159: Don't Create Noise, Break Through the Noise with Gong's JC Pollard

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. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is JC Pollard. JC was the top commercial AE at Gong last year out of 70 reps and was a top-performing SDR before that. Welcome to the show, JC.

0:35 JC Pollard: Stoked to be here. Appreciate you having me on.

0:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man. Excited to have this conversation. And you are a fan of the show, so you know how this works. We always jump in with some immediate value, and we're going to talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success. So what's the first of those?

0:52 JC Pollard: Yeah, the first thing is interesting because it's actually not tactical at all. It's more conceptual and it's more of a mindset. And so the number one thing I attribute having a very successful year or 2 is just having an abundance mindset and this unwavering conviction that there is business out there to be closed and that I'm the one that can close it despite, you know, economic headwinds or obstacles or whatever might exist. Just the underlying belief that you can do it and that there's plenty of opportunity out there is definitely number one.

1:20 Scott Ingram: Love that. And how has that showed up? I mean, we're talking more and more about the economic headwind stuff, right? And we're hearing that as an excuse. How do you think about that?

1:30 JC Pollard: I mean, it would be irresponsible to say that it's not a real factor and it is certainly an obstacle. I think though, where some people take a wrong turn is they stop trying because of that, right? Where it's like, I'm not even going to prospect right now, or I don't even want to try to break into this account because they're not buying because of the economy, etc. Like there is very real additional hurdles that occur now. There's more scrutiny on every dollar spent from a CFO perspective. There's a lot more work that has to be done in order to build like an ironclad business case and all that stuff. But People are still buying software and there is still opportunity to get into these accounts. So you kind of have to balance the reality of the obstacles, but not let that count yourself out, not prevent you from trying to find a way.

2:11 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. All right. What's number 2?

2:13 JC Pollard: Number 2 is something I'm kind of like really fired up about lately because I've seen it go wrong, but it's mastering discovery and demo in a customer-centric way. So making it about them, not about you, not about your software, not about all the cool gadgets and features that you're selling, but making it actually customer-oriented and about the value that they find. And that applies to the discovery process a lot as well.

2:36 Scott Ingram: All right. So, and I get excited when people get fired up and on a pedestal about this stuff. So talk about like, where have you been seeing it go wrong? Like what's triggered you about this?

2:46 JC Pollard: Yeah. Would you agree that like the word discovery has become this like hot-button buzzword in sales over the past couple of years? Is that, I don't know if that's just me or if that's something you've noticed as well.

2:55 Scott Ingram: Maybe. I mean, it's an important word. It's something we talk about a lot. It's an important of the process.

3:00 JC Pollard: 100%. And like, not discounting the fact that discovery is critical. We always say at Gong, like, you don't do discovery, you don't have a deal. But sometimes I see it getting in the way of having like a healthy conversation or a positive experience for a buyer. If you show up to a call with, you know, 30 questions you want the answers to, and by the time the call ends, the buyer feels like they haven't gotten a single piece of value and that it's just completely self-serving from the seller's perspective. Like you're not gonna hear from them again. You might not even get a second call. I really try to keep my calls customer-centric. My number one goal is I want them to meet with me again, and then obviously I want to do discovery, but that doesn't have to all happen in that first 20 minutes of your first call. Like, I trust myself that throughout a sales cycle, I will get the answers to all the questions that I need to, but I'm not going to be so laser-focused on getting every single thing taken care of on that first call that it leads to a negative experience. And so Something I've become like pretty passionate about because I think it's a big differentiator.

3:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So a couple of interesting tiebacks there, right? So I actually wrote, I think this is actually a chapter in the coming Sales Success Stories book, the volume 2. I think I wrote a chapter called Demo-Scovery because I'm actually a fan of combining those 2 things, right? You should be discovering while you do your demo rather than first let me interrogate you and not give you any value. And then you'll have a demo. So that's one point, right? That's coming out. I think I previewed that. So if you go to the show notes on this, I'll share my own stuff. So top1.fm/jc-pollard or top1.fm/whatever the heck this episode number is. The other idea is Katie Jane Bailey, who I'm a huge fan of, who's been on this podcast, who was on the stage at the summit a couple of years ago. She talks about like discovery is a lifestyle, not a stage. Whoa. And it sounds like that's what you're doing. It's not this one time we ask these questions and then the rest I talk at you. It's I'm always asking questions. I'm always working to understand as we work through the entire process together. That is exactly what I mean.

4:59 JC Pollard: And by selling Gong, I have the opportunity to like work with a lot of other sales organizations and kind of diagnose some of their opportunities for improvement. It is literally when you're looking at like the transcripts of these calls, like you said, It's as if there's 20 to, you know, 30 minutes completely dedicated to discovery and then it's like a switch flips off and now it's demo mode and there's no back and forth and we enter a long monologue and we're not engaging the buyer or asking any questions. So I love what you said about, did you say demo discovery?

5:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yes.

5:28 JC Pollard: Like as you're pulling up the screen, how is this different from your workflow? Now that you've seen this, how could you see your day-to-day changing? Like tell me how you forecast it. Like doing that demo and pulling out interesting nuggets as you demo. Or doing the disco, sorry, as you demo. I could not agree more. I think it's so effective. And then to that second point, like discovery never ends, right? When you start negotiating and they push back on price, you do discovery about what's important to them. Why are they pushing back? Where's this number coming from? Like it's an ongoing process. So I love that. It's a lifestyle, not a stage. That's, I'm going to write that one down. That was pretty fire.

6:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. All Katie Jane Bailey on that one. She's amazing. And, you know, again, discovery is, it's everything. So I don't know where you're feeling like overexposed from a sales perspective, but, you know, maybe the issue is That we are thinking of it as this compartmentalized piece when that's not what it is.

6:18 JC Pollard: I think the underlying problem that I've noticed is that we just lose sight of the fact that we have to have our buyer leave wanting to meet with us again to some degree, especially when I notice like an outbound sales cycle, right? Where you're the one who's asking for their time initially. You're asking somebody to dedicate 45 minutes to meet with you. You're pushing for a meeting and you get that meeting and they show up and then it's just all about you asking questions. And they leave that meeting like that. I didn't get any value out of that. I just think we lose sight of the fact that it's pretty important that our buyer walks away wanting to come back. And if that means you have to sacrifice a little bit of discovery that you plan to do in order to do a little bit more demo or whatever that looks like to make sure that they have a positive experience, like you got to be able to pivot and read the room. And so pretty passionate about that.

7:02 Scott Ingram: Do you actually measure and quantify the like next meeting? Because I love that metric. Like it's one thing to have one meeting. That's great. But if you don't get another one, what's the point?

7:11 JC Pollard: Yeah. And we analyze that organizationally a lot. And like one of the most consistent themes with top performers was higher conversion rate from first call to second call. Like that is the number one spot where top performers thrived and bottom performers struggled, which makes sense. So obviously the bigger part of the funnel. So we're huge about that and about progressing people from that first call to the second call. Like if you can maximize that, all of a sudden your pipeline and your funnel just expands.

7:37 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. What's your third point? I have a feeling this actually ties into kind of the discovery thing to some degree.

7:42 JC Pollard: Yeah, I guess it does. The third point is asking hard questions and proactively seeking risk in deals. And the reason this is in the top 3 for me is this is the most before and after difference that I notice as a seller. Initially getting promoted to AE, I was so scared to ask questions that I didn't really want to hear the answer to. Who else are you looking at? Are we vendor of choice? What could get in the way of us getting this done? I would just avoid those questions because I didn't want to hear them. When I finally got over that fear and started to seek risk and ask hard questions and be direct, a few things happened. First of all, we got ahead of risk in ways that allowed me to win deals that I wouldn't have before. And it also just allowed me to suss out deals that weren't real to begin with and prevent me from spending time and spinning my wheels on something that really had no shot. So Number 3 is a big one. It's just asking the hard questions and going after the risk.

8:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I actually noticed this. I, I did this in a conversation today and, and this was kind of a friendly sales process, right? I was working with a friend and we were talking about a potential partnership thing with his company. I mean, it wasn't like a hardcore sales process, but I will kind of call out and ask like, I'm seeing this, like I'm seeing what I perceive as biggest risk or the biggest reason why they wouldn't want to do that. And just calling it out and say, hey, I don't know if this makes sense because you're here and we're talking about this. Is this premature? Is this really worth doing because of this? And what's interesting about that, it's like reverse psychology to a degree because then they're like, either they'll validate it, in which case, awesome, let's stop wasting our time. Or they come back and they sell you on, no, that's not an issue. Here's why.

9:21 JC Pollard: Isn't that interesting how fast they start pitching you when you kind of call it out? Yeah, I love that.

9:26 Scott Ingram: You're like, I don't know if this makes sense.

9:27 JC Pollard: You shouldn't do this.

9:27 Scott Ingram: No, no, I need to. Here's why. Like, okay, now we get to the heart of what's going on.

9:33 JC Pollard: Yeah, I love that. One of the people I look up to a lot at Gong always says, if you think it or feel it, say it. So if you're sensing apprehension, if you feel like there's apprehension, call it out. If you feel like something's really exciting to someone as you're demoing, call it out. Like, hey, I feel like this is really striking the right chord. What about this is so exciting? But I just love the idea of instead of letting those thoughts linger in the back of your head, if you're sensing something, address it, call it out, label it, and then to your point, leave space for them to articulate or to you know, sell themselves, whatever that might look like. I think that's so powerful.

10:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man. And talk about feeling heard, right? Like rather than, I mean, almost going back to the demo thing, like rather than just blowing through like, oh, I want to make sure I show you this and I show you this and I show you this and I show you this. It's about them and really just like letting the conversation breathe a little bit and saying, hey, you know, I'm kind of feeling this. I feel like that didn't connect. Like what's going on there? I feel like there's something not being said here. It's amazing what that stuff opens up.

10:28 JC Pollard: This is going to be a bit of a side tangent, so stick with me here.

10:31 Scott Ingram: That's what the show is about, JC. Let's go.

10:33 JC Pollard: One of the things we actually measure, like statistically, the Gong platform measures this thing called patience score, which is how long you wait to respond after a prospect or a customer stops talking. Essentially, it's a measurement of like interruptiveness or are you allowing space? And when I was in my 3rd or 4th month as an SDR, patience score was horrible and my manager called it out and she's like, JC, I think you have a really strong opportunity to uplevel your skills and improve your conversion rates if we can work on this. So I literally got to the point where I was like muting myself on my dialer between talk tracks because I just get excited. I want to talk. But what I found was by being patient and leaving space, the customer will fill the void. And it's actually in those moments of silence where then the customer stops talking or starts talking more that you actually get like the real gold and the real value. I think everyone is a bit uncomfortable with silence. So if you have the discipline to let your buyer fill it rather than you fill it, you start to really extract some key information. So I think that's right in line with what you're saying. I think it's a super, super powerful, like, sales superpower.

11:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good stuff. I've talked about it here on this show. Like, this podcast is an opportunity for me to practice that, and I do it a lot. You won't always hear it because it gets edited out. And part of what I'm thinking about is how do I make things easier for my editor? So it's easier if I leave a little bit of a pause and there's not overlapping conversation. But also that just not jumping right back in, oftentimes the person I'm talking to will go on. I swear to God, that's where most of the gold nuggets fall out is they thought they were done. I leave a little bit more space. There's just this like additional bit of processing and they're like, oh wait, there's this.

12:16 JC Pollard: It's funny because I feel like we're now both going to be pausing extra long because this is top of mind, but I could not agree more with what you're saying. It's such a night and day difference when you practice it and you work on it and you're conscious of it. It's like a tactical takeaway for anyone listening is just think about pausing a brief moment before handling an objection or showing a feature or whatever it looks like in your sales cycle and just watch the golden information start pouring out.

12:42 Scott Ingram: 100%. 100%. All right. Let's contextualize this a little bit. So I think most folks listening are probably familiar with Gong, but talk about your role. Talk about you know, what it was that it took to get to this number 1 spot and kind of quantify your results along the way, if you could.

12:57 JC Pollard: Yeah, I started at Gong 2 and a half years ago as an SDR, and I got promoted to a closing role about a year and a half ago. And so I'm an account executive that's full cycle. So I'm doing everything from sourcing the deal to closing the deal, which is a unique challenge, but also a pretty fun opportunity because you own every single part of the sales cycle. Fiscal year 2022, my quota was roughly $720,000-ish. I closed $1.4 million, 190% attainment, like 8 consecutive months over $100,000 closed, ended up being the number 1 rep. But I think what I'm most proud of is a few things. First of all, like over 80% of what I closed was self-sourced. So there were a few inbounds in there, a few SDR source leads, but 8 out of 10 deals I closed, I did 100% myself. And then the second thing I'm most proud of is I was close to quitting in like month 3 and month 4 because I literally did not think I could do it. And I had the worst imposter syndrome. I was barely scraping by in quota. I was working just ungodly hours. I was at the point where I was like ready to switch career paths, but I stuck with it thanks to incredible leadership and an amazing manager and really good support from my peers. But it was just cool looking back knowing that I didn't even think I could be like a remotely capable AE and going from that to the number one performer. That's quite a year. That's a career-changing year. It's pretty exciting stuff.

14:17 Scott Ingram: I have so many questions. Let's talk about like the imposter syndrome piece, like What was the disconnect for you? Like, what were you struggling with when you felt like this isn't working? I don't know if I can be this or do this.

14:29 JC Pollard: So I was one of the top performing SDRs, like month after month after month. And so I came in candidly with a bit of a big ego. Like, I'd been a top performer. Most people were asking me for advice, right? And then I get promoted to this team of just superstars, like the team I was on when I first started, multiple President's Club winners, just some incredibly talented sellers. And I would just listen to their calls and be like, I do not sound like that. Like that, that is not how I sound. I don't know if I can get there. I just lost so many deals at first. Like I said, I came in with a bit of an ego, so I was hesitant to have people on my calls helping. I wanted to do it myself, and that led to me losing a ton of winnable deals and making a ton of mistakes. And all that kind of compounded into being like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I have this in me.

15:14 Scott Ingram: And then what was the… again, there's like so many paths I want to go down. But how did you ultimately break through that? I mean, you said you had some leadership, like, did you just lean into that? Like, okay, let me set the ego aside and recognize I need some help. Like, how did you end up getting through that period and kind of finding your stride?

15:30 JC Pollard: Yeah, so I had a few things going for me. First of all, my manager never lost an ounce of confidence, and she consistently told me, she's like, JC, you're going to be the top performer in this org. Like, I know you don't believe it now. I recognize talent early. You're going to be really good at this. That was one thing. But the second thing, which is interesting, is it actually had nothing to do with my job, but I started to work on mindset outside of work. And I started to work on that consciously by reading books and starting to get into different kinds of exercise and focus on finding balance outside of work and working on having an abundance mentality just in general in life. And then that carried over. So it's kind of interesting. Obviously, I got better tactically at things at the job, But factors outside of it actually made the most immediate difference when I just started working on my mentality and my mindset, and that actually infiltrated into my performance at work.

16:19 Scott Ingram: Let's dig into that. What specifically did you do from a mindset perspective that made the biggest difference? What books did you read? What did you adopt? Like, what became sort of your habits around that?

16:30 JC Pollard: The first book I read, and I candidly think it kind of changed my life, it's called The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Essentially, to summarize a very impactful book in a few words, when an obstacle or a hurdle or adversity comes your way, I think the first instinct you have is like, this sucks, right? You view it as an obstacle. Then I think talented people look at it and are like, okay, this is an obstacle, but I can find a way through this. But what this book actually talks about is how do we go a step further and take an obstacle and look at it as an opportunity? Like, how do we flip it on its head and be like, this is awesome. This obstacle's here because now I have an opportunity to do X, Y, and Z. So I'll give a quick example. Recession in software specifically, people aren't buying. That's an obstacle. This book would encourage you to be like, wow, what a unique opportunity to really refine my sales skillset and sell in a recession so that I can just absolutely dominate when we're out of this recession. So like, that's just a quick example. And that book really changed things. And I started intentionally viewing all the the hardship I had at work as like an opportunity to get better, an opportunity to learn from my mistakes. And that really shifted the way I would interpret like failure. If I lose a deal before that book, I'm like, I lost a deal, that pipeline's gone, I suck, whatever. After this book, I lose a deal. I'm like, wow, that was a really cool opportunity to practice X, Y, and Z, or that was a really cool opportunity to learn from this mistake. And it was a pretty night and day difference after reading that book.

17:56 Scott Ingram: Love it. Were there tactical things, right? So it sounds like the biggest factor was you worked on your mindset, you changed the way you looked at the stuff that you were struggling with, what were the biggest things that you actually had to change, that you actually had to learn to then break through? Because it's not just like, oh, I think it and magic happens, right? Which is the problem with some of this like mindset mumbo jumbo. Like, yes, it's important, but you can't just… if I think and do nothing, you'll win the lottery, sadly, right?

18:25 JC Pollard: Because I could think about winning the lottery all day long, it would just happen. Tactically, I think We actually touched on them already. And you asked my top 3 things I wanted to talk about. Like 2 of them were the biggest tactical changes. The first one is I got a lot better at discovery and demo, specifically demo. And I think the problem, the thing I was not doing initially very well was my demos were like a tutorial. It was like a training, like this button does this, click here to see this. If you go to this page, you can access this. Like nobody remembers that. Nobody cares about features. And I finally got better at, I call it telling a story through the lens of your platform rather than giving a tutorial. And once that kind of clicked for me and I started framing the problem and talking about the story and then how they can do it now, I realized like I was barely clicking on the page. People are just looking at a page, right? I'm not clicking 14 different buttons, but people would remember my stories and that would help me beat out competition. That would help people want to come back. It's like, wow, this is impactful. It's not just a myriad of buttons. It's something I can apply to my life and my job that's going to make a difference. And that was a huge, huge shift for me. And then the second one we talked about as well, which is those hard questions, seeking risk in deals, asking, saying exactly what's on your mind, pushing back on your prospects, challenging. I kind of got over my fear of not being liked and I stopped prioritizing being friends with my prospect and started prioritizing being the best co-seller and counterpoint to them. And that made a Pretty night and day difference as well.

19:54 Scott Ingram: Nice. I want to come back to the story piece. So when you're doing these demos, what kind of a story are you trying to tell or kind of your top… here are the 2 or 3 kind of go-to stories that I was looking to get across in the demo process.

20:07 JC Pollard: It's so dependent on the person I'm talking to and the role, but high level, the structure I take is I want to frame the problem as it exists today. And this is referencing the discovery, right? Like I want to learn about what their problem is or if they have one with their current workflow. And then before I demo, I'm framing the world as it exists today and talking about the challenges that represents. So for a quick example, like one of the biggest challenges sales leaders have, and you just talked about this earlier, is we have no idea what's going on on our team sales calls. So we're just left in the dark when it comes to coaching or finding opportunities for improvement. And then after I'm done framing the world as it exists today, then I show the demo. I'm like, now within Gong, You can X, Y, and Z. And then I'm tying it back. And I think this is one of the areas a lot of sellers like fail to do is speak to the power of it. Like call it out. I'll be like, think about how powerful that is. We just went from a world where we literally did not know what our team was doing into a world where we can see every single call and know exactly what the top performers are doing differently than the rest of the team. So we can uplevel everyone's skillset. And then I'll pause and then I'll typically ask questions to engage like, hey, how is this different than what you're doing today? Now that you've seen this, anything spinning in your head as far as how you could use this or what you'd want to coach to? So it's that framing the problem, quick demo, highlighting the power of it, and then engaging and asking and making sure it's interactive.

21:29 Scott Ingram: Nice, solid example. Okay, so now we're gonna go way back because I want to hear the origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place? Because I know this isn't the career path that you started on.

21:42 JC Pollard: Long version or short version?

21:44 Scott Ingram: This is a long-form show, so let's hear it. Cool.

21:47 JC Pollard: So I, as cliché as it sounds, wanted to be a sports agent basically from freshman year of college all the way until senior year. Watched Jerry Maguire one time, loved sports my whole life. I'm like, that's what I want to do. And so I was laser-focused on that in college. I was the vice president of our sports business club. I took the LSAT, I applied to law schools, I got scholarships to a bunch of schools. I was getting ready to Except I landed my dream internship at an MLB agency my junior year summer, and I hated it. Absolutely hated it. And all the agents were divorced and didn't talk to their kids, and the work-life balance was nonexistent. And I had this honestly moment of panic where I'm like, wow, this thing that has been my North Star for 3+ years is actually not something I want to do. And I had no idea where to go next. Like, I literally just did not know. It sounds hilarious, but I literally printed out my resume. And just stared at it. And I'm like, what is the trend line here? Like, what am I good at? What do I want to try next? I'm just looking at all my experiences. And one was vice president of the Sports Business Club where I was in charge of getting people to join and sign up for memberships. I was the head of the personal training department at the University of Oregon where my job was to sell personal training packages. I had this SDR internship experience prior to college. I'm like, oh my gosh, why am I running from this? Like, it's so clear that every single experience I have is sales-oriented. Why not just give this a shot? And so from there, I just decided to pursue the SaaS, you know, tech sales world. And I got a BDR job right out of college, but it was not the goal. It was not the North Star for a long, long time, but pretty happy I ended up here.

23:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Did it feel right right away? So you knew right off the bat that this whole sports agent thing was not for you, that first BDR job. And I know you'd had an internship before that, but like, did it feel right? Like how long did it take you to kind of settle in and go, you know what? This is the right career. This is the right path for me.

23:42 JC Pollard: It wasn't instant. And I think this is a testament to how important it is to land at the right spot and to find a product you're passionate about and a company with a good culture. And so the first job I got, it was a decent job by all means. And I was there for like 4 months and I was happy, but I certainly wasn't passionate about it by any means. And my friend Jake, who still works at Gong, calls me and he's like, dude, I know you have a job. I know you like it, but you have to check out what we're doing over here. Like, just give it a shot. And so I kind of grudgingly went through the interview process. And one of the steps in the process was a mock cold call with 2 SDR managers. So you do a mock cold call, they give you feedback, you incorporate that into another mock call. I took the feedback they gave me into the job I had at the time, and the next day I booked more meetings than I ever had in a day, and I set the company record for meetings booked in a day after one mock interview of coaching. And I'm like, okay, like this is something I need to lean into. And so I left that company and joined Gong. Ever since joining Gong, It's pretty instant as far as I'm like, oh, this is where I'm meant to be. This is what I'm meant to do.

24:42 Scott Ingram: All right. So now you are hitting on my current hot button, which is, and I'm probably going to do just a standalone episode to talk more about this because I'm literally becoming obsessed with sales culture and what it means to work in an organization with a great culture and just how different it is. Right. I mean, it's literally life-changing when you're in that place and It's night and day, the experience that you have and the feelings that you have if you're not in that kind of a place. We'll come back to that a little bit, but I'm really curious about what was that coaching like? What was that thing that you changed that overnight made you just rock in your current role?

25:21 JC Pollard: It's crazy looking back at how simple some of it was, but the first thing was asking for permission to pitch versus just diving in and starting to throw features out. That was like the biggest thing, right? Was like having an upfront contract, having a solidified opener and getting permission before launching into a pitch. The second part was keeping the pitch really brief and then asking an open-ended question at the end to engage somebody rather than just directly, like, as I'm saying this out loud, I'm recognizing how little structure or training I got initially. But it was the basic things like having an opener, asking for permission to pitch, and then ending your pitch with an open-ended question versus just directly asking for a meeting. Seems pretty obvious in hindsight. Crazy to think that it wasn't at first.

26:03 Scott Ingram: Well, we all have to learn one way or the other, right?

26:05 JC Pollard: Yeah.

26:06 Scott Ingram: So from your perspective, because I'm pretty sure you're in an organization that has a really strong sales culture, like what makes for a great sales culture? Like what do you look for? How do you know when you're in it?

26:18 JC Pollard: Yeah, I think the first thing is like the caliber of leadership and where I'm at now, I'm just blown away by how intelligent and capable and hardworking our leaders are. How much faith the organization has in them just because they've proven they can do it and they're very, very good at what they do. And then the second part is a company that takes pride in its sales culture and prioritizes it and leads with it versus a company that has a sales team because you have to have a sales team. And I don't think that every organization does a great job of recognizing, rewarding, and cherishing the sales department. And where I'm at now, it's like the priority of our organization, which is a really cool place to be.

26:56 Scott Ingram: And I would bet actually this is a specific thing that I've been kind of leaning into is that because of that and through that, it's not just sales that's in sales. I would imagine that basically everybody in the organization values and contributes to the sales process. Is that a fair statement?

27:13 JC Pollard: 100%. We even have a couple days a year where we do a company-wide blitz and we've got engineers on the phones making cold calls. Like it's a very Very big collaborative team effort. And that's a really good call out. Everyone is aware of the sales world here too. Like you talk to a product marketer and they know what discovery and demo are like. Everyone is super engaged and recognizes that like the priority is revenue and sales is a huge part of that. So we all work together to make sure that we're maximizing that.

27:42 Scott Ingram: So cool. So cool. I want to talk a little bit about some more of the prospecting stuff. Like everybody always wants to know, how do I get better at creating opportunities? And maybe we can start with, can you talk about planking and prospecting and how those two might go together?

27:57 JC Pollard: That video kind of went viral. It was crazy. But one of my prospects, Kyle Willis, he's a VP of sales at MadKudu. He's been chasing this 10-minute plank and he's been posting about it on LinkedIn. And I've been trying to get a meeting with this guy for a while with no luck. I'm like, all right, I gotta break through the noise somehow. So I filmed myself planking with the goal to do it for 10 minutes. At the beginning of the video, I'm like, Kyle, let's make a deal. If I can do a 10-minute plank, you have to meet with me. And every minute I would hit the gong and give one reason why you should look at Gong. Spoiler alert, I did not make it 10 minutes. I made it 6:45 and I was sore for 4 days after, but we got the meeting and it worked out. I think it was just a testament to like, there's so much noise out there today. You got to try to do something creative to stand out. And I'm thankful that that worked. Yeah.

28:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So keep going on that. Like, what is your overarching kind of prospecting philosophy? I know you've had a lot of success with it. Like, what's the formula? What are the key components for you?

28:56 JC Pollard: Yeah, the number one is just the understanding that if you are not breaking through the noise, you are creating it. So everything I do from a prospecting perspective has that in mind. Like, I recognize that I have to stand out somehow. I just read these stats. The average CEO or C-suite executive has 7.5 hours of meetings a day. The average professional gets 121 emails every day, and then on average 125 Slacks. So the reality is people are inundated with internal meetings, with Slacks, with outreach from other account executives, other SDRs. You have to do something to be creative and to stand out. And so I take that into a few different avenues. The first one is my emails are hyper-personalized, and my goal every time I click send on an email is that the prospect knows and it's abundantly clear that that was only sent to them. And then the second component is getting really good on the phone. I still think that cold calls are the most effective way to break into accounts, even though we're in 2023. I book majority of my pipeline via cold call. And so I think leaning into it and learning to love it and mastering the cold call is hugely important. And then the third avenue is just finding a way. Like when you get stonewalled by these accounts, you got to think extra outside the box. So I just sent somebody a pair of University of Michigan slippers with a note that says, wanted to get my foot in the door because they went to University of Michigan. Like things like that to just make it unignorable. But the summation is figuring out some way to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

30:25 Scott Ingram: So you opened with like an insanely quotable quote. I think you said, if you're not breaking through the noise, you're creating it.

30:33 JC Pollard: My favorite quote.

30:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Is that original? Did that come from somewhere else? What is the source there?

30:37 JC Pollard: My friend at Gong, who's one of the most talented sellers I've ever seen, his name's Emmett. I don't know if he came up with it, but I'll give him credit for it because that's where I heard it and it stuck with me. And I, he told me that when I was like early as an SDR and I never forgot it and something I kind of live by from a prospecting perspective.

30:53 Scott Ingram: So good. So good. And man, is there a lot of noise out there. Again, if you put yourself in the buyer's shoes, especially if your buyer is a busy executive, oh my gosh, are they getting a ton of just garbage that is noise.

31:08 JC Pollard: Yeah, I mean, I, I look at my inbox and I'm an individual contributor and I'm getting tons of emails. I can't even imagine somebody who's like clearly a decision maker. So you got to do something to be just so unique. I like to think of it as you're a needle in a haystack. It better be a pretty compelling needle if you want it to get picked up.

31:25 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. So let's go back to the career thing just a little bit though, right? So you make this transition into sales. It obviously works out, but knowing what you know now, right, having found kind of the success that you did, if you were starting over today, like you made that decision, I'm going to go into sales. Is there anything that you would have done differently?

31:44 JC Pollard: I thought about this a lot because I think if I went straight to Gong, candidly, I'd have a bit more equity, which is enticing, but I'm actually really grateful for the path I took because I got to see a smaller, less well-oiled machine from a sales perspective. And then I got to go to a really effective one. And I think having the perspective of, and the appreciation for a really, really well-run sales org has been critical for my career. So I honestly don't think that there's much I would change. And I also wouldn't even change like some of the failures I have because they've been such learning experiences. So I'm pretty stoked with how things have gone so far. There's probably minor things in there, but not really, man. I feel very grateful. I feel like I landed in a really fortunate spot.

32:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What's your favorite failure?

32:25 JC Pollard: I think my favorite failure was just losing a lot of deals early on in general, but doing it by myself. And this could, I think, be interpreted as good or bad, but I think I could have won a lot of those deals that I lost early on if I had a manager on the call or pulled in a tenured rep. But I also think it expedited my improvement and my growth by making those mistakes on my own. So in hindsight, I'm actually pretty proud of the fact that I just trusted myself and tried it by myself and failed by myself, because I really do think it shaved months off of my ramp time. I think that could go both ways because I could have performed better and made more money if I had asked for help. But I also think it made me a better seller faster in the long run.

33:07 Scott Ingram: I mean, that's such an interesting double-edged sword, right? I'm even thinking about that from the leadership perspective. I think probably the most common leadership failure is that you won't let your people fail and you jump in and you rescue the deal and you never allow them the opportunity to learn the lessons that you had to learn.

33:25 JC Pollard: I think that's such a good call out, especially like a first-time manager that was a top performer, right? It's so easy to want to just jump in and take over, dominate the call, because you know you can get it done. I feel grateful that I didn't have a manager who had that tendency, man.

33:37 Scott Ingram: What about the flip side? Like, what's your favorite, like, I won the deal or I booked the meeting success story?

33:44 JC Pollard: It's so easy to pinpoint because literally yesterday my signer at this account, Aaron Hill, posted on LinkedIn like a novel of a post about how positive experience he had working with me as a sales… like, completely unprompted. And it kind of went It ended up getting like hundreds of thousands of engagement and it made my day to have like a buyer go out of their way to post that. But the reason it's so near and dear to my heart is that was actually the first deal I lost to a competitor when I got promoted to AE. One of the first deal cycles I ran, did not do a great job differentiating, did not make a very compelling case, lost the deal. And then 11 months later to win that deal, it had 5x in size because they grew so fast. To replace a competitor and to navigate a really, really, really challenging sales cycle. Like, by far it felt like my greatest victory because it was the same account that was my first loss to competitor.

34:37 Scott Ingram: That is awesome. And so again, we're going to have a lot of… I think half of our links in this one are going to be to LinkedIn posts. Some of them are your own, some of them apparently from your buyers. Talk about how that deal came back around and how you managed through the loss, right? Because this is a conversation… Lynn Powers was probably the biggest eye-opening conversation for me last year in terms of the opportunity to win back your losses. So what happened there? How did, how did that come about? What did you do?

35:09 JC Pollard: First of all, I never stopped reaching out to them, and I just tried to add value between the time the deal was lost and the time the deal was, you know, re-engaged. So checking in with them, seeing how things are going, maybe sending over a case study, building a champion with an SDR manager over there. Like, I always wanted to stay top of mind. That was the first thing. And then the second thing was just going way overboard when it comes to giving them a reason to check us out the second time around. So I sent a bunch of books to their office for their frontline leaders about sales leadership. I sent candy to the SDR team. I was just relentless in trying to earn an opportunity. To prove why it's worth looking at. Because that was the hardest part, was even giving them a reason to try because they were happy with what they had before, candidly. Like, they weren't using the full value of it, but they were happy with it. And so it was not just replacing something that they hated. It was like actually trying to show we're worth the additional investment and the additional time involved in switching. That's the biggest thing is just staying top of mind and then also just building relationships. And I literally became friends with these people over the course of time and to the point where I was close enough to ask the favor of like, hey, Can you just give me one shot here to explain why this is worth looking at? And that was literally a personal favor that got me the initial meeting. Like just the relationship I built had given me the credibility to ask for one more shot at showing them why I was worth looking at.

36:31 Scott Ingram: That is excellent. And it's so funny, we actually had this conversation and maybe got into some of the underlying, like why this is the case on a pretty recent community call conversation, but As much as I love the Challenger Sale book and the impact that it's made on the industry, it's been kind of a double-edged sword in that it's had a negative impact too, like maligned relationships. I think people didn't quite understand enough. Like there was too much surface-level reading of that book, right? That was like, oh, relationships are bad. Like, no, I think what they meant, it was really against the seller who all it is is like, I'm going to wine and dine you. Like if I buy you drinks and I take you to fancy restaurants and I take you to golf, you should do business with me. Yeah, that's garbage. There has to be real value beyond that. But I think it missed the point. Like, you can't be a challenger if you don't have a relationship.

37:26 JC Pollard: Yes. Yes. Nobody's going to want to talk to you again.

37:30 Scott Ingram: Like, if I don't trust you and we don't have some level of rapport, you're just a jerk who's calling junk out.

37:37 JC Pollard: I mean, especially like most of the sales cycles I run are outbound, right? Where they're not people coming to me, I'm talking them into taking a meeting. So what right do I have to be a challenger or to be a dick? But like when I'm the one that asked them for their time. So I could not agree more. That's interesting. Would you say you noticed like a pretty distinct before and after that book in the sales community?

37:59 Scott Ingram: Yes. That book has probably been the most impactful book in the sales space in the last, I don't know, at least decade, probably. I mean, that book's been around for a while. At this point, I mean maybe two decades. So massively impactful, so broadly read, more broadly read than any other book since that I can think of. And yeah, I think just so misunderstood from that perspective. And so it has caused a shift. And in some ways, I think it's coming back around because now we've got all this AI stuff. What AI will never replace is relationships.

38:34 JC Pollard: Props to us for making it 51 minutes into a podcast without talking about AI. That's impressive today.

38:38 Scott Ingram: Well, so we're here. It sounds like you have some thoughts on the AI side, so spill.

38:45 JC Pollard: Well, I'm a little bit terrified, a little bit excited. I think what we were talking about earlier is just going to become more and more true, which is you got to do something different to break through the noise because now you're not only competing with a bunch of humans but also a bunch of pretty, pretty incredible robots that can write some really good copy and make some compelling arguments. Like some of the emails that ChatGPT can generate, they're pretty incredible. So I just foresee it being even more important to lean into being different and unique and to what you were just alluding to, like human, in order to stand out. So I'm curious to see what it does. I think the prospecting world is going to change so much as these things get more and more widely adopted and user-friendly.

39:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I think the other thing, going back to the relationship component, is referrals are going to come into play more and more. I mean, we've become so obsessed With the outbound and with cold calling and all of those things, and I think we've lost sight of like the most basic form of sales is via introduction and via referrals. I really can't imagine somebody going, "Oh my God, you've got to talk to this AI." Like that's not well. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that does happen at some point. But what's funny is the thing that I've been saying and thinking here lately is. That worries me from just a bigger picture, longer-term perspective is if you think about our own individual human capacity to grow and improve, like how much can you really improve year over year? Like if you're amazing, I don't know what, 5 or 10%? Does that seem reasonable?

40:23 JC Pollard: Maybe if it's that high.

40:25 Scott Ingram: Right. And then if you look at Moore's Law, And how that applies to technology, you can expect the capability of tech to improve to double every 2 years. So what does all this look like after the next 2 or 3 doubling cycles? Because I spent the last 5 years, I mean, we've been talking about AI and this stuff for a long time, and I've spent the last bunch of years mostly pointing to my Alexa going, yeah, look, I talk to this stupid thing all the time. And I ask it the same questions and 20 or 30% of the time it just gets it wrong. I'm like, so we don't need to worry. And then there was this massive leap. And I think we're gonna continue to see like these really, really significant jumps, especially with as heavily as Google and Facebook and Apple and Tesla and all of these companies and Microsoft, like big companies with tons of money pouring tons of resources into this stuff. This is going to get interesting.

41:23 JC Pollard: It's going to get interesting fast. Something I'm trying to do is, and it goes back to that thing I talked about at the beginning of the call, like just having a different mindset. I think it's really easy to be scared and like, oh my gosh, the world's ending. This AI is getting so powerful. I'm trying to look at it like, okay, this is going to change things for sure. And the world will probably look a lot different than it does now in 5 years because of this. But that'll produce new opportunities or new avenues or maybe new ways to leverage it to make your life easier. I'm not sure what it'll look like. I'm trying to stay out of the fear mentality because it's pretty easy to get stuck in the trap of like, oh my gosh, these robots are going to come for everything. So that's kind of how I'm trying to view it, but we'll see if I can stick to that.

42:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, I'm curious about, so I mean, let's talk about like your today, just your personal kind of tech stack. Like what is the technology that you use day in, day out as part of your process today? And across like not just sales, but even like personal life stuff.

42:22 JC Pollard: Yeah. So most of it takes place within Gong, of course, duh, biased party. But truly what was really cool, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this, I think I am. We're launching our prospecting tool and I'm in alpha for it. So I don't even have to use like an Outreach or SalesLoft anymore. Everything I do exists within one platform, which is such a big improvement in the workflow of my day-to-day life as a seller. Like now I update my CRM, I send out my prospecting emails, I'm managing my deals like all in one cohesive platform, which is awesome. So I would say tech stack-wise, 70% of the time is spent within Gong. Outside of that, it's LinkedIn for prospecting, for breaking into accounts, that kind of stuff. From a day-to-day life, the only other thing that I think has changed is now I do use ChatGPT to generate some of my first-touch emails every once in a while, or If I get stuck with like a certain project at work, I will go to ChatGPT and ask for help. Like I'm making a course right now on prospecting. I wanted it to be a 10-part course. I just typed into ChatGPT, write me a 10-part course on prospecting. And I use that for like the skeleton of this course I'm building. So it's crazy that like that's already become part of my daily workflow in some ways or others.

43:32 Scott Ingram: That's really interesting. And I mean, what I've been telling people is you have to at least experiment with this stuff, right? I mean, to your point, like you can't be afraid of it and hide under a rock. Like that's not the answer. But what's really fascinating for me is I thought going into this show, I mean, I've always been in tech and I'm a nerd, so I tend to lean in that direction. And even when I started this show, I thought, oh, a lot of the top sales performers that I'm going to talk to are going to be really great at leveraging technology. And the reality has been almost completely the opposite. I've actually found that intentionally or not, they almost avoid technology because it's such a distraction, right? And your tech stack actually isn't very different. Like the most common tech stack is basically, look, I use email, I use my calendar, I use LinkedIn, and then I take notes. And there's not a lot of other kind of whiz-bang beyond that. It's more like, that's all I need to do the core most important parts. Of my job and not trying to connect all of these pieces and play with all of these gadgets and toys and just doing the work.

44:47 JC Pollard: Yeah, I think the one thing that I would say I'm different about from what you just described is like the note-taking aspect. I intentionally avoid taking notes on calls because I want to be as present as possible in that conversation. Thankfully, I have obviously a platform that records my calls, so I have historical data. I can go back and reference conversations. I'm honestly super against taking notes in a conversation because I want my full and undivided attention to be on what my prospect's saying, what question I should ask in return. The piece of tech I do leverage all the time is before having a follow-up call, I listen to the prior conversation every single time and I toggle myself off and listen to it at like 2x speed. So every time I'm about to meet with somebody for the second call, 10 minutes before that, I had just listened to literally every single word they said in the prior call. So I can use the language they use. I can reference people they talked about. I can double down on parts of the platform that were super exciting to them. I can ask questions about things I missed. That has been an absolute game changer for me just in terms of nailing every conversation and being fully prepared to execute on my calls.

45:54 Scott Ingram: That is brilliant, right? Because as a victim of my own notes, like not having that context, I'm like, I don't know, I wrote this. I don't even know what that means. Yeah.

46:03 JC Pollard: I don't know how your handwriting is either, but I cannot read my own handwriting. So it's another additional layer of challenge there.

46:10 Scott Ingram: Well, I usually type my notes, but the point is still though, there's a huge difference between, I mean, even just my relaying what you said before, right? When we talked about if you're not breaking through the noise, you're creating it. I don't know if that's exactly what you said. So like that ability to have reheard exactly what they said from the horse's mouth with their intonation, right? And everything that goes with it. I mean, that's powerful stuff. Great thought and a great tip. And, you know, just the idea of being able to be present in that way is… you've got me thinking.

46:40 JC Pollard: Well, I think the second layer of power behind it is that you just miss things when you're in a conversation. And sometimes I'll leave a call being like, wow, I crushed that. Like, that went really well. And I'll go back and listen to it and pick up on 10 pieces or points in time in the conversation where I didn't ask the right question or there was clearly some hesitation from the prospect and I just failed to address it or to acknowledge it. And so having that ability, like an athlete watches game film, but to go back to a call and spot check yourself and be like, is this actually how this call went? It's pretty crazy the amount I pick up. It's kind of like when you watch a TV show for the second time through and all of a sudden you start finding these Easter eggs and these hidden messages and this foreshadowing. That's exactly how I feel about referencing my past calls. I'm like picking up on 2x the amount of stuff and it's so powerful in terms of executing on that next call.

47:30 Scott Ingram: Man, that's a great call out. And I mean, where I experience that all the time is I'll listen back to one of these interviews and go, oh my gosh, like JC dropped this gold nugget in the middle of the conversation. Did I pick it up and ask him about it? Nope. Walked right past it.

47:43 JC Pollard: Yeah. Also, because even the most disciplined sellers that are trying to actively listen, it's really easy to start thinking about what you're going to say next. Like it just happens. It's kind of unavoidable. And that leads to missing some really important stuff sometimes. So it's just invaluable to be able to go back and reference that.

47:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. All right, man, let's talk about how you structure your day. And again, I know you listen to the show. This is like my favorite part. I want to know what time the alarm clock goes off and what happens blow by blow till your head hits the pillow that night.

48:13 JC Pollard: This is actually a really well-timed question because yesterday I just had so much anxiety and I felt so out of whack and I couldn't place it because like objectively speaking, I was having a good day. Like things went well yesterday. And what I realized is like, oh my gosh, I skipped my morning routine yesterday. And I was literally out of sync the whole day mentally. Like I was all over the place. That was a long way of saying my ideal day, I wake up like 6:30, 7:00. I typically start work around 9:00 and I try to do something every morning. I call it like to find solitude or to just be with myself and think that could exist in a workout or maybe going for a run or this morning that was just sitting in my yard in the sun, sipping coffee and reading, and then writing some stuff in my journal. The most important thing is like, I cannot be on my phone in the first 30 minutes of the day, or it just leads to a spiral of thinking too much, getting too much exposure to social media, whatever that looks like. So I wake up, put my phone away, and I find solitude for 30 minutes to an hour. Then I make my bed every single day. I call it winning my morning battle, which is making the bed, because I'm big on just like stacking wins early in the day. And then by 9 o'clock, I'm at my desk ready to work and get after it. I start every single workday doing the thing I hate more than anything, which is writing my personalized first-touch emails. It is like my least favorite part of my process. And so I want to bang it out first thing in the morning. Then I typically have calls scattered throughout the day. Between calls, when I have more than 45 minutes free, I'll start making cold calls and use that as like a dial block. And the big shift is I try to wrap up by 5. I used to be The guy that was grinding till 9:00 PM, that was what I was referencing earlier when I was like super stressed out with imposter syndrome. And now I'm pretty disciplined, like 5 or 6:00 PM, I'm shutting the laptop, putting it away, and I'm going to go do something I enjoy. That's typically going for a run or working out or going out to dinner with friends or something like that. And then despite being a 24-year-old man, I'm like in bed, lights out, 9:30 or 10:00. It's pretty hilarious, but I'm early to bed. Big nerd about my sleep as well. So Pretty routine day. I mean, there's not a lot of excitement Monday through Friday. Pretty repetitive.

50:19 Scott Ingram: So 2 things I'm curious about. Does this like stacking wins concept, does that show up anywhere else, like in the way you set up your routines beyond kind of the morning?

50:28 JC Pollard: Have you read Atomic Habits?

50:30 Scott Ingram: I have.

50:30 JC Pollard: Are you a fan?

50:32 Scott Ingram: My perspective on Atomic Habits, my personal superpower when I'm on my game, and if you listen to my last episode on the podcast, I have not been on my game in quite some time. When I'm on my game, my superpower is my productivity process. And I have geeked out about this over the years. I have read so many books about habits and all this different type of productivity and systems and everything else. Atomic Habits is the best consolidation of those in my experience, right? Like, you don't have to read 10 other books. You can read that one and you're gonna get 80% Love that.

51:06 JC Pollard: Yeah. But to answer the question, there were a few things from that book that I took away and found immensely impactful. I think stacking wins is definitely one of them. So it does not stop after my morning routine. That continues through the workday. That's as simple as like, if I want to send 15 prospecting emails out, I'm going to write that down and I'm going to do a checkmark every time I write one until I get to 15 so that I feel like, oh, I checked that off. That's a win. And then I'm also huge on finding something outside of work that allows you to stack wins so that when things are bad at work, which oftentimes in sales is out of your control. Like, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things you can influence, but there's also a lot that you have no control over. So I always try to have something I'm working out outside of my career that I can stack wins with so that even on the worst days of sales, I can feel like I'm having a victory. So lately for me, like, I just ran my first marathon on Sunday actually. But that's been my form of stacking wins outside of work. It's completing the training run, having a PR, whatever that might look like for you, something completely unrelated to work that allows you to rest your head on the pillow at night and be like, I won something today. Even if you got 4 no-shows and you lost a deal and you missed your quota, you have to have something that's 1,000% in your control that can give you that victory.

52:20 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Congrats on the marathon. Which race did you run?

52:23 JC Pollard: I ran the Austin Marathon. I actually did it. I lost my mom to suicide when I was 9 years old, so I did it two-pronged, like one in memory of her, and I tried to raise some money for suicide prevention as well and ended up raising like $5,000 for the cause. So it was a really cool kind of marriage of like supporting a cause I care about and also completing a physical challenge that I've wanted to do for a while. So it was a special day.

52:46 Scott Ingram: Very cool. Very cool. Congrats. And not an easy marathon. For those who don't know, the Austin Marathon is not a flat course.

52:53 JC Pollard: Not at all. Are you a marathoner?

52:55 Scott Ingram: I am not, but I'm surrounded by runners and close to that community, and I know that, I know that race. I actually, one of my favorite things, I haven't done this in years, but I like to get out real early in the morning and ride the marathon course on my bike while they have all the roads closed. Is the coolest thing ever.

53:11 JC Pollard: Oh wow. Yeah, I bet. But I was just impressed because even people that like live in Austin that haven't run the marathon just assume it's flat because Like Texas is flat, but it's such a hard course. I didn't know this, of course, until like day of when everyone's like, by the way, it's like a top 5 hardest marathon course. Like, but I was just impressed that you knew that because even a lot of my friends that live in Austin just assume it's going to be a flat course.

53:34 Scott Ingram: Oh no. And in a marathon, like any little bit of incline is way more than, than you would think, right?

53:41 JC Pollard: Scott, I kid you not. I don't know who designed it, but I need to sit down and talk to them. Mile 25.5 is the steepest hill on the course. It is actually cruel. Like you turn this corner expecting to see the finish line because you're literally less than a mile away. And all you just see is this. I mean, at the time it felt like a 90-degree angle straight up. Obviously it wasn't. They certainly like to challenge you at the very end and make sure you earn that finish line.

54:07 Scott Ingram: Unreal. I didn't know it was that bad. It has a reputation. It is not an easy race. So like double congrats, right? Finishing a marathon is always its own accomplishment. But finishing something like that is something extra.

54:19 JC Pollard: I appreciate it. Thank you.

54:20 Scott Ingram: I wanted to come back to, you talked about kind of the difference of just your discipline around wrapping up the day, right? And being done at sort of a reasonable hour. And obviously you're performing really well. Like, what have you found the difference to be between like burning it hard, going long, going until 8 or 9 o'clock versus like, nope, I'm going to be done at 5 or 6. And I'm going to make sure that I'm kind of getting fulfillment and wins outside of the office.

54:47 JC Pollard: So I have to give full credit to one of my colleagues, Adam Ochart at Gong, for this because he has been a top performer just the whole time he's been there. And when I was really struggling and felt like I was just working myself to the bone, I put time on his calendar and I asked him exactly that. I'm like, how do you find balance? Like, how do you have that discipline to shut it off? And he said something to me that stuck with me since. He's like, the level of performance you'll see at 95% effort versus the level of performance you'll see at 120% effort, the difference is negligible. He's like, you'll be a top performer either way. Maybe you'll squeak a little bit more out at 120% effort, but you'll be way more miserable doing it. I just took his word for it and I did that. And what I found is like, which honestly shocked me, is that my performance has gotten better. And I haven't sacrificed my ability to do my job well because I'm more productive in the hours that I do work. And then I'm happier when I come to work because I'm not working all day. So it was kind of scary, like letting go of that and my tendencies to just grind and work harder and put my nose to the grindstone. But it's pretty, pretty interesting that like that law of diminishing returns is very real when it comes to the hours you're working.

55:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And obviously the results speak for themselves.

55:59 JC Pollard: Have you experienced something similar? Did you early in your career? Have a hard time separating the two?

56:04 Scott Ingram: You know, that's a good question. I don't know that I've ever been great at completely disconnecting, right? Because I've always had, you know, side hustles and things that I do. I don't know. I mean, at the same time, like, I'm not a 70 or 80-hour-a-week type of person. Like, I've always been pretty good about finding that balance. I have found, you know, my kids kind of help create natural breaks in the day, right? Like, I want to spend time in the morning with them when they're getting ready for school and having breakfast. And I take my youngest to school most days of the week. And other than today and right now, because we're doing this interview and it's dinnertime and my wife literally just brought me a plate and it looks delicious, but I don't want to eat on the microphone and offend you. But 90% of the time I have dinner with the family. Like we sit down together and we enjoy that time. I'm pretty good about, you know, shutting things down. As the evening wraps up. Like, I don't work really, really late nights, right? It essentially goes back to that productivity process. Like, I'm a real big believer in if you know what you need to do and you focus and you execute well, when I'm on my game, I can get more done in my morning before most people probably get done in a typical day. And anything else I get done beyond that is a whole lot of gravy. So that's always kind of how I've thought about it because I've never been one to like, I work till 10, 11 o'clock at night. That's just not in my DNA.

57:32 JC Pollard: Yeah, that's interesting. What you mentioned that you've consumed a ton of Atomic Habits related stuff. What are the things that when you do in terms of your productivity routine lead to success versus when you fail to do them, the day spirals? What are some of the top ones?

57:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so I mean, this whole process, I'm calling it defunkification, is the journey that I'm on right now and kind of right-sizing myself and my approach. There's kind of 2 critical components to my day and my structure. The first one is a workout. And what I've learned, apparently the hard way, slowly, is that like I really need to elevate my heart rate. Like I really need to work in that workout. I can't just like, oh, I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna do a not very aggressive weight training workout at the gym. Nope. I need work and like really get the blood flowing and get some endorphins, you know, into my bloodstream. So that's number one. And I need to do that most days of the week. Like if I skip a day because I've got just mountains of stuff going on, that's okay. But I probably can't skip more than 2. The second thing is, and I did a whole presentation on this and I probably just need to go back and watch my own freaking presentation because I forgot. Built the structure and I'll put it into the show notes. I did kind of an updated version. I did it at the summit, gosh, 3, 4 years ago. And then I did an updated version for Sales Hacker in webinar form a couple of years ago where I did a lot more links to different resources and screenshots of some of the details of my process. So top1.fm/this episode number or top1.fm/jc-pollard will get you to this link. I have an opening routine where I just organize and structure my day based on the realities of those days. So on a day like today where it's like wall-to-wall meetings and I had, I don't know, maybe 60 minutes of white space, just the recognition of, oh, I'm not going to get a lot of actions done today. So what are the most critical things? I had 4 things on my list today. I got them all done. Perfect. I won the day. A day like tomorrow where I've got a lot more white space, awesome. I'm going to be able to crank through a bunch more things on my list. But the core of it is making those decisions at the beginning of the day. What are those critical tasks? When are they going to happen? What are the priorities? And then I don't have to think again over the course of the rest of the day. I don't have to think, okay, I finished that. Hmm. What should I do next? Let me look at some emails. Let me look at some stuff. Oh, I'm distracted. Suddenly I'm on like some news websites. Oh my gosh. I'm on social. No, none of that. Right. It's just maintaining that focus and taking away the decisions and just going task to task to task to task. It's just about execution.

1:00:16 JC Pollard: You know what I love about that versus I think the trap I've fallen into before is the flexibility that it entails as far as addressing every day as a unique day instead of like there's 15 things I have to do every single day in my daily routine for it to be successful.

1:00:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:00:31 JC Pollard: When there are some days that just don't give you that opportunity. So I think I'm going to steal that approach as far as diagnosing each day uniquely and looking for what a win looks like that day rather than trying to make this blank template and apply it to every day.

1:00:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we live in a dynamic world, right? Different things are gonna happen. And if you're really clear on what has to happen today, okay, let me make sure that I get that done. And then you talk about stacking wins, like anything that you're able to accomplish beyond that, amazing. That's even better.

1:01:01 JC Pollard: I love that. Like a quick example, last year my New Year's resolution was to journal every day, and I made this template for how I wanted to journal, and it was like 15 steps long. And man, I failed a month in because it became such a chore and it provided no flexibility. And there were days where I didn't want to write about X, Y, and Z, but like I tried to force myself to rather than now my approach to journaling is like every day I'm going to write something that I'm grateful for. And then the rest of it is just ad hoc. If I want to write, I can. If I don't want to write, I don't have to, but like making it less of a task and an assignment and providing that freedom and flexibility has made it way easier to adhere to it. And so I think I love that about your approach to each day where it's like, what does today look like? What does a win look like for this day? And how do I go execute on that? That's pretty cool.

1:01:45 Scott Ingram: I love that. Yeah, thanks. It's win the day. It's control the controllables, right? Because none of that, none of that feeling of, hey, I accomplished something today has anything to do with the external, like, oh, I booked meetings, I closed deals, you know, any of that. We let that stuff weigh on our mindset a little too much. Don't get me wrong, this is not easy, but kind of separating yourself from the results and the outcomes, right? And just focusing on like, what can I actually control and how do I feel good about having moved the things that I can move.

1:02:18 JC Pollard: I love that 100%. That's something that's really hard for me and something I actively work on is not attaching myself to the outcome too much and trying to just take pride in the process. That is like probably the number one thing I'm trying to get better at today. So it's interesting that you called that out.

1:02:33 Scott Ingram: Honestly, it's years of experience and, you know, just having gone through the process because I would guess that your year, your month, your quarter is an emotional roller coaster. Like there's massive highs, there's massive lows depending on kind of how things are rolling from a results perspective. Is that fair?

1:02:53 JC Pollard: Gotten better at not letting that be the case, but 100%, I think that's inevitable in sales. It's just massive peaks and valleys.

1:03:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Again, it takes years to get used to that and not have it be so impactful.

1:03:06 JC Pollard: Yeah, 100%.

1:03:08 Scott Ingram: So it's hard. It does not come automatic. Like, it's one of those things I think we all have to work on. Well, let's keep going on kind of this kind of idea because I'm always interested in kind of the motivation and drive sort of thing. I mean, what ultimately drives you? What keeps you going?

1:03:23 JC Pollard: I think one of the things my manager did best was helping me identify this because when I came in, in our first meeting, she asked me what motivated me. And I said money. And I thought that, I believed that at the time. But after she pried it out of me and asked more questions, I barely could tell you what my last commission check was, but I know exactly where I am on the leaderboard in every category. I'm not super proud of the fact that this is what motivates me, but it's the reality. It's like competition and being the best at whatever I can is 100% what lights a fire underneath me. So What I'm trying to get better at is apply that to things that I can control. Like for example, when I was an SDR, I'm like, nobody's going to make more calls than me, right? Because that's something I can measure and be competitive with. It's in my control. Luckily last year I finished number 1 in terms of revenue, but like ideally I'm not attaching my self-worth to the amount of dollars I close compared to my peers, but it is what drives me, man. I'm competitive. I want to be number 1 in pretty much everything I do.

1:04:25 Scott Ingram: Like an input level leaderboard for you, right? I mean, the outcome is always clear. Like that's the most obvious leaderboard and you had it on the SDR side. Is there something comparable in the AE role for you?

1:04:37 JC Pollard: We see metrics on calls made, emails sent, like, you know, opportunities created, all that kind of stuff. And so I definitely do look at that. I'm also competitive with like some of the statistics. Like I try to have the lowest talk ratio on my team every single month. So there are different ways to metric that that are more in my input, but If I'm being fully honest, man, at the end of the day, I wanna be number 1 on that revenue leaderboard. Like that is my north star every single year.

1:05:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Part of it is just understanding yourself, right? I mean, if that's true for you, then awesome. You just need to know that I am competitive. I kind of need to have that leaderboard. Ironically, I've seen a lot of organizations move away from leaderboards over the years. Whereas, I mean, my first like real traditional sales job, I was at ADP. Oh my gosh. Like you want leaderboards? I mean, we got this crazy, I mean, it was an Excel spreadsheet at the time, but, you know, once a week we would get this giant spreadsheet that you could slice and dice the heck out of. Like, how were you stacked in your division? How are your numbers for the week, the month, year to date, this quarter? I mean, there were so many ways to look at this thing and I think motivating for a lot of people, but it's so interesting. I've seen a lot of organizations move away from that over time. And maybe that's sort of a strange transition. Because we were on some soapbox topics early on. I wonder, is there something that you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

1:06:01 JC Pollard: Oh man, is there something I think the average sales professional would think is crazy that you believe?

1:06:08 Scott Ingram: Like, is there something you think that they would say, oh my God, that's nuts?

1:06:12 JC Pollard: Wow, this is such a good question. I don't know if people would think this is nuts, but I believe that if you're a really good seller, your prospect is ready to hire you as a consultant for their business by the end of the sales cycle. Like, that's the level of understanding you should have of who you're selling to and what their problems are. Man, I'm not sure if people would agree with that or not.

1:06:33 Scott Ingram: I like that a lot. I like that. So what about the flip side? Is there something that the average or typical sales professional believes, or that's just kind of part of the sales dogma that you think is nuts?

1:06:47 JC Pollard: Yeah, I think that negotiation and the way we fight over every dollar is so stupid. I think I would get lit up by like CFOs for that. But man, the amount of times I catch myself in a negotiation over like a few thousand dollars when I'm like, guys, we're talking about a $2 million initiative here. Like, what are we nickel and diming over. If you don't solve this problem, you said it yourself, you're not going to IPO. Why are we arguing over a $3,500 delta? So I don't know if people would agree with that or not, but I think we get so caught up in dollars and cents for amounts of money that I just don't think are worth the back and forth. That's why I'd never be a CFO. And that's probably why I'm not even very good at managing my own finances. But I just don't get the attachment to every single dollar.

1:07:34 Scott Ingram: That is interesting. My wife has, I think she caught up. My wife has binged through like the whole of Million Dollar Listing, like completely obsessed. And so like every now and then I walk in and I'll watch an episode or two with her and it's kind of funny, right? It's like, oh, we're talking about this $25 million house and we're hung up on $50,000. I'm like, really? Right. Really?

1:07:57 JC Pollard: Yeah. I mean, some of these negotiations I've been in, I'm just like, and you know what, actually on the note of getting better at saying what you feel and calling things out. I've started to do that. I'll be like, hey, could I just step back and express like where my head's at right now? And, you know, if they give me permission, I'm like, guys, we are talking about a 4% increase in conversion rates that leads to $3 million of additional revenue. And we are hung up over $7,000 right now. I'm like, where are we missing the mark? But just starting to like call it out. For some reason, I feel like the second we start talking about dollars and cents, people like lose sight of what we're trying to solve for or what we're actually talking about. And it just becomes a price conversation that just drives me crazy. So probably something I can do better to start framing those conversations more effectively to avoid that. But that's one thing that drives me crazy.

1:08:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it is interesting, right? And it's almost like, again, like almost back to this million-dollar listing thing. It's like, oh my God, it's just part of the game. Like, you know, you're going to land right here. Like, do we really have to go back and forth 6 times?

1:08:55 JC Pollard: Like, can we just agree on the number and not play the Yeah, it's also funny when you're selling to a company that just got like a $200 million round of funding and your software is like $35,000 and you're hung up on price. I'm like, man, where's the $200 million going? I don't know. I understand that businesses have to be really diligent and conscious of every spend, but it is just funny sometimes when I think about it out of context like that.

1:09:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So, JC, I usually ask this question about kind of the advice that you would give to somebody that's starting out in sales today, but I want to adjust this based on kind of your SDR to AE transition. What advice would you give to a former SDR who's starting in their first role as an AE?

1:09:35 JC Pollard: I love that. The first thing I would advise, you know the old adage like don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want?

1:09:42 Scott Ingram: Yep.

1:09:43 JC Pollard: I apply that, but it's like don't prepare for the job you have now, prepare for the job you want next. I'd start listening to the people's calls that are a level above you and start picking their brain, like go that next level. So if you're an SDR now, that means Start preparing like you're an AE today. If you're a brand new AE, start preparing like the people that are a segment above you. Like, learn from people that are doing this at a level so high that they've risen through the ranks. That's the first thing. The second thing for brand new AEs, don't stop flexing those muscles that you built as an SDR. Pipeline solves most problems. You got a low close rate? Better have a ton extra pipe to back it up. So like, Just because you start, you know, you got promoted into a closing role, don't stop prospecting. Don't stop building pipeline. If you can just create an immense amount of pipeline, you've all of a sudden given yourself some cushion to mess up, to make some mistakes and to lose deals and still have enough in the back to ultimately succeed and hit your number while learning.

1:10:40 Scott Ingram: Nice. I like that a lot. I like that. What about for you? I mean, what do you want to know from the top sellers, the top performers in other organizations?

1:10:48 JC Pollard: Yeah, I get a lot of fulfillment out of mentoring SDRs or helping new hires get up to speed. Like, I have recognized that I want to be in leadership 100%. That's where I want to spend most of my career. I've heard very conflicting things from many people. Oh, make sure you go close for a decade and get upmarket experience before getting into leadership. I've also heard other people be like, dive into leadership as soon as you can and just go for it and learn. I'm curious from not necessarily the sales professionals that you've seen succeed, but from the successful sales leaders, are there any trend lines you've noticed as far as the experience they had before getting into leadership?

1:11:24 Scott Ingram: Oh man, this is interesting. So just the fact that you're asking that question, right, says a lot. And it's something that I'm really intentional in bringing to… I mean, this has been a significant component of every Sales Success Summit we've ever had is kind of this intentional thought about how do you manage your career? Right, as a sales professional, and what are the right ways to do this? The first thing that came to mind as you started to talk through that was I read an article really recently that was suggesting that the length of our careers is just going to be longer. We don't have 30-year careers anymore. That's really not a thing. And so I think the time horizon is longer, and I don't know, my bias in that Is be patient. Like, take the time, use the opportunity to learn. I mean, one of the key pieces of advice, and we've touched on this a lot in this show, is for folks that are looking to make that SDR to AE transition, I'm like, spend more time in the SDR role when you've got it nailed, right? When you can be a top performer and do exactly what you suggested and act as an AE, like, take that opportunity to learn without the additional quota pressure. Right? When the SDR stuff is easy, because you're not going to have the opportunity again. I think that can be applied here as well. I think the idea of getting that broad base of experience across segments, across industries, so that you have some real breadth and depth to your foundation as a seller, and frankly, get to learn, get to experience working for a variety of different people and different styles so that you can understand leadership. Because what's great about where you are is you know that it's a path that you want to go down, so you can be intentional about your learning.

1:13:15 JC Pollard: I love that. Yeah, that's why I'm leaning too, is like right now I just got promoted to mid-market, so I'm going to get some experience selling to bigger companies, which I think will make me way more well-rounded. And that's like, I've gotten very conflicting feedback on this, and I think the way I'm definitely leaning is I want to go learn a ton more from a bunch of different people. Before taking that leap into having people underneath me. So that's super interesting.

1:13:37 Scott Ingram: And then beyond that, I mean, if you don't know my style and my approach yet, go talk to people who are in the place that you want to be and ask them the question, hey, if you could do this over again, or if you were in my shoes, right? Like just turn it into mentoring opportunities. Like how would you approach this? Like given this environment, right? Recognizing that the way that you did it 20 years ago Maybe it's different because of just the world that we're in today.

1:14:02 JC Pollard: It's kind of like what we were just talking about, like start preparing for the role you want now.

1:14:06 Scott Ingram: That's it.

1:14:06 JC Pollard: Start asking those people, start learning from them. I love that.

1:14:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's it. And the sales leader who has impressed me the most with his approach is KD, is Kevin Dorsey. And when he started in leadership, he called like 100 sales leaders to just pick their brain and understand them and learn from all of them. I mean, imagine how fast his development was accelerated because of that learning. And we're able to do that. You could do that through podcasts to some degree, right? It's not quite as personalized. You're not actually having a conversation, right? But you can hear it. And again, like my approach, I like to learn from the people who actually have been successful doing this stuff. Let me talk to them, not the person who wrote the book about it, who's maybe never actually done it.

1:14:51 JC Pollard: Yeah, that's hilarious. There's a lot of people that have written books on things they've never accomplished. That's actually such a good call out. No, I love that. And Katie, that's, of course you mentioned Katie. She's like one of the most well looked up to, well respected sales leaders in the industry. So clearly did something right.

1:15:05 Scott Ingram: So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Someday, someday maybe I'll branch out and go down the leadership path and continue to explore this. But man, I'm obsessed with what I think for myself. I mean, I am an intentional individual contributor. I do this for a reason. I've not gone down the leadership path. Path for a reason. But we all have to make that choice. We all have to know and understand what drives us. And it sounds like your motivation is right, right? In terms of like, I love watching other people win. Like, I want to help them.

1:15:32 JC Pollard: Man, I've referenced her so many times. I just had the best manager. She just got promoted to director, actually. So stoked for her. But she was just so good at helping me realize the things that do drive me. And one of the most consistent themes was like, man, I love team wins and creating team culture more than any individual accolades you could achieve. So it's cool recognizing that early. And now it's just a matter of, you know, trying to learn as much as I can now so that I can be the best I can be as a leader down the road.

1:16:01 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, man, we have covered a ton of ground. I asked you a lot of questions. Was there anything that somehow or other we didn't touch on that you were hoping we would get to?

1:16:12 JC Pollard: Yeah, I don't think so. We talked about a lot. I think that was pretty, pretty all-encompassing.

1:16:17 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. So let's wrap it up. And I always try… I mean, again, covered a ton of ground, but I want to make this actionable. So for the person listening to this, what would you challenge them to actually do over the course of the next, say, 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:16:33 JC Pollard: Oh, I love this. I think all improvement starts with what I call an audit. Like a personal audit where you literally take out a piece of paper and like write down the things that you're really proud of right now that you think are going well. Write down and diagnose the main causes of things that make you feel inadequate or opportunities for improvement, and then prioritize that list and decide what you want to tackle first. I think a mistake I made a lot of times before was like, there's a million things I want to work on and I'm devoting a tiny bit of attention to all of them. Rather than doing a true diagnostic of where I'm at, picking the most pressing need for improvement and tackling that head on. So I think that's actionable no matter what role you're in now or what you're trying to get better at. Like, first step, audit yourself, have a very, very candid conversation with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, and then try to decide how to tackle it from there.

1:17:24 Scott Ingram: That is fantastic. JC, this has been a blast. Thanks for taking the time, man.

1:17:28 JC Pollard: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast.

1:17:34 Scott Ingram: To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.