do these things and close deals. You know, I'm very different from that. And I do sales for a living, but I look at it how you're describing as well, right? You have to be genuinely curious about what others' problems are and how you can solve them in a, even in a more effective manner. And that brings real joy, not just a good commission check, which will come, right? If you'll, if you'll do all the right things, but that's not the, that's not the end game, at least not for me.

1:37:32 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Exactly. So, let me finish the previous line of questioning. And I always like to kind of ask what advice you would give to somebody that's a little further into their career and they're either Maybe they're struggling or they're doing okay, right? Like, okay, I'm making my numbers, I'm doing okay, but they haven't broken through and found the ability to go from good to great. What's your advice for them?

1:37:55 Irfan Jafar: Yeah, so my advice would be take responsibility and admit to yourself that you have the potential to achieve more. And it goes back to dreaming big, right? So, the first step is take responsibility. That it's on you that a lot more can happen. Honest self-evaluation is the key. Write down 3 things that you can do better in the next 3 months. Write them down. Maybe it's, you know, number of executive alignment meetings that you wanna set in the next 3 months. Maybe it around how many times you interrupt your customer in a meeting, count those, maybe reduce that to zero. Or if you are at, if you are one of those folks who are always cutting somebody off, then, you know, just see how many times you do it and cut it down. So become a better listener is ultimately what I would say, you know, you should be doing if you are further along your career and you have maybe drifted away from some of the things that you as an individual should be doing. And do another self-evaluation 3 months from the day of that commitment to yourself, that where do you fall in those, in the commitment that you set for yourself 3 months prior, and do another self-evaluation and just build on top of that.

1:39:18 Scott Ingram: I love that. So, what's interesting, and I've noticed it particularly today, partially because I feel like I'm not fully as up to speed as I like to be, but when it comes to that listening, I love this podcast for myself because it's such a great training ground. And one of the things that I noticed that people don't hear because we edit it out, but I have learned to, one, try and listen better. But also, I think a key part of listening better is not listening to respond, but just to listen.

1:39:53 Irfan Jafar: Exactly.

1:39:54 Scott Ingram: And part of what I do in that is, and it's so interesting because I find that people are stylistically different, but if you will just, when somebody's done speaking, leave space because oftentimes they weren't actually done speaking.

1:40:13 Irfan Jafar: Very true.

1:40:14 Scott Ingram: And what often comes next is the gold. So if you've listened, if you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time, I mean, today you've been listening for like 2 hours, but If, if you've listened to multiple episodes, I am super conscious about not interrupting and just letting people complete their thought and get it all out. Because even when you think they're done, they're often not done. And what comes next is amazing. And I carry that over into my sales conversations and the ways that I talk to my customers, just leaving that space. And it's like a fine wine, like it's just letting it breathe often leads to really, really great things. And then I'm very lucky on the podcast in that sometimes in those gaps, I sound like an idiot. And we just edit those out. And you don't know, Irfan does, but others don't. So, Irfan, let me, let me ask you kind of one parting question before we get to our challenge. And I would love to know, what would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations?

1:41:25 Irfan Jafar: Yes, great question, right? If I were talking to other top sellers, and what I would like to learn from them is some of the lessons they learned from the deals that they lost that they may have not shared with others in a public setting, right? So a lot of times we don't give a platform to the opportunities that were lost and things that we could have done differently or how things got out of control. And ultimately the deal did not happen. I would love to be connected to other top sellers and find out about some of those large deals that they were they almost got those deals but didn't. So that's one place where I think, you know, that sharing that information with me, I think I would definitely enjoy that and learn from what happened in that sales cycle. And then the other thing I would like to learn is how are they selling today in this new world that we live in? And I shared some of my ideas and thoughts, what I'm doing, But I would also like to learn from them as well. How have they reinvented themselves? And I use that word intentionally because we all had to reinvent ourselves the last 12 months in some shape or form. Maybe learning how to cut our hair on our own, maybe. So, and same thing applies to our professions, right? So I would love to learn about their new best practices, or as somebody said on your podcast, only practices. What are their new only practices in, in this new world that we live in?

1:43:15 Scott Ingram: All right, so the haircut thing is extraordinarily funny. As soon as we're done, I'm going to send you this, this image. When you sent me the headshot that we were going to use for this, I sent it to my design team. It was like, oh my God, this is going to be so hard because we cut out the images and your hair is not… well, I knew was not going to be easy for them. They sent me back an image with you in a barber's chair. I'll send it to you. It is so funny. We have so much fun. It's… my team is so incredible because, you know, it's one of these, we've just developed such a strong working relationship and it's gotten to this point where I ask them for something and it's a whole new level. So, so this week, for example, this is crazy. Sometimes I'll ask them to do what I call successifying. So, right. So I'll draft the newsletter or I'll draft a LinkedIn post and I'll ask them to successify it because I'm not good with, you know, putting in the little GIF images and things like that. So they're great at just kind of taking some of my work to the, to the next level. And I've been having all these conversations with my customers this week about third-party cookies, right? Like Google Chrome is going to get rid of third-party cookies. It has all kinds of implications from a marketing technology perspective. So lots of conversations about third-party cookies. And I just keep thinking, man, somebody needs to create a bakery that delivers cookies on behalf of other people and call it Third Party Cookies. And so I wrote the post and was like, hey, can you successify this? Like, let's, let's make it look a little bit better than just my pure text. And they, they sent back an image with a… they basically came up with a logo. So there's, there's just an empty brown paper bag that says third-party cookies on it, has a little, has a little cookie image. So anyway, they're, they're always doing stuff like that. It is, it is so fun. But I would love to, because I don't think we really talked about one. Do you have one of those kind of loss stories that you can share where, where there was just a really great learning from, from the outcome.

1:45:13 Irfan Jafar: There are always some, right? Oh yes, there are always some. And one of the lost stories, it goes a few years back, and I think what had happened is we just got in a real conversation a little bit too late. We couldn't get in front of these stakeholders in a timely manner, and by the time we did, they had already signed a, a 3-year subscription with a competitor. And, you know, once that's done, you pretty much have no chance for that specific solution to be sold in, in 6 months or, or a year from now. But I think the lessons learned there were that engage Earlier, early was not enough. And there were other reasons why we couldn't. But again, you know, you have to take some responsibility as well that maybe we could have done things differently and maybe we could have had a little bit of better executive alignment early as well, like we have done in some other successful sales cycles. And It was just coming when, when I did the analysis, some of it, it was the opposite of when we were doing things right. This happened many years ago, but the good thing is that even though we did not get the deal that time around, I stayed engaged with the customer, right? Throughout, you know, 3 years or so, we kept on educating them. And we were obviously not looking for their business right away, but we, we stayed relevant. We kept them informed. And guess what happened after 3 years? I'll let you guess.

1:47:09 Scott Ingram: Well, and there's, there's so much great stuff in that, right? So the core lessons being that one, you know, the earlier you can get that executive alignment going, the more impactful it's going to be. So, you could have won 2 deals in the last number of years. But I think bigger for me is, I'm assuming you had a good outcome after that period of time, is just not having given up on it. Like, okay, well, that's the end. We're lost forever. And just, you know, being patient and playing the long game and, you know, like, okay, well, we screwed up this time, but it's not done forever.

1:47:42 Irfan Jafar: Right. And there were other things too, right? You know, the industry they were in and the relationship they had with the other vendor because the other vendor, they had different type of relationships with them. So there were a variety of things, but again, the things that we could have done differently, we focus on those things. Would the outcome… I don't know if the outcome would have been different 3 years ago. It could have been, it could have been not, but still solely focusing on things that we could have done differently, maybe we could have had a better outcome. But the key message was that Stay engaged, continue to educate. And 3 years later, you know, we were able to get in and replace the other solution and with even more value this time around, more strategic than we could have been when we initially started the conversation 3 years prior. So ended up being another successful story, but it was not that way at that time. And the lesson again learned is just don't give up on that failure, right? And if you're lucky enough to be working with accounts that you keep for many years and you just have to be patient because it's always a combination of things that you are doing, right? You, when you, when you're looking at your pipeline, you have some very mature deals. And some deals that you are planting out in the future, right? Because you're not just planning for this year or next year. So that opportunity became a target 3 years from now, and we were very intentional, right? So that's the key part of prospecting on how do you balance what you need to do today and what you're gonna be doing tomorrow. And when that tomorrow comes, what you're gonna be… have you already planned out for the future from there on. That one was extremely sweet in a sense that, you know, we delivered so much value to this customer that they were actually very thankful to be moving to our solution. And that's a part of our job that's so gratifying that maybe another, you know, if you're another line of business or doing something else in life, you may not get that opportunity where customers are coming to you and being very thankful. Because you're impacting their business. You are changing the trajectory of their organization on how successful they are going to be. Just think about that. And you play a key role in it.

1:50:15 Scott Ingram: I love that. So, here's what's fun is given my previous comment, had I been just a little bit less patient, I would have cut off the second half of that answer where all the gold was. So, anyway, just real-time proof that listening well and providing space is super valuable. Irfan, this has been super incredible. The last question I always like to ask is, I mean, we have talked about lots of stuff and covered a ton of ground, but all of this isn't meaningful unless somebody takes an action and does something with it. What would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next, say, 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:50:54 Irfan Jafar: Oh, nice. Challenge time, huh? All right. So I would say part of this challenge, start your day at 4:30 AM. I didn't say 4:15. Start your day at 4:30 AM with the, you know, do your pre-workout and do a meditation and intense workout after that. Mix it up and do some, some reading, 30 minutes of reading in the morning after your workout. And I would say finish at least 2 books In the next 2 weeks, at least one should be related to your profession and be very disciplined around your priorities. I would say create that matrix of success that I've been talking about. Scott's gonna post it after this podcast and see where you follow in those quadrants. And then the next thing you need to do, pick 3 accounts. If you're an enterprise seller, pick 3 accounts where you think you can Set up a C-level meeting with your leaders in the next 2 weeks. At least make an attempt that you can get to those 3 meetings or get the conversation going. Write it down. And just remember as you're going through the challenge that your mind is a wonderful thing. Just like thinking small, thinking big is a choice.

1:52:13 Scott Ingram: Gold, gold. Irfan, this has been an exceptional conversation. Thank you.

1:52:17 Irfan Jafar: Thank you, Scott. It was a pleasure. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast.

1:52:24 Scott Ingram: 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.