199: Discovery is a Lifestyle: Patrick Donnelly on Humility, Hating to Lose, and Winning at Nooks

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Patrick Donnelly. Patrick is the top strategic enterprise AE at Nooks and is based in LA. Welcome to the show, Patrick.

0:33 Patrick Donnelly: Thank you for having me, Scott. Very excited to be here.

0:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, really fun to reconnect. Looking forward to digging into a really good conversation, but we're going to start like we always do. It's all about immediate value right out of the gate. What are the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales?

0:53 Patrick Donnelly: Great question. I had to take some inventory to answer this question honestly and really figure out what's true to me on that one. But My 3 are be a partner to the bigger picture, which I can get into, have humility, and the last one being hate to lose. And I think like walking down the line of those, be a partner to the bigger picture. I think for customers and your company, focusing on the bigger picture is going to really drive like actual great discovery questions. It's gonna make sure that we're both bought on solving real problems and you just create relationships that you don't get out of just focusing on a number or a deal closing for both customers and your company. I don't think anybody wants you to look at things super single-minded. Like, you create incredibly valuable relationships. You ask great questions, you do great things when you're really focused on solving big problems and becoming a partner to whoever you're working with. On the customer side also, if you're doing those things, that's what drives like real high retention customer love that turns into additional revenue, right? So when you think about expansions and stuff, so Really being a partner to that bigger picture is massive. A great place to start from a mindset perspective. The second one being have humility, which is a 2-parter as well. But I feel like when you're in a deal, man, no tasks are below you. You need to do what needs to be done to get the deal done. You have your title, you have your roles and responsibility, but the number's on you and you have to have that level of accountability, but also, and be able to dig in and do whatever you gotta do to get it done. And not have that ego. But the other side is the deal is not just about you. Like, you might be the owner of the opportunity, right? But a great team behind you is going to be your best asset. And you win when a great team is behind you and supporting you and you're supporting them, not when you're out here running the show on your own. So having humility to make sure that you're doing those things that need to be done, but also giving the support to your team and shouting out wins to make sure they're there to get the things done that you need to get done in a deal are just massive. And then the last one is also like a mindset thing, but hating to lose is probably the most powerful motivator at the end of the day. And it's an interview question. It's a little bit corny, but I really haven't found a characteristic that creates more grit than hating to lose. I also haven't found a better way to look back at what happened and making adjustments and adapting based off what happened if you hate to lose, because if you really internalize hating to lose, The reasons you lose won't happen again the next time. And creating great process, that's where that comes from. And I, I'm a big believer in process. I think every great seller out there has a great process and it didn't come from winning from day one. It came from that mindset and iterating and making it a great process.

3:35 Scott Ingram: Nice. I'm gonna pick at the scab. Tell me about the loss that you hate the most. What's the one that taught you the most? It was probably the most painful thing and you're like, I will never do this thing again. And it was X thing. That there was X story or experience that taught me that.

3:52 Patrick Donnelly: Yeah. So it was at Nooks. It was here when we were moving upmarket. I was leading that charge and running some deals and we were early on, we were punching above our weight a little bit and we were winning a lot of deals. There was a lot of positive momentum. So I don't, this was a really like strong winning culture at the time. It still is. But like then we were just winning deals we weren't supposed to be winning and we were keeping the customers and they were growing. So it was a really awesome feeling. But I will never forget, I don't wanna call out the name cuz too many people are gonna be able to draw a reference here, but we lost a deal and the feedback was, you guys didn't run as good of a process as your competitor. If you sell against a competitor that you see in every deal, you have a lot of admiration, but you also grow this like strong sense of rivalry and you do not wanna lose those deals. And there's a lot of emotion tied in there. And I won't ever forget sitting down with my CEO and VP of sales at the time and saying, I know why we lost this deal. I know the things that I did that lost this deal, and I know the things that I wasn't supported on that lost this deal. I will correct my things. I need these things to go and make sure this never happens again. Luckily, I'm at a company where leadership really buys into that kind of feedback and we solve those problems. I solve my problems. I documented those solutions into the new process. And following that, we never lost a deal for that reason again. And I think that's, that's my favorite thing about the losses is I don't even remember all the wins. There have been a lot. I remember that one, but I also understand like the value it's brought to our company by sitting down and like really internalizing that and understanding how we can avoid that in the future.

5:24 Scott Ingram: Love that. Out of that, what were your things? What did you fix for you? We won't get into what your team had to do. Let's focus on you.

5:31 Patrick Donnelly: A lot of this was I was trying to run the show when I was also every cast member in the show. And I think what's really important when you're working a lot of deals is understanding like where your limits are and not letting little things like communication with people in a trial or setting expectations and getting things to a, like, there are just little things that can slip through the cracks if you don't have the process patched up. So it wasn't even necessarily I did things wrong, I asked bad discovery questions. It was more of I was moving a bit too quickly. And we need to make sure that every single one of these experiences is incredible. I need to not move too quickly, and I need these things that help prevent me from not doing that. So really, really making sure that, hey, like I did these things wrong. And I think if we can get these support mechanisms in place, not only me, but no one else has an excuse to do these things wrong in the future. We'll make sure these things are patched up and executed on really solidly.

6:31 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. It reminds me of One of… I won't preface and share my bias. I had a manager who would always harp on me about sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. And it took me a really long time to actually get that and figure it out. And I think that's exactly what you're describing. And again, it's one of those things in the moment that kind of sometimes doesn't make sense.

6:55 Patrick Donnelly: It's painful because you're like, I want to, I want to move fast. It's working until it doesn't. And it's, oof, those are the things that sting when you move a bit too fast is the things that you miss.

7:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I also want to go back to, and this has certainly been a theme the last handful of episodes, I feel like, is just really this idea that sales is such a team sport when done well. Right. And it's no accident that this is a theme and I only talk to top performers. So let's be really clear about that. I think you already called out one piece in that recognition and sharing the win and the credit is maybe part of your process. What else are you doing? How else are you thinking about just building those relationships and making sure that the team is going to be there for you? Because they don't report to you. They don't have to do what you ask them to do.

7:42 Patrick Donnelly: I think there's 2 layers, Scott. Like, number one, these people are people. The SDR I work with, the SE I work with, the CSM I work with, the product team I work with. Before you start asking for a lot, you really have to know these people as people a little. And maybe not everybody's doing that. And maybe I sound a little bit too like perfect world in that state, but I really have found that like your working relationships go a lot further when you're taking the time to meet people outside of the context of work. That goes a long way because these people buy into you as a person now. And I think that's just an important thing for relationships in general. But the other side of that is also being able to like show them that you would do whatever it'd take to win the deal as well. So it's not just about handing things off and saying, can you do this for me? People want to see evidence that you're doing everything you can on your part And that you're willing to pick up the slack somewhere if something does fall. And I've found that when you're willing to pick up the slack and go in and dig in and not have that ego, people have like higher accountability. Like people actually want to get it done so you don't have to do that. When everybody's firing on all cylinders that way, when everybody's bought into everybody succeeding and playing their role, you just get this awesome, really awesome team sport that, like I said, it becomes your best asset and it makes deals move a lot smoother when everybody's playing that team sport.

8:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. Let's contextualize this. Talk about what is your role? Who's Nooks? What do you do? Talk about who you're serving.

9:04 Patrick Donnelly: Nooks is an AI platform that basically helps revenue teams generate pipeline. So think SDRs, AEs, anybody who's going out and generating pipeline. They love Nooks for a slew of different things that we're doing from an AI perspective. You can think like parallel dialing, you can think AI coaching, you can think AI sequencing, you can think AI agent workflows to prioritize accounts. Like, it's really broad, which is really cool because the people we serve are revenue leaders, are revenue operations leaders, are CEOs, honestly, are CFOs that are trying to consolidate. Everybody has questions about what the future looks like with AI, and we've got a really cool answer to the problem. That is, you can consolidate a lot of this technology into one superpowered system that creates great workflows for teams. And my role in this is working with those leaders really understanding where they're trying to take the business, the strategic areas of how they're going to get there, and identifying the tactical layers of what do we need to improve. And that's where we bring the team in and run pilots to get there. But like, we really get to play a consultative role in the AI transformation of revenue and go-to-market organizations. Yeah. Yeah.

10:17 Scott Ingram: You and I had a fun conversation before we started about… and I won't name names… some platforms that were the it platforms for a decade and just the different ways that how quickly things change and how quickly new technologies and new approaches win the day. Always fun to be riding that kind of a wave, but you are obviously also finding success in doing that, right? You're not the only one in the organization. Talk about what it's taken to get to the top in the strategic enterprise space for you.

10:51 Patrick Donnelly: My starting point is a little different than a lot of folks, I think, because I love joining companies early on where you have an opportunity to like outwork everybody and build a process and then lead the direction. And when you're somewhere for 3 years doing that, if you keep doing the things that got you to where you are, you keep staying the top rep and you keep building and you keep being able to be a leader on the team and building up those around you. I'd say that's how I got to number 1 over here and how I'm keeping it that way by consistently doing the things that got me to this point. But I actually think like the biggest thing of being that person is being able to ebb and flow with how the market is moving. Because when you talk about the team sport, the AE and the messaging is not the only thing that's changing. The product is constantly changing. Your CEO's vision is changing. Revenue goals can change. Everything is constantly changing. So you really need to be the person that is really strong at taking that change in stride. And being levelheaded and being that quarterback for your team because everyone's experiencing that same level of change. And I can tell you, like every top performer at Nooks, myself and everybody in every single segment, everybody takes change in stride. They're going to have to continue to, and so will every other number one sales rep out there as AI and God knows what else technology that's going to disrupt how things work for our customers and for us internally in our company's visions.

12:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I love that you're calling this out because this is the new game. And the way I think about it, and clearly what you're doing, is leading from the field. When I coined the term intentional individual contributor, that's one of the things I always thought of, right, is I don't need to have a VP CRO type of title to still make this kind of impact. A lot of times it is, let's, let me blaze the trail. Certainly that's going to serve me. But if I can really impact the organization even more broadly, if I can share, hey, here's what's working and not be selfish about those things.

12:47 Patrick Donnelly: What's funny too is from an origin story standpoint, I didn't want to be in sales. That's not where I started. I actually wanted to be a rock star or a founder. I saw them being the same things. Shout out Social Network. That made me be like, I got to find something and create a company in Silicon Valley. But I would go out and interview founders and be like, when I was in high school and be like, what is a founder? How can I put myself in a good position? And they're like, there's product founders and there's revenue founders. And I go, I don't think I'm a product guy. I knew pretty quickly I was around some smart kids in high school to know that I'm probably not the product guy. But then as I, when I talked to the revenue founder, they're like, you start in sales, that starts as being an SDR, you move up the ladder and then you get there. But what's funny is when I got into sales, what I learned is that I don't really want to be the founder. I don't really want to be the CEO. I actually want to be the CRO. And then I was like, the further I move in my career, I'm like, maybe I don't need to be a CRO. Maybe I just really care about the deals and I want to be on that level at a VP of sales level. And it's continued to evolve to the point where I don't even know if I want to get into management. There's so much to learn in the field. There's so much impact you can provide to your company and there's so much fluidity in your own life. In an individual contributor role. And I think, like you said, like the term is perfect, intentional individual contributor. That is something that you could do your entire life and seriously get so much out of as a person and return so much value with whoever you're working with on your side and the customer side. Yeah.

14:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. This is one of my favorite things that, that resonates so hard for people. Over the years, I've even heard people feel like, oh my gosh, it's okay. For me to do this and take this approach and be on this path. I'm not doing it wrong because I'm sure you've been offered, you've probably been asked, hey, would you lead the team? And it's happened to me many times and I always say no. And at the end of the day, I feel like I can still have more impact here, not just on the number, but again, just thinking about what are the things that I'm learning and paying forward. Now I have to have a podcast. It's been a little while that's been going on, but what are other people's ways of doing that? And how can we learn from that and incorporate Just the one or two little gold nuggets that you're gonna drop across the course of the next, whatever it's gonna be, the next hour or so.

15:00 Patrick Donnelly: I do think it's cool too, because I don't think everybody can be… everybody can be an intentional individual contributor, but not everybody can do that really long-term one. It takes great leaders. It takes great managers. It takes great, like, all these folks, but it does also take great intentional ICs to drive that machine in a perfect system. So I think it's, uh, it's funny because it's almost a leadership position in its own, right? You just don't have people rolling up to you, which in a lot of ways is also another perk of the…

15:29 Scott Ingram: that's the best part. That's what I meant by intentional. I love that you're running a little bit ahead of me. Anything else about your origin story that you would share? I love the way that you rode right into that. Yeah.

15:42 Patrick Donnelly: Another number one salesperson technique is have preparation. So best believe I checked out the questions beforehand. I think one thing I did learn in my origin story is I was really lucky to have some folks around me who said the best thing you can be is curious. They were telling me this because I was at the dentist office asking the dentist, what is this? What is that? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? At 5 years old. So I think that comes a little bit natural, but I don't think that continues. I think everybody starts with curiosity, but it really became strengthened when I was like, okay, I want to be a founder. You go talk to somebody and ask how, and then ask why and ask what to do. And you start to realize, whoa, like there is so much good information out there when you start talking to folks and you're curious and you're inquisitive. And that I think is a big part of why I'm where I'm at today is because that curiosity never really left. Like the reasons of why I wanted to be a founder is the same reasons of why I want to win a deal. It's figuring out how we can solve this problem. And it's the same level of Intellectual curiosity, right? And I don't have a lot of more exciting details about my origin story. We could get into those if you want, but they're not, I promise they're not that exciting. But I think like the really compelling piece of the story is I just, I'm so happy that like I had the opportunity to ask questions and that I just kept asking them because I really think that's such a fundamental piece to being… intellectual curiosity can get you so many places in life, especially as an IC, right?

17:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. After this sidebar, you'll have to explain to me how you ask your dentist all these questions because I find it very hard to talk around her Hawthorne.

17:14 Patrick Donnelly: I liked it. I'll take it, man.

17:17 Scott Ingram: I'm punchy today. This is fun. Sidebar aside, if you could go back and talk to 20-year-old Patrick, knowing what you know now, would you tell him to do anything differently in terms of the career progression that you would take? Or maybe in this environment, right? Going back to 20-year-old Patrick, what if Patrick was 20 years old today? What would you tell him? That's probably a better question.

17:37 Patrick Donnelly: I actually think the answer is the same in both. I'd rather tell my younger self because I have a bit more time to make these deposits, but It's actually, this came up in a family conversation. My sister mentioned it. She's, she's growing up, she's in college now, so she's becoming smarter than me. But there's this like new, there's this concept, right, of the 10,000-hour rule. 10,000 hours to become an expert in something. And I think that's really interesting because there's a lot of things I wanna be an expert in. I love music, I love chess, I love rock climbing. Like I wanna go be an expert in those. You have to pick and choose where you can put those hours in cuz you don't have unlimited hours in the day. Work is not like that. Sales is not like that. Like you will put in 10,000 hours into sales. You will pretty quickly. I think the advice I would give to myself, and I lucked out because I love selling into revenue. I love the people I sell to. I love what we sell. I love the market. I lucked out. So luckily there's not a lot of regret here, but if you're a seller, like it's important to go sell in an industry that you care about because you will not just become an expert on selling. But you will become an expert on the industry and you will become an expert on the people who make calls there. And I really think that like, if I went and spoke to a class in high school or 5th grade or college, I would say the same thing, which is I would figure if you think that you might like selling or you're an entrepreneur at heart, you just want to have a lot of ownership over your life. I think sales is great for you, but I also think you should consider what you want to be an expert in and be intentional about that direction. It's not easy to get jobs out there, but I have found that my, my younger siblings, like friends that are going out, the ones that are like in love with the field are able to go out and get jobs more effectively. And if you take that into a sales role, I think that's actually what a lot of these companies are looking for.

19:22 Scott Ingram: I love that. And it's a thing that took me a little bit to learn earlier in my career in that I think that who you sell to is so key because I've sold to a lot of different parts of the organization over time. And just like you, revenue leaders are my people. For me, I think the reason is they're the optimists. We're going to grow something, right? They see the possibility in the future. There's other parts of the organization, HR and finance and sometimes operations. And not to say that this is a blanket statement, but they tend to be much more conservative, much more risk-averse, much more let's save money rather than… and it's more of a pessimistic kind of approach is the way I see it versus the… so the optimists are my people. That's who I have to talk to. And again, if you don't see the world the way they see the world and you're not interested in the same things, and it's just not nearly as fun, I'll tell you that much.

20:16 Patrick Donnelly: I know a lot of people that I think are out of sales, not because they didn't like sales, but because they didn't like what they were selling or who they were selling to. Unfortunately, I don't think everybody gets the ability to do that, but it's like a consciousness thing. It's if you're aware, you have the upper hand in choosing that early on. And that would certainly be a piece of advice I would pass to myself, not just for my professional career, but my personal stuff too, is to get those 10,000 hours in.

20:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally. What's the music interest? Where are you focused there?

20:43 Patrick Donnelly: Oh man, I think I love creating. I think that's a part of like I've talked about, like creating process. I love scaling revenue. I love building process. I love building teams. I love being in the room to understand go-to-market strategy and weighing in on that. It's funny. That's the same thing to me as starting a band and loving a type of music and creating music in that genre and making it your own and writing the technical details behind that music and performing it and recording it and putting it on social media. It's the same thing to me. And so I think, I think at the end of the day, the reason I love both revenue and music is just I love creating and I love creating in the context of a team. So I'm a big band guy. You won't find me on like any solo tracks out there, but I think like my interest in music really does come from the same place that I love business. And it's just building something really cool in a creative way with people that you really enjoy doing it with.

21:36 Scott Ingram: I think the creativity piece is so interesting in this because I'm super creative in a business context where if I look at any traditional creative thing, incompetent. You don't want me drawing things. I struggle with stick figures. I think it's this disconnect of it feel… I felt, oh, not creative, but so much of what I do is super creative. So it's so interesting that you basically put both sides of your interest, even though they're wildly different, business and music, they're both a creative process in the way that we get to operate.

22:11 Patrick Donnelly: They are. And I bet, Scott, I bet there are weird, like, little activities out there that if you found, you're like, oh wait, my creativity also thrives here. You just need to soul search a little. But it is, it's so weird how it's, it's just so similar to me and it just makes both so enjoyable. If you look through them through the same lens, you're like, these are the same things. It means you get to wake up every day and kind of feel you're doing what you love no matter which activity it is.

22:34 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Patrick, the show's called Sales Success Stories. I feel like maybe we should tell a sales story or 2. What are your favorites, whether you won or lost?

22:44 Patrick Donnelly: I got 2. We can start with the one that I won. It's a little bit more exciting. I really love this story because if you work with me at Nooks or anywhere, I'm a big discovery guy. I'm actually not a big sales methodology I see a lot of merit in them and I've learned a lot. I've never been formally trained, but the one thing that I think is consistent across sales methodology is really great discovery leads to really great deals. We have a customer here at Nooks that before they were a customer that we jumped on an intro call with their VP of RevOps and she told me straight up, we signed with your, we signed with your competitor. I'm only here because I was at an event and I was told I would get free headphones or it was some sort of reward if I did this, which Don't you love those leads, Scott? They're the best.

23:24 Scott Ingram: Those are totally the best.

23:26 Patrick Donnelly: What's interesting about questions is I think the natural response to something like that is then, how can we get out of this? And it's the cool thing about great questions is if you take a step back, you get a chance to like take some comments, be like, oh cool. Okay. So you guys already know the competitor. Maybe we should start having conversations then for the renewal. Cause obviously we'd love to, we'd love to compete for it. But I'm curious, like, why are we on this call? We haven't, uh, we haven't signed, but we're signing this week. So like I told you, give me your pitch so I can collect my thing. Be like, totally fair. I'm happy to give you the pitch. I, I'm curious, what are the things that you actually are like trying to solve with them? I am actually really curious about the main areas where you're focused on solving with this company. They, she divulged those and we got into this really interesting discussion around their goals, what they wanted to accomplish, but also what the gaps were, what they were a little bit worried about. And those were things that we actually performed really well in.

24:16 Scott Ingram: So.

24:17 Patrick Donnelly: You start to, to, to bring those things together. And at the end of 30 minutes, referencing some customers that are similar and doing the other things that good preparation gets you, we get a follow-up call. We get on the follow-up call and we talk about, hey, like, we know that you're signing. Not sure if you can do anything here, but what we'd love to do is run an evaluation here, right? Get them into our process because we think you'd be a really good fit because frankly, based on the discovery, I think you would agree with me. They postponed the signing. We ran the evaluation and it got really tight. Like they already had all their stakeholder alignment built, right? All this momentum. And we were just able to really understand from the discovery call, from the calls following, discovery continues to really unpack what was important to this business and exploit every single one of those areas in a really strategic way. And they're now really successful Nooks customers. They've grown. They, they're getting new Nooks products. And I love that story because it's just, even when the odds are super stacked against you, one, never give up is important, but 2, like discovery questions. Discovery questions, I really do believe, save the day. And not just like pointless discovery questions. I think there is no such thing as activity breeds action. It's meaningful activity breeds meaningful action. And meaningful questions really do drive meaningful conversation. And I love that story because evidences that so well. And that is the start to every great sales process, in my opinion.

25:36 Scott Ingram: Such a good one. I feel like maybe the greatest phrase that has come out of the nearly 10 years of Sales Success Media. Shout out to Katie Jane Bailey, who was at Figma at the time. This was at the summit. This is years ago. She said, discovery is a lifestyle, not a stage. That was just such a perfect encapsulation because the other thing that you just described, it wasn't because on this one call, the first time I talked with them, I asked some really good questions. And it led to other things. It was like, nope. I kept asking good questions on the next call and the call after that, and all led by legit genuine curiosity. You probably started that process going, okay, this is a throwaway call, but I can have some fun and I'm just curious.

26:23 Patrick Donnelly: That is such an OG quote. Discovery is such a lifestyle. I'll hashtag this post with it, Scott. I'll do the same. So shout out to the OGs that, that are quoting that. But yeah, it just so is. And it is funny. Like I crack up because it's, it's important for like onboarding and stuff to look at discovery and be like, are you passing the discovery portion of your onboarding, but it really does come down to, we, you gotta hire really curious people because discovery questions need to happen at every single stage at the process. And it's not even like when it closes, it stops. How are you gonna expand the account? How are you gonna grow with them? It's just so funny how you hear this from the start. You gotta ask good discovery questions, but seriously, you gotta ask good discovery questions.

27:00 Scott Ingram: So I have a question. Tell me about that deal you lost. Have you got another story for us?

27:05 Patrick Donnelly: So you've already got me on record for a deal that I lost. This is another deal I lost, but this is far more earlier in my, in my career. And I'll count this as a loss, but I, I really like this one because it's humanizing. And I was not always the top rep. I was not always the top rep. When I first started being an AE, I'll never forget, I was like 3 deals in, deals are moving, yada, yada, whatever. But there was one deal, um, where I got on, we had a really great discovery call. Like, uh, we, we showed a little bit of product. It was really awesome. And she said, this is awesome. Uh, this is when I was at LeadIQ and she said, I wanna bring in my CMO for the next call. I'm like an SMB AE. I'm like, CMO? Like, I've never talked to a CMO before. This is gonna be awesome. So I put in all my preparation, I build the slide decks, I know exactly what I'm talking about. I got, when you're like over-preparing, I got like a whole doc full of what I'm gonna talk about. Like, it's gonna go according to that plan. It totally won't, but I did it anyway. I still remember what I ate for breakfast that day. I had like protein pancakes, scrambled eggs, like Turkey bacon and serve. Like, I will never forget this again. It's the losses, right? But I got on that call, I kicked it off and said, great to meet you, uh, Mr. CMO. Gabrielle is the person actually who was like, introduce me. It's funny cuz I'll click and connect those dots later. But I just go into it, I start asking questions and then I start talking. And Scott, I'm not lying to you, I had a panic attack in front of the CMO of this company and it was so embarrassing. I had to like get off the call. She was checking on me, hey, is everything okay? And I, it was insane because like, I was like, oh my God, I might not be cut out for sales. I'm so nervous. How could I let that happen? But the cool thing is that if you just eat that and say, hey, I'm early, I'm still learning. I still need to get reps in. I need to be pers… I need to persevere through this. This is just a… you're never going to have easy deals. There's always going to be a panic attack. Hopefully it's not on a call like it was that time, but you really do got to push through these things and have that level of grit and perseverance and realize that you're a human and What's crazy is I lost that deal. It didn't move forward, but I really did learn from that. Wasn't prepare more, you know, it wasn't have more composure or do better. It was really just, hey, we're human. At the end of the day, take a step back, breathe. You're developing, especially early on. But even here, I remember when I got promoted to enterprise and it's like you start talking to bigger customers and you get a, you get this CMO from like a Fortune 500 company in the room. Like the nerves will run and it's really important to take a step back, realize that I'm human. This person is also human. They have weekends. Like that stuff is actually like really grounding and really helpful, I think, for young sellers and sellers that are trying to improve and build better like stature inside of calls. And so I love that call. The other, my favorite thing is I ran into Gabrielle like 4 years later. She's like a director of sales development somewhere. I'm an AE who's actually not having paying attacks on calls. And like, I love that story because it's cool to overcome like those weird early steps and see where you can get in your career if you just keep pushing and keep developing.

29:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I love that you're open enough to share that because it's an insane story, but happens. I'll tell you, I can't remember if it was this show, cause I started another podcast earlier intentionally cause I wanted to get good at it cause I had this show in mind. I think it was that, but I remember the first podcast interview I ever did. I am super comfortable with almost anybody, super comfortable on a stage. Somehow getting behind a microphone, sitting in a room by myself, recording something that probably nobody ever listened to. Freaked me out. I'm like, I don't remember ever being so nervous in my life. And it made no sense. And when you look back on your situation, you're like, it was just a guy, right? He had this 3-letter title, but somehow it's so funny how we get so in our heads. And over time, and again, I think even when you know that reality intellectually, there's no reason you should have had that panic attack, Patrick. It just happens. It is what it is.

30:55 Patrick Donnelly: Yeah. As a top performer though, I think that is a quality to take when things are getting hot, take a step back, assess the situation, take a breath, which you can also do before you ask questions in calls and stuff. It's actually good to take those pauses, assess and move forward from there. I think take that pause is actually like something I've seen pretty much any top performer I've ever spoken to has the confidence to do. Say, hey, I'm gonna take a pause. I'm gonna figure out how I actually wanna approach this. And then they go and execute on that thought. And I think that's actually something that makes… is a big differential between a lot of really good AEs and a lot of AEs that, that need to take that step for themselves.

31:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great guidance, right? Because a sign of not having confidence is coming, just let me just go right back and let me talk too much and let me just throw back rather than… it's only if you have confidence do you take that breath and take that time and go, this isn't going to ruin me. It's all good. But really need to think for just a second about how this is going to go. Patrick, you've accomplished a lot, right? You've had a lot of good, consistent success. What are you most proud of?

32:00 Patrick Donnelly: That's a really good question. I honestly don't like to like bask in my own things that I've accomplished. Like, that's not a… I'm a big team guy. That's what I care about. So the question actually makes me a bit uncomfortable, but I think if I had to associate pride with what I have accomplished, I would have to say it's like, I'm really proud of the reputation I've built that I am somebody who can help build a team and move upmarket. That's, if anybody asks what Patrick is good at, I'd say that's my, that's where I live in somewhat, let me, Scott, I don't wanna say expert land cuz I don't wanna call myself an expert on this, but that's where I think I feel the most comfortable within an organization. At LeadIQ, we needed to go raise a Series B. In order to do that, we needed to go sell a market. We needed to go and find bigger customers. And the way we were going to do that wasn't just selling bigger customers. Scott, and everybody listening knows it's not that easy to just go and sell bigger customers. You have to have a great process. You have to have the supporting characters around that process to be able to do that stuff. And shout out to my buddy Mike Lynch as well. We sat there in a room and we built out a process for enterprise and we went and closed a couple of really big deals. And I ended up being the top rep that year. It was awesome. I learned a ton. When I went to Nooks, I told Rohan and Dan, the co-founders, I want to do the same thing here. And the average deal size at that point was like $13,000 to $17,000. It took some convincing and I had to prove it a little bit, but we were really able to push up market and then get resources, build a process and iterate on that process and get more resources and go further up market and build a better process and get more resources and I really am proud of the, where Nooks is today, upmarket, because of not just my contributions, everybody around me, but like me having the confidence to go into this company and say, I'm gonna push us up here. I'm gonna see how far we can go. And now there's not a lot higher you can go. There's certainly like bigger logos that we're chasing and stuff, but I'm really proud of the team we've built at Nooks, the people I have around me, how incredible the team is around me, and I'm really proud of my role in that. And I don't plan on leaving Nooks anytime soon, but I do get excited about potentially doing that again. And so I think my proudest piece is like my ability and confidence to go and do something like that.

34:15 Scott Ingram: Solid stuff. Let me get you closer to your comfort zone and let's talk about what's hard. What do you find to be the biggest challenge right now?

34:25 Patrick Donnelly: Right now? I think the biggest challenge is also the most, is also the most fun part of what I'm doing. And it's staying afloat amidst a lot going on. Like it really is staying organized, not dropping the ball, keeping level heads, making sure that we're not losing the humanity in it all. It is not, it is not an easy thing to do actually on paper, especially for salespeople. We are heavily scrutinized for hitting our number. And so there's, in turn, a lot of pressure on us. Making sure you're staying even keel, being level-headed, and making sure that you're maintaining all the things that we've talked about to this point, Scott, I think is like a really hard thing to do. It takes practice. It takes yoga. Honestly, it takes breathwork, right? It takes these things, but they're incredibly important. And I think like the most respect… the people I respect the most and the most respected people around me are like the ones who really can Keep that level head when things are crazy. Because typically when things are crazy, it's a good sign, but you really got to ride it in stride. So hard to keep that level head, but just essential to growing and essential to maintaining the success that you've had to that point.

35:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So good. Having recently made a job change and having really been thinking about just the world, I felt like the analogy I was using was half-baked. I'm trying to skate to where the puck is going to be. But the ice is really slippery and the rink in this environment, in the, just, I don't know, the way the world is right now, it's actually spinning and it's tilted. And I didn't go deep enough in math to know how to do that level of calculus to figure out where the heck the puck is going. Finding that this environment confuses the crud out of me, but what I keep trying to ground myself in is Control the controllables. What are the things that I can do? Somebody said, yeah, our challenge with Q1 is war. I can't control war. There are many things that are out of my control, but there are many things that are in my control. And what's the focus on that? And to your point, I think exactly, we're not the only ones dealing with this environment. Our customers are too. Being that grounded place and helping them find something that they can control. To maybe they're not going to quite skate to where the puck is going to be, but let's at least be moving in the right direction and maybe we can stay off our butts at least, which is usually my experience on ice.

36:56 Patrick Donnelly: It's so crucial. It's funny, I see external so similar to internal. Things are crazy. Keep a level head, keep your eye on the ball and just keep moving along with the composure. You got to be that linchpin for your customers a lot of time. So having perspective and then being grounded in that stuff, I couldn't agree more, Scott. I think that's a great way to put it.

37:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And that right there. So let's use this as a jumping off because we're not doing our jobs here if we're not talking about AI and how we're using it and thinking about it to some degree. I think that is exactly the piece. I think the way sales is going to evolve is in a K-shape. If you are transactional and just doing the stuff that AI can do, you are in a whole lot of trouble. But if you are doing a lot of the stuff that we are talking about and you're building trust and creating confidence and connecting all of the complicated dots between 2 organizations, your value is so much higher. And we are going to be able to command more and more of a premium over time because this is the stuff that AI, at least not in any short to midterm future, is going to get to. How are you thinking about that stuff? You're selling an AI product as well. What is your view of the world? How are you thinking about your position in this environment?

38:17 Patrick Donnelly: I'm really lucky because the resources I get to work with every day are like the thought leaders in AI, like Rohan, Dan, and Nikhil, our founders, are the reason I joined this team. There were a couple other reasons, but the most important one was they're the smartest 3 people I've ever met in my life. And it is really cool to jump on an all-hands and have them explain the state of AI to the broader team. We had a graph, it was a hilarious graph. There was some profanity, so I can't show it or quote it exactly, but it really was like this, like they were like, we want everybody to understand what AI is. Obviously we're building a lot of stuff, but we actually want the company to understand like everything that we're building and why we're building at this rate. The reason we're building at this rate is AI's doing this curve, but it's this really exponential curve that gets very steep right about here. We are not here. Like AI just develops to the point where it's like, hey, Nooks can do these things for the past year, but over the next 3 months it can do these things. And the next 2 months it can do these things. And the next week it can do almost all the things you didn't think AI could do. It can do all those things. So it's really cool to be able to work with people that see the world of AI transformation that way, that actually build products that direction. So you can see really tangible examples. And then I think for Scott, I'm not going to be the guy that builds the next great AI thing. But I think what we can do as sellers is really understand what's happening in this world and the actual applications it can have for businesses and be consultative and be strategic about that stuff. Like, I, I haven't met a lot of customers that are like, Patrick, can you like do this AI stuff for me? Right? It's more of, Patrick, we're thinking about AI. Here's what we're thinking about AI. How are you thinking about AI and how should we go and do these things to accomplish these goals in revenue? So you gotta be around a company or thought leadership or have access to information resources to understand at least what's happening and how intense the actual development is, but then also be able to have a real grasp on the impacts it can have for businesses so that you can be consultative and strategic. And that's I don't try to be the expert in the A. I really try to be an expert in the B so that I can be that for my customers and then bring in the technical resources where we got to get technical. Love it.

40:32 Scott Ingram: Love it. Let's talk about just the habit routine, how you structure your life kind of stuff. And my favorite way to ask this question is your alarm clock goes off. Tell me what time that happens and give us a pretty detailed blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow again.

40:48 Patrick Donnelly: When things are crazy like they are in the age of AI, I think it is important to have a routine that does keep you sane. I think that's a really important piece to the sales routine, especially because a lot of people can end up starting work at 6:00 AM and ending work at 10:00 PM. That can be detrimental. I wake up at 6:00 AM. I need a good sleep. This starts with getting a good sleep and getting to sleep around like 10, right? So like actually falling asleep is the first part of the routine. Getting up at 6:00 AM is where I start. And I actually kick off by making myself aware of Slack and emails. Just make myself aware what is in my inbox that came in this morning. I'm in LA, so anything that came in East Coast or EMEA or India or APAC, right? What do I need to be aware of in Slack and email? If something's crazy and it's a fire, I'm jumping on it. So there's always room for alteration here. But by and large, like I'm waking up and I'm checking that stuff and making myself aware. The next thing I'm doing is I'm getting ready and I actually activate my brain with a podcast and It doesn't have to be, it could be informational, it can be comedy, it can be sports, it could be world news. Like I just need something that gets my brain moving, not just thinking about work, but really engaging other aspects of my brain, going for a walk, activating the body, and then getting back at around like 6:30, 6:45, kicking off at work by at least 7 and having them, having some music playing. So no longer active listening, right? Just something that's more passive. And working through Slack and email, right? I've got my calls prepared from yesterday cuz I put the preparation in, my emails and my Slack are good to go. And by the time I engage in my first call, I'm prepared, but my brain is really awake and it's not just awake with a bunch of fire drills and craziness, but I've also had my other information digest, right? I've also been outside and smelled the fresh air, right? Like those things are important to me before I start my day. I've listened to music. So when I start talking to customers, I'm, I'm ready for the day. I'm not trying to figure out how I'm going to actually say my first words for the day kind of thing.

42:44 Scott Ingram: What's that ideal gap like? When's your first I'm talking to a customer meeting in the morning?

42:50 Patrick Donnelly: I do try to not schedule customer calls before 8. I am a firm believer that you do need to prepare your day before you start your day. You lose track of your day if you can't sit down and get yourself on track for a great day. That being said, we're in sales. I absolutely take calls at 7:00 AM. I've taken calls at 6:30 AM, right? That happens. And like you have to roll with the punches there, but just staying moderately true to that routine I think is really impactful. But I do believe in waking up the systems and making sure you're not… you're taking a second to breathe right before that day starts so that you can be strategic and be valuable in those conversations.

43:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. How are you then structuring sort of your typical workday?

43:28 Patrick Donnelly: Workday and workweek are a similar thing for me. I'm not something that somebody that actually needs a super rigid routine. And my life, my work life revolves around projects. I'm traveling sometimes, right? There are certain days that kickoffs require more attention than others where I'm hyper-focused on one customer versus other days where I might be taking 5 to 6 discovery calls, right? It really depends on what's happening, but typically the way I like to structure my week is I like to have days dedicated to projects and I like to make sure that in my days where I'm not dedicating projects, I'm blocking off time and I'm not running through meeting after meeting. It's really important I get time in between to decompress and prepare, but also get the other things done that need to get done and not waiting until 6:00 PM to hit everything that's got me in Slack. I am a firm believer in there are days where you gotta sprint and that's what it's all about. And then there's days where you really do need to create the breaks for yourself to give yourself a little bit of a mental space to rejuvenate, but also take a breath and be strategic on how you're going to move forward for the rest of the day.

44:31 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then last piece, like what happens in the 6 to 10?

44:35 Patrick Donnelly: Oh man. Eat dinner at home. Eat dinner at home because that solves a lot of problems from a money and health perspective. Like I think also cooking, if you have a partner, if you have a partner or you're single, I think cooking is so freaking valuable to make your hands do something other than type on a keyboard. But I also am a big believer in have other hobbies. You gotta go get better. I'm terrible at rock climbing. I'm terrible at chess, but I love going and getting better at it after work. And it completely helps me when you're focused on something that you're trying to improve on. It really does take you away from like the intensity of the workday and you need that before you fall asleep or else you're going to have some crazy stress dreams.

45:16 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. You maybe hinted at this. It feels like this is part of the first thing in the morning thing, but what is your actual information diet? What are you listening to? What are you reading? What are you watching?

45:26 Patrick Donnelly: Good question. There's a lot. I envy some folks that are able to really listen to their industry stuff in such depth, but I really do need diversity in my information. That's really important to me. But I think like from a book standpoint, I do love to read. I like to keep like, I'll write like my favorite book. I think I've actually read from a business standpoint. Scott, yours is one of them, but The Challenger Customer is one of my favorite things like consensus buying. Like that's one of those books that like, I like to revisit. I think building buying consensus is so cool. I think there's so much valuable gold in there. Essentialism is a professional book I'm reading right now to really help you prioritize and understand what's essential and make sure that you're not stretching yourself too thin. If you haven't read that, my leader Colin got it for me for Christmas. It's exceptional. It can change the way you work, but it can also change the way you live. So check it out. I'm also reading a book about medieval ages from 400 to 1500 AD after the collapse of Rome, right? I, that's the type of diversity I look for in my information digest. And then from like a, a podcast perspective, Right here, Scott, but also like Wall Street Journal, TLDR News is awesome. I think it's important to understand world news. You talked about this. You need to understand your customer's world, and a lot of times their world doesn't just exist here. Understanding what's happening in the economy and broader world is important, but also anywhere my customers are, wherever my customers are talking, that's another place I like to live. So my information digest is really broad, but luckily I really love listening to things and reading things. So I spend a lot of my free time absorbing a broad dialogue.

46:55 Scott Ingram: Very cool. I'm sure Nooks is probably at the top of your list, but I'm curious about the tools and apps that you can't live without.

47:02 Patrick Donnelly: Nooks is absolutely at the top of my list. If you haven't checked out Nooks, check out Nooks. But this is going to be such a cop-out answer, but ChatGPT I think is awesome and it's awesome for one reason. And I think my reason is different than other people's. I love how curious you can be with ChatGPT. I love that you can ask 70 questions on one topic.

47:26 Scott Ingram: And it doesn't get frustrated with you.

47:28 Patrick Donnelly: No, it doesn't. It's, wow, Patrick, you're so inquisitive today. I'm like, thank you, ChatGPT. And it's just cool because you really do get to get so deep on topics that it could be work, it could be like sales methodology, it could be the medieval ages, like it can be whatever. And there's an asterisk next to everything. Like you might need to fact-check some work there, but like, I love ChatGPT for that element. Claude Code, I think, is so great. Like I think gone are the days of having to build decks the way we used to. I think gone are the days strategizing like for accounts and stuff. Nooks does this a lot for me. Like I leverage Nooks, but Claude Code is also great. I think we actually use that inside of Nooks, but like technology that AI that really helps you do these things that used to take 4 hours in 10 minutes and then you can just go and adjust. If you're not using that, like here's your sign, go and learn how to use AI to do these things. And then obviously things like I love LinkedIn. I love Spotify. I couldn't live without those apps. LinkedIn is great. I love keeping up with people and I need my music, Scott. So Spotify's on that list too. I'm team Spotify.

48:30 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Again, I think you maybe alluded to this, that you're not really a sales methodology guy. Maybe you're just a pure discovery guy, but just curious about, do you subscribe to any type of overarching sales philosophy or what's your sales philosophy?

48:44 Patrick Donnelly: I think there's a lot of merit in Challenger Customer. I love Challenger Customer because it's so much about like consensus buying and about how exactly executives don't make decisions on their own anymore. That is probably my favorite piece from sales methodology. I think value selling is really interesting, but I think actually a lot of AEs can resonate with this. I've had multiple leaders, I've had multiple managers. They typically walk in with different sales methodologies. It could be Sandler, right? It could be, I don't feel like MEDDIC is a, a sales meth… it's like different elements like that, right? And so I think that I don't subscribe to an overarching sales methodology, but what I do have is like, All these different sales methodologies, I'm able to pick and choose what I love from. So I think the important thing here is not that sales methodologies don't matter. They really do. The important thing is having exposure to sales methodologies and really understanding like what's great from each one and adopting them. And what I think you end up seeing is there's actually a lot of overlap across the board. There's a lot of really good stuff that like overlaps in that Venn diagram. But I think exposure to sales methodology was more important to me than actually subscribing to one across the board.

49:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I almost think of it as… I think you're exactly right. I think the broad exposure is important. And if there's anything I've learned from this show, it's that the top performers have found their way and what aligns with them and their style and their approach. So you do have to pick and choose and try on a lot of different pieces and go, okay, this actually fits. And I always like to joke, look, I'm a 42 regular. You try and put me in a size 3 dress, it ain't going to be pretty. You have to find your style of clothing and the one that fits you right. Patrick, let's talk about that. What is your style?

50:24 Patrick Donnelly: I like this question because it makes me reflect. I actually have gotten the feedback from a lot of folks who have joined Nooks. I'm unfortunate… unfortunately for anybody who joins Nooks, I'm in a lot of the Gong calls and like the enablement program. And they're like, I really like your style. I have to sit there and be like, oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I never really consciously chose like a style. I think my style really is just, I'm a little easygoing. I'm not the most corporate guy you've ever seen. I never wanted to be like an obvious sales rep on the other side of a call. And I think that's because that's not my DNA. I'm not just like a sales rep on the other side of the call. I'm a person, I got interests. I'm a little weirder than some other people. That's okay. But I think like the big piece of my style that resonates with all kinds of buyers is I am a partner to the broader picture, right? I am here to ask questions, to really understand What the problems are, how we solve them, how we go about doing that and building a program. And like when you approach the deal and conversations that way, I think a lot of styles can be appealing, but the backbone of who you are and what you're actually doing and conducting yourself in those conversations like that to me is style. And I think caring about those broader pictures is my style on top of having longer hair than I should and all the other stuff.

51:37 Scott Ingram: What about the motivation front? What is it that actually drives you? How do you think about that?

51:43 Patrick Donnelly: My biggest motivator is a little funny. It's, I think, what makes me a little different than other sellers, but I think this is part of the DNA of a lot of the top performers. I just love scaling revenue. Like, I love going to a company and figuring out what is the next biggest customer that we can close? What is the next thing that we can do to take a step forward in our process? How do we hit this stretch goal for company revenue goal? How can we support customers so well that they're coming back to us and saying, let's reinvest here? It's weird. My, my motivation isn't getting out of bed and saying, how do I get money for a mortgage? It's not, how do I make my car payment? It's not, I want to be richer than all my friends. None of those things are like things that I think about. They're also like not things that are true. I'm certainly not the most wealthy of my friends, but like the… cut that one. I hate that, Scott. I don't want to talk about stuff, but I think at the end of the day, like I really just care about accomplishing this goal as a team and as a company. And when you have that team layer mindset, it's, I wake up every day to go and accomplish the goal with the person next to me, because I think that at the end of the day, like, that's my strongest motivator is making sure that our team is succeeding. Which again, like, I almost feel a little disgusted saying that because it's a cop-out answer, but it is, it is really the thing that like drives me at the end of the day.

53:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. When I started this show, that is maybe the misconception and the stereotype that took me the longest to get over because the stereotype is top performers are ego-driven and coin-operated and it's cash is the only thing that matters. And what I have found so consistently is one, what you have demonstrated over and over again, it's rarely an ego thing. In fact, the level of humility is often very high. And the real driver is taking care of our customers and creating the impact. What's… again, I recently joined Winning by Design. Our methodology is SPICED. So Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, and Decision. When I saw that, because I didn't know their stuff really well before I came to know the organization, the impact piece for me I've been like, that's my love language. That's why I do everything. And that I have actually found to be… that is the most consistent thing with the performance. Because here's the thing, if you deliver that impact, if you serve your customers, they come back, all these amazing things happen for you, including you achieving the sales goals and getting the W-2 that you want and all the things. But it's an aftereffect. Of taking great care of your customers. And it's not about you.

54:25 Patrick Donnelly: This was a cool exercise because it illuminated to me that everyone's in the trenches together. You are in the trenches with your team internally. You are in the trenches with your customers. Like we're all working together to go and achieve a common goal. When you're in the trenches and you're really bought into what you guys are trying to do, it's cool to not need another motivator outside of that. And it creates some pretty awesome friendships and relationships along the way and makes work seem… it makes work a lot more fun. Frankly.

54:51 Scott Ingram: Totally. Totally. All right. I'm going to whip out my soapbox. I got a couple of questions for you. Is there something you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

55:02 Patrick Donnelly: Yes. And we just talked about it. Money is not the best motivator. I actually think it's really important, but it can put blinders on. When you focus on money, you do start to get away from the core of why you're actually in the role and what you're trying to accomplish. And it's a strong motivator, but I don't think it's the best one. I actually think there are like, there are other cool things. I think even like team trips, like I would love a team trip or something out of that that really can motivate a team or an individual to work harder so that they can get closer with their team. I've just, I've always believed, I've always thought that was an interesting thing. SPIFs never got me that excited. I was like, I was already going to try my best. I would rather go to Hawaii with the team. Can we do that?

55:44 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. What about the flip side? Is there something you believe that most salespeople would think is nuts?

55:52 Patrick Donnelly: The question that I thought was really interesting, and I'll just reiterate it because it made me think, I know exactly what you're talking about. I was like, okay, is there something that other salespeople believe that I think is crazy? And I was like, you know, what's funny is I think there's merit to a lot of beliefs. I actually have found that beliefs can be industry dependent. You end up with these different personalities within different industries and like, different types of personalities within different industries. And I don't know if I sit here and go any of these are crazy. I think if you sat me down in a… if you sat me down in a room with any of them, I'd probably at the end of the day maybe agree with them and be like, why do you think that? And then I figure that out and be like, that makes a lot of sense. This person's making a lot of sense. I think I agree with you. But I don't inherently think that most police are crazy. I do just think that a lot of salespeople are constantly thinking about money and that's a blinder on something that you're missing out on something a little bit more valuable. And it's like development and other things that are a bit more intangible and they don't buy you a nice new car, but if you're not focused on them, they whiz by you.

56:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I have 2 thoughts on that. One is I think that there's a little bit of a hierarchy of needs thing that happens. So early in your career, if you don't have enough money, then yeah, it's a big driver. But at a certain point you get to a stage where you're like, okay, I've got enough to take care of my basic stuff. I'm mostly good there. The other thing though, that I think is maybe more critical is the kind of commission breath component. If you're coming at this with, I've got to close this deal because I either need the money or I'm just behind on my quota, and that feeling of lack and I need this, you sell from such a stronger place when you set all of that aside. If the only goal is let me just serve this customer in the best way that I can, and it's not about me, my number, my commission check, any of that. Most people show up differently, I think, when they frame it that way.

57:45 Patrick Donnelly: I think you're 100% correct. It's really hard to develop when all your prospects smell commission breath and you're not focused on solving their problems. The opportunity cost is like you just miss so many lessons. You miss so many opportunities for development. Every deal you close, you will get money. But if you don't have your eyes focused and you're not tuned into the things that can actually develop you, You can miss those so easily. And those are like the wasted opportunities.

58:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I wonder if there's any others like that. What have been the most important decisions that you had to make or the most important lessons that you had to learn to get to where you are today?

58:22 Patrick Donnelly: I feel very strongly it's hard to achieve this. It's really hard to achieve this actually. But I think joining the right team and having leadership that supports you is just so massive. I think that decision is like choosing the right industry is important. Yeah. But if you don't, the toughest junctures I've ever had in my career is when I didn't feel supported by leadership. And in my case, when I felt that, I actually said, you know what, I'm gonna go find what I'm looking for here. I'm not compromising on this value. I need to make sure that like I am bought into the exact same things for myself and what we're trying to do as a business as my leaders. And it's pretty incredible the return on that investment. It's just, if you're aware of it and you don't compromise on it, like it's one of the best decisions you can make to have great leadership behind you and supporting you. Again, hard to find, but it's, it's one of those things that I think is probably the most important decision I ever made and has caused the most challenging moments of my career.

59:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man. Love such a great callout. So good. So good. What advice would you give to somebody that is early in their sales career? What do you tell them to get on the right trajectory?

59:33 Patrick Donnelly: Don't limit your discovery questions to your prospects. If you're at that company, there have to be people, and hopefully it's multiple people that you respect, multiple people that you respect and embody who you want to be in that profession and are at a level that you want to be at. Go ask them questions. Go understand like how you can get to where they are. The cool thing about that exercise is I might be the number one AE in my department at Nooks, There's a lot of people that I have questions for because you just, like, when you have that mindset, you just never stop growing. And so if you're early on, go hit your number. That's number one. But number two, go figure out how you can get to where you want to be and just never stop learning and never stop figuring out how you can get better at what you're doing now. It's the number one thing I'd probably tell anybody outside of make sure you choose the industry that you want to sell into.

1:00:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Patrick, hopefully we'll get to see you again this year at the summit. So when you come back in October this year, what's the question that you have for those other top performers that you'll be with?

1:00:33 Patrick Donnelly: That's a great question. And Scott, if I'm being honest, I would probably take a breath and say, if I got one question, I might need to think about that and get back to you. But if I'm asked on the spot, I am really curious about what they're seeing define success today. I am a firm believer believer. I haven't been selling for 2 decades. I've been selling for around a decade, but in my decade, I've seen the way people sell and the way people buy and the way they react to both of those emotions change pretty intensely. And I would be curious to understand like what makes a seller great today and what buyers are looking for today, not from a product perspective, but from a partner standpoint, because I think that's changing. And I think there's a lot of people that are better at it than I am. And I'd love to learn from them. I know that they're at your summit, Scott, so you can count me in for being there.

1:01:18 Scott Ingram: I have so many questions about your question. What's the change that you've seen? Help me with the context of that piece, just in terms of the buyer-seller shift. What do you mean by that?

1:01:27 Patrick Donnelly: I was actually talking to my buddy Mike about this the other day who leads up LeadIQ. We've been in the trenches, right? And one of the things we were reflecting on was I think there's a lot less shine. It's not about shiny objects anymore. Like, and it never really was. It's always been about value, but it's more about value now more than ever. And I think like sellers that are focused on value and staying away from the shine and sellers that are actually really professional and their approach to showing that value is really important right now. I think people don't have time to waste. I feel like there's a more critical element in sales cycles right now. And so not wasting time is really important. Being professional is really important and focusing on value is really important. All those things have been important for all of time, but I really do think they're being more heavily indexed on now than ever. Less dollars to spend, more consolidation happening. It's going to be you or it's going to be the other one. And if you're not solid on all 3 of those, you certainly put yourself like behind the 8-ball.

1:02:27 Scott Ingram: Let's stay on the advice train a little bit. And I'm curious, what advice would you give to somebody that's further into their career? Right. And maybe they're doing okay. They're making their number, but they haven't gotten to the level of great, or I'm not at the top of the leaderboard. What do you tell them? Those that want to be there, like they're striving.

1:02:46 Patrick Donnelly: I've done this multiple times in my career. I've done it when things are good and I've done it when things are bad. I think it's really… QBRs are not taking inventory. I think it's important to take inventory yourself. It's not a presentation, but it is taking considerable time to sit down and say, Where am I? Where do I want to be? Why do I want to be there? How do I get there? And filling in the how with talking to people who are where you want to be. So we talked about going and getting feedback from people who you respect or in that general direction, but it actually does start with inventory because it allows you to sit down and really understand why you want to do something. It allows you to understand what questions you want to get answered and taking inventory is just one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself, I think. And it doesn't… I don't think it gets done a lot across the board from a personal or professional level. And it can be really healthy. By the way, you can't take inventory listening to something. It's gotta be quiet. Go for a walk.

1:03:44 Scott Ingram: I'm curious for you, outside of prepping for a conversation with Scott, how often are you taking that inventory for yourself? What's your own process?

1:03:55 Patrick Donnelly: It's a good question. I don't have a schedule for it. It's more of, okay, I feel life picking up. Things are smooth-ish. More things have entered. And my wife and I bought a house last year. It's been a year. Things started needing to get fixed. We need to start making renovations. I've got family stuff. Work is continuing to develop, obviously. And when those types of things happen, like when you start to sense that, hey, more is on the plate, That's when I like to take inventory. Like when I feel that things are starting to get added, that's when it's important for me to be like, okay, where am I at? Am I happy where I'm at? Where do I want to be? And taking those moments there. I should probably be more intentional actually about the timing of when I do that. But the first reaction to being overwhelmed or feeling like I will be overwhelmed is that step of taking inventory.

1:04:41 Scott Ingram: Nice. That's a solid trigger, right? Yep. So Patrick, we have covered a lot of ground and this has been super fun, at least for me. I don't know if it's been fun for you, but it's been really fun for me. Was there anything that we didn't touch on, or I just didn't ask the right question to get to something that you really hoped we would get to talk about?

1:04:58 Patrick Donnelly: I wouldn't say we missed anything. I would just say I, I really appreciate the focuses here. I think a lot of people can get lost on LinkedIn learning sales skills. Sales skills are so important. Execution and tactics are so important, but mindset really matters. Intention really matters. I got a yogi mom. She's always talking about breathing and intention, so it's been overworked into me. But it is one of the things that like, I think separates me from a lot of people is like being really intentional and having the right mindset while you're going and trying to achieve some of these tactics and things that you're learning and skills is really an important precursor. So I really appreciate what you do, Scott, and the dialogue that you have with the bestsellers out there around these, around these items.

1:05:36 Scott Ingram: I love that you call it out. I feel like it's a double-edged sword a little bit because I think people do sometimes get frustrated with, look, I just want the tactic. I want the technique. And I will always come back to, it's way more fundamental than that. The tactic and the technique isn't the thing that is going to make the difference for you. It's not, you had this amazing turn of phrase and that changed everything. It's no, it's so much more fundamental. It's so much more foundational. And I believe, and I'm curious on your perspective, that's what's worthy of the investment because if you have that Intent too, right? I think this is perceived by those that we're working with. I can say the wrong thing, but if you know that I'm genuinely trying to help and that, that delivers the outcome, that feeling that they have of, oh, you're not trying to sell me. You're not trying to close me. I'm allergic to ABC. That's garbage. It's the feeling. It's the foundational stuff. And it's not sexy. Everybody wants to know the silver bullet. I'm like, first of all, there are no silver bullets.

1:06:43 Patrick Donnelly: Absolutely not. No, it's an amalgamation of doing all the right things and mindset is the foundation of the right things. I couldn't have said it better. I literally just said it, Scott, and then you said it better than me.

1:06:52 Scott Ingram: So, Patrick, all that being said, what's the closest thing that you feel like you have to a silver bullet that you do that's worth sharing?

1:07:03 Patrick Donnelly: I love that question. We've already hinted at this and talked about this, but oh my God, I'm going to quote one of the greats. Discovery is a lifestyle. Being a great project owner is super important. In a lot of sales jobs, you need to be a great project owner and you need to be a great quarterback. In some sales jobs, you don't have to be the project owner or the quarterback. Your only job is discovery. In both circumstances, the only ways you get successful deals there is great thoughtful discovery. That's on the backbone of really being a partner. I, tactically, it's a hard thing to master, but go listen to Gong calls. Go listen to how the, how great the best discovery reps at your company do it. There's not a better way than listening to a call recording on great discovery and listening to 100 of them to actually pick that stuff up and then go write down what you like and give it a try and you'll get there pretty quickly.

1:07:54 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Amazing. What's your favorite discovery question?

1:07:58 Patrick Donnelly: Oh my gosh. I actually have one. I open up pretty much every call with this. So, Scott, I appreciate you jumping on. I'm curious, like, where are we at and where are we trying to get to? And I really like that question because it sets the meter for where I'm at. I'm not focused on… at Nooks, I'm not focused on increasing your connect rates. If that's a tactical challenge I wanna solve, let's go do it. I'm not focused on rolling out AI so your sequencing platform can improve. If that's a tactical challenge or strategic initiative, we'll get there. But understanding where we're at and where we're trying to get to, that's the backbone, right? That's the backbone of our partnership. That's the backbone of what we're trying to accomplish together. And starting there, I think is a really good place to show the buyer where you're at as a seller.

1:08:41 Scott Ingram: Man, I think we just came up with the title of the episode. I'm so glad I asked this question. Here's what I really love about it. There's 2 things. One, you start with we, so you put yourself on their side of the table immediately. So this is something that we are going to do together, but, or, and, but it's 100% about them. It allows them to then frame the conversation and tell you, this isn't, what are we gonna talk about today? This isn't some generic, do you have anything to add to my agenda? My agenda? No, it's an amazing way of asking what's your agenda?

1:09:14 Patrick Donnelly: 100%. If you've ever been in an email exchange with me, we is probably the most used word in there. It's a partnership, but like from a seller and tactical standpoint, I think it's just really good at evidencing like who you are as a seller. And you don't get many first impressions, Scott. In fact, I believe you only get one. Is that the turn of phrase? Kicking off with those things is really, I think, vital to kicking off an awesome sales process.

1:09:35 Scott Ingram: There's your gold nugget, folks. Thanks for listening this far in. Let's wrap it up this way. Always try and make this actionable. What would you challenge our listener to do? Something that they can get done over the next, call it 1 to 2 weeks, maybe before the next time there's an episode for them to listen to and the next challenge comes about. What would you challenge them to actually do?

1:09:54 Patrick Donnelly: So I do believe in meaningful activity drives meaningful action. And we've talked about this a little bit on the call. It's wild. You take a couple steps, you don't even realize how far you've gone. Like you can get so far with just a couple of steps. So I would say take inventory, sit down, it's quiet, no music playing, break out a notebook, no laptops, and just write down where you're at, where you want to be from a personal level, professional level, wherever you want to improve and start writing out some intentional activities that you can do to get there. One a day, 2 a day, whatever you want. I think one a day is a great start because One of those items might be go talk to this person and learn how they got to where they're at. One of them might be go listen to this podcast. One of them might be go learn how to do this and take up this activity. I promise in a week to 2 weeks, you're going to be like, oh my gosh, I feel like a different person. I feel like I got so much movement and momentum right now. So go take inventory, figure out where you want to be and go get there.

1:10:51 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Patrick, you're amazing. Thanks for taking the time, my friend.

1:10:53 Patrick Donnelly: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for having me, Scott. This has been super fun.

1:10:58 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.