195: How Susan Zuzic Dominated Enterprise Sales at PeopleAI: Six Years at #1

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 Susan Zuzic. Susan is the top seller at People.ai for the last 6 years running as their President of Global Accounts. Welcome to the show, Susan.

0:36 Susan Zuzic: Thanks, Scott. So excited to be here.

0:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, this is a fun conversation for us. Obviously we have some history that maybe we'll get into, but I am all about starting the show every time with some immediate value for our listeners. So let's first talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales.

0:57 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, when you asked me this question, I had to really think about it because when you're doing your job and you're working through sales, sometimes you don't really reflect on what it is you're doing that makes you great, right? And as I reflected, I really thought one of the things that I think I do incredibly well is I'm a storyteller. You may hear it on the podcast today as we talk through it, but I It is something that I find my customers and prospects, they want to know how other people have been successful. They want to understand where they can go. They want to understand what the journey is, et cetera. And so I often am not selling features and functions, et cetera. I'm selling outcomes and I'm telling them the story and taking them on the journey of how they're going to get there and how can they transform their businesses. And so I really work on, you can't really do that unless you understand their business, Right? I may not be an employee of that company, but I sure know a ton about that company. And I'm going to know all of the key players. I'm going to know what they care about. I'm going to know where their initiatives are, where some of the bodies are buried as people talk to me and share their insights. And I'm going to develop a really clear point of view to then be able to tell that story to multiple people across the company so that at the end of the day, Everybody gets locked into that vision. They understand where we can go, and they start to support that, and it starts to become part of their narrative as well. It's hard for people to remember all of the details and all the differentiators and all that stuff. But what is really easy for people to gravitate to is a success story, a place that they're going to go and head to together. And so I think that's the number one thing that I think I do really well. In my customers.

2:48 Scott Ingram: That story, is it a success story of another customer? Is it another similar example, or are you telling their story?

2:56 Susan Zuzic: It depends. I think that the success stories are sometimes accompanied by, this is possible and people just like you have done it, but it has to be about them, right? Because at the end of the day, people, they want to know what others are doing. That's great, but they always feel like they're unique and different and their company is just a little bit special, right? And so you really have to bring it down into their terms, into what matters for them. You have to speak their language. You have to take all of the initiatives and things they're trying to accomplish, and you have to translate that into your story so that they can buy into it and be… it can become their own because it feels like you're speaking in their language. I use the success of others to help influence them along the way, and sometimes I'll even pair them up at different parts of the cycle where they can talk to one another. But the story has to be about them. And it has to be like, hey, why couldn't we go there? This is where you could be. Imagine X, Y, Z, da. And then people are like, I didn't know that was possible. It can be possible for you if we do these things, right? And so it becomes very specific about them.

4:04 Scott Ingram: Love it. What's number 2?

4:06 Susan Zuzic: So number 2, for anyone that is out there that is trying to sell and trying to be the best, trying to do big deals, et cetera, it's hard. It's not easy, right? It's not, oh, I just wake up and woo, like money flies and showers me as I get out of bed. It doesn't really happen that way. It's hard work. And I'm almost like relentless about this where it's, I just don't stop. I don't give up. I just keep going. I always, I joke with my colleagues sometimes, like when things are like shit's hitting the fan and things aren't going the way you want, it's like Dory from Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. It's that mindset because you're gonna have bad days. You're gonna have roadblocks. You're going to have a long I remember at one of my customers, like, I heard no, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 times from all these different people. I was like, I have to keep finding someone who's going to say yes. So not letting that stop you, having that growth mindset, continuing to be persistent and positive, even when you may be getting doors shut left and center. At big companies, there are lots of people that can say no. But there's not a lot of people that can say yes. And it's my job to find those people that can say yes. And that's not, sometimes you get lucky, but it's not, hey, yeah, I've got this project and all this money. Let's go do something. It doesn't always happen that way. So being consistent, being persistent in a pleasant way, and keeping myself motivated and constantly thinking about, okay, what can I do to break in? What can I do to give myself an unfair advantage? Who can I partner with? How do I continue to provide value? So it's like an ongoing thing. It never stops. Once the deal is closed, it's just a whole other set of things that you have to focus on because you can consistently keep growing and keep building. So it's that growth mindset, that persistence. Whereas I feel like a lot of people that I've worked with, they hear a no and sometimes they're like, ah, and that's it. And they get discouraged and they stop. If I had done that in many of my pursuits, That would've been it. Like, I wouldn't have hit my number, I wouldn't have grown, I wouldn't have gotten where I needed to go, I wouldn't have sold the 8, 9-figure, it just wouldn't have happened. And so I think that persistence is key and it's not easy, but it's so necessary to get there. And then holding yourself accountable to that, be like, ah, today's not a good day, tomorrow's gonna be better. Or remember all those other great things that happened? Let's just keep pushing this boulder uphill. 'Cause eventually it gets to a point where it starts rolling down at such a force that no one can stop it. So I would say that would be the second thing.

6:58 Scott Ingram: I'm reminded of… I think our connection points go even further back than I was initially thinking. Didn't you manage the Bazaarvoice account at Eloqua?

7:07 Susan Zuzic: I did. Yeah.

7:08 Scott Ingram: When I was at Bazaarvoice, and I'll skip ahead here a little bit, Susan and I worked together on the same team at Eloqua, so I'm sure we'll touch on that again. But Susan had sold Eloqua to my previous company, so I was at Bazaarvoice before Eloqua. And one of the, one of the things that they said that I thought was just so amazing from a mindset perspective was we are going to hear no 2 or 3 or even 4 times in a deal. And it's a completely different game when you expect it, you know, it's going to happen and you almost get excited about it. It's okay, cool. I got my first no. That's great. And you get into creative problem-solving mode rather than, oh, game over. And I think a lot of people don't understand that, that no, and this isn't like brute force, beat people over the head. You said no, I don't care that you said no, I'm just going It's not that at all. It's finding another way. We'll come back to that, but let's do number 3.

8:05 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I think number 3 is really important. There's going to be tons of people that will be involved in your deal and your success. So when I say, hey, I'm number 1, it's okay. There's no chance that I become number 1 without aligning with my resources internally and with the right people externally at my customers. Impossible. Anytime I win a deal, there's 15 people I'm thanking internally. And it's super important to understand what people are good at in your organization, who they could be partnered with, what are the strengths that you could be bringing forward, who do you need to partner with on the product side, who do you need to partner with on the executive side, who should you pair with the other. There's so many moments and so many people because when a company is trying to do business with you, especially we're a startup, right? And even when you were at Bazaarvoice, I'm sure it was startup as well. And so you're not only just selling, hey, we've got this great product, right? But you're saying, hey, we're also a really great company. You can trust us. And if it's just this one sales rep that's just showing up, doing everything on their own, maybe they've got their SE, that doesn't really instill a ton of confidence, right? But when you're bringing in your executive meeting with their executive, you're bringing in someone from success, you're bringing in maybe the services team, you've got someone on product being like, wow, that's really interesting. Here's where we're going and here's our roadmap. And doing all these things, kind of showing them what life would be like, who they're going to surround themselves with. That is when magic happens. And so I find I work, I almost look at myself as like, a project manager. It's funny, like I have to be very organized in coordinating all of these internal resources. First of all, to know, remember that story, that mission? They need to know internally what it is I'm trying to accomplish at the customer. They need to be aligned. We need to make sure the product does it, that services can deliver on it, that support can support it, right? So it's like getting everybody along that journey. 'Cause I don't know, I don't know about other organizations, but sometimes we'll sell, we'll land, expand, expand. So you have to be on that same journey together. So internal alignment is huge. I know more about our product. I would go toe-to-toe with anybody at our company. And it's not unique to People.ai. I've done that everywhere I've ever been. Oracle Marketing Cloud, I've done it when I was at Wayin. I did it when I was at Eloqua, right? Like, I knew the product so well that I could be the SE. I can go toe-to-toe. With our product leaders and challenge them and push them on, hey, this is where we should go. This is what my customers need, because I knew it so well. And I think that's super important. The second part of that is we talk about alignment. It's alignment at the customer, right? Again, if I'm trying to do something with that organization, their big organization, there are so many people that make that decision, right? People are terrified to fail. People are terrified to spend money, and then everybody's pointing at them saying, Oh, you screwed up or whatever, right? They're happy if everything goes well, but people are usually very risk-averse. So, you need to expand and make that decision easier for them. So, you bring in tons of others that can support, can be excited, can get aligned across multiple champions, right? And we have people, we have the data to see like, how do deals get done, right? And people can see, they have the metrics. Like, I talk to 5 times more people than the average rep from all departments. And it's not random. It's, I'm trying to learn, understand, and align. And that is key. People make this work, right? And it's the people that need to align to what we're trying to accomplish. And so that, I think, is the third thing I do really well. And it's like part PM, part strategist. And at the end of the day, we get the outcomes that that we set out to achieve.

12:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I laughed when I saw the notes that you sent ahead. The one thing I ask of my guests is just help me understand what your top 3 are and where we're headed. And when you said like the project management piece, I thought, because I think that becomes an element, particularly in enterprise sales, there is just so many moving parts. You have to at some level have some of that mindset of some of that skill set in order to put all of these pieces together and make it work. I'm curious, as you think about sort of the totality of your time, What percentage is external-facing working with your clients and how much is internally the coordination and the work that you're doing with all of these partners inside your organization?

13:05 Susan Zuzic: We can actually see that with our own tool, like we drink our own champagne. I can see that I have about 60% of my meetings are external.

13:15 Scott Ingram: Okay. Honestly, that's higher than I would have expected because I think a lot of times you find that as we get into these larger enterprise deals because of all the pieces that you talked about. I'm coordinating with the executive team. I'm coordinating with the product team. I'm coordinating with the success team. You see a lot of that. How do you… I don't want to overlook that piece. Obviously, we're talking to our customers. How do you really just work on building those relationships so that you can make asks of people when you don't have authority, they don't report to you? It's a very different dynamic that we have to manage that. And this is one of those things I think we just don't talk about enough in sales is how do we manage all of these internal resources and internal relationships?

13:57 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I think you earn it over time. You have to get yourself to a baseline of credibility where you know enough that you're helpful to them as well. For example, product isn't going to engage with me if I don't know anything about our product and I'm not bringing them interesting insights from the customer. They're going to be like, yeah, okay, thanks for pinging me on Slack. But if I am, I've learned our product inside out, I'm curious, I have really good insights from the field, or hey, my customer said this, et cetera. All of a sudden now it becomes a give-get relationship. There's something in it for them. There's something in it for me. Anywhere I go, I try to learn. Actually, before I get there, I try to know what I need to know before I get there so that I'm super smart. Usually the first few days when I'm in the office, I'll already know and I'll pick up the phone and I'll just start calling everybody I know externally so that everybody hears. I remember I did this at People.ai. It was like my first week on the job. I came into the office, it was quiet. Everybody's like going into the little telephone booth to make a call. And I was like, yeah, okay. I started dialing and I did it right in the pit, like in front of everyone. I just start making calls. It's like my third day talking, calling all the CMOs I knew, talking to heads of sales, like just chatting about what we do. And everybody was like, who is this? Who's this person? Interesting. And then I started learning, they're like, she knows what she's talking about. Then you start pinging them, you start asking questions, you start bringing them insights, and you get the knowledge of who do I need for certain scenarios? Who's my top person for success-related things? Who's my top person for services? Who's my legal person that helps me overcome XYZ? Oftentimes, actually, You just go to the top rep, try to figure out who that top person is, become friendly with them. And they're… nobody really calls them. They're like scared of them or something. It's very strange. Like a lot of, oh, people never ask me that. It's, what do you mean? That's the first person I call. Who do you work with? Who do you rely on? What do you do? And that's like my shortlist. And then I just start making those connections early. Hey, I'm here. I'm going to be working with you at some point. Is it okay if I reach out when I have questions or pursue that. I usually like to work with you like this. People are like, oh yeah, great. But it's like you establish who you are, you try to get a little bit of something for them, right? And then figure out who those people are that are gonna actually be your people. And it's like everywhere I've gone, I've developed my people, even though they may not report to me, but like we just work constantly together. We do great things. And then They're figuring out how to be on your success path together. And then you just execute and it becomes nice. So like when I first started here and you could track it, it's like my internal time was way higher. Whereas now we just, we're in a good flow, we know. And plus we have AI help, our own AI helping us. So it's like people can see what's happened on meetings, they can see what's going on. All of that stuff just gets fed to them. So we spend less time on internal stuff. Whereas before everybody had to be reiterated. Now I can just be like, hey, look at this summary of everything that's happened, read this, and then we'll hop on a 15-minute if you have questions. And so, I couldn't do stuff like that when I first started. So, I did spend way more on internal calls. And the same kind of thing I think is happening out there with other customers. It's like a lot of meetings, a lot of things that are happening, just kind of reiterating the same thing where it's like, we're trying to be really efficient, Definitely prepare. We definitely follow up. We definitely debrief, but we're efficient about it.

17:43 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Let's contextualize. So talk about your role, talk about People.ai, and talk about how you got into this number one spot that you've hung onto for as long as you've been there.

17:54 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I was, geez, I guess now I've been in sales or sales leadership for almost 20 years. Crazy to say that. It was weird when I was thinking about it. I was like, like, wow, that's a lot of time. It feels like just yesterday when I started as a little BDR at Eloqua. But no, at People.ai, I had just sold a company. I was the CRO at a company called Wayin. We had sold to Cheetah Digital, and I was actually pregnant at the time with my second. And I was like, okay, it's really hard having babies at home with teams all around the world. Like I had a team in Australia, in New Zealand, in London, in New York, and I was living in San Francisco at the time.

18:38 Scott Ingram: And you're already not getting sleep.

18:40 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. And I had a toddler, I had like a 2-and-a-half-year-old, and I was just like, ooh, okay, geez. And we had been acquired and I just didn't want to get back into the email space, right? That just wasn't of interest to me. So I was like, I need… I'm going to go do something else. And I remember one of my reps visited me and he was like, Why don't you just go sell? Why don't you just go after big whales and go do the thing that you're like, you don't have to go lead everything. You're a different life stage. Why don't you just go have some fun and go sell? And I remember I was like, okay, can I swallow my ego and do that? I did. And it was supposed to just be for a couple years, whatever, but it was just so much fun. It was such a blast to like, I found People.ai and I really thought about, I needed to sell something that was intellectually stimulating, something that did big transformation at companies where I could still be working with executives, still have a big voice with our internal team, et cetera. And I joined the company and 6 and a half years later, here I am. It has been a fantastic ride and it's been so much fun. And it's like, if you really love sales, it doesn't matter what role you do, you just have that appreciation, you have that love for it. And I truly enjoy what I do. It's a blast. And just watching customers succeed and what they can accomplish, like, it's… if I could share details, you'd be like, oh my God. Like, it's just been, it's just been so amazing to watch it. But did… if you told me prior to that, hey, you're going to go and be whale hunting at a small startup again, I would have been like, what? But it's been fantastic. Yeah, it's been fantastic.

20:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I actually checked this. I was on Gemini the other day and I was like, hey, who's the first to use the term intentional individual contributor? And it told me all about me because that has always been my thought, right? I have had plenty of opportunities to move into leadership, but for a whole variety of reasons and a lot of them lifestyle, right? I wanted to make sure that I got to be with my kids. My youngest daughter turned 18 yesterday, so I don't have kids anymore, technically.

20:45 Susan Zuzic: Oh my God.

20:46 Scott Ingram: It's wild.

20:47 Susan Zuzic: I remember when they were little, Scott.

20:49 Scott Ingram: I know we were, gosh, we were kids when we started doing this together. Yeah, it's so crazy. But again, for me, so much of that choice was about, A, I love just direct work with customers. I like being in that spot to make that impact. But it was also about just being in control of my schedule and having that autonomy and ability to do what I do the way that I want to do it without a whole team of other people that needed my time on their schedule. So it's been a fantastic Fantastic thing for me, and it's so interesting. A lot of people through this show have made the move that you did, who thought I didn't know this was okay to do. I've been leading, and turns out maybe this is a better thing for me. Now I'm on the other side. Now I'm looking at I might have an empty nest. Does that change what I want to do with my career? I've joked for years. I'm like, I already have kids. I don't need to lead. Now I'm thinking actually I don't have kids, so maybe I need to lead. I don't know. It's a really interesting. Kind of inflection point. Let's put your results in context. So you've been number 1 for 6+ years. Just quantify that in whatever way that you can, because I know you're killing it.

22:03 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. So this year, we're almost done with the year. Our year ends in January. I am close to 500% of my number. And that's not like a small number. So it's been a great year. It's been a great year. But throughout my journey, it's been like, 200%, 300%. I'd say probably this is my best year yet, but yeah, it's been a really fantastic year.

22:25 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Amazing. And what is that difference between consistent 200%, 300% and then moving to 500%? Did something else click? Did you find another gear? Is it just time and territory? And what do you think that difference is? Because obviously 200%, 300% being number one, that's awesome. 550% is particularly awesome.

22:45 Susan Zuzic: Thanks. Yeah, that's good. I have never met a top rep that jumps from company to company every year. Okay? When I was interviewing people, I remember in the past, they'd be like, oh, I'm the top rep at my company. And you'd look at their resume and it was like, been here a year, 2 years. I'm like, that means that somebody, they walked into a deal or some bluebird or something happened, or they were on some team that pulled them forward. You cannot be at 500% of your number or 300%, 200% consistently year over year unless you've put in the time usually at a company, right? Like you are building, it's like building a business. So why am I almost at 500%? It's because I've been building a business, right? And the business is taking off this year. And so there were some bets that I had made, at sometimes you've got the big whale, maybe the mothership, but you can't quite crack the mothership. So you go off to the satellites for a bit and you try to get the satellites working really well. You get them so successful that the mothership can't ignore. This is one of those moments where that kind of thinking and that mentality has always been what I've been doing here is how do I get in? How do I create value? How do I grow that until it hits that inflection point that it it just explodes in a good way. So I think that would be the difference. And I talk to newer reps that come to our company, or either my friends that are starting other places. It's like year 1's like building the foundation. Year 2, you start to see the benefits. Year 3, people who maybe you talked to in the past that weren't ready, all of a sudden are ready. Things start coming up because some of these cycles, they take a while. People aren't always just ready to buy something right away. And they take time. So it just keeps compounding. If you're doing the right things and you're building a successful business, it will grow. And I also think our product has gotten, just hit that point. Like it's not product market fit either. I think it's now people are like, I just need this. And they're less risk averse than they were 6 and a half years ago. Now they're like, geez, I need the data for AI. So yeah, let's go. So it makes a big difference. So all those factors added in. But I haven't changed how I work. Like, I just have been doing the same things. Like I said, consistency, persistence, just kept swimming. It kept going. It's those micro moves every single day that compile to these big years. But people don't see all of that. They just see, oh, the big year. It's because of all those moments and all the things we've been doing to build up to that.

25:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I've got another friend who I was thinking of that's also in the north of 500% range this year. And I was just looking at his profile. Yep. Yep. Been there 14 years. I'm really glad that you called that out because I think there is a lot to that. And it's also been very interesting for me to look at, this October we'll be celebrating 10 years of this show, right? So now we're 190-some interviews in at this point. And I've been watching those folks' careers progress. And I often find, yep, they were a top performer because they'd been someplace. Also, I will call out, I qualify against the lottery winners. That's why I call them, right? I won't interview somebody who got lucky and walked into the right territory at the right time. Has to be consistent year over year kind of performance and not you got lucky. And it's very difficult to repeat in different places. I think the value of longevity and experience and tenure is way underrated. Folks are a little too eager to make moves unless there's a really compelling reason. I think you need to take a really hard look at that.

26:28 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. Because it's like I'm a find a great place, park it and build. That's been my mentality, even like my first stint. With Eloqua and Oracle, that ended up being 10 years. Geez, I didn't expect that. But it's just if you're at a great place and it's growing and you're learning and you can build, it's like really, it's like building your own business. That's the beauty of sales. I really feel like it's one of the places that you have the autonomy to be the CEO of your own business, which is really exciting.

26:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Without all of the other headaches, you don't have to worry about compliance and the HR and all the other things, which is what I love about it. Susie, you actually mentioned something earlier that I wonder if ties together because I think there's an element here also from a patient's perspective. Let me first ask the question this way. Like how often, when you think about your big deals, like your really big wins, how often is that the first win with that organization versus it's the, no, that was like our third or fourth win because we've expanded.

27:27 Susan Zuzic: Oh yeah. Usually third or fourth or fifth or sixth win, right?

27:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

27:33 Susan Zuzic: I have this slide that I show when we talk about like at SKO or your win story or whatever. I have this layered cake I show. It's this fun, like beautiful layered cake. And it's like, this was layer 1, this was layer 2. This is how this deal got built over years. And I really feel like you cannot do large transactions unless you're in some, hey, take out competitor A and move that spend to competitor B, like totally different. We were evangelical. It's a little different in the startup space, but in what we do, you're just not going to go win those big deals unless you prove success and build trust, prove success, build trust, prove success. Oftentimes it is like I have other customers who are maybe a little smaller, not as big. Well, if you're like a $40 billion company, you're not doing big bang from day one. You're just not. It's just not going to happen. If you're a smaller, more mid-enterprise, then yeah, like we, that happens all the time too. But the big guys, they typically are You prove it, prove it, and then go. So typically that I do find that. And then so I will stay very engaged when we land because I look at the land as the next sales cycle. And then it's every time we land again, there's always something else we're trying, right? Again, the next sales cycle. So I'll literally be on with my services and my CS team and I'm like, welcome to the next sales cycle. And it's like our debrief kickoff call. They're just like, oh, okay. They're so used to it by now, right? Because every opportunity in front of the customer is an opportunity to further and grow together. And so we really have to take that. So yeah, it's consistent. I don't know, but maybe some people in their industry is not like that, but for us it's very much land, expand, keep growing and build that on top of that success. And so it may be like 3, 4, 5 wins.

29:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think this is a total soapbox thing for me, but I think it's just an overlooked way of doing business. It's just so powerful. And often I think people are afraid of, oh my gosh, they want to do a proof of concept. Like a proof of concept is a win, especially if you know you can deliver and we're clear about what happens next and where we go. And similarly, I don't see the big deals are so rarely the first deal. It's the 3rd or 4th or 5th or 6th. And we have to build a lot of trust and we really have to prove ourselves and really deliver before they're going to make that scale of a bet. Like you're not going to bet the farm on maybe it'll work, but, uh-uh. It's not how it's going to go down.

30:02 Susan Zuzic: Especially not in today's economy and how things have been for, I feel like the last 10 years even, right? Like even 5, however you want to skin it, people are just more risk averse. And so you really have to check all the balances. Even now, it's any deal that's getting done, CFO's involved. That was not the case when I started originally in my career. It's like now it's like, I'm negotiating with the CFO. It's, oh, where'd you come from? But that's what happens. Yeah.

30:32 Scott Ingram: Susan, what's your origin story? How'd you get into sales in the first place?

30:36 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I was just out of university and I thought I was going to get into marketing. I was interviewing for marketing jobs and then I started to see what they were making and I was, I don't know if this is like where I want to go. Just sorry if any marketers are listening, but I was like, Entry-level marketing positions don't pay that well. Then I started, I stumbled into this one company. It was like an internet consulting franchise that you would sell. It was like modular technology. You snap it together. You're selling like a franchise to someone who could sell websites to people and whatever. And I remember they sold me on it and I was like, eh, I'll give this a try, whatever. And I learned so much. I was great at it. And I was like, wow, this is really cool. But it was straight commission. And I was like, I need a little bit more meat on the bone. So, I started at Eloqua as a BDR, and that's when I like started talking to the top reps and the people that were making… and I started getting exposed to this whole world of tech and what was possible. And I just remember being like, wow. So, like, I broke the comp plan as a BDR. I think they had to pay me 6 figures as a BDR, and they were like, we got to promote her. We got to get her out of this role. So they moved me into inside sales. And then a couple years later, it was like they gave me like the shittiest territory. They were like tumbleweeds, like blowing in the wind. It was awful. But I figured out a way to make it work. And they're like, oh, okay. And then I got the Texas territory. I remember that. And I remember the kind of turning point, like I had gotten top rep of the year, like stuff like that. It's just this little inside seller. And I remember the turning point for me was If you really want to start doing the big stuff, you have to be a field seller. But I just didn't think that they were ever going to promote someone at the time in Eloqua, like from inside sales to the field. It just had never happened. And I remember the rep that was in Texas, he pings me, chatters me or something. I don't know what we were using, right? And he was like, I'm leaving. You should go for my job. Literally, I was like, huh? And then my boss pinged me and he's like, hey, how would you like to move to the field? And I was like, maybe we should talk about it. And literally, maybe 6 months later, I was moved to the Bay Area covering enterprise accounts. And it was a pivotal moment for my career because I was living in Canada previously and like moving to the Bay, working with these big companies. That's when I got exposed to everything. And the rest is history. I got to work with all these massive companies. I remember being at Twitter when Twitter didn't have a sales team. Literally, they were building their team and I was like, I'm gonna help you generate leads and we're gonna do this. And I remember checking in at Facebook when they just bought Instacart and it was just a little garage with 10 people in it. And I'd walk by and they're like, Zuckerberg's there. And I was like, so it was just like all of a sudden I was in the mecca of tech. It was accelerated learning for me and accelerated networking. And then when we got acquired by Oracle, That's when I felt like my PhD in enterprise selling, like, came, because having to navigate at a super large company to get deals done is so hard. Some of these companies…

33:53 Scott Ingram: Selling to their customers, getting the deal done with Oracle, like, please, can I sell this?

33:58 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I was like, please just give me an order form. I just want to give it to the customer. It's funny, we laugh, but anybody that works at a big company understands How much goes through all of that to actually be able to sell to the customer? And then you're selling to massive customers as well. I got to learn from people that were more tenured than me, people who had been selling in a different way, selling to IT. I had always done line of business. I got to see a different slant to it, and I felt like it really rounded out my understanding. And when we were Eloqua, it was more point solution, but all of a sudden we bought 10 different different top companies, and all of a sudden it was a whole suite that you could sell directly to the executives as opposed to this point solution. So, that again helped elevate my learning to how do I sell to executives? How do I sell to multiple groups outside of just one department and really make this transformational thing? And I found that it was the best training of my life without realizing it was training, because you're just in it. But it was, I learned a ton and yeah, and that's when I started leading. And then when you lead things with a different lens. So I feel like everything that I've done in my career has really helped me to be a better partner to my customers and be a better seller.

35:13 Scott Ingram: I mean, your adventure, even just looking at sort of Eloqua Oracle, you went all the way up the food chain, right? From BDR to VP, we went public for a whole one quarter. We got acquired by Oracle. I think you were actually working an Oracle deal while we were being acquired, got all screwed up in that.

35:29 Susan Zuzic: People were very happy with me or very upset with me, just depended on how they viewed the trends. Because I remember it was funny because I didn't know that I was doing this. I didn't know that they were going to buy us, but I knew something was weird when someone was like calling me and, hey, how do you replace Siebel Marketing? How do you work with Siebel Marketing? I was like, I don't. We replaced it. Why don't you find out why you're really calling us? And if there's something, I'd love to work with you. And at the time, the executive team was like, Yep, sell them some Eloqua. I was like, okay. And it was a big bake-off. It was like us versus Marketo, I think, at the time. And I didn't realize, but I was pulling people out of integration meetings and like selling meetings to try to actually sell people, sorry, Eloqua to Oracle. Later, they all told me, like, they were like, yeah, we were hiding in the car while you were selling because we were going to go in for another meeting. And it was Funny times, but I think it was a really great buy for them and I think it made a ton of sense. And, but it was a really interesting time for me personally. And I know for the company, like once we got acquired, that was really, that was really interesting for us.

36:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Usually I ask the question, if you could go back and start over, if you would've approached your career differently. I want to ask it differently because I think that A, you can't do that. And B, this environment is so much different. If you were starting, like you're coming outta university now, How would you approach your sales career? Like, where would you want to start? How would you think about building the depth and breadth of experience that you've been able to build over the course of your career to this point?

37:04 Susan Zuzic: Well, it's so different now. We have AI, which can teach you pretty much anything. Anything I want to learn, I can learn right now. It's at the access of my fingertips. Whereas before, you, what were you going to do? Google it and maybe find some like little freaky article that talked about Challenger, you know what I mean? Or you'd have a trainer come in and you'd learn that, or maybe you'd read something, right? But now it's like anything you want to learn, you can learn it on AI, with AI, and you can even get coaching, et cetera. So, it's, I think if I could start right now, if I'm like fresh out and I'm like, let's go, I would go to one of the top AI, like super AI native companies because the way that we've sold in the past is completely changing, right? This tenure that you talk about, Like, it's going to be here, but we're all going to have to change and we're all going to have to adapt to using the latest in AI technology so that we can be and remain competitive, so that we can continue to show up the way that customers expect us to. And we're going to have to do more than we've ever done before because the AI is going to help us be more effective. So I would go to one of these super AI-first companies. I would learn and consume everything possible. I would have the AI fill my blind spots of experience and second-guess and check everything that I'm doing. I would read, maybe even a lot of people don't wanna read things. I would have AI summarize the main points and things that I need to know for the particular role or whatever it is that I'm doing. Because there's so much available to you now, right? They even teach courses at school on how to sell now. Where it's like when we were coming out of school, there was none of that.

38:52 Scott Ingram: Yep. Here's the phone book. Here's the phone.

38:55 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. I remember when I started my first cold call, I remember I was working for a financial advisor and they're like, we need to set up meetings with people to like handle their finances. So here's the rich areas, circle, circle, go call them. I was like, okay. Like literally that was what we were doing, right? So it's so different now. But again, I would adapt it, but then I would also find somebody that could mentor me. I would get the AI, I would learn all it, because that's going to be super easy and native for me because I'm growing up in that era, right? So I'm going to be like superpower in that and learn and all of that. But then I'm going to find my, maybe a few mentors that have been in sales, maybe people like us who have been in it for a long time, have that experience that could, maybe you're paying them to coach you, right? If you don't know them, there's services out there, people you can get that kind of coaching. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a relative, maybe it's a colleague, right? But there's somebody with tenure that can help fill that blind spot because I don't think AI is at a point where it can replace everything, that feeling, that gut, that, oh, I've seen this situation before, or, hey, you know what? It sounds like you really need… this guy needs to be paired up with blah, blah, blah, right? You're going to need And I think having that person, having that mentor or that other voice just to bounce things off of is really important. So I would couple it with both. And I don't know, I don't think you necessarily have to start as a BDR like I did, but geez, was it a great place to start because you ever hear that one? It's if you give a man a fish, he's not hungry, but if you teach a man to fish, he's never gonna be hungry like his whole life. That's how I feel is like I learned how to hunt. And I've never been hungry. Like, I can find my leads. Like, I'm not dependent on anyone. I know how to get in. I know how to do these things because I had to do it. Even if you're not, I wouldn't say go be a BDR for years. Go do it or find an inside sales role or something where you have to try to generate some of your own business just to build that muscle. Because I think it's something that's going to be, it's so valuable and so many people don't have that. They're nervous. They don't know how to do it. Those would be the things I would do.

41:08 Scott Ingram: I like the idea of seeking out that BDR kind of pure prospecting role because that's where you started. For me, that wasn't a thing yet. Started in this a little bit earlier than you did and starting in full cycle where you have to figure out everything, the ability to just really learn prospecting and the ability to create opportunities. To your point, like that's learning to fish. If you can really master that skill, you will never be hungry. I love that. I love that perspective. Susan, you're a storyteller. The show's called Sales Success Stories. What's your favorite sales story?

41:45 Susan Zuzic: My favorite sales story. Okay. I think I can share this one. I'm not going to use names, but I'll give you context. All right. Think of it as working a maybe $45 billion company. Okay. I am at Oracle at the time. I'm in a big company and I'm working with another large organization. We're working on this massive 8-figure deal, right? And for Marketing Cloud, that was like a big deal, huge deal, especially back then. And we're blocking and tackling. We've got everything lined up. We've got all the executives. We have the procurement process down. We've got InfoSec moving along. We've got all of the ROI. They're agreed on pricing. This deal is going to happen. Right? Like we are just, you can smell it, right? Like we're just there, we're at the doorstep, we're knocking on the door, it's about to happen. But at the final hour, it's, there's always like something. There's the one guy that needs to approve for InfoSec says no, he needs XYZ information and we don't have it. And it's something we have to build from scratch and we're just not ready for it and we won't be ready in time. We're gonna, it's gonna push, the deal's gonna push. And normally when we were Eloqua, it would've pushed. We would've been screwed, right? Because we were Eloqua. But now we were Oracle. Now we were a massive organization. And this is like a first for me, right? Because I'm like, geez, like we're a little more powerful than we used to be. InfoSec. We're also a little more risk… we're not that risky. We're Oracle. I'm like, what if I could get the executives to make an ask? And see what happens. Imagine like at a small startup, we couldn't do that. You could imagine like having Joe Payne call and say, hey, could you just skip your InfoSec process for us and sign off? They would've been like, are you crazy? Whereas in this scenario, I don't, it's not like they skipped it. It's just we were able to get certain conditions that we could continue to move forward and sign something. Even though all these processes weren't checked. The moral and the lesson for me here was, wow, all of these companies, all of these processes, all of these things that we're going through have been essentially designed to CYA for people, cover, make sure that everybody is just taking the precautions they need so that at the end of the day they can say all the I's were dotted, all the T's were crossed, and everything can go. But there are people with the ultimate power at these organizations that can just say, yep, we're good, move it on along. I had never experienced that before at a small company. It was very like, here's how you do it and here's how it's done. But I had set up, I'm like, I'm gonna try. I had set up the ask, the top executive in our company, top executive from the other company. It was like a half an hour conversation. The news comes back, they're going to do it. They'll sign today. It was like, holy cow.

44:54 Scott Ingram: Word came from on high that this is going to happen.

44:58 Susan Zuzic: And the clouds parted in the heavens. It was unbelievable. And at that moment, it was like something opened in my view of how the world worked. And I was like, that is so interesting. And you better believe that I, I worked differently. Going forward, right? I worked harder to get to those executives. I worked harder to align because deals would move faster, deals would have less red tape, things that they cared about, just they'll move mountains for it. And when you also had that larger logo behind you, it was like you had different levers you could pull, whereas like smaller company, you have other levers, et cetera. But this was like an eye-opening moment for me. And sure, we got the deal, we got it on the last day of the quarter. Huge, massive growth for our division. And it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't gone and asked. I used to have a colleague who would always say, he was this, he's awesome. He's this French guy. He'd be like, if you don't ask, you don't get. And I just remember being like, yeah, like maybe that was a terrible French accent, but like when he says it, it's so much better. But it's so true. If you don't ask for certain things, If you don't push the envelope, you just never know if it works. And in this scenario, it did, and it ended up working out in a big way for us.

46:19 Scott Ingram: You set me up perfectly because I made a note earlier in our conversation when we were talking about the nos, and you said that there's a lot of people in an organization who can say no and a lot fewer who say yes. And I wanted to ask you at that point if you feel like, or your approach to the nos, is it turning the no to a yes, or Is it going, you know what, is there somebody just above the fray here who can just say yes and overrule all of this? So I have to imagine that story informs that approach of, okay, you can tell me no, but I bet I can find somebody who can say yes. And it's just a matter of getting to them and telling them the compelling story.

47:01 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. Yeah. Totally changed the way I looked at internal selling. And the way I looked at external selling and positioning. It completely changed it. And it also made me realize the different forces of power and where power was held within organizations. It's not the same for every organization. It really isn't. And, but it became very clear that the keys to power are often with the line of business if it's for driving revenue, et cetera, right? It can often trump that very logical process or whatever it is if it is going to be good for business or if it's going to save a ton of money or there's something, there's usually some reason. But if it's like imminent and there's something compelling, you know, everything they teach you, right? Compelling event, drive business drivers, ROI. But if that's at a senior enough level, nobody's stopping that. Right? It's just nobody's stopping them.

48:00 Scott Ingram: And just to be clear on this, so when you say line of business, you're… I assume you're suggesting, yeah, but if I can find the person who owns the P&L for that line of business, they are likely the ones that can make this decision. So it may not be. Again, I think this totally comes into play in enterprise sales when we're winning the satellites, we're growing to the bigger thing. I don't have to go to the CEO, I don't have to go to Larry Ellison, I just need to go to the person that owns the P&L and is ultimately responsible for this particular line of business.

48:30 Susan Zuzic: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And it's not like someone said no and I'm like, ah, I go crazy. No, it's okay. You respect the no. You have a very rational and nice exchange. And you might even say, hey, I don't agree with that, but that's fine. I understand. I'll be here when you're ready. But then it's, hey, a door closed, let's go find a window. And at big companies, there's lots of windows and there's back doors and there's the cottage in the back and there's other structures and there's the summer house and there's whatever analogy, if I want to keep going on analogy, there are just so many other places to look. And that's worked. And then you get in and then you just keep growing, you keep growing. And so So it can really work out. And then there's other scenarios where I think sometimes a no is just a no. And you have to be able to decipher where you can continue and you can find those windows or when that's it. That is it. Hope is not a strategy. I think sometimes people will hear a no and then they'll be like, but no, I've heard on this podcast I need to just keep going. And don't go in blindly. You have to have a strategy. There has to be some logical way or reason that you think you can actually make this happen. And once you've exhausted all options, you also have to know when to walk away. But at big organizations, you have more chances than you think. That's the key.

50:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What I hear you saying is you're going to need a really compelling no, and you're going to need them to sell you on the no and why that's true, not just for them, but for everybody.

50:10 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, exactly. Not just, oh, I don't feel like doing this, so like it's a no, or it's not my top priority. So if Joe said it's their top priority, Interesting. Okay, maybe I need to find someone who supports Joe and that type of… I'm making up names. This is not… this Joe is not real. But yeah, so I would agree with that 100%. And it's just using your time wisely. There's nothing more precious than a salesperson's time where sometimes people just don't value their own time. They always, oh, like the customer, the customer is… yes, the customer, but I need to go and do the things I need to do so that I can essentially move this forward or not? Like, time is very precious and I need to know if I'm spending it in the right places. Being very pointed on your questions and what you need to accomplish and using that time effectively for yourself and for your customer, people really appreciate that.

51:02 Scott Ingram: So let's double down on the time piece and first close the loop on this piece, on this item, which is how do you decide then? They told me no. Do I keep working on it? How are you making those decisions of is this going to be worth my time and effort.

51:19 Susan Zuzic: I'll give you an example. So I was working another customer, a very big customer, and we were working with a senior executive. We had our pilot running, it was very successful. And then we find out this executive's been let go and they're totally restructuring. And this is like 4 months before the end of the year, 5 and a half, call it. So it's like a little bit of time, you have paper, so maybe, and it's just like, the wind knocked outta your sails. Like, you're just like, there goes my year. I'm done. You're just like, you just wanna lock yourself in a room and cry. You're just like, this sucks. What do you do? Do you walk away at that point? No, not yet. Not yet. Because you have paper, you've got a successful pilot. Maybe you can have somebody else take on that project and take that success as their own. So I remember being like, I need to just shut off the world for 3 days. So I was like, literally turned off Slack, turned off email, turned off social, and just, I was like, I'm not talking to anybody. I'm not taking meetings. Pretend I'm off for 3 days. And all I thought about was, how do I save this? Where do I go? Who cares about what? Who are the 3 other people that I can take this to and shop this around to see if we can turn it into something. And then it's a very quick, concise campaign to see if you can salvage it. If you get a bite, you're good. If you don't, then you are like, okay, we're done for now. And I have to come back when the dust settles. And I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I got some traction. I got some things moving, but it had become toxic because it was connected to this other person that got let go and no one wanted to touch it. So it's like I wasn't ready to let go of it, but I needed to just make sure it couldn't go anywhere else. But I did it quickly. I wasn't going to go drag on because I still wanted to hit my number that year. I went quick. I went, tried to figure out if I could salvage it, wasn't salvageable, moved all of my energy into something else and was able to still hit my number that year. But it's like, if I had dragged on too long with a bit of hope, not letting go, all that, like, it would've been done. You don't always win. Sometimes you get the shit kicked outta you and it sucks. And in that scenario, it was like painful and it was like, okay, what do I do now? Let's just make sure it's dead. If it is dead, then how do I reposition my time and my priorities to move on? It's like all of a sudden the pilot, what are you gonna do with this? Nobody's this isn't going anywhere. So, you almost even have that conversation, hey, you don't have 2 executive sponsors anymore. This isn't going anywhere. Do you guys have a plan to get any more? If you can't, okay, maybe we should just cut our losses. As hard as it is to say that, right? And sometimes you have to do that, unfortunately. It sucks talking about things like this, but they do happen. But they do happen, and you just have to move on, even though revisiting It still feels like a dagger, but what can you do?

54:28 Scott Ingram: You know, it's so interesting is I think it's important. You can't have the highs if you don't also have the lows. I don't care how well you're doing. This is all going on. One of my favorite comments, a guy who attended the summit this year said, and it was his first time there. And he just said, you know what? This is the most amazing thing. I've been to so many sales things over the course of my career. He said, this is the first time everybody is real and telling the truth and the reality, because all these other things I go to, it's so raw and nobody's ever missed a quarter or lost a deal in their lives. And it's just not real. Whereas even top performers, I don't care how good you are, we lose.

55:12 Susan Zuzic: Yeah. And the important thing I think when you lose is that you learn from it.

55:17 Scott Ingram: It.

55:18 Susan Zuzic: And when I think about this particular deal, I'm like, we just didn't move fast enough, right? This type of executive has a certain type of tenure. Things went on a little too long. Like, there's an expiry date to their role and we just didn't move fast enough. So it teaches you, move faster, or whatever the learning is. But it's, if you're gonna lose, it's fine. Don't lose that way again. And learn from it.

55:45 Scott Ingram: Love it. Susan, walk us through a day in the life. And the way I like to do this is take a typical day. Tell me what time does your alarm clock go off and give us a pretty good detailed blow-by-blow till your head hits the pillow again.

56:00 Susan Zuzic: Okay. Might be scary day. So I typically will wake up and this is, maybe I shouldn't share this, but I'll typically wake up at some point. In the night at 4 or 4:30 or 3 or something, especially if I'm like deep in a deal or something, I'll wake up and I'll be like, huh? And it's like I have these 3 things that pop into my head. So I've, I know this about myself. So I'll literally have a notebook next to the bed so that I can actually put it down because they're usually really good ideas. And then I go back to bed because otherwise you'll just think about it and you won't be able to sleep.

56:36 Scott Ingram: There's no way you're getting back to sleep.

56:38 Susan Zuzic: No. So I will literally be And then in the morning I'll be like, wow, that's great. Like, I didn't think of that. And it's like sometimes these things will come to you, to me at least, while I'm in that like relaxed state. Then I'll typically wake up like maybe 6:30 or so. I do have young kids. They typically sleep till 7, 7:30. I like to wake up before them if possible. It's not always possible, but I try. I'll maybe do a little stretching. I'll do like a quick little meditation just to start off a little relaxed in the morning, clear my mind. I'm not talking like long meditation. I'm talking maybe like 10 minutes, like a quick thing. Then they're usually up. I'm getting them ready, getting them out the door by 8. And then sometimes I will have meetings scheduled. Like I work with Europe as well, and sometimes people will want to talk early. So I might have my first call start sometimes maybe 8, sometimes 8:30. It just depends. And then I will literally be back to back most days. My calendar is color-coded and it is, if you saw it, you'd be like, this is a crazy calendar. But if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen, right? So everything in my life is on the calendar from kids' sports thing to my strategy session that I need or the deck I need to build for whatever or this internal meeting that I need to prep for this other thing, or actually customer calls. Every moment is utilized. I do not waste the day. I also do not waste the day prospecting. Some people like to do this. I do not. I like to use the time talking to people, having meetings, getting things done. When I'm reaching out cold to people that don't know me, I pick a few nights in the week and I'll do when it's quiet, no one's around, there's no distractions, and I just jam. I'll create my relationship maps. I'll find all… it's like being a detective. That's when I become, what's that girl from Ninja Turtles? April, whatever. I'll be like, or maybe Lois Lane or whatever. That's when I start to do all of my research and stuff at night. I find when it's quiet and there's no distractions and I can create the plans. And I don't do it every night. Night because then I'd be too tired. But I do it like maybe 2 nights a week where I will either catch up on things I didn't get to do throughout the day because I've been on back-to-back meetings, or I'll just be straight up prospecting. I'll maybe pick an account or 2 or a further pursuit in something I'm already working on. I'm usually sadly eating at my desk. It's not good, but I do that when I remember to eat at noon as opposed to 2 or 3, but I'm just, I just go. Like when I'm at home in my home office, it's just go. Now I'll probably throw something in the oven for the family and be working until dinner, but maybe it's like in a crock pot or maybe like my, I prepped something, my husband's throwing it in. He works from home too. We'll go back and forth. The kids come home and then they go to an activity. I usually bring my computer to the activity. I'm working if there's Wi-Fi. If not, I'm enjoying the activity and maybe watching it. They go to bed and some nights I get back on, some nights I go to sleep too because I'm tired. So it just depends. That's if I'm not traveling. If I am traveling, I really make it count. Okay, so I don't like this, oh, I got a meeting and I go for one meeting. And I'm gone for the whole day and that's all I do. I hate that actually. It drives me nuts. Like based on how I've explained my calendar and how I use every minute, when I travel, I am compounding my day. So like I will try not to travel for more than 2 to 3 days in a row to try to, 'cause I have kids, I like to make sure I'm here when needed. And when I go, I make sure that it's very pointed. I had a an onsite. I was speaking at my, one of my customers' sales kickoffs in Boston. And so that was my anchor meeting. And so I have my anchor meeting, then I'm like, okay, what else can I do when I'm in Boston? I met with another SVP at another customer who I hadn't met in person yet. I've been trying to, hey, I'm in town, I'll come see you. We had lunch together. Then I had the speaking gig and then I'm like, oh, I can meet with the CMO of this other company. We can have dinner. So it's, I try not to have dead time. Like, it's just if I'm gonna travel and I'm gonna be away from my family and like just sitting in the hotel doing nothing is really not an option. I need to be seeing people, being productive, or even if I go see one customer, I'll stay there all day. I'll be like, hey, can I stay here? And I'll just like meet with 5, 6 other people. Sometimes I'll even get myself a little meeting room and then they'll just be like, yeah, come, I'm in room room 502. And they're like, oh, do you work here? And I'm like, today I do. So it's literally how I try to maximize my time, but it also, I think, creates this feeling with that particular customer, oh, she's very ingrained in our business because she's just here and meeting with people all day across the company. Traveling with intention and making very specific use of my time. And I do, I go on site when it makes sense. I don't do it for everything, but people are not going to do a deal with you unless they meet you in person and trust you. So that, that is part of the cycle. And I'll do a lot of workshops where I might get like different groups together and just people will share more and like when they're all together. So that's my day. I know I shared, maybe overshared, but that's what it looks like.

1:02:26 Scott Ingram: I love that. And my approach is really similar. I find the easiest meeting to get is the, hey, I'm in town. There's something about that works so magically. And to your point on kind of the workshops, I find that if you're putting groups together, you just need one or two good anchor tenants in that. You're like, oh, hey, we're getting together and Dell and Indeed are going to be there. If I can name drop a company or two that are interesting, dominoes just fall. It's so easy to go get the rest, especially if it's specific names like, oh, so-and-so from this company. All of those details are magic. So yeah, getting on the road, if you're able to do that is awesome. Susan, what about your information diet? What are you listening to? What are you reading? What are you watching? When the heck does that happen?

1:03:12 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, good question. I've been trying to take some like trainings and stuff on various AI tools and things like that. I've been checking out a company called you.com. They have some cool training. I've been, I'm on ChatGPT like all the time asking it to tell me things. We use Claude internally as well. So, I'm constantly just consuming information that way. I do listen to a couple podcasts here and there, like the All-In podcast. I like partially because it's interesting, partially because I might learn something here or there. I have various news feeds that'll just come my way that I'll read and consume throughout the day, but that's a lot of it. And I feel like just with that alone, there's a lot. I try to read some books here and there. I find it's a little harder these days because I'm just running around. So I like to listen to things more. I feel like I have more of a mental capacity to do that and consume things in like micro pieces as I'm going throughout the day. But really my whole big quest right now is just learn more and more about AI, right? And just continue to immerse and learn because the more I know, the more I can help my customers. And so I've really been trying to consume as much of that as possible.

1:04:27 Scott Ingram: I also listen to most of my books. Susan, given your kind of emphasis on AI, and maybe I should even update my question because I've always asked people the tools and apps that they're relying on. Where are you leaning in the most with kind of the AI set of tools? And we've touched on it a little bit with ChatGPT and Claude and You.com. Like where else, how are you thinking about that? How are you approaching that?

1:04:51 Susan Zuzic: I think I mentioned this, but we really drink our own champagne. So People.ai really helps me with my day-to-day. It's essentially consuming all of my digital conversations and meetings and everything and pulling that into summarize tools right within my CRM. It's pulling all of the information and all the contacts and people I'm talking to, so I don't have to go do that. It's literally helping me create my relationship maps, see where my influence lies, helping me qualify my deals, If it wasn't doing all that, I'd be going back to what it was like when I first started in sales and I had to do it all manually, right? Like, it would be painful. To this point now, it's like I even have my forecasts are just like, here are the risks here. It's all just there for me. And it's reminding me, because like I'll be jumping from thing to thing. I think I mentioned like how busy my calendar can be. It's everything is recorded, everything is then summarized. It can create my follow-up meetings, it can send a Slack note on everything that just happened to my whole channel on that deal. So they all know what happened, even if they weren't on the call. If I'm not on a call, it will tell me what happened with my team members who were on that call. I can't be on all of them, right? Like maybe it's a deployment call or it's something with CS. So it really keeps me up to date and it helps me not have to have as many internal sync-ups. Even though we do, it's cut that down significantly. So, I would say People.ai, hands down. If I went somewhere else, I'd be like, I need to go bring this. This helps me significantly. I'd say my second one, and this isn't new or sexy, but I use LinkedIn a lot. I use it a lot. It's where I do all my prospecting. It's where I see where people are, how we're connected, how I remember. If I'm not texting, I'm sending InMails or I'm finding connections and I'm sending an email or 2, but I'm still using LinkedIn a lot. So I feel like that's a big one. And I think I already mentioned I'm using like all of the AI tools for anything possible. The last one I use quite a bit also, because I do in-person meetings, right? Like a lot when I'm traveling, I use Otter. For my, like a note taker. So I'll be like, hey Scott, hey, can I turn on my note taker so that I don't have to go write everything? And then it helps me get much faster follow-up, make sure I didn't miss anything. It keeps my notes all organized for me. Those would be the kind of the big ones that I use day in and day out.

1:07:25 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. I think automated forecasting piece, I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of like, where are the inefficiencies for us in sales? And when I think about, especially in larger organizations, The percentage of time that we spend talking about forecast and pipeline is just bonkers. How many times are you going to ask me this? Especially if you asked me to put it in CRM, it's CRM. Why are you still asking me about it? I think being able to have tools like People.ai where it's all there and the foundational information is there, like the conversation that this came from is there. So do we have a compelling event? Yep, sure. They talked about it in minute 8 of this meeting.

1:08:07 Susan Zuzic: Yep. Yep.

1:08:09 Scott Ingram: Don't take my word for it. You can hear the customer say, here's what's going on. I feel like that it's just low-hanging AI fruit that is so ripe to be unlocked. And I know you guys are starting to do that where just absolutely powerful stuff that feels like absolutely wasted time for those of us. And on either side of it, I'm sure you had that experience when you were sitting in those leadership seats and interrogating your team about what was happening with their deals.

1:08:36 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, and it doesn't feel good for them. It doesn't feel good for you as the leader. It's if you can just have AI look for the things that you would be looking for, highlight it to the rep so they can solve it, and then highlight it to you so you can help coach them on it. It just saves everybody so much time. And at the end of the day, it just makes everything more effective for everyone. So it's really nice. I don't know how we go back to not having that. So I think this is like we're being very spoiled now. So it'll be fun to see how it continues to evolve.

1:09:03 Scott Ingram: There's lots of things like that, right? We'll never go back to… she's been doing this long enough. I used to get deals that would come in via fax. We're not going back to that. No, I don't predate email exactly, but some of these things, it's just going to be the new way. And I think we're going to see more and more of those things and you just have to figure out how to adapt. Susan, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:09:27 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, I'm kind of a blend of a bunch of them, but I would say that I identify more as like a challenger myself. When you're developing that point of view and you're trying to transform an organization, you're often challenging the way people think, the way things are today, the status quo, challenging the way people's maybe belief system within that company and how things have always been, et cetera. So I feel like I'm often really acting as that challenger, whether I'm trying to or not. It just comes with the territory. But I'm also a pretty consultative seller too. So it's, I'm trying to understand what they're doing, and then I'm only going to challenge if it makes sense to. And usually with the company I'm at, it does make sense to, is changing the way they think, the way they work. And so that's typically how, even though that's not the philosophy we follow internally, like we're a med pick shop, but I feel like med pick is just We're qualifying. We're like, I've been qualifying and doing that my whole career. I don't have to call it MedPic for me to be doing that, but my style I feel like is a little more of a consultative challenger, if that makes sense.

1:10:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally. And MedPic is really a deal management process. It's not sales philosophy, right? It's not any of those things. So understanding the difference, just when you think about motivation and drive, what drives all of this? You've had a lot of success over a long period of time. What keeps you going?

1:10:52 Susan Zuzic: I think I've always just wanted to be the best. I want to demand excellence from myself, from my customers, from the people I work with. It's if we could get to this place, this awesome place, why not? Let's go for it. Let's do it. Let's get there. I think that the journey is exciting. I think that the end result is exciting. I really enjoy driving to a place where you can transform and change. I think that like, I've watched so many people, like their eyes be open. Like I talked so many points today about like how my eyes were open and people had exposed me to certain things and I was like, wow, that's possible. Like, I feel like I really enjoy when the people I work with, either at the customer or internally, have those moments and they're like, wow, we did that. Or, oh my God, like, I'm getting promoted because of this initiative, or that happened. Like, it's so satisfying. Like, I know everybody in sales, oh, money's motivating. Of course. But when you've been doing it for so long, you just get used to the money, right? Like, the thing that keeps you going is this, the excitement, the thrill of driving change and doing really exciting things with that customer and partnering with them. I think that's what keeps it interesting for me because if it was just like day in and day out the same thing, and I think I'd be bored. And this keeps it really exciting because it's other people that like really, they light up and they get excited and they transform and they're like being highlighted at their company and they're just like, oh my God, thank you. Like, I love that. I love it. And even the people I work with, it's just, I've watch them grow. And it's just fun. I really, I think that's one of the things I really loved doing when I was a leader. Like after a certain while, like you're selling, you're like, the deals get bigger and the checks get bigger and this. And then you're like, okay, I want a little more out of it. And so I think I get that little more out of it now by seeing the success of my customers. And yeah, it's been great. It's been really great.

1:12:57 Scott Ingram: Love that. Is there something you believe the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

1:13:05 Susan Zuzic: You called it out right at the beginning of this podcast where you were like, so, I don't know, maybe the average rep does not think this. You only interview the top reps, so maybe every top rep thinks this, that all deals, you have to lose a deal like 3 or 4 times before you can close it. Like, I've said that to people and they're like, what do you mean? And I'm just like, you've never heard that before? And a lot of people have not heard that before. And I, to me, it's crazy because that's just, maybe that's that tenured thing, right? It's, yep, you gotta lose a couple more times. And it's like, how many times have you lost it now? Oh, like twice. But yeah, third one, it's almost time. So I would say that, I would say that would be one of the things that I've been shocked by when people are just like, really? What do you mean? So I don't know. I don't know if you've seen that commonly in people you've been interviewing as well. If everybody, the top people.

1:13:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, probably not the people I'm interviewing so much. And just to clarify that too, no, it's not, oh, we lost the deal because somebody said no. It's often like we hit some seemingly insurmountable thing, right? Oh, we hit this thing in the security review and they won't approve it. Or there was something as we were negotiating the MSA with legal teams, something got completely sideways. And they've decided we can't do this together. There's a lot of other weird, crazy things that come up or, oh, we can't solve for this use case. And that was the critical one. And not being able to solve for that kills the whole thing. And they're going to work with some other competitor. It's all of those little things that come up that seem, oh, this is the end that like, no, it's not, you know, it looks like it might be lost. You got to figure it out. Those are the times. And this is where I'm not a creative person in any traditional sense of the word. You do not want to give me a paintbrush or ask me to draw something, like, that is not going to go well. But my creativity is in strategy and like getting creative around, there's got to be a way that we can work around this thing. Maybe I need to bring in another solution that's part of our ecosystem that solves for that thing because our core tool won't do it. Or I've got this other part that's a really easy technical build. Like these people will build it for you. It'll be done tomorrow. We're gonna have them build you a proof of concept that'll be ready next week so that you can see this will actually happen. It's all of those little things that if you really think about, there's, you're gonna find a freaking way. Yep.

1:15:34 Susan Zuzic: Yep. That creativity. I agree. I totally agree. That's exactly what I mean. That's exactly what I mean.

1:15:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What about the flip side? What's part of the sales dogma that everybody in sales always says this or thinks this way and you think, actually, that's wrong.

1:15:49 Susan Zuzic: I've heard a lot of people say, oh, I'm just solving the problems. I don't need to get deep on the product. The solution people will do that. That drives me nuts when I hear that. That drives me absolutely nuts because how do you actually solve your customers' problems if you don't understand the product yourself? And I've seen this throughout my whole career, anywhere I've been. I remember I remember when I started at People.ai, there was people that are like, oh, I'm like, why did you come to the company? They're like, oh, I just followed this person. I'm like, oh, did you get a demo and stuff before? And they're like, no. I was just like, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life. Like, to me, what you sell needs to be solid. You need to know it. You need to know how it solves the problems so well that you could do it yourself. You could craft that story and you could be credible. Not saying the wrong thing to the customer. And then you've got your people there to support you. That's one thing. And then the other thing that drives me nuts is when you said, hey, don't put a paintbrush in my hands, et cetera, but you're creative. I think that reps sometimes when they don't have the materials or it's the first time they've encountered a challenge or, you know what I mean, something, they think it's somebody else's job to solve that. They think, oh, we don't have the content. Or, oh, maybe that team can do it for me. It's like sometimes we just need to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves and maybe create something that the organization can benefit from, right? And so those are the 2 things. It's like you got to know your product and don't always point to other people to solve your problems. Sometimes you can solve it and you could be a contributor to the greater good as well. So use strategic, that creativity to go and solve that problem that maybe you think is somebody else's job. Don't go waiting for them to do it. Maybe you could help solve that problem as well.

1:17:50 Scott Ingram: We share a lot of philosophies. Being able to demo yourself. I did a lot of my own demos with Eloqua and for a couple of different reasons, right? One was I wanted to show this is so easy to use that this freaking sales guy can do it. I don't need a technical expert to use this software. A lot of times we were replacing things like that. It was just such a huge accelerant for me to schedule an SE, and that's going to add days to my process when I can just go in and show you. The other thing I did, and I've written about this, maybe if there was a Daily Sales Tip about it that I did long ago, I used to do this process, especially when I was selling event technology, that I called a demo scurry. And this idea of the customer, a lot of times, I just want to… would you show it to me? Like, I just want to see it. We have to go through our process. So first there's an interrogation and I have to shine bright lights on you and I have to just ask you questions. And then maybe we'll schedule another meeting and then I can show it to you. I'm like, how is that solving for what they're looking for? Right? If we take a customer-centric approach to this, that's wrong. I put them together. I actually built my own demo environment where I turned an event, this mock event, into a question flow, because that's a lot of times what they were building, right? They're building, oh, somebody's registering your event. What are the questions we're going to ask them? And are they booking hotel rooms? And all of these different things. I would walk them through the demo, but I was also having them answer questions along the way. And it created paths for I'm like, oh, do most of your events, are you managing the hotel room bookings also? Oh yeah, we are. Okay, cool. So then I'd continue to that part of the demo. If they said no, why would I show you the hotel stuff? It's irrelevant to you. It was always really tailored to what they want. And I have this thing with SCs. They're never going to do it exactly the way you want. Over time, and I think you've got a lot of this too, you develop a little bit of the psychic link. Link. We've done this so many times, right? Frame it this way, show them this. And there's so much overexplaining that is just natural in that environment. I think it's hard to only show them the really important things that matter and not freaking everything else.

1:20:05 Susan Zuzic: Yes.

1:20:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:20:06 Susan Zuzic: I think the demo is the story.

1:20:09 Scott Ingram: Love this. Say more.

1:20:11 Susan Zuzic: It is like what you just said. Whether I was at Eloqua, whether I was at Oracle, whether I'm here, It is the story. It's how you tell a story. It's literally how I speak about it. It's your day in the life and what's happening and where you're going. And to your point, it's a psychic link. It's like, I know what they wanna see. I know what they need based on the questions they've asked, and I'll just go and pivot depending on what needs to happen. I've gotten, and a lot of the times I choose not to demo because maybe it's bigger, et cetera, but I may be doing the voiceover and someone else is moving the pictures and they have certain parts. I think of it as like a screenplay. You're on stage and you're determining, this is what I do, this is what you do. You're gonna break it up here. You're gonna say this. We rehearse, we're ready, but you have to tell a story. People don't want to be sitting there and getting explained like, oh, this is how you do this and then there's 5 ways to do it. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear that, right? They need to know that you can solve their problem. And that's part of the story. I think we really do share a lot of philosophies for sure.

1:21:17 Scott Ingram: Oh yeah. When you sent me your top 3, I was like, oh yeah, maybe not have talked in nearly a decade, but our paths really have not diverged very far.

1:21:26 Susan Zuzic: So funny. You are who you are. You just keep building on it. Absolutely.

1:21:30 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Susan, we have covered so much ground. This has been so much fun to catch up. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you hoped that we would?

1:21:39 Susan Zuzic: I might add one thing since it's, people may be listening to this looking for some advice or whatever, right? One piece of advice I wish I had learned a lot sooner in my career was to not allow customers to block me. What I mean by that is, say you're in a cycle and you start talking to someone and you've built this champion and then they won't let you talk to anybody else. We've all been in that scenario. I was thinking about this and I was like, where do I weave this in? But I kind of want to make this point. And I've talked to a lot of sellers and they're like, I don't want to burn the relationship and I don't want this. And they get really stuck on that where the framework that I look at it at is I have a job and my job is to figure out what that story is, where I need to go and how to get this done. If I know that I'm not going to be able to accomplish it by talking to this one person, My competition's talking to everybody, right? I have a duty to this customer to go around, above, anywhere I need to go to get it done. And I think the sooner people learn that, that they have to be in charge of their path, right? And in charge of how they speak to it and not allow the customer to necessarily block, guide, gatekeep, et cetera. And the earlier you do it, the better.

1:23:01 Scott Ingram: So what do you do when it happens? And I've got something that I've learned over time that I'm excited to share with you. It's a story I probably share a lot here on this podcast, but it's, I feel like it's a superpower thing for me, but I'd love to hear what's your approach?

1:23:14 Susan Zuzic: Early on, before I get boxed in, I'll try to meet as many people as I can. Literally, I'll try to go and create different pathways because at large companies, people don't often know each So you're gathering information. So I try to know a bunch of people before I go down a path too far, too deep down a path. And I'll talk about these other conversations and these people and I'll, so that they know that these are happening. So I try to set the groundwork that this is happening. What I will do is I will also write notes for my executive teams to send and align to other people. I don't control my executives. They're going to do what they need. They know somebody or they're just going to do that. I've even had in some scenarios where it maybe became contentious, where I've had someone who's not on my side, who's fighting against me, get on a call and be like, essentially, you're such a pain in the butt. What are you doing? You're making a lot of internal noise for me. And I just smiled. Oh, it's just my job. I'm just networking and just trying to create value and talk to others. I have to talk to people. How much I can do? Oh, people are just networking. People just know each other. I'm gonna keep doing this, so get on my side, right? Because in some scenarios, people are against you. In other scenarios, they just don't have the power to move you up, right? And you just have to see where you are. I use a lot of different tactics to just build a greater groundswell. And then create people at the top, create people at the bottom, and smush the middle. That's how I've approached it. And it might change depending on the situation and how intense it is, but I usually try to bring people along and keep them very informed. I have another customer who I just started talking to, and they were very nervous about the other rep that was talking to people. And I was like, why? Why are you nervous about that? I just never knew what was going on. No one ever told me, and I always was blindsided. I'm like, I'm your partner. I will never blindside you. I'm going to talk to everybody, but you're always going to know that I'm doing it. You're going to know what we're talking about and what came out of it. And they're like, great, right? So, it just depends on the scenario, but I very much let people know that it is my job and I'm going to be speaking with a lot of organizations, with people within the organization, like a consultant, right? I just want to bring that up because I don't think you can really do big transformation and do big deals If you're just thinking sales is very linear, because I don't think it is.

1:25:44 Scott Ingram: I think that again, the more you get into these large enterprise complex deals, there are so many stakeholders and there's just so much triangulation that needs to be done. What I have done, and if you're a regular listener to the show and you know all about Scott's like executive stakeholder thing, then our executive sponsor thing, then skip like 3, 4 minutes. What I have done is I've turned it around and pointed out it actually helps me. I do this very early. I'm trying to get at a higher level of conversation that I'm having than anybody else can access. And it also becomes a huge point of differentiation, right? So what we're thinking about is, hey, I'm not thinking about just closing the deal. I'm thinking about how do we actually make this successful? We've got to think about how this is going to be successful from an implementation standpoint, from a change management standpoint. And as I'm thinking about that and what I've seen with other customers, because this is going to touch so many different groups, so many different geographies, yada yada, we have to find somebody in the organization who sits above that fray, who can help us make decisions because there's going to be a number of points as we work through this, that things are just going to get stuck and a decision needs to get made. And we can't get stuck in just like the internal politics, if especially when there's 3 or 4 peers involved, right? Oh, Susan, you've got Jane over here that's doing this and Steve's doing that thing. And it's education. And I do it both with that person who I'll turn into a champion because what I want them to now do is, hey, let's figure out who we think that executive initiative sponsor should be. And now I'm going to create a story and a reason for them to introduce me because it's going to add value. It's going to show them like, oh, I'm taking initiative, right? I'm leading this project. I'm being really mindful. I will make this whole thing their idea. I don't need any credit whatsoever. That's not what I need. And then once I get to that person, it's educating them about their role. And I tell them the story. The way I learned this is I had actually, you might know who this person is. I'll talk to you offline. The best executive sponsor I ever worked with was at 3M, and he taught me this is what he did, and he explained, this is my role, this is what I have to do. And he said, my job is to call balls and strikes. We're going to have imperfect information. It may or may not be the right call. It doesn't matter. We just have to make a call so that we can move forward. Otherwise, we'll get stuck and this will never happen. When I talk to that executive, I tell the story, I educate them on like, this is your role. And then the pivot is in… I set up the cadence at that point. Now we're going to start to have regular conversations that are at that executive level. So that's the point that I'm mapping my executive team. So here's the executive sponsor on our team. You can be person to person. We're not going to get into the nitty-gritty details and all of the drama. We're just going to bring decisions to bear. We're going to have high-level updates and we're going to make decisions to move things forward. My win rate since I started implementing that approach is orders of magnitude better because again, I'm just playing at a higher level than everybody else. And they know it's trust building. They know I care about the way that we're actually going to do this. And I'm not thinking about closing your deal. I'm thinking about your outcome and your impact. That's what we're trying to get to. And nobody else is talking to them like that. And not only talking to them like that, but acting on it. We're getting in front of it. We're going to set up all of the framework and architecture that's going to make sure that this happens and not just hopefully it all works out. No, I've seen this movie 1,000 times and there's 4 plot twists that are going to ruin us if we don't have a plan.

1:29:42 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's oftentimes I'll be like, oh, when I spoke with your CEO or when I spoke with your CRO, and they're like, they don't speak to those people. If they're getting information they haven't, or in some scenarios they're coming to those meetings. It just depends on this. It just depends. But I agree with you 100%. It's that cadence. It's that just cut through it and get to what they care about and attach to that and then have regular communication. Everybody else will follow that. They absolutely follow that.

1:30:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. At the end of the day, even in individual contributor role, sales is leadership, right? And these are the ways that you lead your clients. And take them through this. And you and I are driven very similarly. I love the human impact. I sell B2B, but I don't have relationships with companies. I have relationships with people, and I love to see them grow in their careers. And what better way than to set them up with a project that's going to be successful and make sure that their executive team sees what they're doing? And we're telling that story. And I still work with predominantly marketing these days. I'm like, we have to market marketing. You have to be able to tell your own story internally over and over again. And it's also the way that we think about change management. So, Susan, let's put a bow on this thing and let's make it actionable. What would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week, the next 2 weeks, that is going to help them improve themselves and improve their results?

1:31:15 Susan Zuzic: I would say the first thing for someone to do, if I could challenge them, is to be honest and ask themselves a few questions, and that will determine where they need to go. The first question would be, do they have some key stories that they tell at their customers? Do they have a narrative, a story, something that they've crafted that's compelling, that compels someone to action? Do they have that? If they do, great. Don't do that. If you don't have it, create one. Create something that people will remember and attach to. Second would be, how well do you know your product? If the answer is, I'm a 10 out of 10, then great. Keep doing what you're doing. If the answer is, oh, I have some blind spots on this part of it or that part of it, I would say go and be curious and go and learn that. Go and learn that. That will be incredibly important on your journey with your customers, go and learn that. It may open some doors at a customer or a use case or something that you find just by knowing that about your product. The third thing, third question I would ask is for each of the deals that you're in right now, who is the most senior person that you're talking to? And if it's not the decision maker, find a way to get to that decision maker. Just start now. You heard what Scott said. You heard how I've… like, it's a journey. It may be uncomfortable, but be honest with yourself and go and figure out a way and be really honest that if it's not, if you're not there, or maybe you are in a few and not in some others, figure out why. Because if you're not with those executives, your competitors are. So, I would get on that. And then the last question I would say, obviously I've had you ask a lot of questions of yourself, but the last one would be, There's something that every single one of us is afraid of in deals, and it's different. It's different in every deal. There's something that you're afraid of. I want you to identify what it is, and I want you to go and tackle it head-on. Those, if you do those things, you got a lot to do there, but maybe not all of them. If you do those things, that will uplevel your game.

1:33:33 Scott Ingram: Give an example of the afraid of thing. I love this.

1:33:36 Susan Zuzic: I think I understand, but I would love to hear just a specific example or Maybe you're working in an account and there's a competitor that's in that account. Okay? Maybe they're being used for a portion of something and there's a sneaking thing in the back of your head that just, they've got their talons into someone. They've got some connection that you don't have. They've got some project that you've got that you have nothing, you don't know anything about, whatever. And you may tiptoe around it and you may not bring it up and you may be nervous about it. This happened to me, right? It's happened to us all.

1:34:20 Scott Ingram: We're all horrible at this.

1:34:22 Susan Zuzic: Maybe if I don't talk about it, it doesn't exist, right? No, it's still there. It's just going to sneak up on you and bite you. Maybe in that scenario you would say, hey, or if you notice the customer's not prioritizing your meetings and, hey, who are you spending a lot of your time What's one of your top projects right now? Who are your most strategic vendors? What are you guys focusing on? What makes them such a great partner? Go ask these questions that seem very innocent. They will give you so much information on how to arm yourself in battle, right? If they're, oh, my top vendor is blah, blah, blah, and ends up being your top competitor. What I love about them is da, da, da, da, da. You're like, okay, my top project is da, and it has nothing to do with you. Or it has everything to do with you, but you have no clue about it and they're talking to your competitor. You need to ask these questions that you're afraid of, dig into it in a maybe not super direct, but like a kind of inquisitive way. You will learn so much. People will tell you, they will usually answer the questions that you ask. It's just, you don't know, you're sometimes afraid to ask them. You don't know if you're gonna know the answers. So you just don't ask the questions. But it's if you don't have the information, you can't arm yourself correctly. So I would say whatever it is you're worried about, or, oh, what if they can't get the money this quarter? And you're like, oh, you're nervous. I'm afraid of the numbers. Hey, what happens if you can't get the money this quarter? Just ask them. Just ask them. Or have you ever been in a situation where the CFO's turned you down down? Yes. Oh, what'd you do? Do you think that could happen again? Whatever you're worried about, bring it up and bring it up as soon as you can. I had an example. I'll give you one more example. I had this Bluebird lead come in, right? I want account planning, blah, blah, blah. I need a demo tomorrow. I was like, okay, great. No problem. So we hop on the phone, we talk, They have this whole deck of everything they want, screenshots. I'm like, okay, these are not screenshots from us. Who created this, right? This is… and so then we set up, oh, okay, send it to me. I'll create a demo. We, me and the SE, we get off and we're like, Spidey sense, this doesn't feel good. Something's off here. I was like, yeah, don't worry. We're not going to spend a lot of time on this. I have a feeling that this is a weird one, but let's give them one more chance to like act normal. And so we set up the next call. And the big, the main guy doesn't show up, just as like the minion shows up. And at that point I'm like, yeah, I could tell that this isn't anything. I'm like, oh, Joe didn't, I'm gonna keep using Joe. Joe didn't show up. Oh yeah, he's super busy. I'm like, I get the sense, I'm just gonna say, I get the sense you guys have already made a decision on something and maybe you just need a couple other bids. And the guys, we do have this vendor that we work with and they have this other thing and they're giving it to us for like almost free. And I was like, oh, okay. What do you need from me? I just need some pricing. And I'm just like, okay, yeah, I can give you a ballpark. It's gonna be much more expensive than free, but yeah, if you end up not going, it sounds like that's a great option for you guys, so you should totally do it. If you decide that, you know, you want this and this, we're here for you. Okay, bye. But if I didn't do that, I would've been on with them for months. I would've wasted all my time. But it's like, something feels weird or something you're afraid of, Just uncover it. It'll save you time. It'll help you prepare. It'll help you strategize. Like, just lean into that fear because that's usually the place you have to go.

1:38:07 Scott Ingram: Love that.

1:38:07 Susan Zuzic: It's your instincts.

1:38:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I was going to say there's an intuition piece of that. Like, that thing that is making you nervous, do not avoid it. It's like what was running through my mind is there's this wide open field and it's amazing, but there's this one landmine. Maybe if you think it's there, you should gingerly poke at it and make sure you uncover it because otherwise you're just going to step on the dang thing later and everything's going to blow up.

1:38:30 Susan Zuzic: Yeah, that's right. That's right.

1:38:32 Scott Ingram: Yep. Susan, this has been amazing. You're amazing. I knew it would be. So thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your story.

1:38:41 Susan Zuzic: This was so fun, Scott. It's so great to catch up and thank you so much for giving me this chance. This is awesome. 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.