200: 428% and the Show Must Go On: OneStream's Rosa Campagna on Playing the Long Game in Enterprise Sales

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Nooks. Nooks is the agent workspace for intelligent outbound. For more, just go to nooks.ai. 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. Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Rosa Campagna, the top performing account director at OneStream out of Toronto. Welcome to the show, Rosa.

0:42 Rosa Campagna: Hello. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's cool to be here.

0:46 Scott Ingram: We are going to have so much fun. The preview you sent me has me all kinds of excited. So let's start like we always do. I'm all about delivering immediate value in these conversations, even though we will go deep and we will go long. But first, talk about what are the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales to this point?

1:08 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, it's so funny because when I had to sit down and think about it, it was interesting to reflect on the process. And as, as I shared with you, we'll say in the green room, it's been a really sales-focused week for me. And so it was timely to have this conversation with you. So the first thing that I would say is Building client relationships is probably my number one secret to success. And it's never because I have the highest IQ. It's usually because I have the highest EQ. And what I mean by that is I am very focused on how the conversation is making people feel, which usually will tell you what they think. And that's a lot of information, right? When you're trying to close an enterprise deal or be in a sales cycle that's 1 to 2 years. So, really understanding who you are talking to, how they think and feel is probably number one. Success factor number 2, this is equally as important as number one, not just making your client feel good, but also knowing how to motivate and excite your team. So, The internal sell is probably, I would say, one of my most demonstrated success mechanisms inside of how I operate, right? And it's very simple. Like, you have to know the rules of engagement when you're trying to get a big deal approved or when you're looking for an exception. Because when you're in the hustle and bustle of negotiations, the fact of the matter is it's not just you and your manager or your CRO. For that matter, making the decision. You are working on behalf of the business. And so really making sure that you are prepped and prepared on what you're going to say, getting them to believe why what you as a collective team are pitching matters to that client or to that customer, and making sure that not only are they prepared, but they're excited about the engagement. And that you extend that excitement to your administrative teams in both finance and legal, right? So you as a collective win that deal. And when you're looking for that extra discount in Q4 from finance, it is going to matter how you make them feel. It's going to matter how you ask. It's going to matter if you've given them updates about what's going on in your world. Have you asked them about their kids? What's the weather like? Sometimes these really simple niceties that we can take for granted when we are working from our computer screens at home can go such a long way, right? And so not just making your client feel great, but also making your team feel great and feel excited to win is probably, I would say, the second most important thing to my success. And then the third is I work with enterprise customers, and so I will work with customers anywhere between $4 to $40 billion in terms of revenue. And so something that's really important is when you're working with large enterprise customers, you have the tendency of trying to stack that deal with as much as you can because the opportunity is so rare. Truly it is. And there's a temptation to take it all because you don't know if you're going to have the account again. You don't know know if the org structure is going to change or if this budget is even real. But what I try and do is plan 2 to 3 year buying cycles with my enterprise customers, which might mean actually taking a smaller deal to then create many future deals so that when you are working those future deals, you are building your client relationships, understanding the political atmosphere, understanding how people think and feel. You'll also have more time to get your internal engine excited about winning the deal. They get to know your customers and you don't put your biggest account right to bed because you wanted to take it all, right? So client relationships, number one, knowing your internal engine, number two, and don't put your customers to sleep, number three.

5:41 Scott Ingram: Love it. I want to peel the onion on a couple of those, but before I do, I have a very important shout out because it was John Davis who connected us. And the backstory on this is really fun. I'm actually going to share a little bit of the note, not the whole note, but a little bit of the note that he used to connect us. And then I know you've got a story about him that I hope you'll tell. This is maybe my favorite kind of connection because I think it's a rare leader leader in the truest sense of the form that really wants to highlight and acknowledge their top performers. So John reached out and said, Rosa finished FY25 at OneStream Software as the number 1 top performing sales rep globally. This is a very competitive sales org and a huge achievement on her part. I mentioned that I was only able to ever crack the top 10, and number 1 at OneStream is huge. This goes on and he says, P.S., my claim to fame is having hired Rosa into OneStream, so would love to see this through. So John, thank you so much for making that connection. He originally reached out to me a long time ago. We've been at this podcast a long time. So, he was, I think, still in an individual contributor capacity way back in the day when we first connected. But appreciate him continuing to be a fan of the show and more importantly, for being a fan of you, Rosa.

6:56 Rosa Campagna: Yeah. Shout out JD. Yes. I think the most important thing that John understood was being in the type of software sales that we are in, as I just discussed, truly large enterprise accounts. There is a sense of character, and I'm going to say likability, and just that little bit of tenacity that's required to be successful in this role. And so, I felt like I met a kindred spirit in John when we first met for what I think was a Diet Coke with our friend, Bri, and we've been buddies ever since. And my first year at OneStream, when I did win that award, what John told me was that I believe he won Rookie of the Year the first year OneStream ever did it. And so, me winning it was bringing it back home to Team East Canada. And the cherry on top was, of course, winning a Global Rep of the Year the following. And John, I think, shares a similar philosophy with me when it comes to those 3 success factors I just talked about, right? Making sure that you're understanding how people think and feel internally and externally and the art of chasing momentum versus chasing… I'm going to say just the money, right? Or just the commission check. Those are 2 different philosophies on how you approach your business. And yeah, the only time John and I can't talk is when the Bruins are playing the Leafs in the playoffs. And then John and I don't speak. We don't talk after that.

8:34 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Amazing. I want to come back. Any time I have these true enterprise sales conversations, I like to just get a sense of perspective in terms of, because you explicitly called out the internal sale, what do you think the reality of your breakdown is? If you think of 100% of your time, what percentage is internally focused and based on that internal rehearsal, internal prep, internal selling versus the external real client-facing work that you do?

9:04 Rosa Campagna: That's a good question. A good way to do this math or just visually understand this, if you're looking for a tip on how to understand how you're managing your time is I color coordinate my calendar. And so, things that I'm looking for are how much yellow do I have? How much green do I have? How much pink do I have? And yellow is internal. Green is an actual customer. So, somebody that already has a contract with me. And then pink is a new logo because I am in a farming and hunting role as well. And I would say majority of my time actually is spent with my team. And that's because we are either working on internal value for our customers. So, if we do have an existing customer, are we evaluating if they want to be in a private preview based on our relationship with them? So, that's a topic of conversation. As I mentioned, dress rehearsals. We have a saying in the dance industry, which is even Baryshnikov does pliés before, you know, he does anything else. For those that know Baryshnikov, shout out to you. And that, that's important because it just doesn't matter matter how good you are, right? Everybody needs to start with foundations, do preparation. So, I always would say I spend a lot of time with my team and then try and make sure I'm tempering that with keeping myself always in front of my customers, right? Because here's what I'll say as a final point is to have great client relationships when you are working in an enterprise space means that you are wide and you are deep. It is not just you. Your executives are involved. Your customer success managers are involved. Your finance team probably knows the backend of this business quite well, given that they have to interact with their accounting people and so on and so forth. And so in order to keep that relationship humming, you need to be their internal brand ambassador and go to bat for your customers. And when you're going to bat for your customers, what you're banking on is that internal engine working to your benefit to give them, in fact, the right value. It is a team sport, but it does take time and care for sure.

11:19 Scott Ingram: Yep, absolutely. I'm going to come back to the enterprise roadmap is the way I would think about it, the way you described it, right? Thinking about what does the next 2 or 3 years look like? Let's do the context piece first. Talk about your role. Talk about who OneStream is and what it took to get to number 1.

11:34 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, OneStream is an AI-first and an EPM tool specializing in being the modern operating system for finance. And what this really means is that we're able to give the office of the CFO an interconnected experience so that he can have teams better understand their math using our platform. So, that's what we do. That's what we sell. That's the audience that I'm talking about. How I got to number 1, I really would just go back to, again, my 3 success factors. What I'll also add to that is, I think I may have mentioned this, but I do have I do have a the show must go on mentality. And right, so I've already made the Baryshnikov joke for those ballerinas that are listening to this podcast. Double back shout out to you. But anybody who has a performance background, whether you're a music kid or a theater kid, you've had an opportunity to understand what it takes to put on a production. You start to understand why the internal sell that I just explained was so important. So that show must go on mentality is probably, I would say, the Rosa factor, right? Factoring in not just who, who I am at OneStream and what I sell and the pitch I just explained, but the Rosa factor that got me to be sitting at this, at this moment right now. And also, I'll say this, Toronto is a great city and I have the most amazing customers and I had the utmost privilege to work in the city and the territory that I do. And that absolutely has a big part to play in terms of my success.

13:18 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Love it. Love it. Can you put your results in perspective for us? What did it take to be number 1 globally last year?

13:25 Rosa Campagna: What do you mean when you say what did it take?

13:27 Scott Ingram: Attainment type stuff, right? So however you want to frame this, but percentage of plan or whatever that number is.

13:34 Rosa Campagna: Sure. I hit 428% of quota attainment. Last year. So, that was the quantifiable result. And I believe we were almost like neck and neck, myself and Garrett. Yeah, it was a tough call. It's like John said, it is certainly a competitive sales organization.

13:53 Scott Ingram: Congratulations.

13:54 Rosa Campagna: Thank you.

13:54 Scott Ingram: Great output. Let's go back to the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of your sales story. How did that start? What brought you into sales to begin with? Before we get to Rosa's origin story, let's quickly talk about Nooks. Outsized results demand outsized pipelines, and that's what Nooks helps the best revenue teams to create. Their intelligent outbound approach combines their AI dialer, their powerful signals and intelligence engine, along with their AI sequencing capability. To learn more about Nooks so you can start building an outsized pipeline for yourself and your team, go to nooks.ai. And now back to Rosa and her origin story.

14:33 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, it was an accident. I didn't, I didn't anticipate actually getting into this side of the business at all. And it was through my experience in marketing that I found my way to sales. And the story goes like this. I thought I wanted to be Samantha from Sex and the City, and I thought I was gonna be in PR and marketing. I thought that really aligned with my theater kid perspective on the world. Like I said, I do love a good production. What I found when I met those people is I just had a lot… I want to say more… to offer in terms of the way I strategically thought about business problems, and that's how I found my way into consulting. And so then I started selling professional services. As I said, I did that for about five years in the Salesforce ecosystem, and really, Scott, the fact of the matter is the ecosystem at the time was. Extremely volatile. I had multiple layoffs, companies were being bought and sold. The organization I started with actually was acquired by Salesforce, and I missed the cuff by, I think, 6 weeks because I was too new of a hire. So, it was a couple of those moments of, ah, just so close. And I think what I like about OneStream, or the bet I took on myself of switching from ProServe to software, was I realized I was better at selling a thing than selling, I'm going to say, the people or the process to build or construct the thing. And that was really good information for me. And then once I realized that this is what I was supposed to sell, I'm going to say not that, that's where the success really took off. And then as I said, Toronto is a great city and I probably have some of our city's best customers and they're fantastic. And so they pushed me to be better too because their expectations were we call it premium execution inside of OneStream. That's a shout out. That's a shout out to Brian Biggs as well, who hopefully will listen to this podcast.

16:47 Scott Ingram: Very nice. I have traditionally asked a question about knowing what you know now, if you could go back and start your career over again, if you would have thought about it differently or approached it differently. I want to change that just a little bit though, because our world is so dynamic right now. If you were starting right now, In this environment that we're in today, how would you think about approaching your sales career?

17:12 Rosa Campagna: That's a really good question because, as I just explained, I've experienced layoffs where you do have to start again in the middle of your career. And so, the first thing that I would really make sure I understood is what do I actually want to sell? Do you want to sell the mechanic services? Do you wanna sell the car? So get clarity on what gets you excited and what do you wanna bring to market? Number one. Number 2, look inside your network. Start to see what people around you are thinking or feeling. What are their LinkedIn posts? Did they go from posting a lot to posting nothing? Not just your professional network, but also the temperature of the people around you, because when you're starting over again, you might need a little bit of inspiration. Get some feedback on what you're good at and what you're not, and then see if you can find a path forward into selling something that you might be interested in and start there. And now if you figured it out and you're like, actually, listen, I know I want to sell software, or I know I want to sell professional services, then start to understand who are the top performing companies inside of that organ… like inside of your market, right? And if you can't get to your top 5, who's that mid-pack? Because that's maybe where you're gonna be able to find an in, right? That's where maybe they're gonna go through funding, they're looking to be acquired, they're hiring. Now you might say to me, because you're perhaps a college student listening to this call, or maybe you've been in the game a long time, and when I say things like, Like, how do you work with AI? That makes you nervous. And I get it. It makes me nervous too. But I think what you want to demonstrate to the market is that you have the ability to pivot and change. What you also want to consider is how you build moats around you, right? And so, you can talk about the projects that you've completed. If you're in finance, I work with a lot of accountants, controllers, directors who want to be VPs one day. These stories about how you work your internal engine, How do you bring a production from start to finish, from rehearsal to Broadway? How do you move the people inside of your organization? Are you a benefit of change? And so, look for those opportunities as well. If it's not just starting a sales role, it's also perhaps being a part of a bigger project. And that's what I'd start to look for. What do you think, Scott? Any questions on that? Is that clear as mud?

19:59 Scott Ingram: I think that's a good way to think about it. I think we will definitely come back to the AI stuff. I think it's a required talking point, although I love the fact that some of our old episodes are so evergreen and I worry so much about how there will be pieces of these conversations in this moment, given how fast everything is moving, that will probably be completely irrelevant in 2 years from now. But the core of the story will be great. And speaking of stories, the show is called Sales Success Stories. What's your favorite sales story? Maybe it was a big one, maybe it was a big loss that you learned a lot from. What's your favorite story?

20:33 Rosa Campagna: My favorite sales story is I work with a, I work with a large asset manager and this is an existing customer who had been at OneStream for quite some time and they needed to do, just for all intents and purposes, we'll say an upgrade that was gonna cost them a little bit of an investment, but it really would've made OneStream a lot stickier, provided a lot more value, improve their accounting structure with us, and all the value that went into it. But the challenge with that was it's a very decentralized community. And so, we might have had, for example, like a parent-wide agreement in terms of what we were going to achieve. But in order for us to transact on basically what procurement and I had put together that we all shook hands on, I basically had to resell the platform of OneStream to each of these individual business units to get them to do this, for lack of a better word, conversion. And that process of, listen, I have something that you can use, and yes, it's not tailored exactly for you specifically, but you're going to be a part of something bigger, and having to sell that into multiple different business units And being successful at doing that was probably one of, I would say, my greatest achievements. I'll say this too, it didn't make me the highest commission. I've had deals that have paid me more, but it was the process of getting back in front of each of these customers that maybe had a lot of attention or some who didn't, and basically having to get them to double and triple down on their investment. On OneStream. I learned a lot about how to talk about OneStream. I learned a lot about how to talk to accountants, given that I came from a marketing and sales world, right? I was selling Marketing Cloud implementations, right? Very different product, very different thing, but the emotions were the same, right? Yeah, that's probably my funnest story, I would say.

22:46 Scott Ingram: Love that. Such a great story and I think so relevant too. I think that there are many times where you're selling a solution and there's an upgrade or a replatforming or another thing that is the future, or you used to have an on-premise solution and we're trying to move people into the cloud. All of these different things. I think that's super relevant. What are you most proud of?

23:07 Rosa Campagna: That's a great question. I know this is a top number one podcast, and I know that perhaps it's easy to say I'm super proud of being Global Rep of the Year at OneStream. While that is fantastic, I was not chasing this goal in any way, shape, or form. I was trying to hit my quota. At the time, I was getting married, and by the introduction of my last name, I had a very Greek and Italian wedding. So, you can imagine how many people were there and what that cost, right? Like, I was working for my life. I wasn't working to be number one. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud that throughout this process of being an overachiever, perhaps, but the reason that I'm working is still to provide myself with the ability to spend time and resources on my family and my friends. And that my team, my direct team, East Canada, shout out to you, that we're, that we get along and that we partner and that my finance teams and my legal teams winning has felt collaborative with them and that I didn't get here by pushing down on them. And so that's actually what I'm most proud of, is that at the end of this huge achievement, I still liked myself on the other side of it and I knew what I was working for. And it wasn't to be the best. It was for what I love the most. And that's what I'm most proud of.

24:40 Scott Ingram: That is so good. And I usually ask about the motivation and the drive piece. Is that the same answer or do you think about that maybe a little bit differently?

24:49 Rosa Campagna: I would say the motivation and drive, as I just said, was not to be number one. It was candidly for last year, it was to be able to pay my wedding, pay for my honeymoon, and give ourselves a great opportunity to buy a great first home. And that was just, that's the tactile, what am I working for? What am I using this commission for? What am I using this salary for? But what I also really enjoyed about the process was the process and that I wasn't just focused on the win. I also wanted to win and have a little fun while doing it, right? And the fact that I didn't make it about trying to be the best, where it was I just wanted to perform at my best and then being rewarded with this award, that was a really cool experience. And what I will say about my ambition is something I actively try and do is temper it, right? I come from a hardworking family where the only, you know, there is no other type of work. It was only hard work, right? And so that's just my nature. I do like to work hard. I enjoy the process, but I want to know that I'm having a little bit of fun while doing it and not like gripping onto it, right? So something I have to do is sometimes temper my ambition so that I'm I'm reminding myself to have fun, that burgers and fries, we're not saving lives. You win some, you lose some, but the show absolutely must go on, right? And have a little fun along the way.

26:20 Scott Ingram: So good. So good. Where'd you go on your honeymoon?

26:23 Rosa Campagna: I went to Japan. It was awesome. You should go to Japan, Scott.

26:27 Scott Ingram: Have you been to Japan? I haven't. My wife spent a year there in high school, but we have not made it back. So it is very high on the list. It's also pretty high on the list for my youngest daughter, has a little bit of an obsession Yeah, me too.

26:40 Rosa Campagna: I have a feeling me and her would get along great. We're probably into similar stuff. It was awesome. I highly recommend that if you haven't just gone to Asia in general, I would recommend going. China's awesome. Japan's great. This year we're going to go to Greece and Italy, which we're super excited for as well. Are you doing any vacations, Scott?

26:58 Scott Ingram: Where are you flying to? My Asia trip. Now, this is very dated, but it was my honeymoon. We did 2 weeks in Vietnam, which was incredible.

27:05 Rosa Campagna: Incredible. That's amazing. That's next on the list, Vietnam. So maybe, maybe we'll do a swap. You'll go to Japan and I'll go to Vietnam.

27:12 Scott Ingram: I will take that deal.

27:14 Rosa Campagna: Let's do it. Okay. See, we're closing every day, Scott. We're closing every day.

27:17 Scott Ingram: For sure. For sure. Rosa, we've been like up on high. We're number one. We're super proud of things. What's the low? What do you find yourself struggling with? What challenges you the most in just your day-to-day?

27:30 Rosa Campagna: Yeah. What challenges me the most? I'm going to go back to the temperance of my ambition. Sometimes, especially if you are hustling to reach your quota, you have the ambition bug. You're trying to be number one. It's really hard sometimes not to bulldoze people. Make sure you're practicing all of those P's and Q's, especially in a high-pressure sales environment. And so, something that I really try and make sure that I'm tempering myself with is Am I being honey? Am I adding a little bit of sweet? And that's not to say, to be clear, that I make myself smaller or I need to be sweet because of X, Y, Z. You have to remember that everybody in your organization is dealing with… maybe you have a large sales team, maybe you don't, but it's probably not just you. And having that, just that little bit of reminder, sometimes it's easy to forget when you're in the thick of a really intense cycle or it's a competitive deal and everything feels just right now. I know it feels right now for you, but it's not right now for everybody unless you get them excited. Then maybe it'll be right now for them. But that's something that I struggle with. I also struggle with the pain, like the highs and the lows are hard of, I think I'm winning, I think I'm winning, I think I'm winning. And then you don't see something coming and that deal that you've poured your heart into, and by the way, now so did your team, you're coming up bust. And that feeling never stops sucking, whether you've hit your quota or you haven't. That feeling sucks. And it can get, it stops being, oh man, we lost that deal to you're terrible. I'm not good at this. I suck at this. I let my team down. This is my fault. Why didn't I know this? Which quickly spirals to, are they gonna fire me? Oh, how much money do I have in my savings again? So that's something I absolutely struggle with sometimes more often than I care to admit.

29:45 Scott Ingram: I'm so glad you gave me that one because I was totally gonna call you out for your first ambition answer. Felt like the answer to an interview question of what are you bad at? You're like, oh, I just, I like to win so much. It's just, I do. It's a problem.

30:00 Rosa Campagna: I just want to go on record because I know that sounds, I know that sounds like an interview question, but my husband calls me the road dozer.

30:09 Scott Ingram: Okay, say more about this and then we'll talk about the roller coaster.

30:12 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, it's basically a Rosa bulldozer. I am just a bulldog in my life. I'm just that way. It's just who I am. And making sure that she is, that, that's a puppy dog and not a snarling Doberman is something I have to remind myself about. Out every now and then.

30:30 Scott Ingram: If you are going to be a bull in the china shop, make sure you're like a little bit nerfed. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. What are your strategies around the roller coaster? Because that is so real, like the ups and downs, just the emotional intraday. I'm 2 months into a new role and that is a more and more acute thing because it's just a new environment. I don't have the answers like I had having been in the same space in the same organization for 10 years. I'm on a whole new roller coaster that I don't know the track.

31:00 Rosa Campagna: Sure. I think that one, you have to know it's a roller coaster. Step one is actually knowing that you are on a roller coaster and that this isn't just a lazy Susan in life. Because once you start to… I had a friend say to me, going back to the bulldog comment and the Doberman, she said, sometimes it's easier to be angry Because angry is movement. You're going. That feeling in your body, it makes you want to run, makes you want to get up and go. Sadness will make you sit and sink and deeper and deeper, right? And so you have to feel both, but you have to know that the swings is the roller coaster. And if you can't tell the difference, you're going to be in a state of constant confusion, and that confusion is going to be projected to I'm awful. I'm terrible at this. I'm so angry. I can't close a deal. I'm so angry. Nobody's answering any of my phone calls. This sucks. I hate it here. That's movement. Then you're gonna be like, you know what? I'm quitting this job. That's movement. The opposite of that is nobody's answering my phone calls. I hate it here. It's awful. I suck. I suck. And you quiet quit unintentionally and your performance sucks cuz you can't move. You have to know how to temper the difference. You don't wanna kick down every door. You don't want to run every single time you hit a challenge, right? You have to know that you're on a roller coaster and you have to have the ability to self-parent sometimes and say, I'm in a high right now. I say my Southern Italian's coming out. I'm feeling very Calabrese. Oh, okay. Noted. What's going on? How am I thinking about things? Do I need to step away from my desk and touch some grass? And remind myself that I work to live. Am I still living? Got it. Check. Now come back down. The opposite of that, when you're sinking, is I feel like I'm terrible right now. Who can I talk to about being great? Who can I get inspired by? Who do I really think is cool? Who do I want to talk to about things that might make me excited? And then how do I… if you do that act of I'll say touching grass and looking for inspiration, you'll find yourself able to recognize the difference and find methods on pulling yourself out. Now, the fact of the matter is it's going to look different from me to you, but if you are unaware of it entirely, you are riding a roller coaster. I'd like to say I'm riding a bull. And at some point in time, I get to get off. At some point in time, it's me that's riding that bull too. And you have to know how to ride the waves a little bit. Oh, so good.

33:49 Scott Ingram: So good. I'm going to listen back to that maybe a couple more times. There's a couple of things that I'm taking away and thinking about that. One is the highs are never as high as they feel. Correct. And the lows are never as low as they feel in the moment. Right. And one thing, like humans, we're weird and really dumb, I think, in that Agreed. I think we project our current trajectory into infinity. So when you're on that upswing, it feels like this is never going to end. This is going to be the greatest for all time. And the opposite is true too. Like when you're in those low places, it just feels, oh my God, it only goes down from here. I'm so bad. And one is recognizing that there is a cycle here. There are ups and downs and there's long-term ups and downs and there's freaking intra-hour ups and downs that we need to experience. And where you're really inspiring me is thinking in terms of almost counterbalancing it. When you feel it going to the right, just maybe lean a little bit more to the left. That's right. And when it's going hard to the left, maybe just lean a little bit more to the right.

34:54 Rosa Campagna: So, when you think about a visual of a roller coaster, you're thinking about the… what you have to ask yourself, why do we use that analogy and why is it so real? Because when I say the word roller coaster to you, Scott, what do you feel in your belly? Tell the class, what do you feel in your belly?

35:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you feel either a lot of weight or you feel no weight. You feel the weightless of, oh my God, it just dropped out from under me.

35:16 Rosa Campagna: And the reason I wanted to ask you, how do you feel in your body? Because I'm going to go back to my dance example here. I started dancing when I was 4 years old. I became really aware of what my body feels like in different moments and that mind-body connection. And so when we use analogies like roller coasters, What we're signaling to our audience is, I want you to remember that feeling of feeling really high and then really low and the speed in which it can happen. And that's what happens in sales. It's the speed in which it happens when the highs are the highest highs and the lows are the lowest lows. You can… in the same week that I won Rookie of the Year is the same week that the asset manager that I was talking to you about told me that they weren't gonna sign their enterprise deal. And John Davis was like, are you crazy? This is the best week ever. And I said, no, this is the worst week ever because who cares about being Rookie of the Year? I bled for that contract. And that's a real, that was a real week right before the holidays. And then I spent the holidays with my nose in a book. And I started to come down and I said to myself, hell yeah, I was Rookie of the Year. And yeah, I got one more deal this year and I'm going to go chase that mother down because I'm better this year than I was last year. And we try again because the highs are never that high and the lows are never that low. But at the end of the day, if you're asking for the cavalry to come, it's you. And once you realize that you are on that roller coaster, You can decide when you want to get off. You just have to decide. All right.

37:00 Scott Ingram: Maybe you should just throw that new microphone on the floor and we'll just stop.

37:04 Rosa Campagna: I think we're pretty good. Yeah. Okay, cool. Bye.

37:08 Scott Ingram: That was great. Oh my gosh.

37:11 Rosa Campagna: Thanks for having me. See you later.

37:14 Scott Ingram: Oh, so good. Let's do a favor to the audience. Let's keep going. I love to just get into the ins and outs of just your day to day. And the way I love to ask this question is Typical day, what time does your alarm clock go off? And give us a pretty detailed blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow again. Sure.

37:33 Rosa Campagna: Okay. There's the I'm at home day, and then there's the I travel day. I'll give you both because I know that this is a sales, this is a sales podcast. And the simple fact of the matter is I had to learn how to find function in both. That took some time. Right. And so, when I'm at home, I typically start my day. Around 7:30 because I probably have some form of 9:00 AM meeting. Now, my typical day, as I explained, is actually a little bit of 60/40 in terms of 60% internal calls, 40% external calls. And that 60/40 again is really talking about how we are prepared for those external calls, or what is the innovation that's happening inside of my house where I can be a brand ambassador for both OneStream, but also for my customer. Who wants, hey, it'd be really great if we could do this on the platform. Who do I need to talk to go make that happen? So there's a little bit of that's happening throughout the day. I try if I'm at home to get an opportunity to just sit down in my kitchen and have a cup of coffee. So I actively try and take breaks from my laptop. There are days, of course, where you are sitting in calls from 9:00 AM right to 6:30 and you're sorry, I have a, I'm gonna be late for my, there are those days, but I try not to. I try to be very mindful about how often I schedule those days so I can remain consistent throughout the week. I usually find myself in the gym or some type of movement practice, as I just explained. Like, I have… I spent a lot of time training alongside now professional dancers. Movement is a non-negotiable for me. I have to move my body for my mental health, for my game, for my spirit. For my health, all that jazz. And then I have dinner with my husband and I pet my greyhound. And then I usually read a book of some sort or I'll do some laundry, whatever else it is, low vibration activity. And then I had… I pour myself a chamomile and I go to bed and then I do it again. So that's a regular day at home. When I'm traveling, it depends. So you have to understand something about bedtimes when you're traveling is it's fluid. Especially if you're working client relationships and you have dinners and you have drinks and that is a part of the game, right? And so my alarm clock is fluid, but I do try and wake up early and try and get some movement in, right? If I'm flying to New York, there's a hotel that I stay at that I know is beside a yoga studio that I love. So I'll make sure I go take yoga when I'm in the city, right? So if I can't find a gym, am I finding a class? Can I find 1 to 2 hours? That are mine, non-negotiable. And then being mindful of what you're ordering. I track my macros, how much loosely I would… no, that's not true. I do track my macros. And the reason I bring that up in traveling is because one of the things that can burn you out really fast is your nutrition when you're traveling and you're already exhausted. So I'm not saying don't smash the beers with the boys at the bar and watch the game after a meeting. I think that's fantastic. But if you're going to do that tomorrow, order a salad, give yourself some balance in your nutrition because you are moving hot, right? So that would… and then again, if I'm, if I'm traveling, I probably have no internal meetings and I'm just focused on customers.

41:02 Scott Ingram: That would be my take. Awesome. Awesome. You called out one example. I was going to ask you to talk a little bit more about what are your go-to move the body things. So you said yoga, but I'm sure there's other flavors.

41:13 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, yoga, Pilates. I weight train, I dance, obviously different styles. In a heel, in a sneaker, bare feet, ballet shoes. And again, I try and do at least 3 to 4, I'm going to say, days of I've done this or I've done that. And it's just, it's a habit that I've had since I was a little kid. I was in the studio like 5 days a week from the ages of 6 to like 17. It's just how I, it's just how my body is used to operating that sometimes it tells me to get up off the couch and go to the gym before my mind gets there.

41:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Any specifics around the way that you are structuring your day? And I'm guessing there are, given you're color coding your calendar. Give me like one more layer of detail on that.

42:01 Rosa Campagna: In terms of blocks, I try not… I try and keep my calendar fairly open, but things that I will make sure that I do schedule for is, for example, if I have a really big demo that I know I need to be on my P's and Q's I'll block an hour and a half ahead of that call to basically get in the game. This is the art of being a performer. You understand that rehearsal is not about just knowing your steps or being able to sing the music or know your lines. It's how you approach the audience, right? So I'll take time before any big demo, any big meeting, if it allows, right? If I'm not in a situation where I have to be back to back for circumstances that are out of my control. I try and buffer, get your head in the game, get into the show, get excited, get your energy up before I start to talk to people. I do color code my calendar. So yellow is for internal, green is for customers, pink is for prospects, but I also have color coding for the software integrators that I work with. And what I do is for tactile relationships, partnerships with implementation partners or critical team members, I do make sure that those are recurring meetings. I also try and have recurring meetings on my calendar with my customers. And the way that one, the color coding helps is it helps me see at a glance where my focus is that week. There are weeks sometimes where it's more green than it is yellow. My favorite weeks are when it's more pink than it is anything else because hell yeah, that's awesome. It means I'm talking to prospects. It means we got activity going. So, not every week looks the same. I'm not programmatic about what my weeks must look like, but I do try and use that color coding methodology to understand who do I need to be that week. And then, if I'm really on my game, I have a Monday morning at home. I don't have a lot of meetings in the morning on Monday. I do have a OneNote where I will basically go through my week. I'll look through my 2 weeks, right? This week and the next. And I'll think about what's my to-do list? What are my weekly priorities? And I'll map them out. And I'll organize the subtasks, whether it be, hey, I'm throwing an event that is happening with my team. Do they have marketing material? Do they have an email they can send out to their prospects? Is the… do I have a dry run on my calendar? And you start to shape what the activities are. And then I try and cross them off the list as I go. And sometimes I hit it and I smash my week and I cross off everything on my to-do list. Sometimes I'm so busy, Monday has started with such a bang that I didn't even have time to write down my priorities because I've just been living them. That's a whole other type of week.

44:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You have really got me thinking. So I'm just going to kind of share my takeaway. And this is how I hope other people listen to these shows is find your own gold nuggets. The thing that's running through my head right now is just the overall performance framing that you have. I'm a band, like drum corps You get it.

45:05 Rosa Campagna: You know what it's like.

45:06 Scott Ingram: I may have won a world championship in, say, the late '90s.

45:09 Rosa Campagna: Okay, Scott, casual. I wish I could ask you… I almost want to reverse the podcast and ask you about that.

45:14 Scott Ingram: I'll temper myself. Most people don't understand, so I don't usually bring it up because it's a very niche thing. But that's cool. The thing that I'm thinking about a lot is the rehearsal piece makes a ton of sense. What I do, but not as intentionally as I could, is the warmup before the key calls. If you're gonna do a big performance, you don't just roll up and walk onto the stage. There's a whole process that immediately precedes that activity. And the opportunity that I'm seeing for myself, because sometimes you do this, this is really common going into a webinar. Oh, okay, we're gonna all go into the green room 15 minutes before, and you get to warm up as a So I'm thinking about that same kind of opportunity of, cool, I've got a really important call. I have multiple members of my team involved. We probably rehearsed it earlier in the week or last week in some type of a prep call, but being able to do that in the moment together, let's get in the zone. Let's confirm those last few things as we go in is again, just something I haven't thought about. And I think there could be some real power in that idea.

46:24 Rosa Campagna: Can I ask you a question?

46:25 Scott Ingram: You can ask me a question. Okay.

46:27 Rosa Campagna: When you were in a band, how many pieces were in your band?

46:31 Scott Ingram: Drum Corps Division 1 is 128 performers. Holy smokes. Okay. On a football field, like this is big scale. Oh, that's okay.

46:41 Rosa Campagna: I understand. Okay. I'm going to temper my excitement and ask to not just make it about that, but here's right before you get on the field with 128 people. People. Can you talk about the unspoken feeling in your body right before you walk on stage and how the energy is amongst the 100 and so people that are about to go on that football stage to perform?

47:06 Scott Ingram: Stadium, stage, both? Yeah, stadium. Indescribable. My favorite shirt from that period is, for those who understand, no explanation is For those who don't know, explanation is impossible. It for sure fits into that realm. But I also think people who've served in the military and experienced true camaraderie and true connection… you chase that for the rest of your life, and it's impossible to find. It's one of those feelings. There is a level of connection that again, it's impossible to describe.

47:37 Rosa Campagna: And when you come off the field, when you're performing, and you know. It and you feel every single person is hitting their cue, can you tell us what it feels like when you get off the field?

47:51 Scott Ingram: It's an incredible high. It's been way too long since I've experienced that particular feeling, but yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing.

47:57 Rosa Campagna: It's a thing. And I think that here's my advocation for anybody who is looking to hire and you're not sure if you should hire the theater kid. It's because of that feeling, because they're going to be chasing the other side of the audience clapping and knowing that they performed well for the rest of their life, and they will be able to teach and inspire that feeling in others. Before I did my biggest demo this week, it was to an executive group, C-suites and so on. I hosted a pep rally. It was literally called a pep rally, and I did that because I understood something really important, and that was before Before my friends and I would get on stage, we would huddle, we'd breathe together, we'd wish each other well, we'd wish for each other's success, and then we would go on stage. And it didn't matter if we had the best performance or the worst performance, we knew we were working together regardless. And so, that's what makes managing sometimes the roller coaster as a team easier because we are fighting for something together. It's camaraderie. And it is important and it is special. And I think that sometimes we think that these hobbies, whether it be, I just really love to dance, or I love to play music, or I mean, I love the show. You think that is supposed to only stay, I'm going to say, on the stage, but baby, life is a show and you can bring those skills anywhere and they actually make you better. And sometimes you leave people better than how you found them. Because they're inspired by you, and that's really what it's about at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah.

49:36 Scott Ingram: You know what's funny? I think of my core driver. What this show is, I call it inspiration squared. I want to be inspiring in the things that I do and the way that I act, but I also love to be inspired. Together, we get to have this conversation, and hopefully that kind of transfers. The other thing that now you've got me thinking about a whole nother thing, and it's making sense of a lot of the Scott wiring. As I think about that performance dynamic, especially in that type of band approach, we're walking onto the field in step together. We perform for 12 minutes, like on the exact same beat, completely in time, and we walk off in step together. And actually think that flows through to the type of alignment that I'm trying to create, not only on my team, but in collaboration with our partners and with our clients. That's right.

50:35 Rosa Campagna: The show must go on, and the show is a beautiful thing.

50:38 Scott Ingram: Oh, so good! Oh, this is too fun. This is too fun. I hope that others are geeking out the way that I am.

50:43 Rosa Campagna: I hope so.

50:43 Scott Ingram: This is just a super fun perspective.

50:45 Rosa Campagna: I bet you do too. I do.

50:47 Scott Ingram: We had to turn our cameras off. So this is a little bit of a bummer, but I feel your smile. I feel your smile for sure. Let's talk about… I wanted to ask a very minutiae question earlier, so I'll ask it and then we'll expand. You talked about right after winning Rookie of the Year and getting a no. It doesn't sound like you lost the deal, but getting a no in your process and you buried your nose in a book. Do you remember what that book was? And then I want to know about like your larger kind of information diet.

51:12 Rosa Campagna: Yeah. At the time, I'm a big Romantasy girl. Absolutely. I love the escapism of fantasy. I think I was reading the Guild series, and it's a 6-book series, and it follows a victim who turns into the hero, who turns into this masterclass mage with all this really cool power. So I promise it's not just a love story. People always… they give fantasy a bad name. Like you girls, you're just reading for the hot boys. Lies. I am reading for the plot. I am reading for the plot.

51:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I used to read those magazines in my teens for the articles.

51:54 Rosa Campagna: Uh-huh. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Anyway, that's what I was reading. And it was perfect because it was snowy and I wanted to think about anything else other than work. And I wanted something to be fantastical. And when you ask me about my information diet, I'll say this. I'll shout out a couple pods that I listen to. I listen to a lot of Pod Save America. I'm really fascinated with politics right now. And I'll say this, not just, not from a choosing sides perspective, but from just understanding people, audiences, and power, right? And when you study history, which I did, I studied ancient Greece and Rome. So we're talking like Roman Empires, the different types of emperors. At the end of the day, what I was studying was politics. It was just old politics. And so I'm not surprised in this neuro-Machiavellian age, hyper-information age, maybe would be the way I would phrase it, that I'm curious in what's going on. I do also try to listen to some philosophy and some Stoicism. I'm forgetting the Stoic pod that I… is it Stoic Wisdom? So I do that. I try and meditate as well. I'll do Joe Dispenza's meditations in the morning, which I've actually done every day this week, which is a pretty good week for my mental health. So I'm proud of that. What else do I consume? Choo choo choo. I don't watch a lot of Netflix. I'll tell you that. Usually I do find my nose in a book. So I try and read about 25 to 30 books a year. And to be honest with you, Scott, my day, I'm a yappaholic. The only thing I do is I'm yapping. I am a professional yapper. You know what I do for a living? I talk. I talk for a living. And at the end of the day, day when I close my laptop politely and I close this office door, I don't want to hear anybody talk to me, candidly. Not even the woman on the screen. I just want to sit down in quiet. Plus, you have to remember, I have my internal dialogue going on too.

53:56 Scott Ingram: There's the yapping in your head too.

53:57 Rosa Campagna: Oh my goodness, she's just persistent. And that's also why I like reading so much, is I do often find myself at the end of the day really in a state of overstimulation. And I try not to doom scroll as best as I can. Shout out BePresent. They're my social media blocker to make sure I'm not doom scrolling on Instagram or YouTube. Oh, and then I also listen to the Scott Galloway universe. So I'll listen to Markets with Ed Elson. I'll listen to Raging Moderates. And, and yes, I mentioned Pod Save America as well. Also for jokes, I'll throw in the Tim Dillon Show because because he still makes me laugh. He does.

54:33 Scott Ingram: That is awesome. So as always, we will put together a nice comprehensive little list. And Rosa, you may not know this, it just dawned on me, you will be the star of episode 200. Cool. If folks go to top1.fm/200, you will find all of those things, all the links to the books and the podcasts and all the stuff we talk about. And speaking of stuff we talk Let's transition and talk about kind of the tools and apps that you use. And what's interesting, I have never in 10 years had to change the flow of questions that I ask. Now, the order I ask them and how I ask them evolves and flexes. Sure. The core set of questions haven't changed, but what we now need to add to the tools and apps question is the AI layer and how you're using and thinking about AI. 100%. Okay.

55:26 Rosa Campagna: We've talked a lot about my calendar and I would say going through just a day in the life, the first thing that I always do is start with my calendar. What's going on today? And that usually starts with the night before, to be honest, right? Because listen, if I have a meeting, my first meeting on a Friday starts at noon, that alarm is set to 9 o'clock. Okay. We don't need to hurt ourselves. All right. Just know what's going on in your life. Step 1, have a calendar. Whether you put pen or paper or your Outlook, Google Calendar, who cares? Put stuff down. Number one. Number two is I obviously use a lot of M365. That's Excel, that's Microsoft PowerPoint, Word. And what I will do now that… and you all that are listening to this podcast know those tools, so nothing out of the box there. What I'll say in relationship to… oh, and then I guess I should say we use Salesforce. I Outreach for marketing and dials. We also will use Gong now as well as an overlay on top of Salesforce. Gong has been fun. We just rolled that out. And what I'll say is this, is as a Yappaholic, those stats have been really interesting on how often I'm talking. So it served me well to learn a little bit about my pace and provided guidance. Guidance. Let's talk about the AI, I'm going to say overlay on these applications. Now, I work in technology. It is my job to sell elements of AI to businesses and organizations. And part of that is understanding, and I'm going to say also believing that this is in fact helpful for these people. And so, the first thing that I did is when we had the ability to have Copilot or ChatGPT, or as I'm having this conversation with you on my Google browser, there's an Ask Gemini. I say that to say is, ladies and gentlemen, this is everywhere, right? And you can use Excel and Microsoft at large. There's also AI already in those tools, so you don't have to go far is my point. The question you should be asking yourself is, where is AI already in my process? So I have this huge RFP that I need to get my stuff stuff in order for. It's in an industry that I'm not really an expert in. Okay, I go to my Teams chat, and instead of immediately just trying to talk to somebody who maybe knows more information than I do, which I did do, what I started with is I clicked that little Copilot button and I said, how does such and such organization make money? And it told me something great. And then I it. Okay. Now what are the business challenges that this industry is facing? And it gave me a pretty good answer, so on and so forth. What that made me do, or what that I should say allowed me to do, was get smarter in a gap faster. That's what businesses want their employees to be able to do. And that is in fact what I am selling. It's not to replace your experience. It's to fill your gap faster. You don't know something about an industry that you're trying to sell into? Use Copilot as a research engine to give you natural language responses that you'll probably understand faster than trying to dissect an article. That's power back in your pocket. You can also use your Excel tools and your PowerPoint tools to build things faster so that you can reach deadlines sooner, or that you're able to get your assets sooner so that you can prep with your team faster because the deadline's short and you are the quarterback and you're the one putting the deck together. Here's an Excel example. We price in a certain currency. Oh, I have to work with a global team. I work with global customers. They wanna see it in, in euros. Hey, can you convert this Excel from USD to whatever, to euros? Sure. And it did. And of course I checked my work, but instead of manually adjusting each column, cuz I am not an Excel expert, please. I'm a theater kid. Come on, let's be for real. I'm not, that's not me. And that's okay. But I'm able to fill my gap faster. This is what I mean when I say building moats around your careers, because when I go to my next job interview, wherever that may Right? Maybe I stay at OneStream forever, but even if I'm interviewing for another role at OneStream and they ask me, how are you using AI? Because guess what, ladies and gentlemen, they are going to ask you, especially if you're an entry level. You're gonna say, I use AI to fill my gaps, and here are my stories. I took an Excel document that I needed to convert fast into a different currency to provide an almost instantaneous response response to my global teammates so that I could get that deal done at velocity. That's how I would talk about it in my interview, right? That's why it's important for us to have the conversation. And listen, it's fun to get in the game, right? It's fun to try new stuff. I think it's easy to bury your head in the sand, or not easy, it's comfortable to bury your head in the sand because if it's not broken, why fix it? But when you sell enough software, you sometimes see that even software that isn't broken doesn't necessarily mean it's great or that it can't be better. And once you see that enough times in your real life, you start to approach technology differently. So, I have that edge, I'll say, perhaps to other people who don't have to interact with AI the way I do and aren't in the software industry. Obviously, I have a favorability towards technology. That's my bias for sure. But if you're nervous, Or that's not your bias. My recommendation to you is start where you already are. Don't go try and find Copilot, ChatGPT, or whatever. If you have Teams, you likely have Copilot, or you have Copilot in Excel or PowerPoint or Word, or Gemini for your Google applications. I triple dog dare you to just ask it one thing and see what happens and just start from there.

1:01:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah, such good stuff. There are layers and layers, and I think the gap piece is so interesting because one of the most most sought-after assets that we have created. Evan Kelsay did a presentation at the summit. It was a long time ago, 5, 6 years ago, about how to read a 10-K and how to read different financial statements from public companies to help build a point of view. You don't have to know that. You can get all of that public detail. And I was just thinking about, it's amazing how quickly we adapt and change because I think about all of the research and all of the learning. I've got a new client in a new industry. I don't know anything about this company. I don't know anything about this industry. All the research you would do, all the reading to try and understand that. And now you can get up to speed so fast and in full context that you need. And now we're getting to the next level of, okay, cool. We can learn faster and be more relevant and more on point. Now I can build some tools that support my process and the way that I do things so that I can be more effective and more efficient in just the way that I operate.

1:02:59 Rosa Campagna: Absolutely. And something that I, as a student of history, that I know to be true, when I was studying the Reformation, the conversation topic was about religious transformation, but what we were talking about was the power of technology. We were talking really about the printing press. Scott talks a lot about… or is it Justin Wolfers? Justin Wolfers is my favorite economist. I'll plug him too. He's great. He's an Aussie with a take on everybody. And yeah, a great resource for those who are interested in the markets. He'll talk about it in the way of, it's like how there used to be an entire floor full of just administrative clerks who were working on typewriters. Right? They didn't necessarily disappear, but their roles did evolve and change. You have to remember that you are a human being experiencing life with everybody else, and technology and innovation, frankly, change is a fact of humanity. You are not going to escape it in this lifetime or the next. There's always a catastrophe that we could catastrophize. If you look back far enough, there's Pompeii. If you check your headlines, it probably was the last catastrophe was like five minutes ago. You know what I mean? Give yourself some grace and scale, and remember that if you're nervous about technology, that's okay. Everybody else in your bloodline was too.

1:04:21 Scott Ingram: Yep, and the highs are never as high as they seem, and the lows are never as low as they seem. Let's put this all in perspective.

1:04:27 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, let's put it into perspective.

1:04:30 Scott Ingram: Rosa, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy or approach?

1:04:35 Rosa Campagna: The show must go on. That is my philosophy and approach. I know we've talked about it at length. That is important to me. I also like… I've reread Machiavelli's The Prince, and I'm inspired by the political craftsmanship, not necessarily the morality perhaps, but the craftsmanship of power and influence is really inspiring to me in that book. I am a fan of Stoicism. I like Seneca as a philosopher. I just read How to Die, which is a collection of journal entries and letters that Seneca put together on his comments of death and how he thinks about it. Talks a lot about the Stoic nature of how to approach like a calamity or something as scary as death. Pretty sensitive subject. I think the way that I phrased it to you was ruthless Stoicism is my sales philosophy with a little bit of glitter left on the stage.

1:05:40 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Although this is my own AI research coming into this because you had called out Machiavelli and Seneca and I'm like, hang on, I don't actually know a whole ton about these. And the question that was suggested, I was like, thought, oh, of course, after I got a little bit of a briefing and got up to speed is how are you merging the idea of Stoicism, which is really about staying grounded in what's happening. And I think a common conversation that we have here is controlling the controllables, whereas the Machiavellian approach is quite a bit more proactive and finding the dynamics and exploiting them. So how do you merge those 2 ideas, those philosophies?

1:06:21 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, when I say ruthless Stoicism, what I mean is you must be ruthless in your pursuit of excellence. You must be ruthless and not apologetic in taking up space in environments that make you uncomfortable. You must be ruthless in creating influence and power with people that you want to move to make decisions. The way that I add stoicism I'm going to say to that engine is I make sure that the intention behind those movements is grounded in my values. I want to leave people better than I found them. I want people to be excited about what we're doing. I want people to feel like when they sit in my company, they're sitting at a Sunday dinner with my Nana. I want them to feel taken care of. Those are my values. That's what keeps me, keeps me grounded. But I am ruthless in my pursuit for success. And I think that sometimes you may say you must choose humble warrior or ruthless warrior. I'm still a warrior. A playa's gotta play, right? It's expensive to live in Toronto. It's expensive to live in Ontario. Okay, I'm gonna go get what's mine. Because I know I can. But that doesn't mean that I step over and under, right? That's where that stoicism comes in place. Am I moving with my highest intention? I believe that my highest intention will get me to my success. So when I feel like I need to press on the gas, I just… like I said, I just make sure I go touch grass and I am in a place of gratitude And I'm not in a place of anger or wallow, right? So knowing where that energy is coming from is super, super important in being able to execute what I'm talking about. It's very easy to just be ruthless. It is, right? When you're just focused on winning, you don't even realize that you're stepping over people because your eye is on the prize and you're moving for it. Or the opposite of that. Is being so cautious that you don't make any moves at all. It's what we were talking about, which is that calibration of, am I in first gear? Am I in third gear? How much gas does my car need? Am I going to punch it? Is now the time? And then relying in just more reps you do, relying on your intuition to give you that feedback. Another great sales book is The Godfather, which kind of is a really nice summer Of everything I just said about ruthless stoicism. Good stuff, good stuff.

1:09:08 Scott Ingram: Let me roll out my little soapbox for you because I would love to know if there's something you believe that the average or typical or maybe it's part of the sales dogma the rest of the world would think is crazy.

1:09:22 Rosa Campagna: I think most people want to put their enterprise customers to bed. I think most reps want to take every single god dang dollar. Dollar and run. And I don't do that. I actually think it's crazy for you to wring people out dry and leave no coffers in the tank. Because here's what I know to be true: when they buy from you the first time, they've basically just said, okay, I'll date you. When they buy from you the second time, they're like, all right, I really like you, I'll give you a ring. We'll see if we make it to And then when they buy from you a third time, you're like, oh, I know the family. Everything's fantastic. How's everybody doing? Here I am again. Procurement. So nice to see you. And then they marry you because you've demonstrated success inside of an organization and you have years of experience and you have years of conversations and you have history. I've talked a lot about history today. Talked a lot about the stage today. This is, I think, a little bit of growing up Italian. You don't ask nonno for $20 right away. You gotta… it's a slow build. And yeah, I learned that. I learned that at Sunday dinner with my family. You never go for everything right away. There's patience, there's grace. Don't go for the whole enchilada. Don't put your enterprise customers to bread. Don't chase the commission. Chase the long haul. Who cares if you lose the account? Account. Who cares? There's another one. Relax.

1:10:53 Scott Ingram: I'm so glad you brought this back around. I have a little bit of a different perspective on it, but I can't help but think that the next step after what you just described is we're going to have a big family together. Yeah. And there will be many more deals.

1:11:06 Rosa Campagna: 100%. Do you want one deal or do you want many deals? Because guess what? Here's what I know to be true. I won this award. I'm looking at it right now. 2025 America's Named Sales Rep of the Year, $428,000. Percent quota attainment to Rosa Campagna. And when I got that award, do you know what my quota was at in terms of attainment when I was handed this award? Zero. Brand new year. Zero. And everyone was like, congratulations, this is amazing. And I said, thank you. And they're like, almost as if I was relaxed. And I was like, excuse me. I'm like, I don't know about you guys, but I'm at zero right now. Who cares? About 428%. Last time I checked, I'm sitting at zero. So remember, the clock always resets. So if the clock always resets, what Easter eggs are you putting in the game so that you can demonstrate to your business not that you just win on year one? You don't just become Rookie of the Year, you become Global Rep of the Year because you've planted enough eggs and you knew they were going to hatch. And when they did, did, you got to high-five Chad Hart on the stage, and that was cool. But it was not because I took down the biggest deal that I could in my first year. It's because I waited and I became patient and I let the audience enjoy the warm-up, and then I hit them with the finale.

1:12:29 Scott Ingram: And you set yourself up so that you're not one and done even after managing that accomplishment.

1:12:34 Rosa Campagna: 100%. Even this year, there are Easter eggs in my pipeline line on purpose, right? And you don't always make that roadmap with your customer, right? You also sometimes are like, you still have to sell that deal. It's not guaranteed every time. Sometimes your customers go to bed without your permission, not because of your lack of planning, but that's a part of the roller coaster.

1:12:56 Scott Ingram: Yep. Yep. We do the same thing. I think about it just from a slightly different perspective and different idea. So the first thing I think about with big enterprise customers is the first deal is always the hardest. There are so many hoops that you have to jump through. We've got to get an MSA in place. We have to go through all of the security and compliance reviews, like all this stuff. And what I have found is that the level of scrutiny through all of those steps in that process in order to… I think about this as as like putting down the foundational sort of rails between our 2 organizations. It's way easier to do that with a really small deal than it is with a really big deal, because everybody's paying a lot more attention when that's 6, 7, 8 figures. Nobody's paying any attention if it's 5 figures. I like to start very small for multiple reasons. One, again, I find there to be less contractual and engagement friction. But that MSA works just as well once it's in place. That's right. So, you get that in place and it also serves to… now I get to embed my team. I can only learn so much from the outside of your organization, but once I'm inside, now we're implementing, now we're working together, now we've got multiple cadences going on across the way our teams are working together and collaborating, and I find that trust compounds. I only trust you so much based on all these rosy promises and things that you say are the ways that you're going to impact my business. That dynamic changes when you've actually delivered on those impacts. And now it's that much easier to do the next deal and the next deal, and it grows and grows. And you build trust across those relationships. It's so much easier to move to another region, to move to another division when you're being introduced by other people internally who are like, hey, we've been working with these folks. They're awesome. You should talk to them. That's a totally different dynamic than connect and pitch on LinkedIn.

1:15:08 Rosa Campagna: You've never heard from me. 100%. I call it the water cooler effect. Yeah. Yeah. You want to be at the water cooler and you want people to say, hey, you're out of the office yesterday. What'd you do? Oh, I, yeah, I went to this really cool OneStream event. It was at this really awesome restaurant in Toronto. It was really cool. Oh, really? Really? Oh, that's cool. What'd you guys like? What did you see anyone cool there? Oh yeah, I talked to these other people from actually from our competitor. Oh, you know what? You know them. Sally from this XYZ company. Like water cooler conversation matters. And you're right. Once your contract is in place, you become sticky, right? It's why you send out a warm-up act. You want your audience to be a little sticky. Picky before you go and give them the enchilada or the large performance, or, hey, by the way, we're a really good partner. We're going to come in with a really big value add, but hey, listen, it's going to cost a little bit of money more than last time, but here's why. And I promise I wouldn't be coming to you if I didn't think you should hear it. And when I say that, and I mean that genuinely, you Actually, as you said, trust compounds. And so usually we've gotten to a place where they're, they will hear that honestly without suspecting every intention that I have. You have to earn the big deal too. And it's not, it's usually not in your first contract. It's usually exactly in that second and third. And yeah, like I do think that's the, and I will say this, John Davis did teach me that I had a huge deal come through in my first year. And should we add this? Should we add that? Should we do this? Should we do that? And he said, how do you feel about making the deal a little bit smaller and just getting it done? And he's like, it's your deal. And John Davis, it's your deal. It's your decision. I promise I'll be happy either way. And I said, tell me more, John. What do you mean? He said, if I was doing this, I'd do something like this. I'd get a in fast and easy. They start implementing, they like the story. You just explained this halfway through. You've taken them out to a couple lunches, couple dinners, they've met your team. Then you'll be ready to sell them part 2 and they'll want to buy it from you. And by the way, he was right because we moved the deal faster than we would've if we was trying to take down the entire thing. Or else if I didn't close that, I wouldn't have made Rookie of the year, but it's because we waited and we reserved the next deal that I was able to be Global Rep of the Year because we had an Easter egg in the bag, right? And when you're first year at the company, don't you just want to close everything? No, you don't, because it's your first year at the company and you want a little grace and patience and you want a long pipeline, right? Not a wide one, what a long one.

1:18:07 Scott Ingram: Oh, so good. And part of that is that is very mature leadership because what I was going to say is if you find yourself in this situation, maybe share this podcast, point them to the starting point that was 10 minutes ago or wherever we started this piece of dialogue. Because what I often find is that there is internal selling work needed because most of your leadership is going to be very short-term focused. Focused. They care about this quarter's number. They care about this year's number. They want you to take down everything when what is better big picture for you, for your business, and for the client is this more measured approach. The other thing I'll call out is, again, if we do that first deal and now we're actively working with them, this is an idea that I got from Irfan Jafar, when he was at VMware years ago here on the podcast, the new, like, walking the hallways. So it used to be a huge big deal if you were really embedded with your client, you had a badge that you could swipe and go into their office and you could walk the hallways and have these water cooler conversations. In the new reality, you know where you need to be? You need to be in their Slack, in their Teams, whatever their native environment is. My biggest opportunity right now, they're a Teams shop. That's where they live. That's where I have all of my conversations with them because everything moves 10 times faster in that channel. Email is an afterthought for them. That's cool. It's not where they live, right? So you really have to think about where is their environment? Where do they have those conversations? Can you put yourself and your team into those channels?

1:19:54 Rosa Campagna: It's game-changing. Absolutely. Go where the people are. And if you can't, if you can't start walking the hallways or get into their Teams channel, create moments of opportunity for them to meet you. I think that I can't stress this enough. Hospitality is a big part of my game. This is the Nana effect.

1:20:15 Scott Ingram: I was gonna say this. This is physically connected all the way. Yeah, this is the Nana effect.

1:20:20 Rosa Campagna: Listen, nobody throws a better dinner party than me, and I mean that. With the most respect. And that's because it is so authentically Rosa to collect people that I care about and have an amazing meal. That is an authentic Rosa experience and something I love to do in my personal life and in my professional life. This goes back to knowing what you want to sell and knowing what you're good at. I'm good at that. Fantastic. If you can't walk the ways. How are you creating memorable moments of connection, and how are you using those moments of connection to build influence? I have 3 influence peers. One, there's the go-to-war. This is your champion. This is the person who you're teamsing with. This is the insider who you're texting with directly. You know their kids' names. You're not friends, but you are working together really well. You go to war together. You're trying to get that project through. Then there's the, hey, remember that time? Hey, you remember that time that we went to that dinner at Canoe in Toronto? Oh, the food was fantastic. Yeah. And they had live music. It was really cool. Yeah. I remember you being there. It's good to see you again. Immediately brings them back to a time. Hey, remember that time? And then there's the, if you know somebody that knows somebody else, you might know something. And what that means is, hey, oh, Scott, I know, you know, John's great. John's probably one of the best managers I've ever had in my life. Yeah. Podcast. The influence of the people matters. Hey, I know somebody that knows, but I know somebody that knows somebody else that might know something, right? And those are my 3 pillars of influence. And I learned that again at Sunday dinner with my family. Absolutely. Yeah.

1:22:03 Scott Ingram: Especially in the age of AI, relationships and trust, it's it, right? All of the cold outreach is getting insanely hard. But what works every time is a warm introduction. Always. What works every time is we spend time together at an event in person over a meal. The most human things that we do is really where the breakthrough is. And I think there's a lot of old school stuff that's gonna come back around because the new school channels are getting really loud.

1:22:42 Rosa Campagna: They're very loud. And once you know something isn't real, there is a human effect of dismissing it. Yeah. Because you don't value that consideration. If you're lucky enough to have a Nana in your life or something equivalent, you will know that to be in her company is the best place to be. Or I'll say a grandparent that you love or an elder that you love. It's the feeling of being warm. It's the feeling of being trusted and interest, and that person is interested in you. That's what I loved about my grandparents, right? And that they were always so excited to learn more about my day, even when I was 7 years old. And that food was always warm and the table was always inviting and the conversation was spirited and loud, to be clear, but we were family on the other side of that and we were able to move as a unit. And so, a big part of, again, how I manage my business internally, externally, is I try and… that's a big part of how I stay grounded is I think about my culture, how I was raised, and what my values are. And then, I also lean on that same cultural engine to be Tony Soprano when I need to, or maybe Carmela Soprano. She's equally as ruthless. Shout out to Carmen Toni. So good. So good.

1:24:04 Scott Ingram: Oh, you just gave me a flashback. I received all of those in the mail in a red Netflix envelope. Okay. Shout out to Netflix, like OG and The Sopranos back in the day. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want to wrap up with 2 things. One, we covered a lot of ground. There was more that I would love to cover, and maybe there is a round 2 in our future, but is there anything we didn't talk about that you really hoped that we would?

1:24:34 Rosa Campagna: We did cover a lot of ground. I'm going to pull out my soapbox and give you this perspective about how I think about life and work. There is the 8-year-old version of you, and then there is the 80-year-old version of you. And then you right now who's listening to this are probably somewhere in the middle. When you stop having fun or creating moments of play, nothing you do will ever feel like living. That's why I keep talking about the stage. So I keep talking about my culture. So I keep talking about being a Nana. I'm having fun, having a little bit of fun. I'm not taking myself so seriously all the time. Now, that level of unseriousness provides moments of creativity so that I can solve problems in a different way that maybe my competitors aren't thinking about. Because I'm just being a little bit silly. That comes from me being obviously a theater kid, but it does come from laughing openly and taking up a lot of space at Sunday meals. And so have a little fun along the way. It's really important. It keeps the game fun, keeps the game creative, and it keeps it interesting. And if you're always thinking about being the most responsible you're probably not thinking big enough. Think about what the most irresponsible thing would be and try and find something in the middle.

1:26:01 Scott Ingram: We'll see what comes out of this. One title idea I just had is something along the lines of Unserious Success.

1:26:08 Rosa Campagna: Yeah, burgers and fries, baby.

1:26:11 Scott Ingram: And because what you called out, I think there's layers to what you just suggested. And the other thing that again is becoming more and more important is the humanity in all of this. And I think the more you're able to be yourself, the more you're able to connect with other people. The more I share… I was a drum corps kid and I'm currently ridiculously obsessed by this stupid Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook crap. Cool. I love that. Like somebody else will ping me and go, oh my God. Yep. Me too. Here's the thing. Yeah. I'm not talking about this publicly, but yeah.

1:26:45 Rosa Campagna: But I'm so into this. Yeah.

1:26:47 Scott Ingram: I only share that over 90 minutes in. So only the serious people, only Only the serious people who are serious about being unserious are going to know. Exactly. Exactly. And those are the things that matter. Let's put a bow on this thing. Okay. What can we challenge our listener to do? What's the action that they can take over the next week or 2 to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:27:13 Rosa Campagna: Okay. A few things that I would suggest for you, dear reader or dear listener, who are this deep into our pod, first, thanks for being here. And second, here's something to take away. You're going to meet a challenge this week in your personal life or your professional life. I want you to try and find a playful way, a way that might make you laugh, to try and solve the problem. Or if you can't, try and see if you can find a laugh or a reason to be really grateful before you try and figure out how you solve the problem. Problem. Somebody just told you no. Somebody just ripped out half your pipeline. You lost a big deal. Whoopsie. Guess that's gonna suck. But you're still employed. You still have the skills. Maybe your family's great. Whatever it is, there is light in your life somewhere. In the absence of having it delivered to you, try and find it in your darkest moments and have a little fun along the way. And if you don't know how to find it in your job, try and find it in your personal life. Read a silly book, read something scandalous, play Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe you're not a nerd like me and Scott. Maybe you're really cool and you have a cool hobby. I don't know. Try that then, but try something. Try something that makes you laugh and something that makes you fun. And in the absence of a hobby, look around to your people, your family, your friends, your pet, and find a smile, and then go solve the problem.

1:28:39 Scott Ingram: Rosa, you're amazing.

1:28:40 Rosa Campagna: Thanks for taking the time. Thanks, Scott. It was fun to be here.

1:28:45 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.