153: Andrew Claus: Partnership and Channel Selling to the Top of the Leaderboard at Kixie

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve.

0:18 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Andrew Claus. Andrew is a strategic channel manager and through his partnership co-selling efforts is the top-producing individual contributor at Kixie. Welcome to the show, Andrew.

0:38 Andrew Claus: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.

0:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, this is going to be fun. So just for the folks listening, Andrew and I connected at the summit he attended, and I learned that he is the top performer for Kixie and checks a box that I have been trying to check for a really long time. Because finding somebody in a partnerships type of role who is a true documented top performer is a tricky thing. So really excited to dig into this. But Andrew, as you know, we always dive into with some immediate value. What are the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success?

1:12 Andrew Claus: Sure. The first one is going to speak to what you were just talking about too. So my number one is strategically pulling in additional resources. And then project managing those resources. So I know this is like a super long answer as opposed to just saying something like confidence or something, but this was something I didn't realize I was doing. It was actually revealed to me because of complaints that trickled up to my boss, David Gable, who you actually know, Scott. They were saying that I wasn't closing my own deals, but I was having all these other people help me close them. And those complaints were typically from reps that they hadn't learned how to maximize the resources around them. Like especially on larger and more complex deals where I feel personally it's necessary. So we here have an entire solution engineering team, which they're great. And they help us close deals on the sales side. And this is something that we don't charge customers for. So they do everything from building out workflow automations. They set up people's CRMs so that they can best utilize our platform. And we actually are a Platinum Solutions Partner with HubSpot. Our entire company is. And this is something we don't charge for. And what Platinum Partner means is basically agency-level support. And so naturally, I think I'm good at managing those resources around me and turning myself into more of a project manager on the sales side, where I really help drive the deal forward to completion and bring all these extra resources to move the deal forward. Like, I find it's much more useful on larger deals rather than the smaller ones, Which is, I think, why I have success on the larger deals. And it's been greater than when I was working on the smaller size, the more commoditized deals.

2:49 Scott Ingram: Nice. Absolute cheat code. We're going to dig into that because I think it's a really smart strategy. The fact that people are complaining about it is hilarious. What's your second thing?

2:59 Andrew Claus: The second is, I would say, authority. And by authority, I don't mean commanding authority over other people. I mean it in the sense of being an expert in the relevant field. So my mantra has been, if a person on the other end of the phone leaves with some extra insight into a space that's valuable to them, whether it's about the industry they're in, if it's telephony or just software in general, irrespective of them buying our product or our solution, then I can guarantee that they're going to answer my call in the future. And this person is going to call me if they move to another company and they decided that they want to engage with Kixie. Like this person in perpetuity, I have rapport with because I've been an authority that they can lean on for free as an expert and that they can learn something from. So what I hold is that to be a very valuable skill of mine. It's helped me in terms of moving these deals forward. And a lot of these deals, they maybe didn't initially go with us and they would come back because they liked talking to me. They learned a lot from engaging with us.

3:59 Scott Ingram: Dig it. All right. Hit us with number 3.

4:01 Andrew Claus: Number 3 is creativity. And I know that seems really broad, so I'll try to narrow it down for this role. I work best when I'm given a high-level overarching goal and not micromanaged in terms of the individual steps necessary to accomplish these goals. A friend of our CEO, Jeff, who works at Amazon, gave the example of how they define their tiers of roles. So for example, Account Executive 1, Account Executive 2, 4, et cetera. They use that as a measure of how high level a goal can be without diving into the specifics necessary to accomplishment. And they trust that they can finish it. So for example, a level 6 employee at Amazon, therefore you could just say, we need to have a 6% increase in revenue month over month, which is what our goal here is at Kixie. And then say, just go do it. And they would take that request. They would narrow it down to increasing close rate on every deal. So how do we do that? We need to take the steps necessary to do that. We need a higher level of touchpoints, streamline communication, have sequences of texts and calls go out as soon as the lead comes in. Then we have to look at the training and software necessary to do that and boil it all the way down to the necessary tools and steps for execution. So in that way, I feel best when I can operate as if I have higher numerals after my title, whatever that title may be. I operate as if I'm a title AE6 or whatever the equivalent is at Amazon.

5:31 Scott Ingram: Very cool. And where does the creativity come into play in that context?

5:35 Andrew Claus: So you're coming up with a solution on how to hit that goal. You're not being micromanaged on all of that. So I have the freedom to choose what type of software I feel is going to add value to get us closer to that. How are we going to get more touchpoints? Well, streamlining communications. Well, what does that look like? This is where we can be creative. That's why I mentioned like sequences of texts and calls that go out. As soon as a lead comes in, we want to have a process that's going to lead them down a certain path to close that deal faster. And by not being micromanaged and someone telling me you need to do XYZ, and it's just the policy of the company, I can think out of the box. You know, if I want to add video in and that's not something the company's done before, then I have that freedom to do so.

6:24 Scott Ingram: Got it. Love it. Love it. Awesome. All right. Let's contextualize this. Talk about your role. And I really want to get into a little bit of the nitty-gritty there because it is a unique role and kind of how you were able to leverage that into your top performance.

6:37 Andrew Claus: Yeah, absolutely. So with Kixie, I've been here about 2 years. I started as an AE and then quickly moved to senior AE and now as a strategic channel manager. We've grown a lot in 2 years, which has been super exciting to be a part of. And kind of like I mentioned with the authority, there's 2 ways that I became top here. And one was being an expert in our industry, knowing competitors and knowing how we win, like across the board. And this happened in a call a couple of weeks ago. Guy just came in and just was cutting me off saying, why are you better than this? Why are you better than this? What is the difference? To have that knowledge, Like I am the expert in that same thing with knowing in-depth CRMs like HubSpot. So I can add value. So when people come to me, they have no idea that we're not just going to talk about Kixie. I'm also going to do things like prescribe the best usage and even talk about introducing it and different sales practices for the team. So most other companies, like they don't go down this route. Instead of, they just talk about their product. Maybe they talk about helping solve a pain point. But by doing this, they're missing the education that they could provide, that added value, like things that are related to not just product specifics. And the one you were talking about and kind of insinuating to, we built a relationship early on with HubSpot's top channel account manager and various reps early on in my selling. He would connect us with different reps that could use Kixie's help to add value or assist in closing their deal. And these started as one-offs and they grew in frequency, which is why we started our channel team back in January. So co-selling with HubSpot reps who saw the value of adding us in the mix, they saw that our mindset is to either close together or help them close first and we'll win after. So these specific relationships led to me closing the largest deals in our company's history. And the final thing to add in is that the contribution from strategic team members here, like I mentioned earlier, our solution engineers, our CSMs, on the majority of these calls, it was between 3 to 5 people from HubSpot and from Kixie when we're talking with the client to go ahead and make the sale.

8:54 Scott Ingram: Nice. And I'm gonna come back to that piece. I'm curious about how did the transition from kind of a traditional AE role to this channel manager role happen?

9:04 Andrew Claus: Sure. So before I got in the company, David Gable, our head of sales, he was doing some of that with HubSpot reps, and I kind of followed suit and took it to the next level. And we learned that those deals closed faster. Honestly, for me personally, they're more fun. Like, while I love, you know, selling and bringing a deal home, to co-sell and see even more value than Kixie could provide standalone, and to learn from these other enterprise reps on the HubSpot side. It's a true collaboration. And so it escalated where we got to a point where I was crushing it in December, and we thought that this would be, especially looking at other companies in the industry who had a channel side of things, which we were kind of just loosely going about sporadically. We decided that I have a passion for this and I think it could really help. And the company believed in me. And so we started developing it. So while being a senior AE, I was building this channel and building a team and a process about how to go about doing it. And it's paid off. It started 7% of our revenue, 8%, 15%, and most recently 30%. So it's kind of a passion of mine that I've kind of grown into and didn't know that this was going to happen. I've always been a traditional AE, senior, or whatever title you want to put it, but this kind of spoke to me and I have a lot of fun and it's helping the company overall.

10:35 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. I believe you kind of proved out the model, showed that it works, obviously generated incredible results, and now you're kind of scaling a team. Is that where this is at right now?

10:46 Andrew Claus: Yes. Now we're scaling the team, which is exciting. This is the first month that I'm fully doing that. So it's perfect timing. And I'm glad that we could squeeze me in as far as that's concerned. But yeah, we're building that team and it's just awesome. The guys that I have are exceeding my expectations and I probably would've got to it later, but by these relationships, some of the deals in question are some of the largest, like we've talked about. Well, what's cool is that word spreads. At HubSpot. And I'm being known over there and our team is being really well known over there and are just a company in general. And we've got a couple deals that might end up being even larger than the ones that I brought in if all goes well. So it's just kind of moving and I'm excited to be leading that charge.

11:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I want to get into that aspect. And I think philosophically, your idea of, look, our number one priority is to help you win, And when you win, Kixie's kind of a shoo-in to follow on, right? So you don't have to worry too much about the rest of your deal coming together. Have you found that there are particular reps or particular types of deals? Like, where have you found kind of a sweet spot in this partnering? Because it doesn't always work.

11:56 Andrew Claus: You're right. It doesn't always work. You're right about our mantra and our kind of philosophy of either closing together or we're going to help them close. And then, like you said, we're a shoo-in. It doesn't always work. We maybe aren't the right fit in some cases. I've never seen someone just dislike us because we talk with the HubSpot rep. We find out what the client is. That's one of the first things. I get emails all the time. They give us a situation and I kind of do an early assessment of can we help them? And the reason we have that way of working, of helping them close, they're a CRM I would offer that they are a more complex sale in many ways. There's a ton of complex stuff that we can do, that Kixie can do on the calling, texting side of things. But, you know, they're talking about a CRM. I mean, it's just like a Salesforce and they're very, very similar. The sale is more complex. So we have to be careful with, so we don't disrupt their process, which I can take you through at any point, obviously, but we want to provide the extra value and And it also shows that they're providing extra value to the customer because they're saying, hey, look, this is a good solution that you need for whatever reason, and it's a perfect fit with us. And therefore now bundling that together, it's just stronger than closing a deal and then saying, yeah, why don't you check out Kixie? Why don't you check out someone else?

13:20 Scott Ingram: Got it. And we'll definitely come back. I'm super interested in the granular specifics of kind of that co-selling motion. First, let's learn more about you. I mean, you mentioned that you've traditionally been in AE roles. What's your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

13:37 Andrew Claus: Sure. Mine's a little unique, so I'll start from kind of the beginning because this will give context to everything else. I went to school for acting. I took a ballet class because I thought it would help with my movement for musical theater, and I fell in love with it. And so I trained hard. Went to London. After college, I moved to New York, and for about 10 years I was performing with different companies, off-off-Broadway, you name it. Ended up moving to LA. I continued that route for a while but didn't find as much success, I should say, or at least it was very up and down. And I was very tired of working every job… Starbucks, Macy's, pouring champagne at parties, Abercrombie. I mean, you name it, I've done it. It's kind of a joke with people who know me is that I've done every job, but I was tired of that real up and down and the potential of not being able to pay bills. And I figured that going into sales might be the best. And that was my idea of stability because there was a base involved. Everyone else didn't see it, but I saw the potential for it. And I felt like it was a good transition because of my acting background and I have thick skin. Because when you're a performer, you're auditioning all the time and you're getting told no. And it feels even more personal because it feels like they're saying no literally to you. Whereas with a sale, I feel like they're saying no to the product for the most part. And so went on Craigslist, which is obviously a red flag. And I found the jobs there are amazing. So I found a fitness equipment company. And so it was inside sales and it was like the TV show, The Office, with a bunch of salesy gym rat guys with like slashed out prices. All sorts of stuff, but at least it got me on the phones. And then I kind of bounced around to another one, and then I sold oil and gas investments for about a year, which was very scripted and aggressive. And then I started to go into the tech side of things in Santa Monica with ZipRecruiter being one of the biggest names. And that's where I really learned how to truly sell in the SaaS world. And then I ended up through that Navigating my way to Kixie. That's kind of where my unique thing, and that's why I also mentioned creativity because I come from that background and co-selling with the channel side of things, I feel is so much more creative than the traditional go through your sales process with your product and go to the end. So that's kind of my origin story, meandering way to kind of get me where I am.

16:09 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. I think that's the first ballet dancer to sales professional transition I've heard, but it's not very different from, I don't know if you listened to the interview I did with Katie Jane Bailey, Oh, I did hear that.

16:19 Andrew Claus: Yeah, that one. Yes.

16:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So she came from kind of a Broadway type of background. Same thing, right? You're like, you're spending your life auditioning. Rejection is personal, like literally. And it's just a ton of work and you're doing all this like side… well, not side hustle stuff, but you've got all these odd jobs just to keep the lights on while you're trying to win these parts and things, right?

16:37 Andrew Claus: Yeah. And also if you're doing it at the level that I was, you're also in the most expensive cities. York City or Los Angeles, that kind of adds to it where either you're sacrificing time when you're auditioning and working, or you're working too much and you're not auditioning. I mean, it's just tough. So it does give you super thick skin. As a ballet dancer, I mean, they're looking at your body, they're judging your looks, everything like that. So it feels more personal, but they're just trying to fit what they need. And so you learn that it's not personal. And I see that the same way with sales. If I lose a sale, I know it's not from my efforts. There was some disconnect, some fit that wasn't right. So when they say no, it's… they're not saying, no, Andrew, you're a terrible salesman. Maybe they did at the beginning, but not at this point. So it was a good kind of training ground for sales.

17:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, in this context, I'm way more interested in your answer to this question than I am in others. So if you were starting over today, knowing all that you know now, would you have done anything differently from a career perspective?

17:38 Andrew Claus: I'll talk about the sales side of things because I'm proud that I was doing the performing. That's near and dear to me. And I wouldn't change the way that… I mean, I would've changed, I would've done it earlier. So I started earlier rather than in college would've been a nice head start. But I learned a lot. I'm sure there's differences there. But as far as sales, I think that if my decision wasn't so kind of organically chosen, meaning I was in a tough spot with finances, with just where things were kind of in limbo, And so I found an easy route, which was the fitness equipment. It seemed to me that that was going to be a good fit because I had been a personal trainer. I was an athlete with the performing. So it just felt natural. But that was such a bizarre experience with the way they went about the sale, the slashed-out prices, the upsells that we would do. I think I would've probably decided to start at a more known company. That had a solid training program. That way I could really learn sales from the beginning the proper way and be able to hone those skills. That's, I think, one thing that I would've changed. I would've latched onto someone as a mentor-type relationship, which I have right now with a dear friend, but I was missing that for the first part of my sales career. So my guidance was my gut instinct, trying to figure out and just kind of navigate it. I see that as a better start if I would've done so.

19:01 Scott Ingram: Right, right. There's some really good nuggets in there. All right. So usually I ask about a favorite sales story because, you know, it's called Sales Success Stories, but I want to direct you a little bit and you probably would've gone here anyway, but I want to hear your favorite co-selling story and maybe we can kind of talk about what that experience was and then we can dissect it a little bit from like, what are the practical steps and how do you typically manage that?

19:24 Andrew Claus: Yeah, absolutely.

19:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

19:25 Andrew Claus: I had thought about 2 different ones and I knew that was going to be the one that you came. The other story was actually we sold to a competitor. I'll give you the 2-second rundown of it. That was weird. I've never had another phone service that needed to use our phone system for their BDR and sales team because they didn't offer what we did. And they're like a billion-dollar company. So it was very interesting. But I think that the co-selling is probably the most relatable and most important one. So I will talk about… it just so happens I'm going to talk about the 2 biggest deals that I pulled in. So about 11 months ago, one of the enterprise HubSpot reps came and reached out to us that he needed help with a deal. And so I ended up jumping on a call with him and he outlined what they were looking for. And I had to go to our solution engineering team because it was a very complex situation. And he came to us knowing that We like to get creative. We'll get in the weeds. Like I mentioned earlier, that we don't charge for our solution engineering. So we have the ability then to have a better in on the sale. So the next step was to jump on a call with the client. So we did a little discovery and just co-selling in general. There's a lot of moving pieces, as you'll kind of see as this progresses. You don't just jump on a call and have it be a straight discovery. You have to plan for it. And so you have to have just basically pre-calls. It's just a lot of extra little moving parts because both of us are trying to make the sale. So I need to know where they're at with HubSpot in this instance. And then how do we piece in so we don't disrupt things? So we ran a demo, we showed them what they wanted to do. Since they were initially talking directly with HubSpot, we got feedback from them that looks like we're the right tool. So then we had to prepare for the final presentation. So they were already pretty far along with HubSpot until they realized that they didn't have the piece missing. And so they needed to fix that, or this mortgage company was not going to move from their current platform. So we had a big planning call. HubSpot had at least 8 people on it, various managers, implementation specialists, you name it. And so we had 4 or 5 of us. I brought our head of sales, David. I brought our head of solution engineering. I mean, talk about grabbing resources and utilizing… I'm bringing the top people from our team for this, plus someone else or a couple from his team so we could really do a great presentation. So we shared pricing with HubSpot so that we could present together alongside. So it truly is co-selling. So they had a slide deck that we fit into. And we're talking an hour straight of going through it. That ultimately led to signing the contract, which was amazing. So HubSpot started doing their onboarding and we joined in a few months later. So we officially took payment and started working on their build-out. Now we were going at it separately because we're doing different things. HubSpot is building out the deal stages, the this and that, and we're building call routing and all sorts of stuff. So We were going side by side. It got a little bit of a disconnect at one point, and finally we talked about it, and I suggested let's literally get on calls together so that we're just building this straight together rather than two companies that have the same deal. So that's what we started doing, and what was cool is they started asking us questions about a different use case of Kixie and HubSpot, and so they asked two and a half times. So the first one was 150 users and this one was 500. So they asked for a quote for that, which is what ultimately led to the largest deal. And we went into co-selling mode again, got the HubSpot team on, got our team on. Hearing this isn't going to be too pleased, but HubSpot didn't ultimately win the second deal. That kind of speaks to a point you brought up, which when you said it's tricky, it doesn't always work out. And that's true. However, we're still adding value because when I talk about we help them win, well, if we can't, we obviously still want to win, but now we're their champions. Now on the back end, we can champion them and ultimately hopefully get them the rest of that deal, which is exciting. And so now we're in the point where I'm still project managing it. We're building out all this crazy stuff. The reason that we've built up a lot of confidence in HubSpot reps is that we actually have built out 2 new features for our product that did not exist. We had our development team literally add 2 complex features for this client specifically to help close the deal and make sure that they're satisfied. So it's a deal that I'm super proud of, as you can probably tell, and a lot of work went into it. It paid off. And yeah, I was definitely lucky to be a part of that.

24:26 Scott Ingram: Love it. I want to get to the inner workings of that. So we got into some of the co-sell, some of the coordination, which is huge. It's making sure that you're aligned with that partner and you're sort of showing a unified front and you're all on the same page when you're in front of the client. I mean, you were there. One of the themes in the summit was just the internal sale, right? And what you're talking about in terms of garnering all of these internal resources, talk about that. Talk about how you're sort of managing that and the project management side of this as well. Both of these topics, when I really get into it with enterprise sellers, these are the things that really come up, right? It's less about the tactical sales stuff that a lot of the rest of the industry is focused on. And it's really unique things like how you're managing these internal relationships and literally project managing, which very few of us have any formal background in that, but I think we kind of pick it up.

25:25 Andrew Claus: It's definitely a learned skill. I would say I had a stint at account management, but not in the same way. Project managing is so different, I'm finding. And when you're talking about getting the internal buy-in, so the first part of that is fairly easy. I have a big deal. I need your help. You're the one who specializes in this. Can you help? That part they're going to see, and there's buy-in there. You have to keep that buy-in and you have to keep… So the difficulties of managing, especially on an enterprise deal, these clients ask for a very complex solution and it can be very frustrating with the way, because I'm sometimes a middleman because lot of this technical stuff that our solution engineers are building is something that I understand the concepts and I've built some small workflow stuff. Nothing is in-depth. And so you have to keep their morale high when the client's asking or demanding, requiring something that either we don't have or is extremely difficult. It can be very frustrating for them. And you're balancing expectations because they think you're overselling it. Or, you know, the owner of our company, if someone goes to him and says, hey, we don't have this feature. And he's like, why are we selling this? Because I'm a big believer, don't overpromise. You know, that's kind of the death of a lot of deals is when you can't deliver. And so you're having to both keep them bought into it. So all the people that are helping you in this case, I also had to get the CSM that we're bringing on. And make sure that he's up to speed. So you're going through and taking all this information in from all sides, from the client. For me, I get asked things from HubSpot. I'm playing middleman and project managing the SE team and finding out status of things. And you're having to just really juggle that so that when you talk to the client, you're not losing them for any reason because you find out that the dev team has another 2 weeks that they need. And so you just have to be really on top of it. And I didn't realize how difficult it is because as much trust as I have, and I trust my team to the highest level, but I want this to go smoothly and it has to go smoothly. So I'm just keeping tabs on everyone and I'm sure they don't like me at times, but that's too bad, but I'm not being overly demanding. But that's kind of the project management side that people don't really see until they're like right in the middle of it, rather than the salesperson who is talking to whoever they need and someone else is helping, but they're just really focused on the sale and the client. It's really about the bigger picture so that it can all come together as needed.

28:12 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's the piece I want to dig into, right? A lot of people might argue, well, now you're spending all of this time in the weeds on this deal, right? You're kind of putting on a different hat. Is that keeping you from bringing in more business? How do you think about that?

28:27 Andrew Claus: It depends on your deal flow, what you have to do with your outbound or with the leads that you're working, because this doesn't take up your entire day. You just have to be specific on when you're speaking and keeping tabs and working on it. So I would say that it should not take away, but also you have to look at the size of the project, of the sale that you're trying to close. I mean, that's one of the biggest things too, is the value of it versus the time. So if it's a smaller deal, I kind of mentioned it earlier about small deals. You're not bringing in tons of resources for small deals. It's typically not worth it unless you have a team that is specifically set up for that purpose. Otherwise, your engineering team, different stuff, their time is best spent on the largest, more meaningful deals. So I would say that you just have to keep your time managed because you should be able to have blocked out time for your prospecting. I don't know too many enterprise reps that have 20 deals going on at the same time, all of massive size. Some I'm sure do, obviously, but you're working less deals. So I just think it's a function of how well you can time manage and then literally look at how much time you're spending and figure out how to trim that down. Do you have to be a part of this conversation? Do you have to be a part of this conversation? To bring more people together at the same time so you're not having just individual conversations or individual calls all day long. I'm a big believer of, if we're going to talk with the client, rather than me talk with the client and convey stuff and then have another call later, another third call to clarify, I'm a big fan of just get everyone on one call. We'll set aside an hour and go through everyone's question in turn.

30:12 Scott Ingram: Well, and I have to imagine that the investment that you're making in the success of this deal is part of what leads to future deals because now HubSpot trusts you, right? Like, oh, they're actually going to deliver on this stuff. Their confidence in bringing you into future deals is going to be there. Have you seen that?

30:31 Andrew Claus: Yeah, 100%. What's been happening, and it's like a snowball effect, regardless of the size of the deal, HubSpot reps that are on the SMB side, they want to bring us in. That doesn't mean we have to roll out the red carpet, including tons and tons of individuals on our side, we can just have one solution engineer if they need any help with it. It's always true based on the value of the deal, but it absolutely does show confidence when we close deals. Like I said, we have another deal that just came through from another enterprise rep. And that's obviously, I mean, I can't, because I haven't talked to him and asked him specifically, but I have to believe that they see that we have this size of a deal that we're bending over backwards and going above and beyond. And so they're willing to, and they have that trust. So I've been seeing it time and again that our team just closed. It's a small deal in our world, but the HubSpot rep and I spoke to him and he was so excited. And I said, hey, it looks like it closed. And he closed as well. So we closed the same day. And he called me on my cell and he said, Andrew, and we were right in the middle of signing and getting it finalized. He goes, Andrew, is it too early for me to send you another lead? And I said, no, let's talk. He had that confidence. He had never sold before with anybody. I don't know if co-sold is a word, but I'll make it. It is now. He had never done it before. He goes, Andrew, what's the process? And I said, what's your process? To find out where he was at the deal. I'm like, we'll match that. We won't do anything outside of what you're looking for. And it closed and he was excited. So I believe on the enterprise side, and I think the enterprise side probably has a lot more visibility because it's obviously a bigger deal for HubSpot. So there's going to be way more eyes on it.

32:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. And that's always been my experience is once you find the people that you can co-sell with, because some people just aren't wired this way, there is a deep degree of trust in just the co-selling relationship because, I mean, they're entrusting you with their deal and they're trusting that you're not adding risk and going to take their deal sideways or you're going to win and they're not. But once you've won together and you have that relationship, I find that even the individual relationships kind of snowball to your point, right? It's like, oh, we've done this before. I mean, we saw this again in the summit between Jason Walker and Alex Smith. Like, oh yeah, we just do this together. It's like now our natural motion.

32:52 Andrew Claus: Yeah, that was great to hear. 100% what you're talking about. It's once they have that confidence, the scary thing I think, and this isn't just like HubSpot related. Relates to this deal and my team does, although we work with all the other CRMs. The thing you worry about when you don't know how that relationship is going to go, is that person out for himself? Are they going to say, yeah, we'll co-sell, great, go HubSpot, go Kixie, but they're just trying to get the sale. They just don't care. Like that's, you know, and it could be win or lose. On the flip side, they could kind of burn you. So if the client is coming to Kixie and we're working with HubSpot and they start talking, they're like, hey Andrew, I don't know. I mean, I don't know, HubSpot's kind of… I'm not having a great experience for whatever reason. You know, it would be easy for someone to say, why don't you go with Salesforce? Or why don't you go somewhere else? And now we've just like burned… like, that's your fear. Like, we've never done that, but I'm just saying with any industry, you have to build that relationship once you have that trust, because once they see that they're selling their client and we actually provide more value because we dive in and we show them how we work within HubSpot or within Salesforce and what it does. And like I mentioned earlier, we talk about best practices, how best to use our platform, our dialer, which not many others do. They'll tell you how to use it, but maybe not how best to use it. So once they see that there's value, like you said, the confidence is there and they'll easily come back. And they do. We see it time and time again.

34:26 Scott Ingram: You mentioned the time management piece, and that's one of my favorite things to really dig into. So why don't we dissect that whole thing starting with… I mean, give us the high-level view. Walk us through a day. You know, your alarm clock goes off. What time did that happen? And I want the blow-by-blow till your head hits the pillow.

34:42 Andrew Claus: Sure. So, Scott, I've listened to some of your podcasts, and I know that some of the expectation from other guests is, you know, woke up at 4:30, but not before I spent at least 45 minutes meditating and doing some motivational self-talk. And at that point, I do 90 minutes of hardcore Peloton followed by reading some philosophy. And then I'm ready to hit my hardest things first, all that kind of stuff. That's not quite me. It just isn't. I'm not the best morning person. I start my day. It's not like it's late. I'm up by 7:00 in the shower, I take my dog for a walk, which is kind of honestly my form of meditation to get my headspace right. I take any early calls from home and then obviously I just do a cursory check of my emails and then I drive into the office. So I think that honestly the most interesting part of my day is the fact that I go into an office, which isn't usually the norm these days, but taking you through a structure of my day, So the beginning of my day is more reactive, and that's because I'm dealing with 2 different types of input. So I have the input on the channel side. So those are the people who are with HubSpot, maybe they're reps, maybe new partners that are part of the HubSpot ecosystem. These are like agencies that work with HubSpot and we're partnered with them. There are deals that are coming in, people asking for information about partnership stuff. And then on the flip side, I have the deals that they output that come through the team that I have to project manage a little bit, if you will, assign them to our AE team, make sure that they're set. And I have to be responsible for both of these. So for me, the morning is just the busiest time with that type of activity. And it also, we're on the West Coast, so we're 3 hours behind the East. So by the time I wake up, their day's already going. So when I get in, I will have calls scheduled or I will have meetings, but I'm really fielding a lot of information and coordinating a whole bunch. By the later part in the day, so for emailing, I do some email blocks in the morning. I'm a little more reactive with emails because I'm getting HubSpot reps to ask me questions. I'm getting deals, all that kind of stuff, but then I kind of block it off. So I can be a little more proactive in a Cal Newport deep work kind of way where I'm not just checking email all the time or Slack, where I can just really have a deep dive and focus on the projects that I am working. And this kind of going back to project managing, this is the time that I spend on those types of projects. When I'm working a big deal, when I'm needing to coordinate this stuff, I can sit down and really do it. So it's structured but unstructured, if that kind of makes sense.

37:32 Scott Ingram: Sounds like it's unstructured until it's structured.

37:35 Andrew Claus: That's a better way to put it. You're right. I leave it that way purposely. It's a little chaotic. And some days I do just block off stuff where I set meetings. So it always starts off unstructured. By the time I get in the office, I'm talking with my team. They're getting me up to speed on what deals they have. Do they have a new referral from their partner? Like I was saying, I have HubSpot reps ask me for questions, in which case I have to set up a call with them, get them hooked up with the right person or with myself. So I like that chaos and I feel like I manage it pretty well. But then I like to… there's a certain point in the day, 1:00 or 2:00 PM, where I kind of transition out of that and I block off certain times in the afternoon where I'm working on specific projects. And that's what I was saying earlier a little bit, talking about your time management when you're spending so much time on one account that you're trying to close, that you're working on. Just make sure you block off time. You don't need to consolidate stuff, what I'm a big fan of. So it's an interesting way that I work, which I didn't expect to kind of transition that way. As an AE, I used to be much more structured where I would have my closing calls and meetings set up in the morning, or the most important And I check my email just 3 times a day, morning, early afternoon, and then do a big block in the evening before I go home. So that, and so it also leaves me, I stay late. I'm one of those because I'm not up and at 'em at 5 or 4 to be in the office by 6, where then I wouldn't obviously stay so late. So I tend to stay late. I find that as people trickle out, it helps me kind of focus. I mean, I have a headset, as well, but it's just nice. The kind of office quiets down. I feel like I can really dive into the real important work.

39:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And let me call this out because I think I see both sides of this, right? I mean, clearly you are a more afternoon-night person, whereas I'm a morning person. And I mean, it's just sort of flipped, right? My process is sort of similar, right? There is a triage that I do in the morning that sort of defines the structure for the rest of the day, which sounds like a lot of what you're doing. You've just had a lot more inputs. Like, I don't have a lot of inputs to deal with at, you know, 5:30 in the morning, you know, but being that you're behind because of the time zone and everything else and starting later in the day, there's just more to contend with. But it also sounds like you're really leaning into, like, your peak energy is going to be kind of that late afternoon, early evening. And that's when you're creating those blocks. And that's when you're setting yourself up to do the deep work.

40:08 Andrew Claus: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's partly, I'm not a morning person, but let's be honest, you can change that habit. I've been a morning person before, but I want to have and have that stamina in the evening. And because when I get in, I need to be rested because I just have, like you said, I have so much that's incoming to me to try to navigate and dissect on when am I going to deal with this? Who's going to get this? How am I going to handle this? What do I need to set off for the later afternoon evening to really deep dive into? So you're right. It defines the day, but that way, when it comes to the afternoon, you're right. I can block things off. So this is where, if I'm working on that deal, I can block off time to go ahead and find out from the solution engineering team, where are we at with this specific project? I can talk to the CSM. I can talk with David for the state of anything that he needs to. It's my favorite part of the day. Like I thrive on some of the chaos in the morning. Like it's fun. You know, it can be a little overwhelming at times, but it's just nice to be able to sit down and focus on what I need to do. And that way I can also really sit down with my team, find out how their pipeline looks, see where things are, because I can't do that in the morning. You know, my team already is like, hey, I got this new agency on board and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, great, great. That's awesome. But I can't really see what that means. It's just coming in and I'm just compartmentalizing it and organizing it so that I can then work on it that afternoon. That's where I feel the most productive, which is why I don't mind staying late.

41:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Again, it makes sense. Like understanding in yourself, like when are my most productive periods, right? What part of the day am I naturally most productive? And then booking that time, blocking that time so that you can take advantage of it and you're not wasting it on frivolous activities.

41:58 Andrew Claus: You're right. And a lot of that becomes, as I've gotten older and more experienced in sales, I know myself and it's great if people want to get in early. I mean, I encourage it. If that's like how you work best, then if you want to get earlier with the East Coast, that's great. For me, I just know me. It's the same thing in a different light. I was talking with one of our newer reps. I mean, he has experience in sales and he's doing great. But he has an overwhelmingly large amount of leads right now, and he's feeling overwhelmed with it. And we were just talking. I said that you have to learn how many leads can I handle if you're on a high velocity, or what does that look like? And I know how many leads I can handle and be effective on that. And if I start going above that, I know that I'm going to lose the bottom 10% or 15%. By not being able to contact them. So it's the same thing with the day. I know where my energy is, I know where best to focus it, and I'm happy with that. And it's been working.

43:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what time are you typically calling it a day and heading home?

43:06 Andrew Claus: Between 6 and 7, usually.

43:09 Scott Ingram: What's the rest of that? What's the after hours look like for you?

43:13 Andrew Claus: After hours? Yeah. I get home and I've probably eaten something at the office. I bring in food when I can. I mean, first thing is I have to walk my dog. That's literally the first thing. I end up doing a little bit of work. I pre-plan. I know I should do it probably between the 6 and 7 hour, but I take another good look at what's going on. I do make myself a little too available, I'd say, via Slack. So if people do have questions, I usually try to do something that's for me. I don't like to just turn on the TV. I'm not really a big TV watcher. So I do try to soak in some information that is sales-related so that I keep kind of learning, if you will. But I use it just to kind of relax because it doesn't sound that interesting, but I do live close enough to the beach where I can take a long walk. And that's one of my favorite things. I can listen to a podcast. I could just listen to some music if I want to unwind, but I'm a big believer of trying to keep that separation so I can come in fresh the next morning, knowing that I'm going to be hitting some chaos.

44:11 Scott Ingram: Love it. And you set me up perfectly because I always like to ask about the information diet. So now we know when that's happening. What are those podcasts? What else are you listening to? What else are you consuming?

44:21 Andrew Claus: Sure. Absolutely. Podcasts and audiobooks have been interesting for me because I've had to carve out time for it. The reason I say that is everyone drives in LA, but my apartment is 15 minutes away from the office. So that doesn't work where most people just listen to it. So that's why I like to take a walk to the beach and stuff and pop it in. So obviously your podcast, Scott, is something that I was introduced to a while back that I really like to keep on top of. I love that it's long-form so that it really dives into topics rather than the short podcasts that I feel they just leave me with aphorisms and things like, you know, give 110% or use call blocking, but they don't really go into it. And so you're like, that's a great concept. So I've been enjoying that. Currently working through MEDDIC Masterclass that David Weiss, who was at the summit, created.

45:11 Scott Ingram: Nice.

45:12 Andrew Claus: Yeah, I just… at the beginning of it, so I'm really excited to dive in. I know it's about learning how to find gaps in deals and achieve a higher close ratio, better forecasting. So I'm jumping into that because I want to really dive into how best to tackle enterprise-level deals. Let's see what else. So I was talking with Ian Koniak at the summit who coaches on the sales and some personal habit side. That's something I'm very interested in looking more into. But here at Kixie, we have a sales audiobook of the month, which our leadership picks one that's been meaningful to them. Things like Challenger Sales. We've had Jordan Belfort's Straight Line System, things like that. And I really like Jeb Blount's books.

45:53 Scott Ingram: Yes. Jeb Blount is good for a steady stream of books. That is for sure. Yeah.

45:57 Andrew Claus: I haven't read his newest one. I just saw a quick video that he had put think on Twitter, and it was all about, which is perfect for this. I mean, it's obviously he's catering it to this time. It's about making sure that you continue to move through the deal stages with your clients, because the minute that you get stagnated, it gets hauled up, you're going to lose the deal because of the way that the market is right now and kind of buying habits. So I'm kind of excited to jump into that.

46:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously very, very timely. I don't remember the exact title, but it's certainly something about selling in hard times. It's a crazy period. What's interesting is, I mean, it's kind of back to back. I mean, when I created this show, I mean, it was good times for years, but I knew, I'm like, you know what, we're going to get an opportunity here to learn from the people that outperform in those challenging times. Like we're going to go through a recession. That's how it works. I mean, it's a market. It's a cycle. I wasn't planning on a pandemic. So we got some interesting insights out of that. And I mean, the reality is even if you've never been through a recession, because it's been a while, it's not very different from having to deal with the pandemic. Like, okay, things are going to change, right? You're going to have to adapt. You just got to keep moving your feet and moving forward. And you may have to be a little bit more diligent and on top of your deals to your point, right? Now is not the time to get lax with your process and your structure and your approach.

47:15 Andrew Claus: Maybe not across all industries, but buyers are a little gun-shy as far as spending money. And the moment that they express interest in, regardless of your product or your service, The moment that they expressed interest, that's a good sign. And you need to capitalize that because it's going to get harder and harder the longer that it goes. Or if there's times that you're not continuing to add value, the moment that you don't add value is the moment they go, eh, maybe I won't do it unless it's like an absolute must-buy. In our world, and like I said, I've been here for a couple of years. The pandemic didn't help anything, but, you know, we were okay because everyone needs a phone system. And what's interesting is even though the market and the way everything is currently, I was still able to pull in some pretty massive deals in our world. And yeah, you just never know. You have to just go one step above everyone else. You really do have to outperform and outsell when we're in this. You have to provide more value, which is why going back again with co-selling, as much value as you can add, just the better chance you have. So It's an interesting time.

48:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I think another piece of it is just kind of managing the mindset because it is harder. We have to call that out, but a lot of people start to feel kind of defeatist. And so then the opportunity is, okay, well, if you can maintain your activity levels and maintain your own psychology in a positive state, you're going to be able to outpace those folks.

48:43 Andrew Claus: Yeah, absolutely. And it is, especially when you start losing deals. That's when you get that defeatist feeling and the attitude. And that's very easy to happen. I mean, I have a way because of the performing arts background, I've been able to separate myself from when a deal closes, it's a bummer, move on to the next. Not everyone can do that because you're looking at your paycheck, you have these big deals, you put all this time into it, and then it doesn't go through. You can feel so defeated. And if you carry that with you, it's going to go into the rest of your calls. It's going to go into the rest of the deals and you're going to come in and just subconsciously, you're going to sabotage yourself. Whereas if you can have that confidence and just be optimistic, people hear that in your voice. It comes across in your messaging, in your emails, comes across as excited and the value that provide. I think the mental headspace is extremely important.

49:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about your information diet. Let's talk about just kind of your tools of the trade. Like, what are the tools and apps that you're using to execute your process?

49:53 Andrew Claus: Absolutely. So I'm going to tell you the most important tool that I cannot live without. It's a backup headset. No joke. So I'm on the phone all day and I have so many issues. They're top-of-the-line headsets, you know, with connectivity or Bluetooth is acting funky, drops off. One of mine is better at background noise than the other, like whatever it is, like I have to have a backup headset. I can tell you how many countless times on a Zoom call, either joining, you know, my team or whoever I'm on with, they'll see me in the office, like quickly switching headsets to get back on. So I do that mean as, you know, kind of a joke, but for real. Other things that I use, I use an app called Any.do, A-N-Y dot D-O. It's basically a to-do app, like a to-do list type of thing, because if I don't have it written down, I will forget it. And I find it just very easy to use. I know some people use Tasks and stuff on their iPhone. I just like this app because it's also on Chrome. So I have it always. There. I use Loom video. So I record videos all the time, just short. I'll give them a short demo if they need to send to somebody else. If there's a problem that they're solving, or there's some steps on a how-to, I spin them up, you know, I'll spin them up here and there to show them a feature. We love here automating things because it's something that other companies don't do. We love sending them how an automation works, how a call happens and right after a text gets sent, stuff like that. So Loom video or Vidyard, those have been important. Some are just basic like Slack. That's just for communication. I couldn't live without that. My iPhone and Apple Watch. I love the Apple Watch because it has meeting reminders like the 10 minutes before. So I get to actually just have them on my watch because otherwise I sometimes miss them and I don't want to miss any meetings. And then the last 2, I mean, I have to say Kixie. We use our own platform. I mean, why wouldn't we? We're different than other dialers. I've been a lot of different dialers. And the reason I can't live without this is because of the automation stuff that we do. So like, if I send out an email and I embed a video in it, as soon as someone clicks on that video, they can get a text. So if I also, if I miss a call, then a text can go out saying that I'll call them back. Like there's all sorts of stuff that I never thought would be so extremely helpful in my sales process. So yeah, we drink our own Kool-Aid. And then last would be HubSpot. It's our CRM, but it means more to me because of the relationship that we have with them. So as much as I love the other CRMs, we just have a strong relationship and on a personal level with a lot of the reps. Love it.

52:35 Scott Ingram: Love it. It's a tool and a partner.

52:37 Andrew Claus: Yep, exactly.

52:39 Scott Ingram: So you mentioned that you're digging into MEDDIC with David. Do you subscribe to a sales philosophy sort of in general?

52:47 Andrew Claus: So I don't literally subscribe to one, nor have I worked for a company that has like one that they teach their sales team either. In particular, I've taken bits and pieces from lots of them through the years. I do say when I was working selling oil and gas investments, we were extremely aggressive with the script and the entire sales process. And we were following the straight-line system, which is best known for Jordan Belfort. I had an objection book for any rebuttal, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty funny. I've just gathered bits and pieces from everything. I think it's the best way. It kind of reminds me of acting because there's all sorts of different acting methodologies, Stanislavski, there's all sorts of stuff and you can go with one, but I'm just a big fan of pick what works from different ones. So I'm kind of like a conglomeration or a mismatch of them, kind of a mutt, but I'm very much more into consultative and solution selling.

53:45 Scott Ingram: Love it. So typically I ask how you would describe your style, right? In the way that you do that. And maybe I'm going to augment that question now and ask about not just your style, but what's your superpower?

53:57 Andrew Claus: It's interesting you ask it that way. My superpower. So my style is very consultative. So the thing about me is that I don't really push for the sale. I really lead them towards it by providing value. So my superpower, I would say, is providing value that they didn't see and show an understanding of how we can really solve for what they're experiencing. So I'm just very straightforward in the way that I work and the sales tactics I use. They're very organic, which is way I like it. So like setting next steps or how I utilize discounts and incentives and soft closes. I think my customers just like that I come across as professional and with a friendly approach. And at the end, they just see that value. They see that they've been working with an authority on the product, the industry, and the competitors. And they see that this is the right move. So I think it's just literally providing value. And other ways that I do that, I mean, I do that in so many ways. It's also bringing other, like with the co-selling, even if it's just internal, bringing other people that I know are gonna add value. And so we just keep building and building and building on that until finally they don't see that there's any other right move.

55:16 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. There's so much goodness in that, right? Recognizing that bringing people to the conversation is value, right? If they have specific expertise, whether that's a solutions engineer or it's an executive or somebody else that can kind of help them connect dots or your partner, right? Like what I heard you say earlier, and one of the ways that you're providing value is you're thinking broader than just the context of your solution, or like you're really thinking about the whole kind of situation of the customer and might be touching on things that are beyond your own scope, but are still going to help them and serve them.

55:47 Andrew Claus: Oh, I completely talk about stuff that isn't something that is related to the calling and texting. You know, just as an example, in our dialer, you can schedule a future task. I go one step above and I start talking about how to use the tasks, the task view in HubSpot as a to-do list and how it works. And I go into deep aspects of it. It's going to pop up on the bottom right-hand of your screen. And, you know, this is the best practice and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that has nothing to do with their calling. Like, that's just one small example. And I think that people, they learn something that they didn't know before. And when I bring other individuals, could be a partner, could be an executive, like you said, one of our solution engineers, whoever I bring on, I also set the stage and the expectation of how I am selling and how I'm interacting with this customer so that I don't have someone come in and it's jarring. So we kind of all, I mean, everyone has their own style, But I make sure that there's a through line and they know exactly what the role is. And it's very clean for the customer. So that's why I'd say my superpower is just bringing and building the value. So like I said, you keep adding enough value, price doesn't matter anymore. They're going to go with us because they see just this massive amount of value and just how much people this company is looking to help me. It's not just, I'm working with one sales guy and he's taking me through this process because he wants to close the deal. And maybe he is solving for my pain point, which is great, but you don't really have a connection. And what's great is referrals come from that. I mean, people talk and obviously in my role on the channel side, that's extremely important that when these agencies bring one of their clients to us, we have that one shot to show that we're the right move and the agency is right to be partnered with us so that they'll continue to bring us more of their clients.

57:53 Scott Ingram: Such great stuff. Such good stuff. All right, everybody go back 3 minutes, listen to that part again. That was good. So Andrew, we talked about, we kind of touched on some of the mindset stuff, but I would love to hear just kind of your thinking and how you're managing motivation?

58:10 Andrew Claus: I mean, it has to be said, money is always a motivator. I mean, we do that. To be truthfully honest, as I've grown older and more experienced and more time in sales, I really am motivated by the win. I like to keep what I call quietly competitive. I don't brag about my deals, but people will notice them once I mark them as closed won. That went for this big one too. Like I wasn't trying to brag that I have this massive deal, like this whale. I just don't see any value in that. You know, I'd like it to keep competitive, but yeah, just kind of slip it in. And the reason I have this, this, I want to win and I want to win big. I want to do that is I like having an outsized impact on our company's future. So it's something that as a rep, I've always believed, and it's doubly true as a leader of a team. And what's really cool, I have to say, is the guys that I brought on board on the channel side, I have a good gut instinct on who I'm bringing aboard, who I'm hiring, and they see my vision. And every one of them, when they were kind of ramping, they were getting agencies on board. It wasn't about the MRR, but all of them across the board share my view of we want to bring as much value to this company as possible. You know, and they are individual contributors, but they're not… a typical AE is like, I want to, you know, close this much. I want to close this much. They have that in mind. I'm not saying they're just focused on their paycheck, but like they want to close these deals for themselves. And so I just have always felt that like we want to grow the company, And I want to be as big of an impact as possible.

59:56 Scott Ingram: I love that. And it's such a consistent theme in these conversations. I'm thinking about, I think maybe it was Luke Floyd that captured this really well in his presentation at the summit. And just, you know, it's about being just excellent at everything you do, right? Like really serving the customer, having that impact. And what I have found is sure, there's a lot of kind of on the front end, goal setting at 200% or 300%, right? And setting the bar for yourself very high and sort of working towards that. But I often find, and especially once you get to a certain level of maturity in this, right? And like once you're making enough money that you're not worried so much about the money, I think is one of the triggers that kind of happens with this. Then it becomes more about, to your point, it's about the impact. It's about the service. It's about taking care of the customers. And then miraculously, you do a great job of that, all the other stuff on the backend just kind of falls into place. You're like, oh, look, I'm number 1 by like a mile.

1:00:56 Andrew Claus: I really have always believed that. And that kind of stems from the way that I was looking at performing is I'm going to train as hard as I can. I'm just going to be the hardest working one in the room. I'm just going to keep at it. And then success is going to find you. I think it's the same way in the sales world. And like you said, it is hitting a switch. Like you do have a moment because it is about the money in the beginning. It always is. Once you get to a point where, yeah, you've made it and your mindset is able to switch by being the best you can, by servicing the customer the best possible, you're going to close more deals by really focusing on the good of the company, not selling to clients that aren't the right fit, stuff like that. By really focusing on that, it's just going to come. It's just going to fall in place. And I just believe that work ethic is huge. People who are hard workers, You know, and you can have some talent obviously, but you can teach them sales and they'll get there.

1:01:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, if you can control and constrain your lifestyle, you know, to a point where the sooner you can get to that financial place, I think it also comes from a kind of hitting your number place. I've found a lot of times, and even with myself, that, you know, once you get to that, like, okay, I'm at or above my number, then all the pressure drops off and then you get to be really natural and lean into this stuff and it gets easier and easier. I mean, it's so counterintuitive.

1:02:21 Andrew Claus: Yeah. You're absolutely right. When you know that you're going to hit quota, if you know you have enough deals in the pipeline, you're halfway there, you're 3/4 of the way, you become more comfortable and you sell better. When you hit quota, especially now you're setting up for next month and you get this whole cycle and it's all in your mindset because Regardless of your quarterly or your monthly or annual goals, you know that at the beginning of that time period, everything is zeroed out. You start from ground zero. And that can be daunting if you don't have stuff set up or you have to scramble. And that scramble mindset is something that you need to work on as an individual to try to keep away from that because that's what makes you a desperate seller or you'll lose deals because you weren't keeping it as cool as you could.

1:03:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's continue this. Is there something you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

1:03:13 Andrew Claus: There is. I think a lot of people are going to think that this is crazy, but I believe that it's possible to be successful as a tech company without an outbound sales team.

1:03:24 Scott Ingram: Oh, keep going on this one. This is interesting.

1:03:26 Andrew Claus: I was going to let that sink in.

1:03:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:03:28 Andrew Claus: So I've been with 2 companies now that were successful with inbound. ZipRecruiter, and now Kixie. Now I didn't have this opinion from the very start, but when I started working with HubSpot reps, you know, last year, year and a half ago, and we decided to create the channel team, I see that there's a tremendous amount of business that can close with the right sales team in place. So our revenue at Kixie has doubled every year with 90% of it being inbound and channel. And now here's the gray area. My channel team does some initial outbound to agencies, bring them on board, like the ones that are like HubSpot or Salesforce agencies. So you could argue there's a little bit of outbound going on, but it's definitely not the typical cold calling by reps like every day for individual deals. So ours becomes more farming and less hunting over time. And then also This is why I have this belief and I do see value. So don't think that I don't see value in outbound, but deals that come in through channel, the close rate is so much higher than either us or our partners experience when they're selling alone. Therefore, it benefits both organizations, which explains why they keep coming back with new deals over time. And to give you kind of one example, When we co-sell with HubSpot, there's a 68% close rate versus half of that when we're selling alone. That means there's a 2/3 chance of this deal closing, knowing nothing about it except the channel that it came from. And that also is kind of, as a result, makes forecasting pretty awesome for us. That's kind of like why I hold this belief as to the value of inbound and especially co-selling, like a 68%, and this is math that we've done, 68% close rate. That's insane that, you know, that a deal comes to you and it's yours to lose at that point.

1:05:32 Scott Ingram: So let's translate that to and try and make it relevant from an individual contributor perspective, right? Because at a lot of levels, like that's a company decision, right? Do we have marketing that's good enough to create enough inbound from that perspective, but maybe there are things that as an individual you can do to essentially create your own channel or your own inbound. Like, what's your prescription there?

1:05:54 Andrew Claus: Yeah, absolutely. This is where the co-selling, finding what I would call partners. So forget agency partners and ours, that's kind of our decision in the way that we work with the CRM specifically. But as an individual contributor, that's More along the lines of outbound, because that's more traditional, of course. And you're right. It is a company-wide decision. We do have some outbound reps here. The way that I would go about it is find either another company or something else that can provide value. That could be some sort of referral source, either referral source or somebody that you could kind of sell alongside if it's not quite so intertwined, like we are with HubSpot. I would say, look for those opportunities and referrals themselves. I don't have the numbers on that. Asking for a referral after every closed deal is such a good habit. And I wish more people do it. I think people either forget, it's probably just, they forget it's not a habit that they've built. And that would be kind of the equivalent because a referral is going to have a higher close rate potentially. Because now there's more kind of love around it. You know, they've got experience with someone who's using it, who's happy with it. So I would look for like to try to get as many referrals as possible, just literally ask for it, you know, and then pay them out on it. I mean, if they're going to give you a deal, give them a gift card or something. I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying like, it's always the nice thing to do. And it gives them more incentive to refer. So that would be one way to go about it.

1:07:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think this is a huge part of my own day-to-day selling motion. I partner with Oracle pretty deeply and work with a lot of those reps. And I think, you know, what you can do is just find, you know, are there complementary technologies or solutions or, and what I kind of look for is, is there something where if they have invested in this other solution, it's going to make it more likely that they're going to buy from me. And then really just trying to figure out, okay, well, who in that organization has a similar territory to mine? Can I build an individual relationship there? So earlier this week, I actually went to an industry-specific conference, not so much because of the companies that were going to be there from a prospecting perspective. I was really just more interested in spending time with my kind of counterpart reps. And building those relationships and supporting their efforts, right, in this event and working on some things kind of following that event. And it comes back to what I was alluding to earlier, has always been my experience. Some people are wired for co-selling and some people aren't. And so I want to find the people that are wired that way. And if anybody has ever referred me or successfully co-sold with me, like those people are gold. They're 10 times more likely to do it again versus somebody else that may or may not have that particular wiring.

1:08:57 Andrew Claus: I mean, absolutely. I think if you think of it the way that we kind of view partners and how we work with HubSpot, if you can find, like you said, complementary technology, that's the first thing. Find something that is going to be a great fit that you would add value to, and it's complementary. So use LinkedIn, use whatever resources you have and find these people. And just talk with them. First, you have to build the relationship with that person. So they have that confidence that you are, so that way they can bring up, like, know the pain points that your company solves and will fix. When that other person is selling their product and they come across someone that has X pain point or Y pain point, and you can be the one to solve that, then they can loop them over to you. And it's a great relationship. It's very similar to how we work with HubSpot, but I would spend whatever percentage of part of a day during the week to try to make these relationships. You'll be so far ahead of… if you can find these people, which they're out there, there's definitely lots of great partnerships that you as an individual can create just with other individuals from other companies. If you do this, Nobody else is doing this. It's just like asking for a referral from your client. You do that and they send you one extra deal. That's one deal that you had that you wouldn't have easily found before. So this will kind of, if you take this little tip and try it and see if you can get it to work, don't spend an extraordinarily large amount of time on it just because you have the stuff that you know that you have in your pipeline and that you're working on. But you'll set yourself apart from others. And who knows, people might be open to it. They don't know that it's out there.

1:10:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and the real beauty is if you partner with another rep that has successfully sold to a prospective company of yours before, they know how it works. Like, here's the process, here's the people, you know, they can walk you through and kind of give you the cheat code for that organization. So really, really, really powerful stuff. Andrew, I want to come back to kind of the other side of my crazy question. Which is, is there something that the average or typical sales professional, or just part of the sales dogma that's out there that you think is crazy?

1:11:14 Andrew Claus: Yeah, I do. I'd say the old like ABC, always be closing. I just don't really believe in it to a point. I think it's a little bit crazy because churn is definitely a thing. If I sell to someone on a platform that isn't the right fit for them, They're going to leave and they're not going to come back to us, even if they're in some later role or at a new company where it would be a good fit. Alluded to this before, especially now that I'm in channel, my reputation for not just like hawking my solution or making it fit somehow and close them on it, but helping them find the right solution, whether it's us or otherwise, what's going to make them refer more people to us. They're going to come back when their needs meet. What our problem solves at that point. One of the only reasons that deal, I talked briefly that we sold to one of our competitors. I mentioned that earlier just in passing before talking about the other co-selling is because we send happy customers, we send customers their way when we feel their leads don't fall into the same circle on the Venn diagram for our company. So I just, with my style, adding value and leading them down the path. I'm not always closing them. I'm not, you know, soft closing. I'm not saying if we can solve this need, then are you going to buy us? Like, I just think that's a little outdated. I know it likes to be a slogan, you know, slapped around, you know, coffee's for closers, stuff like that. But that's something that I kind of think is a little crazy for people who still believe that that's the right mindset to go into. Rather than the value mindset.

1:12:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I think you maybe exposed something that particularly in this kind of partnership co-selling space is a double-edged sword and it can work great for you or it could work against you, which really is this reputation thing, right? Like if you build a great reputation and you are somebody that partners can trust that deliver on behalf of their clients, then you can really accelerate your success because as you're experiencing, like word gets out, more people want to work with you. The other side, the flip side of that coin is if you're not that, you can bury yourself because I mean, these industries, the world is a very, very, very small place, right? And word travels and, you know, you never know who knows who. And if you don't take care of somebody, or I love the example of kind of the churn example. Like, sure, I could force this deal. I could make this happen. But if it's not long-term right for the customer, I'm hurting my company. I'm hurting myself. Like, I'm just… nobody is being taken care of in that approach.

1:13:59 Andrew Claus: No. And you lose all credibility. It's why overpromising is one of the worst things because a customer has these needs and you fill most of it, not quite the rest of it. And you hope that they can just be happy with it. But if they churn, like I was saying, they're not going to want to work with you again. And if they move to another company and you are the perfect fit, they're not going to think of you first. They're just going to think of their experience. Churn is just the worst, right? And just in general, it's not like evil or anything like that. It's not like it's going to, but like, it's just not great. And there's other reasons why people churn. I mean, obviously it's not always because something's not functioning right. Or, you know, but it still is never, it's like they're saying no. Like, I don't like people saying no. When I'm on the phone, I want yes, yes, yes, as much as possible, because with no, just like churn, that's your reputation. That's who you are. They're never going to recommend you. Someone's going to be… we're social media heavy, where people post on LinkedIn or on Facebook, different groups. They say, hey, I'm looking for this type of service. Or what do you guys think is good for this instance? And your name's not going to be on there, or if it does, then it might be from that customer saying, hey, don't use these guys, try someone else. So just have to be careful about that. I'm just big on reputation. You know, we can't win every deal, obviously, but if you're just honest with the customer and you sell from the beginning the right solution, then there shouldn't be, outside of other issues that come up down the road, you know, you still sold them clean.

1:15:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. So what advice would you have for somebody that is just getting their start in sales today? How would you guide them?

1:15:37 Andrew Claus: This one's personal to me because I really like to help people just in general. And I always think that, like, when I was younger in sales, I always listened to those that were successful. And so I don't flaunt the fact that I've done well, but like, I like to give people advice or thoughts. You know, to help them out, what I think is going to be good. So I think that being coachable is one of the biggest things as far as advice for someone just starting out. And I realized that being coachable and having your own creative methods for success, I don't believe that they're mutually exclusive. I think that some of the best reps are able to build on proven methodology by then incorporating all their creativity. I know Sarah Brazier had a great episode with you where she highlighted a lot of that on the SDR side. But you take that coachability, you find a good company, and you honestly have a great start to what can be a life-changing career.

1:16:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I want to… I probably should have touched on this earlier. You gave him plenty of shoutouts and I didn't give him any credit, but I have to imagine that a component of your success is David Gable. And I'm going to add some fun into the show notes just to give somebody one more reason to go look at your episode page. So top1.fm/whatever this episode number is, because I always forget, or easier, top1.fm/Andrew-Klaus will get you to this page. And on that page, I'm going to share my favorite picture that I took because I didn't take enough at the summit of David Gable, of your boss. David, for folks who don't know, everybody at the summit knows who David is.

1:17:16 Andrew Claus: Yes.

1:17:17 Scott Ingram: David requires a lot of protein to maintain his physique, let's say. And so I have just a super fun picture of David eating because that's what he does. So I'm going to include that on your page because I love that picture and I think he'll appreciate it too. But, you know, talk about that part of the relationship, right? Because it's not just being coachable, it's also finding the right mentors and the right leaders who are going to help you develop and give you good coaching.

1:17:46 Andrew Claus: It really is. We've all been through different companies. I mean, if you're starting out, obviously, maybe not too many. We've been through companies that aren't the right fit. You find it out once you're in, but once you find the right fit… so David has been… it gives me a lot of autonomy. There's been a lot of support. I can go to him for advice on how to approach deals, but he lets me do my thing until I need some help. And then he'll guide me. He'll give me good advice and good direction. But he doesn't micromanage, which I appreciate. And he's just been amazingly supportive. That's what's been the nice thing. Organizations can be tough. We have customer service and you have marketing that crosses hairs oftentimes with sales organizations. And while I've been building this team, he was the one who was right there side by side with me going through it. This is the process. This is what… because he did it when he was a rep. When I talked about early on, just talking with certain… So he and I really have been working together, which is great. I think it's one of the best things that you can find is when you can look at leadership and they can teach you something, they're supporting, they're fighting for you. The wrong leadership, I guess I wouldn't say wrong, it's just a different style. The micromanaging, the looking at the numbers, and that's what you're just absolutely focused on. And kind of that kind of level of leadership, I think, is tougher to learn from, which is why you have to usually find somebody else, maybe one of the top reps in the company to kind of help you along or an outside mentor. So finding the right leadership that's supportive, but you can also learn with and they fight for you is just so key. And what's been very key to my success here.

1:19:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Love it. Love it. All right. One more round of advice giving. So now for somebody that is more mid-career, right? They've been at this for a few years and they're either good looking to make that leap to great, or maybe they're struggling a little bit and need something to help them get back on track.

1:19:43 Andrew Claus: Sure. This kind of goes to my style, but I would say use the resources around you, but make it worth their time. So if they aren't paid to help you, then I mean, you better buy them their like favorite Italian sandwich whenever they help you build a complex workflow or something. Because I see oftentimes that companies, you're surrounded by talented people who can really help you on your deals. But just as often, company doesn't necessarily have a pay structure that directly incentivizes their involvement. So this is an interesting one. Take it on yourself to institute that process. By doing so, here's the tip. You can create a process of recruiting other people within your company or out. To assist on deals. You can easily measure that increase in your close rate. Just write down the process and codify it, then take it to management and some incentive structure formalized. And maybe that'll spread across the team. The reason I say this is because getting people involved in your deals, I think, just helps you. So if you are struggling or you want to make that leap, start finding people who can help and help you close your deals and work on them. If not directly on calls with you, but just on the backend advising you, this is what is possible. On a kind of nice side effect of that is it's not a bad way to position yourself for leadership as well. That is if you're interested in taking that leap, which for those that want it, it's definitely a leap.

1:21:14 Scott Ingram: So your Italian sandwich example was awfully specific. What's the story behind that?

1:21:20 Andrew Claus: We have a place around the corner called Bay Cities, which makes the most amazing meatball sub. And some people like the Godmother sandwich. It's just been one of those where like, we are big about giving food. We have specific tastes for specific people on what they want. Food has always been one that people appreciate every time rather than a gift card. Maybe they want the gift card, but like, this is the easier one. And then you can tell they're happy eating it. So that's why it was very specific. Yes.

1:21:49 Scott Ingram: Love it. And as I suspected, it came with a restaurant recommendation in Santa Monica. So next time you're in Santa Monica, it's… what is it? Bay Cities?

1:21:56 Andrew Claus: Bay Cities.

1:21:57 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. And we'll put the link in the show notes so you can see a picture of David eating a sandwich, which is ironic, and a link to Bay Cities for when you find yourself in Santa Monica. So Andrew, you've listened to a lot of these episodes. What else would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations?

1:22:17 Andrew Claus: Yeah, this might be a tough one to find as we've talked about channel being unique, but I want to know what customer needs come through to them that their platform doesn't solve for. Like my job is largely about finding out when there's a true disconnect. So connecting disparate platforms to each other so they can solve, let's say a synergistic, I know that word is overused, but it works here, a synergistic relationship and solve all the pain points the customers have. If it happens to be calling text automation, I've got a few guys that can help. But all jokes aside, what I actually would like to learn from these top sellers is more about what they do in these situations. Do they have some sort of channel team in place? Is there a referral program? What are the specific aspects of it that are working well or not working? Because one of the difficulties of starting a channel SaaS team is that there isn't like a challenger channel sales book that lays out the steps. So largely we're having to figure a lot of this stuff out as we go. So that's something that I would like to hear from top sellers is what do they do in situations where, you know, there's needs that your platform doesn't solve for and what kind of programs are in place if there are.

1:23:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Super fascinating. And I would love to do another one of these. So if you are a channel seller, or you know a great channel seller who can prove that they are one of the top 1% in their organization in terms of results, I'd love to continue this because to your point, it is a unique space. There's not a lot of resource on it. It is one of those areas where everybody kind of goes and figures it out themselves. And there are a variety of different approaches. And I think this is a really interesting topic and still relevant for those of us who are in more traditional roles because there's ways that you can leverage elements of this. And it's interesting you brought up the gaps because that was the other thing I was thinking too is when you do have those gaps in your solution, if you can find somebody that is great at solving for that, there you are. You found a partner, you've got a great co-selling collaborator.

1:24:24 Andrew Claus: Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right. And every product, I would argue has some sort of gap. And if you can prove yourself to your customer that, you know, or they can prove to their customer that they have value and then they can make a strong recommendation, then that's great. So find the gaps. That's huge. Because I would argue, like I said, all organizations have that and somebody else can fill that gap.

1:24:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Great stuff. Find the gaps. All right, Andrew, we've done it. I wonder if there's anything that I didn't ask about that you were hoping to touch on.

1:25:01 Andrew Claus: You've hit most of it. I mean, I think a lot of it's like what I really wanted to talk with you was about co-selling. I wish I remembered what deal it was that made me really realize that bringing more people and extra resources was the right way to go, because I know a couple years ago there was this series of a couple deals that just really humbled me knowing that I myself had a better chance of losing a deal if I'm just selling by myself. So I did have one experience. I just don't remember the company, but I'm just such a big believer in channel, in co-selling. I think it can literally help everybody to what extent you're willing to do.

1:25:47 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. All right. Let's make it actionable. So what would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week or 2 to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:25:56 Andrew Claus: Absolutely. I would challenge you to pick a specific deal value, like either potential or actual, that connotes a large deal for you, and do not under any circumstance work that deal without a colleague collaborating on it with you. That could be anybody. It could be a senior rep who worked there for a while. It could be a solutions engineer, customer service rep who might be handling similar deals. So depending on like your deal velocity, 7 to 14 days might work. It could be 7 weeks to 7 months as a challenge, which I know is a longer challenge. But the upside is that like, you don't have to like cut carbs or set your clock for 3:30. There's literally no downside to it. And I just firmly believe that you're going to see a difference in your close rate on those deals, which also happens to be the most important thing for securing that next promotion or hitting your quota. So that would be my challenge. Bring someone on your next deal.

1:26:54 Scott Ingram: Great stuff, Andrew. Thanks for the time.

1:26:56 Andrew Claus: Appreciate it. This was great. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.