116: Mentorship in Sales with Zscaler's Alex Whyte

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Outreach, Alyce, and Proposify. To learn more about each of them and to support them in return, just click over to top1.fm/sponsors. You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Alex Whyte from London. Until very recently, Alex was the top enterprise account executive at GoCardless, but he just started a new role at Zscaler. Welcome to the show, Alex.

0:52 Alex Whyte: Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here.

0:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah, glad to have you on. I know that you are a big fan of the show and we'll talk about that a little bit. But for those who are new to the show, it's important to know that I only interview active quota-carrying individual contributors who, like Alex, are the number one top performers in their organizations. But sometimes I'm willing to settle for those who work in very large organizations who are in the top 1%. So Alex, let's start like we always do with some immediate value and talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales. What's the first one of those?

1:28 Alex Whyte: Yeah, absolutely. And I just wanted to go back on your original comment there, Scott, before we go into that. Of course, I am honored to be here and I obviously am an avid listener to this show and I've listened to so much and I take so many notes. And some of the guests that you featured on here, you know, like Ian Koniak from Salesforce or Brandon Fluharty at LivePerson, I definitely don't consider myself in that league, but I think my learning trajectory over the last 3 years has been almost vertical. A kind of crash course in software sales, so to speak. So I think from that perspective, the learnings are worth sharing. But to answer your question, I think that the number one thing for me that has enabled me to have a relatively good year last year has been pipeline generation. And this for me is, you know, whatever form of sales you're in, it is so crucial. But weirdly, so many salespeople kind of put it to the side. It's like, I feel like it's the thing people least like doing, but it's actually, I would say, one of the most important things you need to do is to create opportunities. And I feel particularly in software organizations now, like GoCardless, like Zscaler, if you can bring the opportunity to them, you've got incredible teams around you that are going to help you close the deal, but they're not going to be the one that does your outbound for you. They're not going to be sending emails or sending books to CIOs or CFOs. You've got to do that yourself. And that takes a lot of, I mean, it takes a lot of self-motivation. No one else is going to help you do that. So I think for me, it's been the most important because it's identifying the right accounts, it's targeting the right people, using their language, bringing value in each exchange. It's enabled me to get the the right opportunities on the table, which then I have the best team around me to help me close that.

3:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And we will certainly dig into this in more detail just in terms of the way that you're structuring your time and your day and things like that. But I've heard it said that if somebody shows you their calendar, you can understand their priorities. So what percentage of your time do you spend on pipeline generation?

3:45 Alex Whyte: That's a good question. I think it really depends on the cycle and the pipeline you have. I think kind of earlier on, you obviously spend more time to build more pipeline. But I think once you understand your operating rhythm and you understand the value prop, you're able to use your time more effectively. So I think one thing that I picked up from, actually from one of your guests who I mentioned at the beginning, Ian Koniak, he had this incredible principle. It's revenue generating time versus non-revenue generating time. And when I heard this, I think it was last year, honestly, I ran with it. And it's so true. It's a simple, it's a really simple principle. Don't do your pipeline generation between the hours of 10 and 4. That's when you should be talking to customers. But to answer your question, I try and set my plan on a Sunday night or very early on a Monday morning. And then between the hours of sort of 8:30 and 10, I like to do lots of pipeline generation. The first part of the week is the kind of first conversations, but it's kind of, again, it's creating that operating rhythm, creating that cadence with your prospects. So you're sort of connecting with them on LinkedIn, you might share an article, but usually it's before the hours of 10, and then you'll sort of clean up the PG in the evening between the hours of 4:30 and 6:30.

5:06 Scott Ingram: Excellent. So if we kind of break that down, it's really call it 90 minutes a day, the kind of a daily practice of active prospecting, and then another 90 minutes or so of, of prep and, and getting everything ready for the next day. Is that about right?

5:20 Alex Whyte: Yeah, that's about right. I, I think the, the most important thing is, is it becomes kind of daily rhythm, because if you don't have that, it's so easy to slip out of it because you're… you kind of level it on, on importance. It's like, oh, I've got, I've got you know, some late-stage deals that I've got to close and I've got some executive calls, you know, I need to get prepared for them. So pipeline generation can wait. But if you get into that daily habit, it becomes kind of second nature and it's like, right, I have to get that done to get that done.

5:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, excellent.

5:52 Alex Whyte: And it's just important you kind of prioritize it in the same way as you prioritize closing the deal.

5:57 Scott Ingram: This is probably as good a place as any to talk about Outreach. If you want an amazing platform to help you make the most of this type of daily pipeline generation, rhythm and habit for yourself and your team, you've got to check out Outreach. Outreach is all about helping sales teams to be more effective with every engagement. And that's why companies like Snowflake, DocuSign, Adobe, and Twilio rely on Outreach to help them in their pipeline generation efforts. To learn more, just click over to top1.fm/outreach. And now back to Alex and the second thing he attributes his success to.

6:36 Alex Whyte: The second one is mentorship. For me, mentors have been incredibly important. And I think this is where our first exchange really came about. I got recommended your book and I read your book and then I actually added you on LinkedIn and said, look, Scott, I've really enjoyed your book. It would be great to be connected. And then we connected. And then someone said to me, asked me the question, how do you create a mentor network? And I actually didn't know the answer. And I thought, given the book you'd written, I'd ask you. And you came back with the great response and you said, it's very simple. Just ask someone, ask them a question, make it very specific, action it, report back. And you've got a, however limited or however big it is, you've got yourself a mentor. And I've really run with that, Scott. And I've taken that to my outreach and building my network, my mentor network. Identifying companies that have got renowned great performers, just asking the question, how do you build your pipeline? How do you close deals? Making it really, really specific on what you're looking to do, whether it be champion building, multi-threading deals, negotiation. And that's the most important thing. It has to be specific. You can't just turn up to a mentor and say, I want to be a better salesperson. It's like, where do they even start? So it's making it really specific and they can find out or offer you what you need to do, how you do it, and then you can implement it effectively.

8:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I was so glad we got to really dig into this. You and I talked about it a little bit beforehand, but I think most people just way overthink the mentor thing, right? They think that it's this very formalized, structured relationship. I've got to like reach out to somebody. It's probably a cold outreach. I'm essentially asking them to marry me and become my mentor. And the reality is It's so much less than that. I mean, I think virtually everybody I talk to, I learn something from, right? So they're not really formalized relationships. And I think the piece that you hit on that's so important is that really specific ask. I mean, the thing that no mentor ever wants to hear is, can I pick your brain?

8:47 Alex Whyte: It's just, it's so broad-based. It really isn't.

8:51 Scott Ingram: It's so broad-based. It's so nebulous. It's so like, what are you actually asking? Asking me, what does that mean? It sounds like it's gonna hurt. Like, don't touch my brain. So, you know, it is… it's, it's… but in order for you to get to that point that you're going to ask very specifically, you have to do the work on yourself and figure out, okay, where is my gap? Where is my opportunity? What do I need next? And you shouldn't be asking stuff that you can go find organically. Like, don't, don't ask basic questions that you can easily find in a podcast or in a book or something else. It's, it's those it's those deeper sort of next level types of things. And I think you've actually done a lot of that, maybe even using this show.

9:31 Alex Whyte: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, you know what, I had to find out, sometimes you have to, I think a lot of the time you have to find out the hard way. And I remember just asking my manager who I would call one of my… Steve Reed, he was a top 1% seller at Cisco and then Google and then became our manager and leader in Northern Europe. And I remember right at the beginning of our, of our relationship, me asking a basic question and he sort of looked back at me and said, well, why are you asking that?

9:58 Scott Ingram: You've got Google.

9:59 Alex Whyte: It just, it made me realize, don't waste questions. Don't waste their time. Don't waste questions. Make the questions good. It's really made me kind of think twice before you ask a question, before you ask something of someone, make sure it's a really good ask because questions are just important as answers.

10:18 Scott Ingram: Ooh, that's a good line. Yeah, it's all in the setup, right? Because the value of that mentorship is all about what you ask and how you ask and the work that you do up front.

10:33 Alex Whyte: Exactly. Agreed.

10:34 Scott Ingram: Excellent. All right, what's, what's the third point? What's the third key to success for you?

10:38 Alex Whyte: The third one, and again, this is as a result of mentors identifying one of the key things in getting deals over the line. It's been champion building. And this has been something that I've learned more aggressively over the last 2 years, just because the nature of the GoCardless business, typically it's been small business focused. But as we've moved upstream into the enterprise space with larger deals and more stakeholders, finding the right person within the account with the right level of influence and authority has been absolutely crucial. This not only enables us to kind of gain access to the right stakeholders within the account, they continuously challenge you, which keeps your deals honest. So when it comes to reporting and, you know, your manager saying to you, what's the chances of this happening? If your champion has challenged you in the right way, you can say right now it's not a Q1 deal, it's a Q2 deal. So it keeps your deal honest. And I think one of the most important distinctions within that, and this again comes from asking the right questions, is making sure your champion is a true champion and not a coach. And I think one of the best podcasts, the episodes that I listened to was with a guy called John McMahon. And he said, you want to avoid the ANIs and the NANIs. And it rolled off his tongue so easily. And it's authority and no influence and it's no authority and no influence. And when I heard that acronym, I was like, there's a lot of acronyms in this industry, But that one I really liked and I was like, yeah, okay, that does make sense. But it's being able to identify the right person and, you know, your champion becomes as much of a part of your team as your solution engineer. You know, they're as key. So finding the right one is absolutely key to closing the right deals.

12:30 Scott Ingram: And so obviously what I'm taking away there is you're looking for that person that has authority and influence, right? And is going to help you kind of work through the deal. How similar or different is the relationship building with that champion from the work that you're doing in acquiring mentors?

12:50 Alex Whyte: That's a good question. It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. Because acquiring mentors, I've seen it from my experience in the last few years, even the process, it's like kind of running a deal. You're selling yourself, You're asking the right questions. You're aligning both of you from a kind of values perspective in what you're looking to gain and what you're looking to do. And honestly, if you're trying to build a champion or a mentor, the process is identical.

13:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I think in this instance, one thing that's really important, you mentioned it, but we blew through it really, really fast, is the reporting back piece. Right? So we talked about the front end where you're asking a really great, great question. But so whether you've got a champion or whether you've got a mentor and they give you advice, It's then showing that, hey, I listened, here's how I acted on your advice, and kind of what's next. Because that's, that tends to be the gap, right? You start these relationships, whether it's with a mentor, whether it's with a champion, and they make a suggestion to you. But if you don't do anything about that, why would they keep giving you advice?

14:01 Alex Whyte: Yeah, no, exactly. And that's the thing is like, unless you're actually reporting it back to them, as you say, from a mentor perspective or a champion perspective or a customer perspective, How do they know you're listening to them? They don't. They don't. And I think this is one of my massive takeaways from listening to more senior leaders in sales calls. It was the mini reporting back within conversations. Honestly, I was like, it's a completely different way of talking to people. But I remember we were sat in an executive meeting and obviously they all say, you know, you have 2 ears, one mouth, make sure that the ratio is the same in the customer talking, etc. Everyone kind of knows that. Knows that, but it's listening to what they're saying, absorbing it, paraphrasing it, reading it back to them and getting them to agree. It sounds so simple, but I'd never done it before. I'd never done it before. And when I saw that kind of being played out in a meeting, I was scrambling, taking so many notes because it was like, it completely changes the dynamic because most salespeople, myself included, They're thinking about the next question before the person you're speaking to has finished their answer. So actually, how much of that are you taking in? And obviously we don't have this now with obviously COVID because we're doing things through Zoom, but absolutely that person can read your body language and they can see that you're preparing the next question before you've answered it, before you answered or absorbed what they're saying. So acting out or paraphrasing exactly what they've said, reading it back to them, getting reassurance, or, no, you've misread that. No, I didn't mean that. It's a different way of engagement. And it builds the rapport a lot better than I would say most people kind of run meetings.

15:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I try and do in that process, and I mean, sometimes you'll hear it here on the podcast. I mean, for me, this is great practice for those types of conversations, because an interview is really not very different from running a discovery call, right? Having, having these types of conversations, I often like to relay things back the way I would describe them, right? So rather than just parroting and using all of their same terms and just repeating them verbatim, that's one thing. And there's not that there's anything massively wrong with that, but it's, it's really if you can take it to the next level and have it be in your language and make sure that you're still kind of on the same page, or, or maybe your language doesn't align with their, like, actually in our industry, or in this company, when you say that, we think this. And so that's not the same thing. And then you've learned something.

16:48 Alex Whyte: Yeah, no, agreed. And I feel like I've taken you slightly down a different path than what the original, the original comment was, was the importance of reporting back to mentors, which is where we originally were.

17:00 Scott Ingram: Sure, sure. But it's, but it's all important, right? And I think that reporting back piece is, I mean, you were talking about reporting back just more from a real-time perspective, rather than, hey, here's the advice. And now, not only Did I act on that? Here's the result. Here's what I've prepared. You know, did I capture it correctly? Again, asking for additional feedback. Like, I think I did what you said. Is this it? Right. But it's the ultimate differentiator because with so many of these things, it's kind of like, okay, I gave you this advice and then I never hear from you again. Okay, well, that's weird versus, okay, now you came back and you showed, hey, you really listened. This is awesome. Okay. I'm happy to continue to give you advice if, if you're going to actually take it seriously.

17:42 Alex Whyte: And that's what I loved about our very first engagement, Scott. It was my… I reached out to you and asked you a really specific question, and you gave me a very kind of short, simple answer. And within kind of 3 or 4 days, I'd gone away and literally actioned that. And I came back to you about 6 days later and said, hi Scott, just to let you know, I did exactly what you said. And I got the result I was looking for. Really appreciate it. And that was the end of the conversation.

18:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, but it sticks around. Here we are.

18:15 Alex Whyte: Here we are. Exactly.

18:17 Scott Ingram: Let me tell you about Alyce real quick right here. Whether you're working with mentors, champions, or other key stakeholders, an incredible way that you can make sure that they feel seen, heard, and appreciated is with a personalized gift. And Alyce's personalized gifting platform will help you find just the thing using AI behind the scenes to make recommendations based on their personal interests. Then you can solidify your relationships with the perfect gift. To learn more about Alyce, go to top1.fm/alyce. That's A-L-Y-C-E. Well, let's contextualize this a little bit, and obviously you're, you're just kind of in the middle of the early stages of, of this transition. So I'm gonna have you talk about 2 roles. What were you just doing? What was your role at GoCardless? And then what's your new role that you've just stepped into at Zscaler?

19:09 Alex Whyte: Yeah. So my role at GoCardless was essentially an account executive. And obviously, the word enterprise gets thrown around in this industry quite a lot, and everyone has different parameters. And to be honest, our definition of enterprise has changed about 4 times since I've been there in 3 years. And that's the nature of startups, right? So in terms of Zscaler's definition of enterprise, it probably doesn't fit that. But in terms of our definition, it's over a $250 million in revenue. That was the most important metric that they used to define the accounts. But I think just to kind of give you an overview of GoCardless, GoCardless, as I said before, has been very much a product-led company. And by that, I mean the product was built for essentially a self-service model where small and medium-sized businesses would essentially go on to our website and sign up and create an account and be able to take what we call direct debit payments, which obviously in the US is ACH, which is to set that up for a big business to set up, it's very antiquated. It takes 6 months. You've got to put a bond in the bank. It's an arduous process. But that's the problem we were solving was small businesses can't do that. They can't put up a bond. They haven't got 6 months. They want to act now. Let's give them an API-based portal. They can simply take payments. But as the company has kind of grown and attracted investment from the likes of Google Ventures and Salesforce, we started moving into the enterprise space. So again, what that's meant is we've kind of shifted our model from an inbound product-centric model to a much more of an outbound-focused approach. And that's kind of where I came in, was at that kind of shift at that point. So the aim was for us to kind of build out new verticals completely untouched. We'd never approached a new business. We kind of barely had our value proposition kind of articulated from that perspective because everything went through billing partners. That's kind of how we won business. 90% of business, I believe, in 2018 came through billing partners. So essentially a lot of it was just trying new things. So the results at the beginning weren't Well, from my perspective, weren't fantastic. And I remember being sat down. Steve Reidy, who I mentioned at the beginning of the call, sat me down after his sort of first or second week. I'd already been there about three or four months and started with small talk. You know, great to great to see you. Did you have a new show? Blah blah blah. And he sort of looks at me and said, "This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work." I kind of looked at him. I was like, "You know." I'm getting on with everyone. What do you mean by this? And he looked at me, he's just like, there's no process, there's no organization. And I think for me, I'd started my career in early-stage startups. Everything was shoot from the hip. My kind of very first real job out of university was setting up a media startup with 2 of my friends. And I think we barely had laptops. Like, we had no revenue, we had no nothing. We were shooting from the hip. So to come and work in somewhere where they were building out process and to work for someone who lived and died by process, what I was doing just wasn't flying. And that was, I would say, a pretty big turning point. The kind of energy I got was, you're either getting on the bus and you're riding with us and, you know, you're gonna kind of learn and learn quickly, or you're not. And I would say that was a pretty pivotal time in my career. And my explanation was to him is it was having come from early stage startups, if you don't know it, you don't know it. And that was my whole thing is like, I don't know how process works. I don't know what medic is. I barely know what enterprise sales is. It's like, if you don't know, you don't know it. And his point was like, we'll learn. And so he's gonna teach me. He's like, go and get some mentors, go and find people, go and speak to people. Go and listen to podcasts, go read books. This isn't school, go and do it. And I think that there's just something switched in my head and I think that it was a real light bulb moment. It was like, this is it. And I think that he was a super inspirational guy and just the way he put it, he just kind of knew how to motivate me. And at GoCardless, it was like, right, okay, We don't necessarily have formal training in place, but go and find the training. Go and meet mentors. And that's where, to your point, what was I doing, go cardless? It's like, right, okay, I had to get organized. I had to learn the kind of process of what software sales really meant. What does PG mean? Why is PG so important? Why is gaining mentors so important? Why is champion building important? And he kind of set out a framework because obviously, again, he'd come from You know, as a graduate, he's only a year or so older than me. So he started his career at Cisco where you get given the book and, you know, they teach you the book. It's like, this is how large deals are closed and you have great coaches alongside you. So he kind of, he'd had that, but obviously he'd run with that and he'd gone from company to company using that. But I was like, right, okay, that kind of learning framework isn't in place. You gotta go find it. So with regards to my role, what we had to do was really find out what was working, what vertical worked for us. And this really comes down to, again, back to organization. Like, where did I look at my PG? How could I do my PG most effectively? But well, first things first, do you have the right accounts? So I go to sales ops, can I have some accounts please? Yeah, we're not quite there yet. This is 2018, by the way. So If anybody who's listening from GoCardless, it is a while back. We're different now. Oh yeah, we don't have accounts. Okay, so you've gotta find your own accounts. And it was understanding like, what is a good account? How do we know what a good account is? How do we target a good account? And I think again, it came back to this level of like organization and discipline and then applying the pipeline generation to that organized process. And that's what the kind of aim was. It was essentially like my first set at GoCardless, it was like I was a kind of glorified SDR because that's pretty much what we had to do. We had to go and find the business. But again, like I said at the beginning of the call, once you found the business, I had a great team around me that would help me follow a new process, champion build, identify pain, what's the metrics of their pain, do we have an EB, have we identified, you know, All of this stuff was so new to me, but suddenly I had the great team around me that was helping me really learn the process and stick to the process as well.

26:01 Scott Ingram: Well, and clearly you got on that bus and you went for a pretty good ride. So why don't you kind of put your results in perspective over those few years?

26:11 Alex Whyte: Yeah. So I think it's important to kind of give a bit of context here. I'm not giving excuses here. To answer your question straight, My last year was 123% to target and the quotas are 450. So I hit 543. And the year before I was on around 100, around 101% and our quotas were 375. The reason why it's important to give a bit of context here is because, like I said, the business was an inbound-driven product-led business. So the average deal size was less than $10K. So when I joined, we were building out a whole new team, a whole new outbound function with completely new quotas. So if you think about it, if you're gonna close $450K worth of $10K deals or less, you're looking at 45 to 60 deals. I mean, it's just impossible, right? So that's why the onus was on us to kind of move upstream. And I think this is, bigger than achieving quota or achieving 123%. I see my success last year in making my average deal size over 12 times bigger than the average deal size of the company. Because it came to, like I said, the research and the identification of true ICPs and what I was going after, what the messaging was. So rather than closing $10K deals, I was closing $150K deals. And not just one-off edge cases, there were 3 of them. So I think that, of course, the deal sizes are slightly smaller in the world of enterprise, particularly as I'm going to someone like Zscaler, where they work with 50% of the Fortune 100. The deal sizes are much larger. But I think, and this is something that they definitely saw in the interview process, it's more about the environment that you're in, and what you're selling, how can you ensure that you can increase deal size and know that you're talking to the right people and applying a process? Because there's a very different process to selling a $10K deal than there is to a $150K deal.

28:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So I want to go down 2 paths. I'll let you pick which one we go down first. I want to talk about kind of what, what exactly was the process? And how did that start? And how did that evolve over time? I'm also interested in Why now? Like, why did you decide to make this change and switch over and go to work for Zscaler?

28:38 Alex Whyte: Okay, so to answer your first question, what was the process? The process over the course of the last 3 years has very much been defined by Steve, who, as I said, is the VP of Northern Europe, bringing in his external learnings. And he kind of followed the same process as the likes of Zscaler, MongoDB, AppDynamics. And it was like, first things first, PG, PG plan, you know, account plans, account discovery. And then you kind of move it into stage 1. You go to discovery and qualification. You kind of have that first meeting deck. And, you know, he introduced the 3 whys, which was super important. I think I'll forever use this. Why anything? Why now? Why go cardless? It sort of ensures that you guys are aligned at a company level and you have a reason to do the deal now. It's not a kind of 2-year thing. And then it was the case of, right, where are we gonna build out a business case? Where are we gonna build out a business case? Do we have the right champion to build out the business case? And once we've built that out, are we gonna get support from the EB? It's kind of gonna be a yes or kind of no-go. And once we've had that, where do we go forward from there? Is it kind of a proof of value? Is there a kind of a value assessment? How do we play back the value from them? And then beyond that, it goes into the kind of procurement negotiations. We bring in legal and obviously it ends either close one or close the other. It's more often close one, of course. But no, I think the framework was there, but I think funny enough, I had a conversation, obviously my last day, I had a conversation with Steve today. And he showed me this incredible like sales playbook that he'd built out for the entire company, for all managers, for all RDs, for all reps in the company. And was like, this is, you know, our ticket to scalability. That exactly what he showed me is just, it was his word of mouth that I was running by. The discovery, the questions to ask, the 3 buyers, like this is, you know, this is how it works. This is what you do. It was never really in a formal process. So every single time we'd run a meeting and be like, no, just do this slightly, do, do that slightly different. You take notes and you do it differently. It was very much a kind of learning on the go process.

30:54 Scott Ingram: All this talk about process has me thinking about Proposify because even companies with well-defined sales processes often don't have a well-defined proposal process. And Proposify offers a great way to fix that issue by allowing sellers to build proposals much faster and then have visibility into how those proposals proposals are being consumed. This is game-changing stuff. Check them out at top1.fm/proposify. And now back to Alex after I asked him why he decided to leave GoCardless and join Zscaler.

31:31 Alex Whyte: Yeah, so I think there are a few reasons. I think for me, it's always, always been in my mind since being introduced to this world of software sales and medic, I've become absolutely kind of besotted by it, I guess. It's probably the wrong word for something like software sales, but I've kind of become obsessed with it. Like, I've really kind of got lost in this world of PTC, BMC, AppDynamics, and, you know, I follow all of the… what I would describe it as a cult, but I've been following it so closely. And weirdly enough, before I joined GoCardless, a recruiter called me up and was like, you're looking to make a move into tech sales, you should go and interview at this company called AppDynamics. I was like, oh, well, why is it great? He's like, well, 5 reps in the UK have earned 7 figures, and, you know, I think you've got what it takes. The guy literally spoke to me once. I was like, oh, really? Okay. So I kind of went to the interview, zero prep, barely understood what they did, didn't understand the interview process, that's for sure. Got there, I sat in front of the guy who I won't name, and he said, so why are we here? And that threw me off so much. And then it was just obviously, I was just, I mean, it was just an absolute car crash of an interview and we kind of ended it early and that was it. I was like, wow, that was pretty intimidating. But then obviously I found out about what this software sales movement was. And I was like, well, I want to be operating like those guys, and I will go back when I'm ready and try and get into that. And I felt that I got to the point at the beginning of this year that I'd learned so much, and I'd had that track record piece, which is one of the key parts of their hiring criteria. And I felt that I was ready to make the move into their world. I've always wanted to go into it. I'd never felt that it was… the time was right, which is what they all say when they're intimidated. But yeah, I just thought that it was the right time. I had the right experience. I had the right track record. I understood the hiring criteria. I understood the interview process. But again, this goes back to exactly what we just spoke about in running the process with mentors and running the process with with champions. I literally reached out to everyone within those companies and identified the 5 companies that I would be applying to. And I reached out to the top performers in all those companies, a very simple question. And I said, I know your hiring criteria is intelligence, character, coachability, and experience. Which is most important? And it's a really simple question. Everyone, every single person came back to me. With an answer and it just starts the rapport. And then, you know, before you know it, after a few exchanges, they're like, do you want to jump on a call? Happy to run through this. Next thing you know, they're coaching you through the interview process. And it's just having the right language to reach out to someone where it's just non-committal. I think that's the most important thing. Make it non-committal. If you ask them, you know, what's it like working at X? Are they gonna reply good or it's all right? Do you know what I mean? It's just such a wide question. Ask them a specific question. It's non-committal. So they can say like, look, it's this. They can leave it or they can reengage. It's completely up to them. Ball's in their court. But I think having that approach the same way you approach mentors, the same way you approach deals champions, it meant that you get educated on how to really understand the hiring process, understanding what they're looking for, the level of importance, what questions to ask. And I think once I had that, you just get, you get more confidence. And you think that maybe I'm ready to go through the process.

35:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and you also get into the fast lane and the lane that gets paid the most attention into that organization. I mean, the worst place you want to be is here's my resume, I clicked the apply button to the generic ad, and now I'm one of hundreds, I don't know, thousands, versus, you know, now you're getting an internal referral, which literally it is the fast track. And then if you've got them on board to kind of literally be your champion through the… I guess in this case, they're a little bit more of a coach, but even still, it's still a very valuable relationship.

36:03 Alex Whyte: And it's funny, it's funny you say that, Scott, because you're absolutely right. And you gotta remember, I put my… I'm going into an organization where straight off the bat you've got a million dollar quota. So I'm already on a back foot because my quota is half that or just over half that. So by just simple kind of process of elimination, they're gonna be like, we've got so many applications, we definitely want someone that's carried a bigger quota than that. And one of the companies, again, I won't mention the name of the company, But I got put forward by someone and the talent team said they could jump. We jumped on a call and I kind of, kind of, you know, clarified their hiring criteria. But they did say, although experience is last, you know, we're looking for someone that's carried a bigger quota and that's closed more complex deals and sold to bigger organizations. So look, we'll keep your CV on file and when a role comes up, we'll come back to you. And I was like, I'm not accepting that as an answer. Obviously, I didn't say that on the phone call, but I was like, I'm not accepting that as an answer. So I actually went straight to the VP of Northern Europe on LinkedIn, and I asked him very similar to the way that I asked the question a second ago, was, I know your hiring criteria is intelligence, character, coachability, experience. Is experience still last? Like, that was… it's a yes or no question. And he said, yes. And I said, okay, great. And then I gave him a little bit of detail around my situation. He was like, should we just jump on a quick call? And we jumped on a 15-minute call with the VP of Northern Europe. And he was like, yeah, okay, I'm going to introduce you to the hiring manager. And then that was it. I was in the interview process and I actually ended up getting an offer from them as well. That…

37:52 Scott Ingram: see, that's, that's brilliant. And here's, I think, the insider piece of that is that there are certain people like those that are in the early stages who can say no, but they can't say yes. But you went to the person who could say yes, and they just… it's easy for them to trump the person who told you no.

38:09 Alex Whyte: Yeah, exactly. It's not like I was kind of disregarding what the person had said originally. Like, I understand that's, that's the filtering. There has to be a filtering system. And I got on a call with the talent manager fairly, fairly promptly after that and said, look, you know, and he was like, absolutely, I get it. But he's got it. This is my job and I filtered you out based on X. And, you know, you know, hats off to you for going for not accepting no. Right.

38:35 Scott Ingram: Right. Let's recognize what the role is. This is your job.

38:38 Alex Whyte: Yeah, it's the same way for a deal.

38:40 Scott Ingram: So I want to come back to something that actually maybe you can educate me on because I haven't been deep down this particular rabbit hole, but I know it exists. So you talked about a cult. Earlier. And it's this, this group of sales leaders, and I don't know how long ago this was. I, I feel like this is, this is a while ago, but there's a group of…

38:59 Alex Whyte: you want a history of it, ask me, I'm your guy.

39:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, but there, there's this group of leaders that came out of PTC, and PTC had kind of this heyday moment and became like this really incredible kind of sales machine. And those leaders have kind of gone all over the place. It's kind of like the analogy that I'm more familiar with is many people might be familiar with the PayPal Mafia. So there was this group of like the early executives in PayPal who have gone on to do epic things. And, and this one people will definitely recognize because it's people like, I don't know, Elon Musk, you may have heard of him, Reid Hoffman, who started LinkedIn, Peter Thiel. I mean, and there's, there's a ton of them, but they've done massive things. There's, there's a very similar thing to the PayPal Mafia. So maybe it's a mafia, not a cult. But maybe you could talk about that because it sounds like you have been like very, very deep down this particular wormhole.

39:55 Alex Whyte: Yeah, in a big way. Like, I think I've become like semi-obsessed with it. So, you know, the equivalent of the PayPal Mafia in this industry, I honestly can put my hand on my heart and say I've listened to their podcast interviews 5 times each over. It's because I think it's because of what they created. And look, you know, But I'll be honest with you, it doesn't have… it's not to everyone's taste. Some people don't have good experiences from it. And this is just from reading reviews and, you know, talking to people, etc., etc. And also, I think that just from my understanding and, you know, the interviews I've heard and the people I've spoken to, I think that the culture that existed… and obviously I wasn't there, I'm just going by what people are saying… the culture that existed early on in the '90s at PTC and then BladeLogic and then BMC. I don't think it exists in the same way, although they have the same leaders. I think I mentioned this the other day. There's a podcast series called Hunters and Unicorns, and the whole premise is the 33 CXOs that came from John McMahon. So John McMahon was the SVP of sales for PTC. I mean, he's basically like the godfather of medic. You know, he sits on the board of Snowflake, he sits on the board of MongoDB. He built BMC. He was involved in all of these incredible software businesses that are renowned for their sales process. But the most important thing is that he had this knack for picking great people and that he created the hiring process that I mentioned earlier, that he hired on intelligence, character, coachability, and experience. It was called ICE. But for him, it was like number one thing is character. And that's what they interview straight away. And experience always came last because that's what they can teach you. And that's why I tried to qualify out at the beginning. But the reason I became obsessed with it is because John McMahon hired these great salespeople that were incredible individual contributors. But why I consider him one of the best leaders that's ever been in this industry is because he created so many leaders. In one of his interviews, there's always that question in what makes a good leader. You know, people talk about leaders that join businesses and turn them around and, you know, IPO, and then, you know, everyone makes their money and then he leaves and then, or she leaves, and then the whole place falls apart. How is that a good leader? Someone's done a good job. And that's his whole point. It's like, he created leaders. And, you know, the people he hired back at PTC and he took to BladeLogic, he took to BMC, who are now the leaders of the best software companies. Cedric Persut at MongoDB, he's followed him through that whole journey. Jeremy Duggan, Steve McCluskey, Thibault Serrel, the VP of EMEA at Snowflake. All these guys. And again, 2 years ago, I hadn't, you know, none of these people know who I am, of course, but it's like I suddenly know their whole autobiography because it's just what he's created in an industry. I've never seen anything just have such a huge impact on, you know, a company's success, on individuals' lives, on their career trajectory, on their ability to create other leaders. One of the reasons I, going back to your question about why I joined Zscaler, I heard through this, through the grapevine of software sales, it's not a massive place, that there was this young woman at Zscaler, Zscaler, depends on where you're from, who in her first year had hit, had done 350% of her number and had joined the 7-figure club. And I was like, right, I've got to find this person. I've got to find this person. So I literally, I trawled through LinkedIn And I worked it out. It was obviously someone who was on Jason Crean's team. Jason Crean, who's at Dynamics, trained by Jeremy Duggan and Steve McCluskey. He was one of their A players there. He joined Zscaler as the major's RD. So I reached out to him blind and, you know, in the back of my head knowing it would be someone on his team. I said, look, you know, Jason, again asking a very specific question. And then, you know, he's like, Alex, do you want to jump on a call? We had a 30-minute call and obviously I asked him, he's like, yeah, it's a person called Marina. I was like, well, can I meet her? He was like, of course. And then yeah, that was 6 months ago. And then obviously on Monday, I'm joining Marina's… the star performer. She was given maiden to RD and I'm joining her team on Monday.

44:43 Scott Ingram: That right there, that's the story, right? So you go down this rabbit hole, you become obsessed with this group of people, and I've got a project for us. Mostly for you, and, and I'm not saying we have to get this done before the episode releases, but either this exists already or it would be really interesting to map out maybe the first 2 levels of this particular network, right? So we'll, you know, call it the PTC mafia, the PTC sales mafia, right? Because you mentioned there's these 33 senior executives and then just kind of the, the ripple effect that that's had down to… I don't know how, how many degrees removed she is, but down to your brand new boss.

45:26 Alex Whyte: Yeah, I can tell you right now that she's sort of… actually, she kind of said, because the reason she joined Jason Crean's team, she was Jason Crean's SDR. She's only, she's only 28. She's been working 4 years, for 5 years max. She was Jason's SDR, and then she got moved into commercial as a commercial AE out of Dynamics. And Jason had already gone to Zscaler and he was recruiting. And again, this is another reason why I'm obsessed with this cult is because it's the 3 Rs. It's recruitment, retention, revenue drives everything. So they're always recruiting the best people. And Jason had already identified Marina as an absolute A-player. Like she would be, you know, one to watch for the future. And my understanding is that, you know, he'd hired some pretty senior guys for his team, you know, everywhere from sort of 30 up to 50 in age. Not that that matters, but like people who've been in the industry a long time. And he took a gamble on her, a gamble in the sense that from my understanding, she hadn't sold into majors before, but she had all of the raw materials going back to the hiring criteria, she had intelligence, character, coachability. And yeah, he kind of gave her an opportunity. Well, my God, did she prove herself. And I think that whole story, when I heard that, was just incredibly impressive in itself. She was given the opportunity and nothing short of smashed it out of the park.

47:00 Scott Ingram: I love that. That is so good. So let's, let's you and I kind of work on that project over time and we'll start to link it up. If you go to top1.fm/this episode number, Or top1.fm/alex-white, and white is W-H-Y-T-E. We'll start to link that up there. I think that'll be a really fun project. And now you've got me super curious about digging into some of this stuff. And like you said, there's the… so what's the relationship with the Hunters and Unicorns podcast?

47:28 Alex Whyte: So basically, they are interviewing the 33 CXOs that John McMahon hired.

47:34 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. So, so there we go. There's the beginning of our list. So that, that'll be fun. All right. So let's go. Way back in the time machine here and talk about what's the origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

47:47 Alex Whyte: It's an interesting one because the university that I went to, most of the people, when you go into like the careers fairs at my university, it was like PwC, Accenture, KPMG. It was just like what I would consider the kind of the boring 4, like just the professional services. They were just trying to hire you know, really kind of bright people that wanted to go and be in audit. And do you know what? They actually made it really aspirational. But I was, I guess I was never that way inclined. You know, I think for me, all of the work experience I'd done in the lead-up to entering full-time work had never been in sales. It'd always been in political PR or I did underwriting. Like, it is, you know, all these random things. But for me, I enjoyed sales. My first kind of real taste of it, I was like, you know what, I really like this. And it's actually quite a funny story how I started my career really at this media startup called The Tab, where 2 Cambridge University graduates had the ambitions to change the way student journalism existed. And it was a really, you know, they went on to raise money from Rupert Murdoch and even Balderton Capital. But these 2 characters, I remember meeting them and I was at Glastonbury. So for your American listeners, that would be the equivalent of Woodstock, I think. But I remember there, I remember being semi-introduced to these guys and I was in the middle of a festival. And I think there was like 40,000 people around us. And I went on my phone, I went on LinkedIn in sort of typical fashion, and I looked on this guy's LinkedIn. I was like, right, amazing. So Cambridge University Business School graduate. Okay, great. Founder of The Tab. Founder of The Tab. Okay, right. And I went up to him, I was like, Jack Rivlin, Cambridge University graduate, founder of The Tab. I want to work for you. And he was like, wow, okay, that's incredible. And it was like, I want to help you build the tab. Let's take it to big brands. Let's go to agencies. I think it's got legs. I want to be involved in building this. And it really started from there. It was a kind of, I think it'd barely been registered as a company and we kind of got a shared office in London and it was kind of, yeah, start from there. Like, well, what have we got? What's the value to customers? So yeah, we just, we started really, it was very much shooting from the hip. There was definitely no process, but I really enjoyed my time there. And that for me was like my entry into sales. After 3 years of doing that, I think I decided that media wasn't necessarily for me and I want to go into something a little more, I guess, exciting. And that's why I made the route into fintech. And then, yeah, fintech went on to obviously go cardless. And then here I am walking into, starting at Zscaler on Monday.

51:00 Scott Ingram: Okay, but let me, let me get this straight on, on the first thing. This was an on-the-spot thing. So you see this guy, you meet this guy, and you sneak away to look at LinkedIn. You're like, oh, okay, I get it. And you, you basically pitched him on the spot.

51:13 Alex Whyte: To answer your question, yes, I basically heard about these guys and what they're building, and I've been speaking to them, or the, the co-founder quite a lot over the period of the weekend. And I was like, I was getting pretty excited about what they were doing, you know, with the way they spoke about it. They were super energetic about it. And I was like, yeah, I want to go work with them. I want to go work with them. They've got this cool young brand. It's just raised some money. It's a completely blank sheet of paper. Like, yeah. And I pretty much just, yeah, found him on LinkedIn. I had a bit of context to go into the conversation to make it work-related. In the middle of a sea of 40,000 people. And yeah, he was like, talk to me on Monday. And then when I met them, and then yeah, and then I worked for them 3 years.

52:03 Scott Ingram: Wow, I love it. So if you could start over today, knowing everything that you know, having gone through this journey and gone through media and learning process and kind of this escalation, is there anything that you would have done differently from a career perspective?

52:18 Alex Whyte: That's an interesting question. It's obviously something that I think about a lot. Everyone always says, you know, don't look at the past, look at the future. But it's very difficult to, very difficult to at times, because obviously you have the benefit of hindsight. For me, if I could give myself some advice, the one piece of advice I would give would be, look for the right leader rather than the right company. Because that person, that person who you spend most of your time with in the working world, if they have a vested interest in you and if they genuinely want you to succeed, I mean, your career can progress 5 years in less than 1. It's mind-boggling as to how much of an impact a good manager can have on you. So if I was to go back, I would say, look, yeah, find the right leader, find the right leader, latch on to them, learn everything they can. But obviously you just don't have that mindset when you're leaving university. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I was funneled into the system where the absolute aspiration is to be an auditor at KPMG. So it's like you're just not in the mindset. If you're not doing being an auditor at KPMG, you know, what are you doing? So I didn't know anything about software sales. I didn't know it existed. I didn't know it existed until later on, definitely after I'd left the tap. So from my perspective, I love the industry I'm in. I'm really excited. I've got quite a few years ahead of me, but it's having those extra years and being managed and coached by the right person. It sets you in an insane stead compared to your peers.

54:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great advice. Love it, love it, love it. So what's your favorite sales story? Was there a deal that you worked on? And maybe it was just one of these, you know, 3 deals that you, that you just did that were kind of 10 times the average size, or, or maybe it's one where you just faceplanted, but you learned so much in the process that, that it was an invaluable experience. What's, what's your favorite deal from that perspective?

54:30 Alex Whyte: I think my favorite deal is, it's a publisher. I don't think I can name, I don't think we got the rights to name the name. So I'll leave that out. But it's a publisher in the UK. And the reason why it's my favorite story is because it was one of my first deals that I could literally say that it was assigned to a process. It was assigned to the process of MEDDIC and the sales… that was the kind of qualification tool, but the sales process of identifying the right champion, doing the right discovery, qualifying, going through that. And I think that I found a great champion that helped me. I learned so much in having her as my champion in terms of navigating the right stakeholders, presenting, multithreading. Like there was just, there were so many different areas of sales that I hadn't really included in my deal. And I managed to get a crash course in one because my champion had been involved in these projects so much that she kind of knew the process. So she essentially taught me how to run the deal. And it was incredible from ensuring that we aligned executives, i.e., the EB from their side, CFO, and my CEO and my chief customer officer, to running workshops where she had all of the people who were challenging our product and the project and price in one workshop. And we literally methodically went through and handled objections and closed them off, you know, ran through the product and how it can help them or ran through, you know, the global partnership or ran through the legal process. And it was like, you know, I had, yeah, this incredible person that that literally enabled me to, from start to finish, win the deal.

56:27 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Now, what are you most proud of?

56:30 Alex Whyte: That's a difficult question. It depends in what context.

56:33 Scott Ingram: Well, there's a reason I didn't give a context.

56:37 Alex Whyte: I would say I'm most proud… I mean, being proud of something, I would say, comes from facing adversity. Because if it's not easy and it's a tough gig, then when you succeed at the end, you're more proud of it. So I'd say one thing that springs to mind is how many different schools and places I lived before going to university and then going to the working world and the constant change. To kind of give you an overview, I think I did a lot of failing at school. So failed my 11+. We have a kind of common entrance exam in the UK for your American listeners. And I failed that and I went to a kind of a low-performing school where very few people go into higher education. And then my parents decided to move me from there and move to a different area into another school which kind of had a kind of similar outcome. And then age 14, and we give out qualifications early on here, so at 16 you get a formal set, but at 14 I moved to the US. So I ended up going into high school as a freshman. In New York, which I obviously loved, but I was in a completely different environment, completely different system, completely new people. And again, every 18 months I was changing schools. And then at 16, well, my family split up and it was either you stay in New York or you go back to London. And my brother stayed in New York and I went back to London. But at 16, you have formal qualifications in the UK. And obviously I had nothing. I'd failed my 11+. I'd gone to 3 schools already and I had no… what we have here is GCSEs. And I arrived back in the UK and I didn't have a school to go to. So we have a system here where we have selective schools, we have to have certain grades to get in them and then they take you. Or you have non-selective schools, which is, you know, it's more about, you know, sport and other non-academic stuff. But I wanted to go to the academic schools, ultimately I wanted to go to university. So very much like my prospecting, which I do later on in life on LinkedIn, I identified 5 schools within my area that were top-performing schools, i.e., sent the students to the best universities, but they had an academic requirement to get in. So I emailed the headmistress directly on my own personal email and said, look, I'm coming over from the US, so I don't have the formal qualifications we're looking for, I'd love 20 minutes of your time to give you a reason as to why I think I'm a good fit for your school. And I went to the school and I kind of broke it down into 3 areas. I was like values, academics, and sport. And I ran the meeting, it's weirdly in a similar way to what I do now, and kind of aligned myself with what they valued. And I got offers and I got accepted into this school. And then I finished there at 18 and I still wasn't sure which universities to go to. So I took a year out and went traveling. And I remember being sat on a beach in Nicaragua on the Corn Islands, literally this remote place. And I was sat next to this guy who just finished… well, he went to Cambridge University. He was 5 years a hedge fund manager and he had just started being a maths teacher. And he sat next to me and I kind of gave him my story and he was like, you've got to go to Bristol University. I was like, yeah, but they don't do the exact course that I want to do. He was like, doesn't matter. It's the best academic institution. You'll be surrounded by the best people. The surrounding is far more important than the subject you're studying. It will set you in good stead for the future. And on that island, I responded to my university accepting letters and said, I would like to go for Bristol University. And, you know, lo and behold, the institution I ended up at was just an institution of like people that were just like go-getters. Everyone came in there, had smashed all of their school grades, done incredibly well, was so motivated, so focused. So I arrived at this university and the drive to succeed was infectious. So yeah, and then that kind of set me on the right path into my university. So I think that was quite a long-winded answer to your question, Scott. But for me, I would say that's, that's probably what I'm most proud of.

1:00:59 Scott Ingram: That's amazing. I mean, that's why I love asking these questions. Like, you just never know where it's, where it's gonna get. There's some really, really interesting stuff in there. I mean, and it's interesting, kind of the themes that come back, like you were running a sales process before you knew how to run a sales process. But, but also just really looking for that. It's, it's so much about like that culture and what you're surrounding yourself with. With, right? Because if you're in an environment with a bunch of lazy bastards, like, you're gonna become that.

1:01:27 Alex Whyte: Yeah, I mean, absolutely, I agree. And, you know, when I look back at, you know, of course, at university, college in the US, like, everyone likes to, you know, have a good time, go to parties and stuff. But I always remember the culture there was you do your parties fine, but you have to do your work. If you miss class, you have to make up for it, that you have to come out of that university with a good degree and good qualification. It was like an absolute table stakes. So people just did it.

1:01:56 Scott Ingram: I love that. Again, there's so many parallels there that are fantastic. But why don't we dig into… I mean, you started to give us just a little bit of a tease at the top of this when you were talking about your pipeline generation, your PG, and kind of the daily discipline stuff. Walk me through your day? I know you know the deal, right? So alarm clock goes off, what time does that happen? And I want blow by blow.

1:02:20 Alex Whyte: Obviously, I've listened to probably 90% of your podcasts and this question comes up every time. At least 50% of the answers you get are, I start my day, I wake up not as early as everyone else, I only wake up at 6 AM and I do my meditation. Unfortunately, I can't give you that. Unfortunately, I can't give you that. So it's probably not the answer that you're used to getting. So I get up around 7 o'clock when I'm fully involved in the working day. I get up at 7 o'clock, I go to my local coffee shop, I have a chat with the owner, I check my fantasy football team always, and I usually am starting work by 8 o'clock. I think that obviously a lot has changed in the last year. We're in lockdown. So usually I'll try and do 1 or 2 workout classes in the morning. My ambition, in fact, as of Monday, I'm joining the 6 AM Club. I've decided it's a completely new leaf. If you want to go to Zscaler and you want to succeed, you've got to be part of the 6 AM Club. It's in too many self-help books for it not to be a thing. So for me, Monday morning, I'll be up at 6 AM. But of course, like with regards to my work, as I mentioned earlier on in our conversation, you kind of got to get PG done. Got to get out of the way. So it's really the the first thing that, that I'm doing is getting my pipeline generation, checking the responses I've got from the day before, the day or two before. But I try and get that organized as the first kind of task of the day.

1:03:48 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like you're kind of structuring your day in, I don't know, maybe it's 4 blocks, right? So you're starting with your PG, you've got kind of the core revenue generating part of your day, that's, you know, call it 10 AM to 4 PM. And then you're closing with the PG.

1:04:03 Alex Whyte: And then there's like something else on the other end, I So actually, so this is Ian Koniak's framework, not mine. Non-revenue-generating tasks are PG. Weirdly, revenue-generating tasks are customer engagements. So running customer workshops, running customer discovery calls. So that is between the hours of 10 and 4. So I try and get all of my customer engagements between the hours of 10 and 4. I think also one thing that I've also taken from another one of your guests, it was Matt… oh my God, I'm sorry, I would have written down here…

1:04:46 Scott Ingram: Du Pont.

1:04:47 Alex Whyte: Matt Du Pont, that's it. Matt Du Pont, who I've also spoken to a few times on the back of your interview, was Pomodoro Technique. So breaking up my day into sort of 25-minute sections in what I can achieve based on what the task is. But yeah, 10 to 4, we do kind of revenue generating tasks and then we kind of close off the day after 4 p.m. I look at kind of going back into my PG, doing my follow-ups from my meetings at that point. And then for me, almost every day after 6 o'clock is exercise. I think exercise honestly keeps me sane. I don't think I could live without it.

1:05:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm with you on that. Now, given that you were… we'll speak future tense… you were getting up at 7 o'clock, that probably means you go a little bit later in the evening than I do. What's the rest of the evening? Is there some more magic that happens there?

1:05:41 Alex Whyte: I don't know whether I should be completely honest or talk about something from a sales perspective. If I'm completely honest, I watch football most nights.

1:05:47 Scott Ingram: Okay, fair enough.

1:05:48 Alex Whyte: I watch football most nights to the disappointment of my girlfriend, but I actually Probably. I reckon there's 2 nights a week that I don't watch football.

1:05:59 Scott Ingram: So are there any other kind of habits or routines that are just core to your process and approach?

1:06:06 Alex Whyte: Yeah, as I said, I think exercise for me is everything. It keeps me sane. Whether you're frustrated with work or you're enjoying work, you have to kind of sweat it out. Obviously, you know, you want to be that person like Bill Gates who reads a book a week. Unfortunately, I don't. I do I do get stuck into some books, but I'd say podcasts, I listen to more podcasts than I do read. And the reason why I love this, obviously, you can, when you live in London, you're always on the go. London's so big, you have to travel so far to literally go to work or to the other side of the city. So it means you have a lot of time where you're either driving or you're on the tube or whatever. I do a lot of podcasting. And I really enjoy listening to real people's stories. I think that's why I enjoy your podcast so much. It's because it's not, you know, obviously I love the How I Built This stories and you talk about, you know, Whitney Wolfe building Bumble. You know, these are incredible stories where people have built incredible things. But I also like hearing stories about people who do the same job as me. They give you, you know, great ideas, great tips on how to optimize your time, how to be that little bit more successful. So yeah, I think podcasts are pretty good. And the final one, this has been a theme probably throughout this entire conversation, but it's mentors. I'm not an originator of ideas. And in fact, I stole that quote of Steve that everything that I kind of have learned in this industry and this space has been from someone else. So getting into the habit of reaching out to people that are doing things well, you know, it's just as much of a routine as exercise is.

1:07:56 Scott Ingram: I love that. Let's go just a little bit deeper into, because I was dying to ask you the information diet question and you've already kind of half answered it. What's the rest like? Are there any other podcasts that you haven't mentioned that, that you listen to pretty consistently?

1:08:13 Alex Whyte: I mean, yeah, we've obviously mentioned your one. Legends of Sales and Marketing is a really good one. It's a really good one because it interviews all those people, all those folk that we spoke about, but also it interviews like true legends of sales and marketing. Like we're talking about the founding chief customer officer of Salesforce. Who met Marc Benioff after, you know, being 20 years in IBM and an executive there for 15 of those. These people like have changed the software industry as we know it now, like have modernized it. And their journey and their stories is all kind of documented and laid out in Legends of Sales and Marketing. So I highly recommend that. I touched on the Hunters and Unicorns one. Another one is How I Built This. I think this is really good because it lifts the hood on who these people really are. Like we talk about Brian Chesky at Airbnb. I mentioned Whitney Wolfe at Bumble, Pat Brown at Impossible Foods. All these people have built incredible businesses at different stages of their life. Whitney Wolfe IPO'd the company at 31. Pat Brown started Impossible Foods at 60. So these guys, their stories are so different and their careers and their journeys are so different. But I find that Guy Raz is so good at asking really personal questions and really kind of lifting the hood on who they really are and the adversity they faced and how they've overcome it. And I find it's really pertinent whether you're in sales, whether you're a founder, whether you're in marketing. Their story can be relatable in many other ways. And then there's, there's, I don't know if you guys, thing is he bases, he's based in the US. I don't know if you guys have heard of Louis Theroux.

1:10:14 Scott Ingram: Not ringing a bell for me.

1:10:16 Alex Whyte: Okay. Well, he's like one of the most famous journalists for the BBC in the UK. And again, he's just incredibly good at asking really personal questions to really famous people. And these are like, you know, athletes, you know, celebrities, whoever they are. And I find that he's just, he's really good at finding out the real person, which is obviously an art as a journalist. But definitely, definitely check those out. And if you're going to ask me about podcasts, I guess it'd be rude if I didn't say talk about Ricky Gervais, who surely you know Ricky Gervais.

1:10:52 Scott Ingram: I'm cringing.

1:10:53 Alex Whyte: Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, Karl Pilkington. You don't know the latter 2, fine. But I listen to their podcast and these are podcasts that were recorded in 2002, 2003. I listen to them every night before I go to bed. Nice.

1:11:09 Scott Ingram: All right. I'm going to… I'm going to check those out. I'm going to check those out. And let's talk about… I mean, you have listened to most of the episodes on this podcast. And I think when we… when we spoke earlier, I kind of challenged you to you know, what are the ones that have really resonated with you the most that have had kind of the biggest impact on you? You had a great line earlier about like, hey, I didn't, I didn't come up with any of this stuff. I just, I just steal what, what other people are doing. So which episodes of this show have, have impacted you the most?

1:11:37 Alex Whyte: I think the person that impacted me the most, and by the way, in typical fashion, every time I listen to an interview, it's not an interview, it's a conversation, sorry, that you have with one of your guests, I always reach out to them on LinkedIn. And I always say, look, I really enjoyed this, this, and this about the conversation. It'd be great to be connected. And they're obviously super responsive. But I think the one person that sticks out is Brandon Fluharty of LivePerson. And the reason why is because his story about, you know, he went to university in Florida, soccer was his thing, that's, you know, all he focused on. But just the level of discipline that he has put into his life now is like mind-blowing, down to like he measures his sleep, he measures his heart rate, he measures the time that he spends on podcasts. And, you know, Like to be a top performer like him consistently, you've got to do it. And he makes the analogy between being successful in our industry and being a professional, being like a top athlete. If you want to be the top person, you have to do that. Like, you know, Cristiano Ronaldo isn't Cristiano Ronaldo just by fluke. Tom Brady, same thing with him. It's not just something you're just naturally born with. You've got to work at it. And he's used everything that he's learned from nearly making professional soccer to his life in software sales. And he's just done it so incredibly well. And he shares like honest accounts of it and he shares honest tips. And I read his blog, you know, it's, you know, it's someone I follow pretty closely after listening to his podcast.

1:13:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting how prominent the discipline theme Has been of late, right? Also, for just more sports perspective, I think about Kobe Bryant. I think about Michael Jordan, right? Just the level of individual effort that they put in and the level of discipline that they had. But you know, just recently, maybe you haven't even had a chance to hear it yet. But my conversation with with Irfan Jafar, who I'm like, God, I'm so lazy. I'm not I'm not upholding my end of the bargain. Here's a guy; he's up at four fifteen every morning without an alarm clock, and on weekends, like every single day, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm such a.

1:14:04 Alex Whyte: Slacker makes me feel like a complete failure, Scott.

1:14:08 Scott Ingram: But you know what? I think that's I think that's the beauty, you know, and and what I love about this is I mean there is just this range, right? At every level there's another level. I mean it's it it's it's it's ridiculous.

1:14:23 Alex Whyte: It's exactly what you just said. Like every level there's another level, and honestly some of the people. That you have on your show. I mean, I'm taking notes for days. It's just the level of detail. And as I said, no matter what you do, unless you're prepared to the nth degree, you're not going to be the best. You're not going to be a true high performer. And I think that Brandon in your show really articulated this well.

1:14:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, the other thing, and I've probably talked about this a little bit in the past, is kind of what I saw with the Sales Success Summit and particularly the first year, because I thought, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a little bit dangerous and scary because I'm bringing together truly the best of the best. And I was just worried about the level of ego that people would bring. And I was so freaked out that that would really start to escalate and it would be just this, I don't know, like crazy testosterone fest. And the reality is, and I don't worry about it anymore because this is such just a core part of the culture. The reality is everybody walked into that event and went like, I know I'm good, but I know there's better. And I know there are people in this room who are better than me. So I'm just gonna frickin learn.

1:15:45 Alex Whyte: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And honestly, I started listening to your show about 2 years ago. And my plan was always to come, I think it was in Austin. Was it going to be in Austin last year?

1:15:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Austin. Yep.

1:15:58 Alex Whyte: It's always in Austin. Yeah. So I was going to go, obviously with COVID that's not been able to happen. But the reason I've wanted to go is because all of those people that I've listened to and I reach out on LinkedIn, they're in one room. It's like they're in one room and, you know, in a few days there and, you know, I can't even imagine, you know, how much value and how much, you know, you could learn from the different people.

1:16:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So the folks who were already on the listener list, this will have happened. I'm working on an email this weekend because we're getting ready to close out the month, close out the quarter. The price of the summit goes up every month. The beauty is people are signing up again, right? I hadn't had anybody for a year sign up kind of unsolicited to join us, to be in person. And it's happening again because I think we can see a future path. But I am having so much fun with this email we're putting together. I think the subject is going to be something like Whatever It Takes. And I found these… I found… I'm like, you know, surely if this continues, we will find a way to innovate our way out of this isolation and find ways that we can get back together again. I mean, the vaccines are one thing, but you know what happens if there's like crazy variants and something like this happens again? How do we avoid the isolation and the lockdowns and everything else. And I Googled, I'm like, somebody must have invented like a HEPA helmet. Sure enough, I Googled that and I found some of the funniest stuff. So we're going to stick all of those images and stuff you can actually buy today. It's, it's totally ridiculous. So we're, we're going to put that together. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but damn it, if that's what it takes, then fine. We'll wear silly, ridiculous helmets, look like we're from the Jetsons. And we'll make this happen. So, I want to talk about the sales philosophy piece, right? Because, you know, I always ask if people subscribe to a particular sales philosophy. Has that become MEDDIC for you, or do you have a different answer to that question?

1:18:02 Alex Whyte: If I've subscribed to that cult and that cult subscribes to MEDDIC, by default, I'm subscribed to MEDDIC.

1:18:11 Scott Ingram: Well, that's easy.

1:18:13 Alex Whyte: People talk about, you know, SPIN Selling and all those other variations of sales. Of course, I've dipped into the books or whatever, but I think from a methodology, from a kind of qualification piece, for me, MEDDIC makes sense.

1:18:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, I also like to ask though, within MEDDIC, like, what's your style?

1:18:33 Alex Whyte: I think this really comes down to, like I mentioned right at the beginning, it's that ability to identify the right champion. Because, you know, you can kind of look at a printout of your sales process and write, okay, I've got to go discovery, I've got to go qualification, I've got to go architecture, I've got to go alignment, I've got to go sponsorship. If you don't have the right champion on board, it's all completely worthless. So from that perspective, all the kind of the investment early doors has to go into finding the right champion. Finding the right champion, so identifying the right champion, but building the right champion. You've got to be aligned. Like, what are their KPIs? What are their metrics? What do they gain out of this project being successful? Unless you have that, and then unless you have them and you have a real pain that's been identified, that's got a metric over the top of it, you literally have nothing. So for me, it's like putting so much energy in those, those first parts of the deal, getting the right champion, getting the right pain, getting a metric over that pain. Once you have that, you can go through the process. But I think the fundamentals all lie in getting the right person on board in terms of champion, getting the right metric, getting the right pain.

1:19:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And it's interesting because I was going to ask as a follow-up and you got there anyway, right? If there's just kind of like anything else around the way that you develop and you work with those champions and what you said is like, it's It's getting to their individual why. And, you know, one of my favorite questions to ask, and I've had to modify it of late, but it's really kind of a visualization process that I try to get them in, right? And I will ask, look, Alex, if we had an opportunity to get together a year from now and raise a glass and toast our success, what specifically would we be celebrating? And I find that to be such a powerful question, right? Especially if I can really get them to like be in that moment. And then like the real magic is to ask why a couple more times, right? Because that was typically what will get you to the personal, right? Like, oh well, if I'm able to do that and have this type of an impact, then that elevates my profile and it puts me on this type of a career path. And here's what I'm really trying to accomplish. Like, aha, now we're somewhere. Yeah.

1:20:59 Alex Whyte: And I think that that's, that's definitely something that I'm learning still, is like, you gotta ask that second and third why. Because every single answer you get, it's like, why do you want to be in sales? Oh, I like earning good money. That's not, that's not the real reason. Like, why do you want to earn good money? Oh, you know, then you start getting to the nitty-gritty, the personal, as to what's really driving them. And it's the same thing whether you're, you know, aligning yourself with a champion. Why do you want this project to succeed? Oh, I, you know, it's good for the company, it's good for my reputation. But why is it good for reputation? Oh, well, they're actually, you know, doing promotions in 6 months' time, so I want to put my name on the table. Okay, why do you want to be promoted? Oh, because it's a new project they're launching in, in Asia. And, you know, I get to build a team. Okay, now we're getting to the real, the real answers. We went from being good for the company to I want to move to Asia and get my own team and launch a new project.

1:22:06 Scott Ingram: Right, exactly, exactly. Well, why don't, why don't we do this now? Because what I like to ask is about kind of motivation and what motivates you. But kind of underlying that is, is always your own personal why, right? So let's start there. Like, what's your why for why you're in sales and, you know, what you're hoping to accomplish at Zscaler now?

1:22:28 Alex Whyte: I always find that's an interesting question, like, what motivates you? And I think going back to leaving university and not really knowing what specific career or industry I wanted to be in, from that perspective, I think the main goal was just to to be someone, as kind of basic as it sounds. But you just want to be someone. You want to kind of have ownership over a particular area and, you know, be a thought leader. But I think as you kind of, you know, you're looking for respect in a particular industry, the other things seem to follow. And I think that's why it comes back to like, and I've always had this, and in fact, this is the conversation when I was sat down with one of my mentors in terms of choosing my next career. And I had, you know, these offers on the table. It's like, you know, 3 companies, X, Y, and Z offers. Zscaler is actually the lowest. And it's like, that shouldn't even be a factor. That shouldn't be a factor. That's not what's part of the decision criteria right now where you're at the stage you are in your career. Of course you're in sales. Of course you want to be financially, you know, stable in the future and provide X, Y, and Z. There are other things that you need to be, that need to be a higher priority. Who are you working for? What are you learning? What are you going to be at the end of this 3 years? How is it going to, you know, promote your career into the direction that you want it to move? So I look at kind of where I want to be. And ultimately, you know, I would like to move into leadership. I want to close that 8-figure deal. But I've got to be on the right bus to do that. So my motivation right now is to get FTSE 100 or Fortune 100 logos under my belt, to close an 8-figure deal, and to get to number 1. I see it as Zscaler. Only then I feel that I'm in the right position to move into a leadership role. That for me is enough motivation to get up at 6 on Monday.

1:24:33 Scott Ingram: And why the leadership path?

1:24:35 Alex Whyte: I think because typically we all know that the ICs probably, options and equity aside, earn more money. But I think that there's a kind of… your career becomes something completely different when you move into leadership. So I always remember this quote, the first thing that John McMahon says to someone when an IC says to him, John, I want to be in… I want to move into leadership, he says to them, Well, have you got kids? They say, yeah, I've got two. Why do you want five more? I always laugh laughed at that, but it's like it's it's a different motivation, and that's the thing goes back to that why I respect you know what he's done so much in his career is because he's created leaders, and it's a different level of motivation. It's like why do you want kids? You have to get up at silly o'clock. They don't say thank you. They cost so much money. It's like, well, why do you want them? It's just a different level of responsibility. It's a different stage of your career. It's a different stage of life. So you get a different gratification out of it. And I think for me, once I've kind of ticked the boxes of what I see as ready to move into leadership, I feel like I'll get a completely different buzz out of my career.

1:25:48 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. You said earlier something that's funny because it's just echoing in my head. Actually, it's today. That this came up. So you talked about like wanting to be someone as just kind of a general theme. And today we wrapped up the encore series with Leila. And one of the things she was talking about was being who you want to be. Right. So it's sort of taking the future state, but bringing it into the present. Yeah.

1:26:15 Alex Whyte: I mean, I want to say I understand that, but I think I'm, maybe I'm missing How so? I don't know. What do you mean by being someone present?

1:26:25 Scott Ingram: Well, I think it's a couple of things. Like, what that says to me is, and maybe it's not, it doesn't relate as directly to the future role, although at some level I think it can, right? I often talk about how I'm not in a titled sales leadership role. But that doesn't mean that I'm not a sales leader, right?

1:26:51 Alex Whyte: I see what you mean. I see what you mean. And look, I agree. You know, I know for a fact that the 2 people who I mentioned have had a massive impact without even meeting them, just on my career. You know, I mentioned Ian Koniak and Brandon Fluharty. Those guys are ICs and they could very much be in leadership. They've achieved so much in their career. It's not like a barometer of success by any means, but it's something that for me has been an ambition when the time is right. I've always, you know, for me, it's like you can't teach something until you've done it properly yourself, until you've got the war stories. I could go into, you know, an RD role in a few years' time and go, actually, this is not for me. But at least I can say I did it. I guess it's just, it's one of those things. It's like you have that, that burning desire to go and at least try it, but you can't try it until you've achieved kind of table stakes to be of a certain, you know, ilk.

1:27:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, hopefully, hopefully you're, you're doing it right. So I wonder, is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

1:28:04 Alex Whyte: Honestly, I would say that it doesn't matter where you are in terms of against quota, whether you're 200% to quota, keep PGing. PGing, by I mean pipeline generating. Like, keep doing it and never take the foot off the pedal. And honestly, I think that the people I speak to that have blown quotas out the water. We're talking 500%. They've joined the 7-figure club that we all kind of talk about in software sales. But do you think that they took the pedal off it at 200%? And these guys are like, they are edge cases. Like, you don't, not everyone in the company, every company has a 500-percenter. So these people, I honestly, I look at them with complete admiration for, and one of the main reasons is, is like, Like most people, 99% of people take their foot off the gas at 150% target. 100%. They take the foot off the gas. Like I've done my job and I'm doing well here. And I've finished number 1. But those who keep, put the gas on more at 150%, at 200%, at 300%, those are the ones that get to 500%. So I think that it doesn't matter where you are in terms of against quota. If you continue to pipeline generate, you'll be you'll be successful.

1:29:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love it. What about the flip side? Is there something the average sales rep believes that you think is crazy?

1:29:40 Alex Whyte: The average salespeople that I think is crazy… the six o'clock club.

1:29:46 Scott Ingram: But you're still gonna join them, huh?

1:29:48 Alex Whyte: I'm still gonna join him. Apparently it's the thing to do. All right.

1:29:51 Scott Ingram: Well, we're gonna check in. I'm gonna see how you're doing with that effort after a couple of months here. Okay. So we talked a little bit earlier about just kind of your interesting path into sales. And I think we've all had kind of interesting, interesting paths into sales. Maybe it wasn't as intentional as we would've liked. What's cool is I think there's a lot of people earlier in their careers who are being more intentional about the opportunity to come into sales. And, and some of them are finding this podcast. In fact, sitting on my desk right now, I haven't even acknowledged this. I'm a horrible person. Now I'm just going to acknowledge him in front of a few thousand people. So Earl Moore is a listener to this podcast, and he said, you know, look, I'm, I'm in this role today, but I really want to move into tech sales. And, you know, he's, he's absorbing and And, you know, took the time to write me a personalized note and put it in the mail, which is absolutely incredible.

1:30:48 Alex Whyte: Love that. Absolutely love that. Yeah. Yeah.

1:30:50 Scott Ingram: I mean, it gets my attention again. I owe him an apology because I haven't even responded yet, but this is probably better than nothing. And I'm sure I'll acknowledge here sooner rather than later. It's just been a busy couple of weeks coming up to the end of the quarter. But what advice do you have for somebody like Earl, right, who's just getting started in their sales career today and wants to lay this really great foundation for themselves? Yourself to do great things over time.

1:31:14 Alex Whyte: It's an interesting one because I had exactly the same scenario as someone right before lockdown, a random person I met in the pub, and he literally was a graduate of university, got a first in biomedical sciences. He's about to go insurance. And this was the advice in a very similar situation to Earl I gave him was like, don't make a decision until you have all the information. Because that's the thing is like, especially going into career, there's just so much information there. I know you have to pick the right stuff, but it's like it becomes overwhelming. So if he knows, if Earl knows he wants to get into tech sales, reach out to people in the industry and just start at whatever level. Like obviously he won't know about PTC, John McMahon, you know, those veterans in the industry. He will now. He will now, of course. But just go and speak to people who have done well, who've been in the industry a few years, and they could be any age. But just ask the question, why are you in it? What's in it for you? Why did you get in? How did you get into it? What motivates you? What's day-to-day like? Everyone, there's no salesperson that wouldn't be happy to share that with them. But it just gives you, it gives you the information that you need to make the right decision. I think the one thing that you will find if you manage to identify various top performers at whatever company, they will all tell you without doubt they had an incredible manager or mentor that got them to this place, without doubt.

1:32:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's, that's what you called out earlier, right? It was, it's the individual, it's the who you're going to work for, not the company necessarily. And I think that's fantastic advice. What about for somebody that's a little further in, right? So they've been in sales for some number of years, maybe they're doing okay, maybe they're struggling, but, but they want to, they want to do better. What's your advice for them?

1:33:19 Alex Whyte: I look at this as like, let's, let's just take it for a second, take a step out of software sales, of tech sales. And you're someone who is about to IPO your company and revenue starts stumbling, or you have a massive PR disaster, what do you think they do? They reach out to people who have gone through similar challenges, similar adversity. Someone who, you know, built a company, a CEO's built a company and the market changes and suddenly they go into like freefall, what do they do? They go and seek advice from people that have circumvented, you know, similar challenges. There should be no difference in our industry in what we do as software salespeople. If you're struggling to get deals over the line or things aren't working for you, go and find out someone that's… go and find that person that's gone through that, that's managed to navigate it. I'm sure there'll individual contributors and leaders out there alike that have done that, have overcome that. It's all part of, you know, we all know that everything, whatever you do, whether you do sales or whether you're a CEO, whether you're a brand manager, that there's adversity in everything, there's challenges in everything. But speaking to people that have gone through that and come out the other side and succeeded, that is just, I mean, it's invaluable. You can't put You can't put a price on it.

1:34:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's a really good call out, and I feel like there might be a couple of these stories, you know, buried in these last hundred and however many episodes on the on the podcast. But one idea that came to mind, and maybe folks will reach out to me who are listening, is people who have been put on a plan and recovered and went on to do really well inside that organization. That is a body of stories and those types of examples, right? Like find somebody who's been there and come out better the other side, or maybe you just went to another company. And that was your result. But if you've been in that situation, right? If you got put on a plan and turned it around, I would love to hear your story. And you're all welcome to reach out to me. Email is always the best channel. So just send me a note to scott@top1.fm. I would love to hear those stories, and maybe we'll assemble them at one point or do something with them because that's something I come across with some regularity. Is like you know I'm just stuck. I'm struggling. I got put on. This plan. And sometimes it's, sometimes it's just not the right place, you know, and sometimes that's its own sign and you've got an opportunity to go find a better place and the right place. But other times it is on you and you've got things you need to work on. And I know there are people in this audience who have successfully kind of navigated that type of challenge. So would love to share some of those examples. So Alex, you as somebody who has listened to a lot of these episodes and has done a lot of your own Outreach to kind of find top performers in other organizations to hear their stories. Is there anything that I'm not asking right in these conversations that you're curious about when it comes to what these other top sellers are doing?

1:36:26 Alex Whyte: I think the main the main thing that really because I talk about you know organizing my day, getting up at seven, you know. Revenue generating versus non-revenue generating. But when I hear someone like Brandon, who's the other end of the spectrum in terms of like, you know, by the book, by the T Pomodoro technique, I would just love to know how the kind of the best performers organize their day. Like, how do they organize their day? Because I've taken it from various other people, but I draw back on this book by Daniel Pink on when… about timing is everything and about when you have the most energy, when you kind of lull, when you can solve the right problem. But I would love to hear from different types of people like Brandon. I've obviously never met Brandon. He could be just someone who operates like that. But I would love to hear from other people from other companies. What do they do? What time do they get up? How often do they pipeline generate? Like, how much time do they spend on it? Because time is, I mean, time is everything, particularly in our industry. Because you can spend, you know, so much, too much time on pipeline generating and not enough time closing deals. And you don't hit your number and then you're on plan like you just spoke about. Or you spend too much time closing deals and then not enough pipeline generating, then next year you're on plan. So it's like, how do you best balance your time?

1:37:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I've been looking for a venue to talk about this and I, I think you just created it, it for me, you know, cuz I've presented on kind of my productivity process a couple of times and, you know, it's something that I think about a lot, but I think it ultimately comes down to intentionality, right? And really being thoughtful about how am I gonna use my time? What, what is my plan? What are the priorities? What am I gonna focus on? How am I going to focus? Because I've had really just in, in the last couple of weeks, like a few kind of off days. And it's kind of given me an insight into… I'm like, you know what, I bet this is the way that sort of the average typical person operates. And it is so unproductive. And what it is, is it's, you know, I enter the day without a plan. Like, okay, well, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read some emails, I'm gonna read a little bit of news, I'm gonna check into LinkedIn. Oh, I've got a meeting. Okay, let me show up to that meeting. Okay, cool. I did my meeting. And it's just this lack of direction and priority, and you're sort of just, you know, being led around by whatever's around versus I've defined these are my most important accounts, these are my most important opportunities, these are my most important prospects, these, these are the tasks and sort of the key activities that I've got to get done. I've figured that out. Now I'm just gonna crank out those things. The difference in results between those 2 types of days… and I'm the same person living both of those days… is on one side, virtually nothing of substance gets done. It's, you know, like I was quote-unquote working, like I do. Okay, sure, I did that for like 8 or 10 hours, but I have nothing really to show for it. Versus the other type of day I can build you a list of like, here are the impacts and the things that I was able to move forward because of this intentionality and this type of focus, right? So I think a lot of it just comes down to that, like to starting the day and having a plan and having those priorities. How you do it beyond that is maybe less important, whether you're using Pomodoro or, or, you know, whatever your, your approach is. It's… and not being distracted, I think, is another kind of key piece. So anyway, that's my, that's my own 10 cents on the topic.

1:40:18 Alex Whyte: Scott, I couldn't agree with you. I couldn't agree with you more. It's like, I feel like I'm searching for that, that silver bullet, that magic answer. But I know I'm never gonna get it. Yeah, because it's not there. It's something that I'm constantly grappling with is like, what, how the hell do I optimize my time? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:40:35 Scott Ingram: I mean, it comes back to a quote that I'm fond of. I think it's my own quote, which is, the secret is there is no secret. Right? Like, I think we're all looking for this silver bullet, you know, magic thing that we can do. And it's just, you know, as nice as that would be, if that existed, everybody would do it, you know. But the reality is answers you really don't want to hear, because it is like, it's the discipline, it's this, you have to do all this really hard stuff.

1:41:04 Alex Whyte: Yeah, we're gonna speak in a few weeks' time, Scott, and I'm gonna say, look, 6 o'clock in the morning is just not for me, right? It's just not for me.

1:41:12 Scott Ingram: Well, I keep thinking, I'm like, okay, maybe I need to experiment and try the 4:15, 7-day-a-week thing. Or maybe I stick with, okay, I keep doing my 4:30. Maybe I don't need to adjust the time. But to, you know, continue that and maintain that on the weekends, I'm like, man, that, that is, again, it's another level. It's another level that is beyond where I am today. But I'm willing to try things. Things, you know, like, okay, I'm willing to give that a shot for a week and see how that plays out. So, you know, maybe, maybe we both do that. You start your 6 AM thing. I'll do, I'll do 7 days at 4:30 or 5. And, you know, we'll compare notes and see how that's going. Let's do it. Let's do it. Awesome. So the last thing is always just trying to recap this in the most actionable way that we can. So we've covered a lot of ground, talked about a lot of different ideas. But what would you challenge the person listening to this to do right now over the course of the next week or 2 and until we release the next, you know, gigantic, super long interview episode? What would you challenge them to do to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:42:25 Alex Whyte: That's a really good question. I think it makes sense that it's in line with stuff that we've, we've spoken about. And where I've personally seen gain, seen results, to challenge someone to identify 5 of your weakest areas, write them down, and write down why they're your weakest areas and what you need to improve. Then find someone in your industry. And again, obviously I know everyone that listens to this is in software sales, or pretty much everyone, but this can be any industry. Again, law, banking, sales, branding, but find that person in industry who is known to be a master of that specific area. And you've got 5 specific areas, but of that specific area and ask them a very specific question. And that is going to help you take action on their advice, report it back as we talk about. And whether that's a short engagement where you've got a 1 or 2 word answer, or you've ended up building rapport and having a call with them, but you've gained a mentor. And it's really, it's enabling you to kind of strengthen where you are weakest. And whatever you do and whatever industry you're in, you're gonna have weak areas. So if you wanna improve, I personally believe that that's the shortest route to doing so.

1:43:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, Alyce, are you ready to start fielding these? You have been on the, you know, question asking side. Are you ready to receive some really great, like specific questions that you're willing to help people with? Bring it on, bring it on.

1:43:52 Alex Whyte: I actually am, of course. Like, for me, I think it's such a great feeling when someone says yes or they respond. And it's mentors and mentees is very much a two-way thing. And of course, wherever I can offer assistance, I will be happy to help. Brilliant.

1:44:09 Scott Ingram: I knew that would be your answer, but I had to ask. Alex, this has been fantastic. Thank you for all of your time. Thank you for being such an involved member of the Sales Success Community. We appreciate you.

1:44:20 Alex Whyte: No, I really appreciate it, Scott, and thanks very much for having me. And yeah, it's been a pleasure to speak.

1:44:26 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.