125: Disconnecting from Outcomes and Doing the Work with Workstream's Chris Horton

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Outreach, Vidyard, and Skipio. To learn more about them and all of our sponsors who are supporting you through this show, 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 my guest is Chris Horton, the top key account executive at Workstream and the first rep in Workstream's history to close more than $1 million, and he did it in just over 6 months. Welcome to the show, Chris.

0:51 Chris Horton: Hey, thanks Scott. Good to be here.

0:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, really glad to have you here. And 2 quick shoutouts. First, to your VP of Sales Blake Harbour for publicly celebrating your accomplishment on LinkedIn, and then Florin Tatulea for tagging me on that post and suggesting that we get you on the podcast. So let's kick things off like we always do with some immediate value. Chris, what are the top 3 things that you believe got you to this point?

1:16 Chris Horton: Yeah, big thing. Biggest thing probably I would say is getting rid of the commission breath as much as I possibly could. You know, I know it's kind of an interesting way to look at it, but, but I kind of looked at the relationships that, that I have with prospects as Hey, would this person like to work with me in 2, 3, 5 years? Would they like to even hire me once I move on from the company I'm at now? And so looking at it as a very long-term relationship and building that trust. The second thing that I think has helped a lot lately, especially with kind of the mental health of sales, is Just trying to make sure that your happiness doesn't just hinge on where you're at on the leaderboard or where your results stand. Those are obviously, you know, byproducts of all of the hard work that you put in, but you can't necessarily let yourself be totally destroyed if you're not hitting a number or not, you know, reaching a goal. You put in your dials, you, you do your follow-ups, and you let the the results come from that. And then the third thing I would say is understanding your product in the industry better than anybody else that, you know, is around you or is competing with you or anything like that. So, you know, going in and meeting the, you know, meeting influencers within the industry, meeting even understanding the engineering side of things, even if you, you know, are just sales focused. So really just going around and becoming the number one expert, undisputed expert in everything that you sell to your clients and help them with. Those are kind of the top 3 things that I've tried to live by, at least for the last, you know, year, 2 years. And, you know, just kind of summing it up into 3 things.

3:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great stuff. Now, you sent these to me in advance, and one of the things I was thinking about in just in my prep is it feels like it really just boils down to disconnecting from the outcomes and doing the work. Is that fair?

3:22 Chris Horton: Yeah, yeah. I was in a lucky and unique situation, I feel. When I started at Workstream, the company had just, just finished raising their Series A, and we were basically right in the middle of COVID Luckily, our products still sold pretty well through COVID, but, you know, the company had raised that Series A. They had brought Blake the new VP of sales at that time. They had brought him in kind of saying, hey, we raised the money, we're ready to, to really drive sales, to really come up with repeatable processes. And so Blake hired 5 of us. I believe it was at first it was 2 ADRs and 3 account executives. And, you know, the uniqueness of it was he basically said, I'll help you however I can. I'll, you know, be a resource in any way that, any way possible. But you guys kind of need to figure out how to, you know, what's repeatable, what we can hire 50 AEs in 2021, 2022, and tell them do this, this, and that, and you'll be successful. So, you know, us 5 and now 15 or 20 or 30 of us are kind of going out and finding those repeatable processes. And so it's exactly like you said, just going out and doing the, you know, doing the follow-ups, the calls. The things that you really just should be doing that everybody knows they should be doing in sales and then expecting the result to come back. And, and luckily it's come back, you know, very positive for all of us.

4:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great. And something that, you know, I've heard a lot in these conversations is again, kind of that disconnect from, look, if you just do a great job of serving your customers and you do the right things on the front end, it'll work out, right? You just have to, you have to stay consistent. So. I imagine then that you're really focusing in on the inputs, right? It's your dials, your follow-ups, and the work that you're doing. Like, how do you think about that?

5:14 Chris Horton: Yeah, I actually had a sales leader early on. He had the 3… what did he call it? The 3 C's of sales failure is basically what he called it. And it was like, here are the 3 things that if you do, you're going to fail. And one of them was complacency. And so every week, every month, every quarter, I kind of have these moments where I say, where am I at in my inputs? Am I, you know, compared to last quarter, last month, am I doing less? Am I doing more? And, you know, what should I expect from all of those inputs? And so kind of just, you know, every, like I said, every week or every month, having those check-ins to say, okay, you know, what am I doing? Am I doing things the way that I should be doing based off of what I've learned in the last 6 months, year, 2 years? And what do I need to adjust from there?

6:08 Scott Ingram: And what are those inputs for you? Like, what are you tracking?

6:10 Chris Horton: Yeah, it's interesting now because the role… my role has changed quite a bit, but we're tracking… and it's interesting now that we're tracking what we actually say on demos and that sort of thing. But generally it kind of goes back to you know, your dials, your emails sent, that sort of thing. For me, it's turned a little bit more into if I have next steps on opportunities that I've created or, you know, demos that I've done, follow-ups. And so now it's kind of for me in my head and, you know, me personally, it's what percentage is or what percentage of all of the conversations that I'm having have follow-ups attached or next conversations. Already scheduled. And if I'm, you know, 75, 80-plus percent of all of those conversations have a follow-up, then I know I'm doing well. But if I see that, you know, less than half of the conversations I'm having actually have a next step, then I'm probably going to be in a bad place in, you know, 3, 4 weeks. You know, so early on kind of in the position and in the role, especially at Workstream, it did go down to dials. You know, we had certain amount… amounts of dials that we had to find because we were really, really starting from scratch. We had a pretty small customer base and needed to build that pretty quickly. And as we built that customer base, then it turned into more, you know, referral driven or, you know, these channel partners that we have and a little bit less cold calling. Not that that's not involved at all because it definitely is, but it's just changed a little bit more to actually managing the pipeline versus kind of building it from scratch, if that makes sense.

7:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, it does. Anytime anybody talks about building pipeline, I think of Outreach. Here's a fun Outreach story for you from within the Sales Success Community. David Weiss is currently leading a team at Seismic, and they used Outreach to build an average of $500,000 in pipeline per rep in one sequence in one day, and they identified 500 contacts who had moved on from their target accounts in the process. Not bad for a day's work. To get your team started on outreach, go to top1.fm/outreach. And now back to my conversation with Chris. And then talk more specifically about how you're working to develop your product and your industry expertise.

8:37 Chris Horton: Yeah, so again, I was lucky because Workstream, when I started, and now we have a hub in Salt Lake City with about 30 or 40 people that, that are in the office, you know, anywhere from 2 to 5 days a week. And so now we have kind of this hub that we can go to, but before, Workstream was a fully remote company. And so they did a really good job of giving us tools to connect with people, you know, cross-department and people from across the country or even in different countries. And so we have team members, we have engineers in China, you know, we have customer success personnel in, in the Philippines and, you know, across the country here in the US. And so the company did a really good job of helping us connect with those people even though we weren't in an office. And during those conversations, it was always, okay, today I'm going to be talking to Lei, who's our Chief Product Officer. I've been having XYZ questions, you know, and I'm just going to get those questions and you know, take notes. And, and that's another thing too that I've learned really, really well is, is how to take notes and how to document everything that you hear, everything that you learn, so that you do have an eventual database of, hey, I heard about this, you know, I have this one question, or this person had a question for me that I didn't necessarily know, but I can go to my library of, of notes that I've taken over the last year and, and find the answer right here within my notes.

10:03 Scott Ingram: Nice. We're going to come back to that, that notes thing. But I guess we should contextualize this a little bit first. Why don't you talk about the specifics of, of your role and what is Workstream? What do you do? Who are you selling to?

10:13 Chris Horton: Yeah. So Workstream is a hiring platform. Right now we're almost 100% focused on restaurants. So I personally focus on one brand within the quick service or fast food restaurant space. And right now, pretty much everybody on our team is in a similar spot. Some, some reps focus on, you know, 3 or 4 brands, but I'm a little bit more into a position to where I'm just focused on one that's a larger brand and has a lot of white space. But we sell to these restaurant operators that are right now especially desperately trying to hire. And so, and I actually have a restaurant background. My dad worked in restaurants his whole life and And I worked in restaurants a bit before I kind of came into the tech space. But so that helps out quite a bit. But then just going out trying to find these brands, talk to the decision makers within those brands, and most of them have franchisees. So on a day to day, we're talking to a franchisee of Burger King, McDonald's, Carl's Jr., those sort of brands, but we're talking to someone that owns 10 of them in Arizona, or 20 of them in New York, or whatever it might be. So not necessarily selling to the corporate brand, but to the individual owners of those stores.

11:34 Scott Ingram: Interesting. Let's talk a little bit more about kind of the origin story, like this, this background in restaurants. How did you come to sales in the first place?

11:41 Chris Horton: Yeah, growing up, my daddy worked for… he worked for Jamba Juice, he worked for Fleming's Steakhouse, for Denny's. He eventually went into hospitality and worked with Marriott. And I, for some reason, I don't know what it was, cuz my dad hated his job, but for some reason I really wanted to like do the same thing. I wanted to be like a director of food and beverage or whatever it might be. I think I saw him and his co… you know, his counterparts walking around and kind of conducting things and it looked really cool. And so I actually went out and did a 6-month, it's kind of, it was almost a contract where I worked for him, with him for 6 months doing weddings and dinners and all sorts of events and that sort of thing. Worked about 80 hours a week and had the worst hours you could imagine. And so from there, decided that, you know, I was talking to an aunt of mine who works in HR for, at that time, a booming tech company here in Salt Lake. And she said, well, hey, you can go and make X amount of money doing cold calls in a climate-controlled office with a comfy seat. And I said, well, you know, that's a lot of money. And if I just have to sit and sit in a seat and call people, I like, I'd like to talk to people. I'm good at talking to people. And so I, from there, I just jumped in, became an SDR, and SDR work is hard and not necessarily the most fun thing, but I just, I tried to learn as much as I could from people around me, tried to be, you know, aggressive in just that learning piece of it and that showing the hard work and kind of becoming an SDR that my manager and our director and our VP could trust enough to hopefully one day give an account executive role. And I always thought that the account executives were just these, these top dogs, these, you know, this position was unattainable for someone like me. And so that probably honestly helped a little bit with the humility part of it, thinking that no, I'd never be an account executive. I don't have the skills, I don't have the maturity or whatever it might have been. And then, you know, one day after about probably 12 or 13 months of being an SDR, I got the chance to go on to kind of our lower, like SMB AE team, you know, sourcing all my own deals and then closing them. And so didn't have much help from, you know, marketing or sales development reps or anything along those lines, but I was already an SDR sourcing deals anyways. So the only change was learning how to close deals and then manage a pipeline as well. And so that was at that company, SolutionReach, that I was an SDR and kind of got my first chance as an account executive there as well. I moved on from that initial account executive role to, to a senior account executive role where I was able to actually coordinate with marketing, work with SDRs, and kind of grow into more of just a full-time closing role. And from there, and that's really where I built my base of sales knowledge and what to do, what not to do. That's where I mentioned that VP of sales taught me the 3 C's of sales failure and kind of just, you know, I tried to soak up and absorb as much as I possibly could from that point. And then there just came a day where it was, you know, time to move on from there. And, you know, things started at Workstream and like I mentioned, it was, they were early on, they were a young company, they were extremely scrappy. Which was a lot of fun because I was with a company that was a little bit more built up and they had, you know, tens of thousands of customers. And I came over to Workstream where they were, you know, kind of in the hundreds of customers and such a fraction of what I was used to. But we really got to build everything from the ground up from that point.

15:27 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Now, your role today, it sounds like, is a full-cycle role.

15:31 Chris Horton: Yep. Yeah, correct. I work with an ADR and we've obviously got a lot of amazing help from our marketing team, doing everything to kind of become close to these restaurant brands that I mentioned. But my main role is to kind of coordinate our efforts within that brand so that we can penetrate it as much as possible.

15:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And then what's kind of average deal size for you? How many transactions did it take to get to this first million dollars this year?

15:57 Chris Horton: That's a great question. Honestly, I want to say it was probably about 40 deals a month. Whoa, which is a lot, you know, average deal size in annual revenue is probably between $5,000 and $15,000 on average. And so to get that to $1 million was a lot of deals.

16:18 Scott Ingram: Geez. So what is… I guess we'll come back to it as kind of we talk about your day. But I'm interested in what sort of volume and inputs it takes. And it sounds like your close ratio must be, must be pretty high. Otherwise, this math just doesn't work.

16:31 Chris Horton: Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, it worked out well to where we figured out this formula of finding champions within a certain brand or region or whatever it might be. Find a champion, get them to just love your product as much as you do, get them excited, you know, talk to them, text them, call them, send them swag, you know, do whatever you can to, you know, get them on your side. And then they'll sell for you basically. And that's really how everything went. And so I built a few of those, became really, really good friends with a few of those champions, and they almost started to sell the product for me to where, you know, I would get an email and it would say, hey, so-and-so in Florida talked about you and loves you and thinks you guys are great. I honestly don't even need a demo. I'd like to sign up. You know, with my XYZ situation. And so that really kind of trying to figure out the multiples of everything of where, how can I be in, in 20 places at once? And, you know, doing that by having people talk about me and my product for me rather than me having to, you know, do all of that on my own.

17:42 Scott Ingram: So this is awesome. Okay, so I've been on this soapbox lately too around like we've, we've lost sight of this opportunity, right? Like there's so much emphasis on the, on the cold calls and the cold outreach and everything else. And, you know, if you create this type of dynamic, it works, right? You can get yourself to a situation where you're doing 40 transactions a month, which is totally insane. Talk about the early stages of that. Like how did you build this type of referral situation? And I'm assuming this as you continue to grow that base, It just becomes more and more powerful over time.

18:19 Chris Horton: Yeah, it's exponential. And that's why I'm not… I don't want to ever say that people shouldn't put in lots of dials and that sort of thing because, you know, I feel like that's an important part of sales regardless of what you're doing. And that's why, like, in the beginning of all of this, I was dialing like crazy. We all were. We were dialing like crazy and, you know, we had to We had to do that to find these champions and make that process exponential to a point of where I don't have to dial or email or cold outreach near as much as what I was doing 6 months ago, 8 months ago, 10 months ago, because I really worked hard at the beginning to call all of those people, email all those people. And once you kind of, you know, if you're fishing and you kind of set the hook, Then at that point you found your champion. You need to work with them a lot to get testimonial videos, any sort of like written testimonial, any sort of email template that, you know, I listened to a prior episode of yours where you were saying you basically have a written testimonial that you'll send your, you know, you send to someone who you want to refer you and you just say, hey, can you introduce me with this template or this email to so-and-so? Whatever it might be. And so doing those more creative things has honestly led to, like what I mentioned, me, me being able to be in 20 places at once versus me sitting in a chair and calling 80 people and having a totally separate conversation with those 80 people. Yeah.

19:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And it was Kevin Piket's episode where we, we had that conversation and he had that kind of, look, I've done all the work for you. Just send this email. This is how you, you introduce me, which I think is fantastic. I'm going to interrupt myself here because this idea of scaling yourself and being creative sounds like a perfect use case for Vidyard. Sure, you could craft a short intro email for your champion to pass along, but what if instead you created a short intro video? That's even more compelling, and then you'll also get to know when that video is getting watched. The best part is you can use Vidyard for free if you're not already. Just click over to top1.fm/vidyard forward slash Vidyard and give it a shot. Then let me know how it works for you. All right, back to me. And I mean, the other thing that's sort of interesting, like when you talk about industry expertise, you're focused on one brand. So you probably know more, or at least as much as many of these franchisees about their businesses and about the challenges they've had because you've talked to so many, right?

20:59 Chris Horton: Yeah, you just have, you know, if you're closing 20 deals a month, then that's still 20 people that decided to buy your product. And so you have 20 stories of, of why so-and-so decided to buy this, and the stories are usually fairly similar. And so you can say, and if you are focused on one brand or one region or whatever it might be, then generally they know those people that bought. They know those 20 or 30 or 40 people that bought last month. And so you have just those stories that you can pull out of your pocket at any time to be able to talk about that. And then even better is, it's kind of like what I mentioned, if you can get any of those champions or those people that bought to record a video, then you can send that video or use that video hundreds of times without it losing its relevance. And so, you know, we early on were bouncing around quite a bit. From region to region, brand to brand. And then my colleague Josh, he was starting to get a lot of traction within one brand where he got a referral from someone who gave him 3 referrals, who, who led to 3 referrals from those 3 referrals. And he said, hey guys, this is totally exponential and repeatable. Let's focus in each… everybody pick 1 or 2 brands and just go after those ones and try to get referrals and build yourself into a situation to where you're just working with this small group of people and really just getting that penetration within their, their group of friends or, you know, whatever it might be from there.

22:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So here's what's really interesting. A dot just connected in the back of my head a gajillion years ago. I guess it wasn't that many years ago on episode 9 of this podcast, I talked to a guy named George Penyak and George, I think still works with Restaurant Technologies. So it's ironic that they're relatively in the same space. He contributed a story to the first Sales Success Stories book. It's way late in the book. It's on page 262. It's story number 56. And he talks about he was doing a lot of the same type of stuff. He was selling to franchisees and the way that he kind of went about it, it was less about, you know, you would ordinarily think, okay, let me tackle this. Based on whoever has the most franchises. Like, that's how I should order my list. But instead, he looked to really understand the relationship dynamics. And there were a couple of small franchisees, but they were really involved in like the industry association.

23:34 Chris Horton: Exactly.

23:34 Scott Ingram: And so they had all of this reach and connection. He's like, well, if I can build a relationship there, then I'll be able to get these introductions. And he was able to massively accelerate his process. I don't know if you've seen that. I don't know if you've connected with George. We're going to make that happen regardless.

23:51 Chris Horton: Yeah, I know.

23:51 Scott Ingram: But it's crazy, like how closely aligned this, this is.

23:56 Chris Horton: I would say, and I've worked with several customers that several people that, that use his tool and, and would absolutely love to chat with him. And I would say that our process is probably identical. You know, whenever I go to trade shows or events or anything like that, which are kind of starting to pick up again, you know, talking to the vendors, it's just crazy how similar most of our processes are as far as talking to these franchisees and selling to them within the restaurant space. But that… I'm gonna have to go… I haven't gone quite that far back into the archives to hear that episode, so I'm gonna have to go back to episode 9 and listen to that because I'm sure there's some awesome pieces that I can pull out and that I wish I would have had day one at Workstream. But you know, that's amazing.

24:40 Scott Ingram: Sure, sure. Yeah, that would have been something like 4 years ago. It's interesting that you mentioned the vendors too because, you know, when you're running this type of a play, like if you're, if you're really tight into an industry, a lot of times there's great vendors that overlap as well. And there's incredible opportunities to build networks and referral relationships in those scenarios. And a lot of times what I will do is I'll work that situation backwards. And I'll talk to my customers and be like, hey, I know you work with a lot of similar things, or you're solving for similar issues, like, who are your favorite, absolute favorite people to work with? Because if they love them, Those are the people where I know that their introductions are going to carry a lot of weight.

25:20 Chris Horton: Right. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, that's, you know, a little story behind that too is I was at a conference in Florida about 2 weeks ago and heard a story about a sales rep that was selling buns to these restaurant franchisees who eventually went on and sold a tech solution to them and, you know, basically took that whole book of business that he had selling buns that he had done for You know, he had, he was doing that for 10 or 15 years. So he knew all of these people since like, you know, the '90s. And when he started to kind of move over to this tech solution, he took that whole book of business and everybody just trusted him already. And, and so I looked at that rep and I said, well, will they love him and they'll buy, buy his product honestly, regardless of if he's with a hamburger bun company or, you know, a phone provider company or whatever it might've, might've been. And try to, like you said, replicate what he does because for some reason these buyers love this guy and refer him to friends and talk about him. And so anyways, yeah, but kind of recreating what they do and learning from them. And that's, that's kind of just absorbing as much as you possibly can from these people that have already gotten this, this stakeholder, this foothold in, in these areas or brands or whatever it might be.

26:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and especially to be able to leverage, you know, like here's somebody that has 15 years worth of relationships. You know, that's incredible to kind of learn how did you build that? How do you do this? What is the style? You know, kind of creating that as a mentor opportunity. I'm sure it's created a lot of referrals. So this is just a fun little inside baseball aside here. When you said buns, I thought, okay, I can't not mention this. So giant shout out to Kevin. So Kevin does my show notes. So if you go to top1.fm/chris-horton, where you'll find all of the notes and there will be you know, specific references to different points. There will be quotes. There's all kinds of great stuff that Kevin does around this. When I first met Kevin, he was a marketer for ESPN, and this was kind of some side hustle stuff that he was doing. He listened to too many episodes of this show and we got him into sales. And today he is selling for King's Hawaiian and selling, selling that stuff to restaurants. So I joke, I'm like, oh, you're a crack dealer. Because if you've ever had King's Hawaiian bread, They're kind of like Lay's potato chips. Like, you can't eat just one of those. So I'm like, all you have to do is get somebody to taste those things and get them hooked on the… exactly hooked on the stuff.

27:47 Chris Horton: That is, the product sells itself, I'm sure.

27:49 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Exactly. So I want to come back to kind of the career adventure. I mean, you've come through a pretty traditional evolution through sales, right? You went through from SDR, you went to SMB AE, you kind of worked through the AE ranks, and then you went to this, this really like early stage startup, which is always its own adventure, right? Is there anything… I mean, knowing all that you know now, if you could start that whole process over again and you were doing it today, is there anything that you would have done differently in terms of the way that you approached your sales career?

28:20 Chris Horton: Yeah, so Utah… I don't know, you know, how many people out there are familiar with Utah and Salt Lake City right now. It's not, it's not like San Francisco is, but it is growing a lot in the tech space as far as the companies and businesses. But it seems like every day there's a new young company that raised a Series B or whatever it is that's trying to hire 200 reps and that sort of thing. And so early on, especially when I was an SDR, I would… I was job shopping, you know, a lot. And looking back, it was like I would job shop, I would do 5 interviews, and then I would be like, oh wait, I actually do like where I'm at right now. And I wasted a ton of time doing that early on. And just honestly, it's a hard pill to swallow, but it's like the grass isn't greener on the other side unless it actually is. Like, unless there's like just these absolute defining factors that are so much worse where you're at and so much better where you're looking at going. But if it's just you're bored and you're just, you know, you don't want to pick up the phone or you don't want to do that demo and you want, you'd rather just scroll LinkedIn and see who's hiring and, you know, get that satisfaction of someone telling you that you, that they would love for you to be on their team and that sort of thing, then really that's just such a waste of time. And like I said, I probably spent too many days, too many hours kind of job shopping and then ending up exactly where I was because then I realized that it was good where I was, you know? So, so that's a big thing is, you know, and I think in the last 2 years of my sales experience, I would say focus. Has been just like this overall theme, focus on a region, focus on an industry, focus on your company and how to better it, focus on your product and how to become an expert in it. And so try not to lose that focus that you should have that will actually lead to sales.

30:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's, that's interesting. What about, what do you think is the right amount of time for somebody to spend in an SDR role and just kind of set the expectations for themselves before they should think about moving to an AE type of opportunity?

30:30 Chris Horton: Yeah, that's a great question. Now, the easy answer is everybody's different. Everybody needs their certain amount of time. But honestly, I feel like me having, you know, at least 10 to 12 months of SDR experience was not only extremely humbling because at 4 months, at 6 months, I was like, man, I could… I feel like I could just learn it and do it. But being able to, or needing to stay in that role for another, another 6 months and kind of do that full year of SDR work helped me like crazy. And I've seen a lot of, a lot of SDRs and ADRs get very antsy about getting that promotion. And, you know, everyone does it for different reasons. Like people say, well, I'm getting married and I need to make more money, or, you know, I'm having a second child and I want a promotion or whatever it might be. There's a lot of like factors that people tell themselves they need to get a promotion and become an account executive. But honestly, like, I've seen so many people move from the ADR role to an account executive closing role and fail because they didn't just… whatever it was that they weren't just quite ready. Yeah, they knew how to cold call, they knew how to, you know, pick up the phone or send a million emails or whatever it was, but they just didn't quite have the maturity to move into that role and have failed. So, you know, I think it's just important to trust your leaders and trust, you know, mentors that you can find, especially outside of your company, who will be very honest with you and say, I really don't think you're ready. You know, I had a manager when I was in SDR that said, you know, we would love for you to be an account executive one day, but right now your email you know, your emails aren't quite what they would need to be. They're not as professional as, as what a closing role would need to be, because you're going to be sending high-level emails to people that make decisions. And, you know, so, and that just gave me something to work on and something to kind of focus on to really just know that I was ready for the role at one point or another.

32:34 Scott Ingram: And how much of a difference did maybe the latter parts, right? If we think about, I don't know, the first 6 or 9 months of the SDR role versus that kind of quote-unquote additional time that you spent in the saddle. How much of an impact did that make on how well you're doing right now?

32:49 Chris Horton: Well, you know, if I kind of think about it like that, there was, you know, if you say like phase 1 was the first, you know, 4 to 6 months, that was me really like learning how to pick up the phone and talk to people and build processes of how do I hit my numbers and that sort of thing. And then, and then maybe phase 2 of the next 4 to 6 months was me shadowing account executives or, you know, I remember I would have account executives, I would have these, these closers send me recordings of their demos that I could listen to on the bus ride home or, you know, as I'm driving around or on the weekend. So after hours I would listen to their demos and I would take notes on the little things that they did. And so I think that phase 2 of like my second half of being in SDR was me learning how I could really manage a pipeline. And maybe that's what is missing with ADRs that do fail when they go from the cold calling hunting role to a closing role is that they don't, you know, maybe they've checked the box as far as making, you know, building pipeline and helping their account executives, but they haven't quite checked the box on just the, you know, apprenticeship of moving into an account executive role. And so I feel like that's that last piece was really what was important for me to say, hey, I've already been for like the last 3 to 6 months been shadowing these account executives and really watching them, their every step and what they do. Now it's just going to be easy for me to go into this, this actual me actually becoming an account executive and managing my own pipeline.

34:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good callout, right? It's, it's maybe it's to the 2 things you really sort of mentioned there. Like one, one is the focus and the other one is, is maybe a little bit of patience, right? Because at some point, like you kind of settle into the SDR role and you're like, okay, like I got this. I understand the game and how to make this happen. And that's probably that opportunity without all of the pressure that it's going to come with being in, in that AE role to sort of take advantage of that time. To build the skills that you're going to need to be able to learn, like, how do I run a good discovery and how do I manage a process and how do I do all the follow-ups? How do I do all… how do I run the rest of the sales process when you have the space to learn it, which you're never going to have again? Because as soon as you get thrown into this fire and I think there's a lot of failure that happens with folks that don't succeed in that transition and then it's all for naught. Like, you know, you were impatient.

35:21 Chris Horton: It's do or die.

35:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you were impatient. Now you're in this role If you wash out of that, well, now what?

35:27 Chris Horton: You're gone, right? And that's kind of your, you know, you either go back to being an SDR or you find a different industry, a different career path, right? Because, you know, which is a very humbling… I've seen people do and it's humbling. And some people say, you know what, actually I do want to be in ADR again and, you know, move into account development management or whatever it might be. But like you said, it's kind of do or die because once you actually get that chance, It's your one shot and you gotta make sure that you're ready for it, right?

35:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, we call the show Sales Success Stories. What's your favorite story?

36:02 Chris Horton: Yeah, so this is not, well, I was involved obviously, but I, it wasn't me selling, but I was looking at a tool with my VP of sales at one point. So we were on Zoom with the, the rep that was talking to us and he was sharing his screen and he had brought his manager in. This was kind of like closing call where they were gonna pitch us on Hey, if you do it by the, you know, if you do it today or if you do it by the end of the week, we'll give you this price or whatever it might be. So rep is sharing his screen, his manager's on Zoom. So there's the 4 of us and, you know, they kind of go to shoot their shot and he says, well, okay, so if you do it by this time, I can't remember if it was that day or that week or whatever it might've been. If you do it by this time, will you buy, you know, or, and I think it was actually the manager talking, but will you buy you know, at this price. And the rep is still sharing his screen on Zoom. And my VP of sales goes, no, honestly, you know, we're not really trying to make a rash decision. We want to really think it out. We're not solely based on price. And a Slack notification comes up on the screen from the rep to the manager that just says, and I'll edit it for, you know, to not make this episode explicit, but it says, eff them then, from the rep to the manager. And we see it on his screen and we go, you know, we go, okay, we're gonna go. We hop off of Zoom, we look at each other and we say, what just happened? You know? And so it was just this like ultimate breaking of trust of like, they just wanted a quick deal. They wanted to get it out of the way. And so anyways, that just was like, you know, it was kind of like, I don't want to be that kind of sales rep that just wants to collect a check from a customer. And regardless of like, you know, keeping them long term or making them happy, it's just let's get them. And if not, then F them. Let's leave them at the curb type of thing.

38:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man, there's so many, there's so many parts about that. First of all, be cognizant about where your messages are going to show up. But, you know, I think it's A, I mean, we're certainly aligned and man, if people have been listening to the show, if you haven't picked up on this, like, you know, doing the right thing is like the key to winning. Like those folks, that team, that rep, like I promise you is not successful and certainly, certainly not long-term. But there's also, there's so much advantage in putting yourself in positions to see the other side of this, you know, like get sold to. Because there's so much that you learn, you're like, oh my God, is it this bad sometimes? And sometimes it's also like, you know, this is what it can be. This is what it should be.

38:46 Chris Horton: Right. You know, the best feeling in the world is getting off of a call or a demo and being like, man, I'm in love. You know, I'm in love with my product and I'm so excited for them to also be in love with it. And having that feeling versus just like having a shallow feeling of like, Did I just weasel them into something? You know, is the difference is honestly what makes sales great versus what makes sales kind of that like cliché thing that a lot of people think it is, which is shady or, you know, so in my opinion, it's just, it's all about trust. It's all about transparency. It's all about loving your product and your customer.

39:27 Scott Ingram: That's perfect. That's perfect. And maybe the ideal transition into, I mean, you're coming off of this huge first 6 months, this big accomplishment. I know that you've got a lot more kind of cooking through the rest of the year, but what are you most proud of?

39:41 Chris Horton: Yeah, well, the easy answer for sure is, is saying hitting $1 million, honestly, within a year. I don't know, you know, what it's like in, you know, certain areas of sales, but for us hitting $1 million, my, you know, my quota was just over half a million for all of 2021. And so, you know, almost doubling that by June or July was, was huge. Honestly, that's just, that's probably what I would say has been like my greatest, what I'm most proud of so far, because not just the fact that like, you know, I sold $1 million, but then like looking back at what I did in 2020 to build that base and kind of what we talked about earlier as far as working with these champions. Finding these strategic people and building this process that was just exponential and repeatable. And then having that turn into $1 million of product sold, that just, so it's almost just, it's a number. It was interesting hitting that number too, because it was 2 weeks ago or so I was sitting there, I closed one, an opportunity, pulled the dashboard up and it said I had passed $1 million. And I was the whole year, I'm thinking like, man, if I ever hit $1 million, I'm going to get like a golden halo and I'm going to feel all of my problems are going to wash away. And I was like sitting there in my chair at home, like I'm the same person, you know, we're going to go do the same things we were going to plan, you know, already planning on doing. It was, it was just a number. But then what had gone into that, the camaraderie that our team had built, kind of grinding through the early days as well as just like figuring out those processes. It was just so much more rewarding than just that, that number. So that's kind of what makes me most proud of it was all the work that went behind the very, very beginnings of it.

41:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Now, what was the challenge? What was the problem that you wish had washed away that you still fight with?

41:40 Chris Horton: Just, you know, life things, paying bills and you know, managing, you know, your relationships and like you still have to wake up and brush your teeth and do all of the normal human things. And so there's not necessarily one problem, but just, you know, humans are hard to please. We rarely stay satisfied with our situations for long. And so, you know, you kind of get caught up in this idea of, oh, if I hit that number, if I close this deal, if I buy this car, if I do whatever next thing, I'm going to be happy. You know, and that was a big lesson. Hitting a million was like, oh man, that's like the ultimate thing is like, that's way better than like buying a car or way better than like eating at this restaurant or whatever it might be. And then it happened and I was like, wait, that wasn't like my most fulfilling moment I'm ever going to have in my whole life. You know, it might be the most proud thing in sales that I, that, that I have. But, you know, it wasn't like what, what solves every single little complaint, or, you know, and, and my life is so great, I don't have anything large to complain about. But, but it just didn't wash away all worries and stress and fear that, you know, that I have in my, in my life and in my, my job.

42:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know this is still relatively fresh. I mean, this, this has happened in the last know, couple of weeks as we record this episode. Have you processed that yet? Like, have you kind of figured out the, okay, like clearly it's not that, like, is there a new goal? Is there a different way that you're sort of looking at and thinking about kind of the satisfaction, happiness side of things? Like, where are you at with all that?

43:21 Chris Horton: Yeah. So, you know, in one of your questions earlier or that you had sent before was, you know, kind of what is, what information do I digest? And Lately, I have been looking more into, hey, if I want to do sales for like 15 years, not just the 5 years, 6 years that I have so far, if I want to make it a long-term career choice, like how do I stay mentally sane and emotionally satisfied, you know, through this whole process of getting rejected? And it's demoralizing sometimes to every quarter the new quarter starts and your number's back at zero. So you're back on, you know, back on the hamster wheel of hitting that number. And so how can I be happy through this whole process, even though I am going to face rejection, I'm going to face highs, I'm going to face lows. And so I've been looking a lot into just kind of like, it's called, I want to say it's called the hedonic treadmill, which is basically that human desire to, oh, if I climb this mountain, if I you know, score this deal or whatever it is, I'm going to be happy and looking towards that next thing. And humans are basically built to do that. Honestly, it's a, it can be a really good thing that pushes us to hit our goals, pushes us to be better people. But the important part is to be aware of, hey, if I hit $1 million, I'm not going to just instantly not be stressed. I'm not going to just instantly not be worried. I'm not just instantly going to have the best marriage or whatever it is. You still have to work towards all those things. And so just trying to be extremely aware of your mental state and what your emotions are doing is honestly what just kind of helps me stay sane day to day and helps… what helps me focus. And so, you know, obviously I would love to hit $2 million this year, and that would be an awesome feat, but I'm also the whole the whole while that I'm trying to hit that number, I'm realizing that it's a number and that if I hit it or when I hit it, I'm, you know, all of my, my stresses are not going to vanish immediately.

45:27 Scott Ingram: So no double halo.

45:29 Chris Horton: Exactly. I won't get another one.

45:32 Scott Ingram: All right. So I just had a little sidebar with Chris and he's going to join us at the Sales Success Summit this October. So if you want to meet Chris, although this is going to be really, really close. By the time we release this episode, I'm not sure that we'll have tickets left. So you may want to, you may want to really jump on that right away as you listen to this, but you can also register for the live stream for free. So all of that's at top1summit.com. But the reason I wanted to kind of call this out right here is this whole thing I think is a really, really important topic in general. And Chris, I love the way you're thinking about this in terms of You know, how do you think about a long and successful and satisfying and fulfilling career in sales, right? This isn't quarter to quarter, month to month, and the grind, but thinking about kind of that bigger picture. And one of the presentations… and also, by the time this is out, I should have the full, or at least the majority of the agenda built so you can kind of see all the speakers. But one of the speakers for sure at this point will be Ian Koniak. From Salesforce, one of their absolute top performers, and he's going to be talking about you are not your number. And again, this whole idea of we put so much of our self-worth in…

46:50 Chris Horton: I love that…

46:51 Scott Ingram: in our performance and in these numbers. And you can really screw with yourselves a lot of times. I mean, there's stuff… we started this conversation talking about the, you know, kind of disconnecting from the outcomes because you can't control that. All you can control is what goes in and doing the right things and being consistent in that discipline. And, you know, if you do associate your worth and your value with your number and just something goes sideways, well, then what? You know, did you just screw yourself mentally? So it's a really, really important conversation we're going to dig into. We're also… hopefully by the time this is live, you'll also be able to learn more on the Top One Summit site about some really big things that I'm trying to pull off. In our relationship with UnCrushed, who hopefully you've heard the conversation I had with Tim Clark a number of weeks ago, and just the great work that they're doing as a nonprofit around mental health from a whole variety of angles. But, you know, again, like this affects even when you're performing at extraordinary levels, this can really screw with your head.

47:58 Chris Horton: Absolutely. Yeah. It's, I've had a lot of conversations with, with a couple of people. You know, at Workstream specifically about this is just, you know, how do you… because we've all had those deals that we lose that we… they were whales and it would have, you know, got our quota for the quarter or whatever it was. And then you lose it and you can let that just destroy you and subsequently then destroy your month or 2 months after that. Or you can Like, I think the biggest thing is becoming aware of, hey, you're preparing for a call where you're going to find out whether or not you get this big deal or not. It's going to be totally fine. Remember, like, what's important before you go into that call and what you're going to do if you don't get this deal. And so start to detach from the, you know, from the results and start to go into those calls saying, okay, I've built the relationship, I've done all of my follow-up, I've sent the proposal, I revised that proposal, prepared it very specifically and very, you know, well prepared for this, this group or this company. And so I know that I've done everything that I should do and should have done. And so if I don't get this deal, it's gonna be okay. You know, and that can translate to any piece of sales. I think, you know, hey, if I don't hit my quota for this month or this quarter or this year, or whatever it is, then I want to be able to look back and say that I did everything that I could have done, that I did all of the right things. And, you know, my manager should also say, well, Chris didn't hit his quota, but he did everything. I saw him. I was with him while he did everything that he should have and could have done. And so, you know, having those, those inputs be what brings you happiness and just being aware of where your emotions are at, because I've seen reps that do lose those big deals that they thought were going to come in. Not only their work performance is hindered by that, but then imagine just like what the home life is like, what they're like with their friends. Like, are they just going to be sour for, you know, a week, 2 weeks? And no one wants to be around a person like that. No one, no one wants to buy from someone who just lost a deal. An hour ago that they thought they were gonna win, right? And so, you know, kind of back to your question, Scott, is, you know, how do I look at kind of like the long-term sales career? And I think 90%, 95% of everyone who's in sales will probably say they fell into it. I don't know about many, and I hope this changes, but I don't, I don't know about many, at least when I was in, you know, high school, many people that said like, I want to sell software, I want to sell, you know, hamburger buns or whatever it is when they were in high school, but then they fall into it. And, and so that's what kind of has happened to me. I fell into it and as soon as I did, I loved it. And so I've rolled with it and I don't, you know, I don't know what I will be doing in 10, 20 years, but sales has been an amazing path so far. It's gotten me all of the satisfaction that, that I've wanted out of a career and out of a job. But at the same time, as I hit, you know, whatever it is, 6 or so years, and I'm not extremely tenured, but as I'm in sales for 5 or 6 years now, I realized that I can't live, I can't be in the same mental space in the next, next 5 years and the 5 years after that, that I was in the first, you know, 3 to 5 years because I was stressed and I was worried and I constantly had a fear that my manager was going to pull me in and for some weird reason say, Chris, we don't want you on the team anymore, or something along those lines. I can't live in that same space anymore. And so staying aware of just like where you're at with everything and coming up with, you know, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly rituals to like refocus, recenter yourself on you know, making sure that you're not just associating yourself with a number or an achievement or whatever it might be.

52:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So 2 things I want to come back to the rituals and the routines and all of that stuff. We'll do that next. And maybe this is just a comment, what you were talking about earlier in terms of the emotions around the big deals, right? The emotions around, you know, the impact that's going to make for you financially to your number or anything else. I think it goes back to kind of the What you opened up with is how do you get rid of the commission breath? How do you have the opposite emotional mindset of your horrible, you know, Slack story? And I mean, the way I try and do that, and this is a hard one, right? I mean, I, yeah, I've done this wrong so many times and we all have. I'm picturing one right now that was just, I felt like everything hinged on this deal. I'm like, if this doesn't happen, I'm pretty much screwed. And all I was worried about in that conversation was me and my outcome. And guess what? I lost the deal. You know, I think if you can have the mindset of, again, putting the other person, their timeline, all of those things first and not worrying about, you know, what works for you, like, that's really what it's all about. I mean, that's what leads to a great customer experience, that's what leads to the It comes back to the trust you were talking about.

53:30 Chris Horton: Yeah.

53:30 Scott Ingram: Right. Because if you're, if you're only focused on them and their outcomes and their timelines and their priorities and their drivers and the difference it's going to make for them, that is trust. I mean, that's what that is, is all about. And again, it's hard, especially when the deals get really big and the impacts get really, really meaningful. But the more you can kind of put yourself in that position, I think your odds go up, right? I mean, this, this is a human thing at the end of the day. And, you know, we can't lose sight of the fact that this is really emotional on both sides.

54:02 Chris Horton: Right. And don't get me wrong, there are ways to, like, in a very trustworthy, friendly, I'm trying to help way, like, there are ways to challenge a timeline or challenge a price discussion, right? Like, I'm not necessarily saying that we have to like lay down and just become these passive things that people tell us, well, I want to buy this day, I want to buy that day, I want to buy this price, whatever it is. But like, and obviously that goes more into like how to become more tactful. And you can only challenge a timeline if you are good friends with a person, if they do actually trust you. Because if that, you know, that story that I had told, if I had, you know, we saw that Slack message, but for some reason we were still willing to consider the company. And then he challenges us on the timeline of why we wouldn't buy by the end of the week. Then I don't have any trust in this guy. I've already, you know, lost all of it already. And now he's challenging me. Now he's asking me why I don't want to buy by this date. So I think, Scott, like you said, having their best interests in mind, Builds that trust and then allows you just to work together as professionals versus a battle of like a one-way, well, I think you should do this. Well, I want to do this type of thing.

55:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And that's an important call out. I'm glad you said that. Right. Cause I don't want it to sound like, oh, I'm just going to roll over and whatever you say. And you know, I'm going to be an order taker. Let me know when you're ready. It's not like that. And it goes back to, you know, really establishing that value. Like, wait, wait, wait, what is this going to mean? Cause I thought what we came to is, you know, I mean, especially in your business, like if we can't make these hires in time, like you're not going to be able… I mean, this is really meaningful for your business. I don't know. I'm confused. Like, how, how can we wait this long?

55:50 Chris Horton: Exactly.

55:51 Scott Ingram: Let me interrupt myself one last time here, because as I think about this whole idea of trust, to me, the most trusted channel is text. If you can open up this channel of trust with your prospects, it can go a really long way. And Skipio is built to do just that. Just this week, they sent me a brilliant message about sending a text automatically at the end of a form submission process to solve for the speed to lead challenge that many organizations struggle with and to open up this super powerful line of communication. Why don't you try it with me? Just text Horton to my Skipio number at 512-813-0676. Now, this only works in the US and Canada, and I know many of you are outside outside of the US, so I've set up the same number in WhatsApp so you can reach out to me as well. 512-813-0676. It's always great to hear from you. And to learn more about the SMS magic that is Skipio, click over to top1.fm/skippio. Okay, back to Chris.

57:02 Chris Horton: Yeah, we subscribe. I don't know if you've read the book or heard much from him, but he has a masterclass as well from Chris Voss. And it's all about negotiation, but, but kind of teaching how to do that in such a way that they don't even know you're challenging them, right? And so it's, you know, from what it sounds like you're saying you need to make 15 hires by the end of the month. Well, yeah, it totally does. We do need to do that. Okay, I'm confused, you know, on that just because you said you need to make those hires, but you also said you don't want to buy until next month. That's just obviously an example, but those kind of conversations don't happen without trust and without them knowing that you have their best interests in mind in the first place.

57:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And again, a huge degree of finesse, right? Like that's got to be a really soft conversation and shouldn't be a shouting match by any stretch of the imagination.

57:54 Chris Horton: Right.

57:55 Scott Ingram: All right. Let's talk about the routines and the habits and all of that good stuff. So, I mean, you know how this rolls, right? So Alarm goes off, what time, blow by blow till your head hits the pillow.

58:05 Chris Horton: Yeah, I've been at every single end of the spectrum as far as time that I wake up and that sort of… I've woken up at 4:30 AM consistently for 6 months. And then I've also just like gotten to a point sometimes, you know, at some points where I don't even set an alarm or I set an alarm for 8 AM and then naturally wake up at 7:30 or whatever it might be. So I was doing the 4:30, 5:00 AM type thing, which I loved because I could get so much done before the sun was even up, before people started shooting emails to me or Slack messages started coming. And then I just, you know, I guess stepped back a little bit. I know it's funny, but like I was reading an interview with Jeff Bezos about his morning routine and he was saying that with how much stress he deals with every single day and the decision fatigue that he gets and just the types of meetings that he's in, he has to have a very slow, easy morning and doesn't necessarily hold him to like, well, I'm going to be in the car on my way to go by 8:30 AM or whatever it might be. Apparently he kind of takes it slower. And so I kind of realized, okay, when I was building the pipeline and when I was starting from from scratch, I kind of needed that discipline of waking up at 5:00 AM and doing all my things. And now that I am dealing with maybe a little bit more stress or a little bit more, you know, high-level meetings and that sort of thing during my, you know, between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM and that sort of thing, I need to have like a little bit more calm morning to where I can really just understand. And so anyways, alarm will go off at 7:00 AM. Right now when we're talking, like I said, I've kind of been everywhere, but right now it'll go off at 7:00 AM. I get outta bed and I try as hard as I possibly can to refrain from looking at my phone because if I do, then it's just like work mode. Like I can't get out of it. If I look at my phone first thing, get outta bed, then I'm, I'm gonna go downstairs. I'm gonna open my laptop. I'm going to, you know, respond to emails and that sort of thing. So I try to refrain from looking at it unless I of course have have a meeting that I need to get onto or anything like that, but try to refrain from that. I've been going on runs lately with my dog as we've kind of transitioned out of a work-from-home model and more into, you know, 3 to 5 days in an office. I feel bad because my dog hasn't quite had the interaction since we're in offices more. So I try to go on a run with him around 7:30. I'm not a huge runner. I've done done one half marathon because my sister forced me to do it, but I do maybe a 20 or 30-minute run, nothing super impressive. And then I usually will get home, shower, get ready. That takes 20 or 30 minutes, and then I'm in the office by maybe 8:30, between 8:30 and 9:00 AM. So nothing super glorious, but kind of what I found is that I tried packing so many things. I tried to read 15 pages, go to the gym, run, feed the dog, take him on a walk, you know, talk to my wife, make breakfast, do all of those things in the morning time. And I started to realize like it's not necessarily about doing everything before the workday. It's more about doing like 2, maybe, maybe 3 things really, really well and preparing yourself doing those 1 or 2 things versus doing 5 or 10 things for 15 minutes, you know, and jumping back and forth and only getting a piece out of the one thing that you're actually focusing on.

1:01:39 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then what's the structure of kind of the workday?

1:01:42 Chris Horton: Yeah, so I love to have demos kind of first thing in the day. It allows me to, you know, just kind of focus on that. I'm not, I'm not already in the weeds as far as emails and admin type work. And so I like to if I can, you know, put as many of my demos early on in the day. And then that way I do a bunch of demos, have a bunch of meetings before lunch, do a little lunch, and then come back. And the second half of the day is much more admin-type work where it's me responding to emails, reaching out to, you know, people that have whatever issue they're trying to fix within their account. I do quite a bit of customer success. Still, that's just kind of what I've liked to continue is like once I close a deal, rarely do I kind of just hand it off to, you know, to the customer success, the onboarding team or whatever it might be. From there, I try to keep a good communication. So even though the onboarding team handles all of the heavy lifting, I still do keep close contact with the customers. And so I'll handle, you know, if they're seeing any issues or have any questions, I'll try to handle that. I try to, in the second half of the day as well, do training with my ADR. So I'm lucky enough to have a 1-to-1 ratio with my ADR and myself. We're, we're just, like I mentioned before, focused on that one brand together. So she doesn't support anyone else, which, which is great because I can kind of, you know, listen to calls and train her the way that I kind of feel like is most effective with the situation that we have. And so really it's kind of meetings before lunch and admin email/training after lunch.

1:03:23 Scott Ingram: And then what time does the day wrap up and what happens, what happens then?

1:03:27 Chris Horton: Yeah, my wife also has a pretty stressful job, a pretty heavy workload with her job. And there are nights, I'd say once or twice a week, we're working till maybe 7 or 8 PM, which I don't think is what everybody should strive for. Or, you know, my goal is to be done by at least 6:00 PM. But then there are days where I'm able to end the day at 4:00, 4:15 and, you know, hit the gym earlier than I was thinking and spend the night a little bit more, you know, at home and not focused on work things. But on average, I'd say the day is over between 5:00 and 5:30.

1:04:10 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then what happens in the 5 to 9?

1:04:13 Chris Horton: Yeah, so like I mentioned, most mornings I try to do a really short run, but in the evenings I'll go to the gym. I'm an avid rock climber. My dad owns a climbing gym in southern Utah, so I go to a gym here in Salt Lake area, which is more northern Utah. I usually go there. It's kind of fun because my wife will go sometimes and I have a really good group friends that's there, and that's kind of like my social, my social minute for, you know, an hour and a half, 2 hours, something along those lines. And then my wife has… she's an amazing cook. She, she has a lot of Asian influence in her family, so she makes some amazing Asian food. I told her I will do all of the cleanup and obviously help as much as I can with the cooking, but I'll do all of the cleanup and everything like that if she wants to make any of the dishes that, that she loves So, you know, a lot of times she'll make an awesome dinner. And then as long as the Utah weather will cooperate, we actually try to eat dinner outside, which we have a little patio. And something about that just kind of like helps calm everything down. And like you sit and you kind of, you know, you can watch the sunset or whatever it is and just de-stress from everything. But other than that, we've finished almost every TV show, movie type thing that's on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or Disney or whatever it is. And so we used to watch The Office and Parks and Rec and that sort of thing. And now we've been more just kind of just hanging out and de-stressing every now and then. We'll play Mario Kart with friends or whatever it is, but nothing too crazy.

1:05:51 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And then what does your information diet look like? What are you listening to, reading, watching, and when does that happen?

1:05:57 Chris Horton: Yeah, so like I mentioned, I've been watching and reading especially a lot concerning like the mental health and the mental state. I wish I was better at meditating because that's what all of the books and the TED Talks and everything that I've read and watched lately have told me to do. I try to obviously meditate as much as I can, but I've been digesting because in the first 3 or 4 years of sales, I was like, all in, all sales books, all sales podcasts, videos, everything. That was all I listened to, all I digested. And, you know, obviously that was great, but now that I'm… I feel like I have a good base of sales knowledge, I'm trying to, like we… what we talked about a little bit earlier, trying to figure out how maybe best I can, you know, understand like how to stay sane, how to stay calm, how to stay… how to de-stress more efficiently and that sort of thing. And so that's what I've focused most of like my reading and my information on is like, so I'm listening to a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and that talks all about how your brain is, you're not your brain, you're not necessarily your thoughts. Your thoughts and your brain are kind of a tool to help you progress and get things done, but your mind will you know, kind of tell you thoughts and they're not necessarily what is at your core. And so anyways, I've been a lot more interested in that, that sort of thing of like, you know, what goes on in our heads and why do we do things the way that we do lately, as well as I still obviously will sprinkle in some of those, you know, the Sales Success Podcast and, and, you know, a good sales book. Fanatical Prospecting is one that I try to read at least once or twice a year. So sprinkling those into kind of more of like the philosophical or mental health type books or podcasts or whatever it might be.

1:07:51 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then what are the tools and apps you can't live without? And I'm particularly interested in your note-taking process and where that happens since you called that out earlier.

1:08:01 Chris Horton: Yeah, so this is probably just a shameless plug, but I use an app called or a tool called Scratchpad, scratchpad.io for note-taking. It's nice because it allows you to connect it all to Salesforce and all of it is going to just kind of flow into, you know, your CRM. That's a big thing that I learned from my CEO Desmond, who like, I didn't really know anyone quite like him that took notes and documented so well. Like I would end, I ended my first interview with him, with him sending me an email of like 10 bullet points of what we talked about. And it was like, you said your name, your dog's name was Ralph. Like, would love to meet Ralph one day. I'm like, this guy takes insane notes and it helps. It helped me. And, and I hope that it helps the people that I talk to really just like understand like, oh wow, Desmond or Chris or whoever it was, they were actually listening to what I had to say. As, you know, silly as the conversation might have been or whatever it might be. And so I use that to take notes and document things and kind of create that library that I mentioned of, you know, after the fact, I'll kind of organize it into, you know, specific documents or specific pages of notes that I'll say, okay, this is going to be like product knowledge, or this is going to be brand knowledge, or this is going to be region knowledge, or whatever it might be, kind of organize it into a library from there. And then another thing that like, I feel like, I feel like most people can't and shouldn't live without is like a calendar app of some sort. So I use Google Calendar and that honestly is just, you know, in the evenings I'll check what my next day looks like. Then I have an understanding of like, okay, is this going to be a 12-hour day? Is this going to be a 7-hour day? How should I mentally prepare? How should I physically prepare, you know, that sort of thing for that day and just understanding your schedule, understanding your follow-ups. When should I be following up? When should I be meeting with people and that sort of thing? So I always thought it was really interesting that people say to like master your calendar. And I didn't really understand in the beginning what that meant and how you could master a calendar. But I feel like, you know, after a lot of trial and error, I have kind of figured out best how to, to manage a Google Calendar and really use it to my advantage rather than it just being a reminder of the meetings that are coming up for me that day.

1:10:33 Scott Ingram: Nice. Anything else in the mix there?

1:10:35 Chris Horton: So I spend most of my time in Salesforce during the day. That's obviously a huge tool. I feel like any company that wants to kind of take them, at least in the software, software space, Any company that wants to kind of take themselves seriously should be using Salesforce. Outreach is an amazing tool that we use that basically streamlines all of my emails, all of my… me actually scheduling meetings, being able to send out a calendar link where people can choose a time and do all of that saves me honestly 2 to 3 hours a day not having to type up the same email every single time, but more of having templates and snippets built into it. Saves me a ton of time. And then there's obviously a lot of kind of those prospecting tools which we use. We use ZoomInfo, we use Lusha, we use, you know, a few of those different tools out there. And then more recently started using Gong, which I didn't know how much it was going to change my process. But for me to be able to listen to like someone else's demo every day and then a few of my, my ADR calls every day and get just like this broader perspective of what people are saying and what people are doing has helped my process like crazy. And so I know it's not every account executive's decision to use a tool like that, but honestly, it has changed the way we're just able to train and learn and progress as far as what we do and say within these, these deal cycles.

1:12:04 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's perfect. I was wondering based on your earlier comments about kind of listening to calls and things like that, if you were using Gong. So great stuff.

1:12:12 Chris Horton: Yep.

1:12:12 Scott Ingram: Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:12:17 Chris Horton: Yeah, right now, because we did things backwards at Workstream where we were the ones kind of figuring out how to sell at this company, we did it backwards where it wasn't necessarily, hey, we're going to use XYZ methodology, go do this and call these people. For us, it was more like, hey, honestly, not many of us have sold or had much experience in this industry. Let's go out and experiment and just like, you know, trial and error, see what works. If there's a methodology that I would say is closest to what I do, and right now we're actually using Gong to kind of analyze a few of the top reps at our company, analyze their calls and see actually what methodology it would kind of translate to. If I were to say that there's one that I use or that closest to what I do, it would probably be gap selling. So finding the gap in somebody's hiring process and then just expanding on that and expanding on the impacts that that gap brings to your company or your business.

1:13:21 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then kind of what's your style within that particular approach?

1:13:25 Chris Horton: I like to think of myself as pretty consultative. It's interesting with these franchisees because Like their expertise generally, and a lot of them, like I'll talk to them and they're like second-generation franchisees. Their dad owned, you know, 15 Burger Kings and now they run the company. And so hiring is an interesting thing where like someone who owns a restaurant is not like an HR leader and they're not trained in like how to run an interview, how to source candidates and And that sort of thing. So for me to be able to come in and say, well, hey, I think the reason that you're probably not being able to hire many people, you're not hiring many people is because there's a huge gap in point A to point B, point A being when somebody applies and point B being when they actually schedule their interview. And so being able to come in and say, and then they have that aha moment and they say, oh yeah, I totally think After you bring that up, I think that's where it is. And, you know, it's interesting because like I said, they're not necessarily HR experts and being able to kind of source all of that. They're more experts in like food and beverage and like, you know, business management and that sort of thing. So me being able to be the expert in actually hiring, because I don't know as much about like how to cook a hamburger or how to make a shake or whatever it is. Me being able to be the expert and a resource that people can come and say, hey Chris, I was thinking about doing this, do you think that's something that would work with Workstream? And me to be able to say, absolutely, that's a perfect fit, or honestly, no, I don't think that that's a good fit for what our platform can do. So just trying to be as consultative as I can and as friendly and as trustworthy as I can as well.

1:15:12 Scott Ingram: Perfect, perfect. Let's talk about kind of the motivation and drive side of things. What is it that ultimately drives you and how do you think about motivation and keeping yourself going?

1:15:25 Chris Horton: Yeah, that's something that I have just gone back and forth about a lot over the last half decade or so. There's always like everybody should be able to kind of find an external factor, whether it's like providing for a family or you know, making your parents proud or whatever it is. I don't necessarily think those are going to be the things that like long-term hold you and keep you motivated. Honestly, for me, it's like being able to, whatever it is, close your laptop at the end of a day or walk away from the office at the end of the day being like, wow, I really, I really did do a good job today. I really did work hard rather than walking away being like, man, did I just waste 8 hours, 9 hours? Not doing anything. And so, and that kind of goes back to being aware of where you're at mentally and psychologically, staying aware of where you're at and knowing like how you want to feel at the end of the day is honestly what motivates me. Because at the end of the day, feeling like I didn't do anything is worse than, you know, worse than most other things. I'm motivated by Hopefully being able to retire earlier than average as well. So that pushes me to do really well at work so that I can invest in things outside of work financially. And then I just have this weird thing about… I think a lot of people have this… is like, what do people think of you? And I just hope people trust me and think that I'm someone that is worth working with or worth working for and that sort of thing.

1:17:06 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. You know, it's interesting. I don't delve into this enough. And if you're open to it, I'd like to dig into it because people will definitely ask me like, okay, well, Scott, I'm doing well in sales. I'm making all this money. What do I do with this? Like how, what, what is your kind of high-level investment approach and kind of path to this early retirement goal?

1:17:25 Chris Horton: Yeah. So we actually, my wife and I when we were first married, I rented a basement apartment, which are pretty common here in Utah. And the landlord, the people that lived upstairs, were pretty big real estate investors. And like one day I just stopped them and I said, hey, you always talk about like this property that you have down the street or like a property you have in another city or whatever. I'm like, hey, can you just tell me about that property, like, or your investing strategy? And so he kind of just walked me through and we ended up buying after that, buying a duplex that we lived in one side and then we rented out the other side while we were, you know, I was just barely promoted to an account executive at this point. And so we were making like decent money, but it wasn't necessarily the greatest money ever, but we saved a ton because the people on the other side of the duplex were mostly paying the mortgage with their rent. So anyways, that kind of spiraled me into this real estate investment strategy, and it's got its ups and downs, but we own 3 properties now, or 4 doors, I guess, is kind of how the real estate investors say. And some of those are… one of those is a short-term rental that we rent on VRBO and Airbnb and that sort of thing. And then 3 of those are long-term renters. And I'm kind of constantly going back and forth on whether I want to do all short-term or all long-term. But I'm really interested in continuing that real estate path. So we're kind of constantly out there, like looking at what's available in the housing market in Utah, especially, and I'm sure in a lot of other places is insane, where houses that we bought last year are worth almost double what they were before. And then beyond that, especially now where the market is so crazy and we're not necessarily able to buy houses like we wish we could, then I'm investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies, much heavier in stocks. So I'm a big Tesla fan and I love just throwing as much money into that so that hopefully it can pan out in the future.

1:19:38 Scott Ingram: Nice. Do you drive a Tesla?

1:19:40 Chris Horton: I bought my first Tesla on Thursday.

1:19:44 Scott Ingram: Oh my God.

1:19:44 Chris Horton: So 2 days ago, what'd you get? We got a Model Y. Yeah, 2021. My wife will mostly drive it because she works closer and just, you know, it was kind of her thing. She was ready for a new car anyways. But, but yeah, I got our first Tesla. It's like this weird, exciting thing that also was one of those moments where I was like, oh wait, my life is still the same. I like still have stresses and problems. And buying a Tesla didn't fix all of my worries. It just made driving a lot better.

1:20:18 Scott Ingram: Dude, I think the Model Y is an awesome car. I haven't even been in one. I picked up a Model 3… oh shoot, what's it been? Maybe 2 years ago. I love that car to death. And so unfortunately, I'm disappointed in what you just said because what you're saying is when they finally deliver my Cybertruck, everything's not going to be better for me.

1:20:37 Chris Horton: The Cybertruck will actually solve all your problems.

1:20:40 Scott Ingram: Perfect.

1:20:42 Chris Horton: The Model 3, the Model Y, may not solve them all, but the Cybertruck will actually solve all your problems.

1:20:48 Scott Ingram: That's my plan. That's my plan.

1:20:50 Chris Horton: That's why it's taking so long.

1:20:51 Scott Ingram: Oh, seriously. You know, that, that and full self-driving, like legitimately the cities in… anyway. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing. What… here's what, man, we're going to go on a giant tangent here. Tesla and Elon and all of that stuff is just mind-blowing to me. And he has delivered on every single thing he said he would. He's just not very good at the timeline.

1:21:14 Chris Horton: Yep. Yeah, it's honestly changed my perspective because I feel like, you know, like, I don't know, I guess just the traditional business model was almost broken with Elon Musk. And, you know, not necessarily like what the company actually delivers, like as far as product goes, but just how somebody runs a company. Like I saw they're coming out with a matte black Cybertruck because someone tweeted, Elon Musk and said, hey, look at this rendering I did of a matte black Cybertruck. It looks awesome. Will you make one? And Elon Musk replies, yep. And then like a week later they announce it, you know? So just, I don't know. I like the untraditional, like, you know, maybe it's a good thing that they're not, not delivering on time because it kind of like makes us be, makes us be a little bit more patient. And I don't know, wait for a product that's worth it. Maybe. I don't know.

1:22:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm having to be very, very patient. It's all good though. I think I'm probably like a year in line. So even once those things start rolling off the production line here in Austin, which is pretty awesome.

1:22:23 Chris Horton: That's awesome.

1:22:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm still going to have a long wait. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. But in some ways, I think that's also good too. That's them working out a whole lot of bugs and stuff and making I know that's the full self-driving.

1:22:35 Chris Horton: It's like, do you want a half-baked self-driving tool? And the technology, thinking about what they're doing, it's like no one has ever perfected… back in 2012 or '13 or whatever it was, them being the first ones to really launch a full electric vehicle, the first ones to launch full self-driving. You know, it's like they're inventing it so that we're kind of on their timeline type of thing. But yeah, it's frustrating kind of waiting and waiting and waiting.

1:23:07 Scott Ingram: But yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to need some feedback from you, the listener, on this, because I'm going to ask Chris one more question on the crypto side of things. Is this relevant? Are you interested in these types of conversations or are you like, Scott, I've got other shows? Like if I'm interested in the investment stuff, I'll go other places. Would you please talk about sales and Chris and all the stuff he's doing? So I want to hear that feedback, but I am interested, Chris, in what's kind of your crypto approach. What are you into on that front?

1:23:35 Chris Horton: Yeah, well, so as far as like the first part, I like hearing more about these, these sales reps or these VPs of sales. I like hearing about their life, you know? So in my opinion, I think like we have had today, 75% of it be about sales and how to sell. And then if there is 15 to 25 or whatever percent of like, what's your personal life? What's your investing strategy? What are you doing with the money that you make in sales? I think that's interesting because we all, you know, we're all, we're all in similar positions and we all want to just know what we should do with our careers and with our lives and that sort of thing. But yeah, as far as kind of like my strategy, I've been, I mean, I feel like I've bounced back and forth. This is how I am with most things, but But I was actually like day trading and swing trading before 8:00 AM for a while. And then when work got really insane, I actually just put all of what I planned on and what I plan on, what I continue to plan on investing just into like 3 different cryptocurrencies or stocks or whatever it was, like more long-term stuff where I'm like, I don't care if it goes up tomorrow, down tomorrow. Down next week because I'm going to hold this for like 3+ years, 10+ years, whatever it might be. So right now at this very moment, my strategy is like, don't even look at your position and what number plus or minus you're at. Just find a good strategy long-term. Is this stock going to be… I remember Warren Buffett said, look at a stock and say, is this going to be around in 50 years? 20 years, whatever it was. And if so, then like invest in it for 20 years. It's actually given me an interesting perspective into like how I look at where I'm working. Because if you look at a company, I believe you should, and I've recently kind of formulated this thought is like, I believe you should give at least like 3 to 5+ years to a company because that's how I think from this point on, I kind of want to start investing in my stocks and my cryptocurrencies is like, I'm in it for 3 to 5 years. And so find a company, whether it's stock or actually like where you're selling things that you're willing to be in it for 3 to 5 years. And maybe you don't hold it for that whole time, but I, in my opinion, it's just easier to know you're going to put your money there. You're not constantly searching for the next hot stock that you're going to buy and then sell within a day or a week or a month or whatever it is. You know that where you're going to put your money into is worth it. And so you don't have to constantly be checking of like, oh, when should I sell it? When should I buy it? You're just going to buy it when you want to buy it and when you can buy it, and you're going to sell it when you want to retire at 40 or whatever it is.

1:26:26 Scott Ingram: Nice. And what is that shortlist for you?

1:26:28 Chris Horton: Tesla and Ethereum right now.

1:26:30 Scott Ingram: Easy. Easy.

1:26:31 Chris Horton: I like it.

1:26:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I like it. Waiting for the flippening, huh?

1:26:34 Chris Horton: Yeah, right. No, it's just, I mean, trying to like be for now, for this moment, trying to be hands-off because work is, is so busy that I don't really have the time to analyze a whole lot.

1:26:49 Scott Ingram: Yep. That makes sense. Is there something you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy?

1:26:56 Chris Horton: Yeah. I mean, it depends on, I guess, how average that sales rep is, but I don't believe that cold calls are what will put you at the top of the leaderboard. I believe that it's like the multiplicity or like the repeatability, if that's a word, of your process. And so to be honest, if you want to be in sales for your career of 20, 25 years, whatever it is, You're not gonna be able to make 100 dials for 30 years. You know, you need to figure out like more strategic, more, and cold calls are gonna play a big part of that. But you need to figure out what your process is and what's going to make you successful that is repeatable and that you could wake up every single day and say, you know, you wake up in the day and say, I, I don't have any problems starting that process because I know it works. And I'm comfortable with it and it helps me and it delivers results.

1:27:56 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. What about the flip side? Is there something the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

1:28:01 Chris Horton: That's a good, great question. You know, and I thought about this as I was preparing, you know, just from your list of questions and honestly couldn't think of a whole lot. I think it's crazy that sales reps think that they have to like rub shoulders with upper-level management or like shout their leaders out on LinkedIn without necessarily a huge reason. Like, I just think it's crazy that sales reps believe that's what's going to get them to the top or get them their promotion is like rubbing shoulders with the higher-ups. For me, it's like all about results and all about, you know, the merit and what you've done rather than like, oh, well, I'm best friends with, with the VP of Sales or the CRO or whatever it might be. That just, it irks me a little bit when, when people are like that and, and you can kind of understand like, oh, I get what you're trying to do and it's not gonna work, you know?

1:28:54 Scott Ingram: So what you're saying is it works better if you just perform so well that your VP of sales calls you out on LinkedIn.

1:29:01 Chris Horton: Exactly. I mean, when you said that, I didn't quite catch that you were, you know, talking about Blake's post, but, but I do think like perform so well that like your VP of sales would love to go out to lunch with you and like learn from you so that they can teach the other reps what you're doing and that sort of thing. Like, you know what I mean? I just think it's more repeatable. It's something you don't have to constantly be worried about. Hey, what does my, what does my VP think of me? You just know, like, my VP loves me and he'll fight for me type of thing.

1:29:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. All right. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna run things a little bit quicker so we can stay on, on time here. A little bit of advice and then a challenge. So what advice do you have for somebody that's just getting started in their sales career today?

1:29:43 Chris Horton: Yeah, I would say, you know, I talked earlier about not job shopping or job hopping unless there's like an extreme or like obvious reason for why you should go somewhere or leave the company that you're at. But then the other big thing that I would say is getting as much like hands-on experience with the closing process as you can and the, and the of the pipeline. Like I mentioned, when I was in SDR, I would have these account executives send me recordings, and then I would listen to them like on, on the train or the bus home, or in the car, or while I'm mowing the lawn or whatever it was, you know, just having that like desire to learn and study and learning from other people's successes and mistakes.

1:30:30 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. We do a little bit of that here. And then what about somebody that's a little bit further into their career and they're doing well, but they know they can be doing better? What's your advice for them?

1:30:39 Chris Horton: For sure. Just like go talk to, like take the best account executive out, you know, take the top performers out for lunch, take them to lunch and learn from them. And, you know, honestly, I'll do anything for a free lunch for the most part. You know, I think just, just learn from those people that are doing it right. And obviously pick the right people. Some people get lucky and they fall into a top performer position, you know, maybe not for the right reasons or whatever it might be, but like find someone that you say, hey, I want to like do what they do every day. I want to put up the numbers that they do and do it the way, you know, have kind of like the, the same process and then just like take notes and, you know, create like this document library of, of all of what they do and then recreate it yourself.

1:31:28 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. Awesome. So last thing we always do, we talked about lots and lots of stuff, but we're going to make this actionable. So Chris, what is your challenge for the listener? What can they do over the course of the next 1 or 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:31:43 Chris Horton: Take out the best performer or, or I guess like your ideal, the position that you'd ideally be in, the rep that you'd ideally become, take them out for lunch, take them out on a walk. Like, like call them on Zoom or whatever it is, but just like spend 30 minutes to an hour with the person that you feel like you would most like to be within the sales org.

1:32:07 Scott Ingram: That is a great challenge, Chris. Thank you for your time. This has been a blast.

1:32:12 Chris Horton: Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. I appreciate it, Scott.

1:32:16 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.