204: UiPath's Taylor Britton on a 495% Enterprise New Logo Year

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.

0:23 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Taylor Britton. Taylor was the top-performing new logo enterprise account executive at UiPath last year and did nearly 500% of his number. Welcome to the show, Taylor.

0:39 Taylor Britton: Thank you.

0:40 Scott Ingram: Thank you.

0:41 Taylor Britton: Thanks for having me on, Scott.

0:42 Scott Ingram: Why don't we jump into some immediate value and start off by talking about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales?

0:52 Taylor Britton: Yeah, happy to, happy to dive on in here. So when I, I did a good bit of reflecting on this and boiled it down, I think the 3 core tenets that I lean on, not necessarily in any stacked rank order, but I'd call it like tenacity and grit, resourcefulness and authenticity, and then accountability. Like those are really the 3 legs of the stool that I think I practice personally and professionally. And I think that's gone a long way, especially in a role where you're chasing enterprise new logos.

1:27 Scott Ingram: Why don't you walk us through those?

1:29 Taylor Britton: Yeah. So I'll take them in order. I think starting at first, tenacity and grit, you know, this is a tough game to play, right? How do you go and approach Fortune 500s, Global 2000s, develop a point of view, create a project and bring that through for through to fruition to a, you know, a commercial event, right? That takes grit, determination, and tenacity. Like when you're dealing with these really large global organizations, like there's, there's a lot of people involved. There's status quo changes almost daily. How can you kind of persist through all of the obstacles in front of you? Because I think both from an organizational point of view, as well as like just a natural human element, like People resist change and you are there to evoke change. And it's statistically proven the vast majority of the workforce is there to clock in, clock out, get the work done, and kind of come back the next day and rinse and repeat. The sales game is fraught with objections, refusals. You get things started, you get interrupted, they get stopped. You can do everything right, air quotes, everything right, and still, still lose. Right. So I think tenacity plays a lot of success of just, can you keep moving? Right. If one door shuts, can you take, find another door to open, whether that be within the same account or open a door with something else to go work on, to just keep moving. I think that's probably, if I'm going to stack rank it, tenacity and grit. Like if you're not willing to show up every day for this and go get it, It's, it's tough, tough sledding. Yeah, that's probably how I'd encapsulate that. I think resourcefulness and authenticity. Look, like I've got a kind of a cliché entry into sales. I was pre-med in college and I'm not wearing a white lab coat. So I got into sales, kind of a cliché story, but you know, I don't have a Harvard MBA and I'm not a 20-year veteran CTO or solutions architect. Right. So I like to think, you know, I'm not completely ignorant, but I'm pretty damn resourceful, right? And I think another thing that plays to my success is quickly identifying what is needed and who might be the best contact to either bring in, uh, have a conversation, whether that's an executive to an executive conversation, maybe it's customer peer-to-peer reference, maybe it's, hey, you don't need to talk to me to AE, why don't you talk to our head of product? Someone without sales in their title, being able to find resources that either maybe it's just a better mesh. You know, there's oftentimes you meet people in organizations where you just, they're there, you're there, but you're not necessarily meshing well. Like, is there someone else in your organization that can help move this conversation forward? I think there's an element to that that's key to success and authenticity, right? I remember being Early in my career, kind of almost like performative of being like a corporate, you know, one of the, you know, standard issue corporate drones, if you will. And I think you quickly learn that the human element of this game can't be overstated. It's key. It's crucial. Having a level of authenticity goes a long way. Of just, and that means being true to who you are, your beliefs, kind of how, what gets you motivated, but also understanding where your limits are. Like, I'll be, I'm very quick to say, hey, I'm not the guy for this, but I know who is. Either, you know, a quick give-get, here's what I need to get them in the room, some sort of validation, some element of being able to bring an authentic conversation and align people where they are and meet people where they are. Is critical, especially when you're talking about, you know, 7-figure deals, 8-figure deals where it takes 8, 10, 12, 15 people on the customer side to get aligned. And then accountability. I think this is, it seems pretty obvious, but it's just so paramount. Uh, just do what you say you're going to do, right? People see that even in the small things. Hey, I'll have a follow-up to you by end of day. That doesn't mean let it trickle into lunchtime of tomorrow.

6:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

6:01 Taylor Britton: Even the small things, like hold yourself accountable for what you say you're gonna do. And I think that's reflective internally to your internal organization, externally to your customers. And again, I mentioned earlier, I apply that in my personal life as well. So, you know, it, it helps to practice that personally and professionally, and it always pays dividends. You know, again, back to the human element. of this role and, uh, the job I'm tasked with doing is that level of accountability is something I pride myself on. And I think that goes a long way. And when you combine these last 3, like, I think it's a pretty potent combination of skills and attributes that play nicely for the role that I'm in.

6:45 Scott Ingram: Nice. So let's, let's contextualize this a little bit. You've dropped some really good hints. I'm, I want to talk about what is your role? Who is UiPath? And before we do that, I should probably give a giant shout out to Thom Wright, who you report to. Thom has been a big fan of the show. Uh, he has recruited off of the show, which I think is actually pretty brilliant. I'm surprised more people haven't been as smart as Thom in that, uh, in that approach. Uh, and, and he's actually, what's really funny is I talk about being an intentional individual contributor and we had a whole conversation at last year's Sales Success Summit about just challenges with, with bosses and frontline managers. And I'm like, yeah, part of the problem is there is no such thing as an intentional frontline manager, right? Like usually that's a step on the ladder. Thom is actually that, like he is super passionate about, I am great in this role. I want to help my team win. Uh, so Thom is a great, great, great guy. I'm sure you have more to, more to say about him, but put, put all of this in context, role, UiPath, what's happening?

7:49 Taylor Britton: Yeah. So my role here within the organization is new logo hunter. I'm specifically tasked with going after Fortune 500s and Global 2000s. So you're typically, I would say at the minimum, like a $7 to $8 billion organization. Some of by happenstance, a lot of my focus is around retail, consumer goods, and discrete manufacturing. So a lot of big logos in the CPG space, as well as the manufacturing space. And that's my remit. And we are kind of masters of our own destiny, right? It's, here's a little list of targets. You go build the book of business, build your team around you. How do we go and build a scalable, repeatable motion that we can take from one customer to the next, to the next, and really start to build out some real revenue-generating opportunities, but also some just really good brand opportunities. I think what Quick tangent. What's, what's nice for me and a motivator for me is, yeah, there's a commercial element to all this, but what's really cool is seeing a massive logo, like a publicly traded logo, either on stage at your conference or on a webinar talking about the impact that you've had. I think that's, that's a, that's pretty cool. But beyond that, like tried and true individual contributing AE role, right?

9:13 Scott Ingram: Got a quota.

9:14 Taylor Britton: Go get it. Let us know how we can help is kind of the remit there. But yeah, it's pretty blocking and tackling AE role. It's got its own nuances just due to the level of kind of revenue band we serve, but that's the cut and dry of it.

9:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And how did you get it? What were the components of a, you know, 495% year?

9:38 Taylor Britton: Yeah. There's a lot to it. I think getting in there, timing is everything. I mean, I'm not going to overstate that. Timing makes probably the largest impact. And I think it's, you know, through my experience early on last year when we had this initial meeting and opportunity start to arise, being able to identify some key components that make up a really good deal.

10:06 Scott Ingram: Right?

10:06 Taylor Britton: Like when you look at what, you know, do we have a good value proposition? Do we have an identified problem statement? Do we have metrics in place that they've defined as here's what success looks like that we can quantify? Do we have enough pain? You know, pain's, to me and a lot of people, pain is measured. It's like a wave. It's measured in both frequency and magnitude. Is this a small problem that happens a lot? It's like a dull annoyance.

10:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

10:34 Taylor Britton: Is this a meteor strike, which albeit was unfortunate, unfortunate, but probably won't happen again, right? So being able to quickly identify those pieces and reporting up to Thom, I remember probably like May, June of last year in a one-on-one and being like, chips in the middle of the table on this one. It's got all the components of what good looks like. We've got a really strong group of people. They're spending a lot of time with us on the customer side, really explaining the nitty-gritty. So a lot of Discovery came easily. They were forthcoming. You know, some people kind of keep it, things close to the chest. So identifying that early and then just raising my hand early to say, if we rally around this one, this has got all the trappings and trimmings of what a 7-figure deal looks like. And doing so in a way that helped prioritize our executive team and our product team of like, if you spend a little time here, The trajectory of this is going to increase up and to the right very quickly, and we could probably accelerate this. We ran a good cycle. I am certainly not the sole contributor to that cycle. Again, back to the resourcefulness, getting the right people in the room, right? We did a lot of work upfront educating, not necessarily selling, but educating, shining a light and helping these people kind of like see around the corner. You know, I use a line like, Here are the 3 landmines you're probably going to step on if you do that. Being able to give that education upfront, what to look for. I use a lot of like, hey, regardless of whether you choose to do business with UiPath or not, these are the things you should be looking for. And I think early on in those conversations that built a lot of trust and don't have to harp too much on what trust will do. in a business relationship. It goes a long way. Um, and we ran a good cycle, not without its hiccups and bumps. You know, there's the old, old platitude, like this isn't real until you lose it twice. I think we might've lost it 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times, but back to the tenacity of like, keep finding that way through and navigating and being confident. Like there's something to be said where. You truly believe the impact that you can have. You can back it up not only from internal resources, attributes, accolades, but also having customers vouch for you as well is probably one of the single biggest, you know, leg-ups you can get is having one of their industry peers go, yeah, these guys, they're not messing around. Like, here's the impact we've seen. That pays dividends. Made it through and then went toe to toe with our procurement teams, as one often does. But I think then continuously leveraging our relationships that we built, and it's not always me. Some pretty clear, you know, requirements for deals like that. So just for context, I think the total was 3 years paid upfront, TCV 3.1. So chunky deal. And like, that doesn't get done by a single person overnight. So being multi-threaded consistently. throughout paid dividends in the long run. And we were certain we were able to get what could have been an easy 2-year cycle done in 10 months.

14:01 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. I think the, one of the things we all have to learn probably the hard way, and it's easier to know if it's the way that it works, is that you are going to lose, like any real super meaningful deal, you are going to come near to losing it. 2 to 3 times. What, what was the scariest one of those? What was the one where you're like, oh man, I put all the chips in and I think I might've lost the bet?

14:27 Taylor Britton: Yeah, it was, uh, without fail, timing is always the crucial thing. It was almost looking back, it was almost like a Curb Your Enthusiasm, like comedy of errors we got after putting all my chips into the middle of the table. I think it was 6 weeks or so after that. We get this, just get a blank one-liner email. Hey, appreciate the time. No longer a priority for the business. You know, we'll look forward to picking this back up. And you're just, I think I read that email a dozen times, like making sure it actually said what it said, going, huh? Like, huh? Just out of the blue. And then you get that like, well, what's going on? How can we help? Is there anything we can do about that? You know, you're not necessarily gonna tell a $40 billion company to jump and they're going to say, oh, how high would you like us to jump? And so we got that kind of shot across the bow. We're able to work through it. I think again, a key to working through that is early we had good executive engagement and alignment. So being able to go kind of back up and really understand what's going on and have a conversation of how we work through that was paramount. But I think that was probably the scariest one of just getting that. out of the blue email of like, they're just going to pull the ripcord on you with seemingly no rhyme or reason, which if you play this game long enough, something happened somewhere, sent a rippling effect through the organization. You may figure out what that is. You may not. Luckily, we were, it was something we were able to work through. But I think, yeah, that was the, probably one of the scariest, like immediate, like, now what?

16:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

16:07 Taylor Britton: Like, now what?

16:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's go back to your origin story. You said it was cliché. I'm not quite sure what that means, but how, how did you get into sales in the first place? Yeah.

16:18 Taylor Britton: So I say cliché because I, you know, I've heard the, I've heard this origin story in similar ways, but I went to Georgia Southern, was pre-med undergrad, got through like junior year and was like, I don't know if med school's on the on the track here anymore for a few various reasons, not necessarily academically, but, you know, you go through a lot of growth from your senior year of high school to your junior year of college, and you're kind of looking around, is this what we really want to do? Et cetera, et cetera. It's a big commitment, you know, uh, you kind of get those, is this really worth it? So all that to say is I quickly added like a business minor Did that in a semester and a half and had a, had a good college buddy whose dad was early on at ServiceNow. And he knew another here in Atlanta at Veeam Software. And I had a, you know, coffee chat with him, kind of feeling it out. I obviously had, you know, I'm still in college, graduated and started out at Veeam Software in renewals about a couple months after I had graduated, just cutting my teeth on Just a tidal wave of kind of mid-market contract renewals of kind of an entry point into corporate America, if you will, and liked it, kind of had a natural knack for it. I'm a people person. I'm a social person. So the human interaction day to day was fun despite it being, you know, kind of the same remit from a job capacity every day. I enjoyed it. There wasn't really ever a same day. Everything, something new happened every day, which I liked. I don't do well with stagnation or, you know, kind of a mundane, repetitive nature. So got into it from there and then quickly moved over into, I think we were called ISAs at the time, which à la 2012, 2013 was the term for BDRs. I just cut my teeth on that. And that was, you know, tried and true. Like you're gonna make 100 dials a day. Or we're going to find someone else who can type, just outbound grueling, and then moved up into owning the entire sales cycle. So owning the close grew from there and it's been, it's been a fun ride, but that's how I got started. So not wearing a white lab coat today, but I'm happy where I am.

18:41 Scott Ingram: Was, was there a point in that where you really felt like you found your sea legs and really decided like, you know what, sales is my thing. Like, this is what I'm going to do.

18:52 Taylor Britton: Yeah, it's, I would say, this might be a little trite and cliché as well, but certainly once you get into the closing role and being young, hungry, the earning potential is there. Ironically, this is one of those roles where you can theoretically control your outputs by your number of inputs. Now, the customer gets a vote, the prospect gets a vote, but I think that was one of those key things where it's like, I do enjoy this. Like, there's nothing I really do enjoy once you sink your teeth into a good, good sales cycle, just kind of get in the ring there and you get to go toe to toe with some big organizations. Yeah. Once you kind of get that, that feeling of you can control your destiny a little bit, you know, obviously I'm a part of a much larger organization, cog in the wheel, if you will, but I never really felt that way. So I think it was also somewhat of being fortuitous in an organization that gave their reps the opportunity to operate without, you know, being too clamped down on over, you know, over-engineering the process in the day-to-day with metrics and this and that. But yeah, I think once you kind of get, once I got into that closing role, that was fun.

20:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

20:07 Taylor Britton: Being able to see that and then like getting to meet people, see people, new things. I'll never forget covering manufacturing earlier, getting the dime tour, just always fascinated by the machinizations these people have to make, you know, insert product here. So it was fun. That's really how I kind of got into it.

20:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Knowing, knowing what you know at this stage, if you could go back or if you were coming out of college today, what, what would you do differently? How would you think about it?

20:34 Taylor Britton: Experience has taught me, you know, when you, when I was definitely first into this, it's, you know, insert metaphor here, like you're a hammer, everything's a nail, right? And I think approaching it now would be If I could start all over would be having the understanding and appreciation that that's not true in this role. You know what good looks like, but you're not going to drag anybody kicking and screaming through this process. You've got to walk arm in arm with your prospect, client, customer together. And if you're not going to do it together, you're going to get all the way to the end and your deal's either going to get picked apart. Or they may not have the groundswell and momentum internally if they're doing it by themselves. So I think that's certainly a key element there.

21:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I had a mentor who always said, walk through open doors. And this, this always created sort of this visual for me of like a very long hallway. And it's like, yeah, you can knock on doors and maybe they open, or maybe you find one that's already open. Walk through those, right? Rather than beating your head against the one that like, this one never opens, but maybe if I just keep knocking on it, that's silly.

21:47 Taylor Britton: Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong. There's definitely some logos I'm after that, you know, call it wishful thinking. They're just not ready and not interested. And that's okay. I think early on in my career was I kind of had this like, that's not okay. We need to convince them otherwise. And that's just, that's an exhausting place to operate from. And you'll quickly find yourself, it's almost like quicksand. Like the more you try to keep forcing things, the quicker you sink through that. And then you'll look back and go, wow, I've got really nothing to show for my efforts over the last 3, 4, 5, 6 months. You know, even a quick anecdote here. I remember having a conversation recently and we were, there's a project there, but it's not quite fully baked or approved. And then just flat out having the conversation with, hey, look, we'd love to help, but there are some things we need to get done. You need to get done on your end, Mr. Prospect, before we can really sink in here. Because 6 months are going to go by. My boss is, my boss is going to start asking me questions. Your boss is going to start asking you questions. And then we're going to get an increasingly difficult conversation. Let's just avoid that. Let's just make sure we're ready. And it's okay.

22:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

22:58 Taylor Britton: It's okay. Like at the end of the day, you know, I take this role very seriously. I take what I do very seriously, but it's not lost on me. It's software. There's nobody bleeding out in front of us. We're not ER doctors. Like, we will get there. The business is operating, right? And that's another big thing I think looking back earlier is if they could have solved this, they probably already would have. What reasoning do they have to say why they haven't solved this? You know, is this a new problem? Is this just something that kind of annoying in the day-to-day, but such is life. It's not worth throwing a couple hundred thousand dollars at year over year to fix.

23:37 Scott Ingram: Mm-hmm.

23:38 Taylor Britton: Things like that. Yeah.

23:40 Scott Ingram: Taylor, what's, what's your favorite sales story? Maybe, maybe it was the one that you learned the most from, right? Like maybe you lost, but it, but it was a thing that taught you a ton.

23:48 Taylor Britton: Yeah. Oh man, there are a bunch. I've got a semi-recent one, which is just a good reminder of knowing who's in the room with you. So myself, solutions engineer, and industry executive are headed to Uh, a manufacturer out in Birmingham. We're supposed to meet with the CIO, somewhat of an intimidating guy, very matter of fact, military background, business oriented, which I appreciate because those guys aren't messing around. You know exactly where you stand, good, bad, or otherwise. And so we're supposed to meet with CIO. We get there and we kind of get ambushed, right? Where you go in this meeting, you're expecting A to happen, which is at the time kind of overview of our platform, where we fit, what we can do, what we've done for other manufacturers. Kind of a get-to-know-each-other type meeting, bring our point of view and perspective. We get there, next thing we know that the CISO is there, the VP of IT is there, the enterprise architect is there. There's several other of the CIO's generals, if you will. And we get in there and this meeting just quickly goes off the rails. We had, you know, come in with plan A. Right now we're currently scrambling live. We're on plan like F. In this meeting to get this thing back on the rails. But it was, it was just a good reminder of getting into the conversation. And VP of IT chimes in and basically says like, hey, our strategy is not a good one. Which is like, huh?

25:22 Scott Ingram: Huh?

25:22 Taylor Britton: It's been a good one for 10,000 other customers. Like, say more. And we kind of get into this and they're going to build, build this, build that. And the SE finally kind of you know, gloves off, so to speak, is like, well, how are you going to productize all that internally? And ended up just poking several large holes in his VP of IT strategy. And, you know, when that happens in front of his boss, his peers, his colleagues, it was quickly like a, hey, great meeting. This is not going anywhere because now we've made, like, there's several large dissenters in the room now with the strategy. So I think it's, I like that story because it's good because equal parts stand your ground, right? Like sometimes you just get tested in these rooms and if you're not confident in what you're doing, how are they supposed to be confident in what you're doing? But also just, you gotta know who's in the room with you. And I will say this time and time and time again, like never ever underestimate the human element of this job. People have their own biases, preconceived notions, as do you. There's a lot of technology out there. There's a lot of ways to solve problems. Why is yours better than others? So it was a good reminder of like, know who's in the room and being able to quickly identify like what you're gonna, what obstacles and objections you're probably going to get. It's tough when you kind of get ambushed, but I think being audible ready, like you've got to have plan A, B, and C. Here's what happens if this, here's what we're going to do here, here, here, and here. If we don't You know, if it's not the easy, happy-go-lucky conversation where everything's great. So a lot of lessons, and that was last year of just a good reminder of like, gotta know who's in the room with you, gotta know their strategy, what they think about, how they're going about solving these problems. Because, you know, at the end of the day, when you make a technology recommendation, if you're sitting in the room with someone who's recommended the previous solution and they love it, like, That's tough to get around from a human element because they put their neck out for that previous solution. And you're basically telling them that was a bad bet. Here's why. But we have something for you to help if you're still interested. And people don't like change and people will resist it and people will go down swinging sometimes before they're willing to kind of take a hard look and go, okay, this isn't working. We do need to make a move.

27:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You're really reminding me a lesson of a number of years ago for me is this idea that sales is leadership, right? And it's, I think it's kind of in the middle between if you bracket it on one end, what rarely works, especially in the enterprise, is being an order taker. Like, yes, sir, whatever you want, we're gonna do that. That Most of the time they don't know what they want nor what they need. So that's not going to work, nor does the, your baby is ugly. Let me tell you all of the ways.

28:29 Taylor Britton: Right.

28:30 Scott Ingram: And all of these things. And in this, right, it's finding that middle ground, finding their goals, finding what fits in their thing, and truly leading them forward and helping them find what's going to best… how are they actually going to succeed? And to your point, there is a lot, lot, lot of human element. In all of this, right? Like we're, we're not leading drones. We're leading people who have feelings, who, who are invested in this thing that, to your point, like put their neck on, on the line for a solution that, that is the ugly baby. And here we are. Yeah.

29:08 Taylor Britton: Or even potential bets they're gonna make where, you know, you're trying to shine a light on like, hey, we've, The vast majority of our conversations are people that have tried that and failed, and here's what they saw. You tell me how that feels to you. And, you know, you kind of get, you learn to do some of that jiu-jitsu, if you will, where you're taking an objection and kind of putting it back. And that comes through one, knowing your business, knowing your product, knowing their business as well as you can. Public companies are easier to sleuth around than private ones. But yeah, it's…

29:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

29:41 Taylor Britton: I mean, when's the last time you saw 6 people get in a room and generally agree on everything? It's tough, right? And you're going against beliefs, biases. And so you really have to come correct with facts and evidence that's not fluffy. It's gotta be real. It's gotta be defensible. And if you can't stand there and defend it, why would anybody bet on you for it?

30:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

30:07 Taylor Britton: Yeah.

30:07 Scott Ingram: Taylor, you've, you've had a good track record of success. You've had some big wins. What, what are you most proud of?

30:13 Taylor Britton: What am I most proud of? Uh, there's a lot, you know, as I've gotten older and done this longer, what I really have a soft spot for is the team. You know, this is a good, like, don't get me wrong. There are, I even know some incredibly successful lone wolves out there. You meet them in your career, they just operate on their own, they execute on their own, and they bag and tag things. And they're, that's just not how I operate. And I think one of the proudest things is watching, like, giving that player coach role and watching those around me succeed and grow. I've got an absolute soft spot for mentoring BDRs getting into their frontline or first closing role. Um, so I would say a bit non-traditional answer. Yeah, there's some big wins out there that I'm proud of. I kind of, you know, not to belittle it, but like, that's, that's what I signed up for. That's what I signed a contract to do. I'll never forget an early EVP closed my first 6-figure deal and him looking at me and going, great, you did your job. Like, okay. So most proud of watching the team grow and develop, whether that's coaching to younger reps, coaching to less tenured SEs or CSMs or TAMs, watching the team come with us. And at the end of the day, being able to like highlight wins of like, it's not about me, you know, insert metaphor here. Like people call the quarterback, the AE, the quarterback. Well, there's a lot of time the quarterback just gives the ball off. So how can you set the stage for other people to be successful? I think that's what I'm most proud of is doing things the right way through a team, through like just good teamwork and hard work. Like those are the wins that where you get the door shut in your face, you rally together, you find a way, a path forward, and you keep moving. Like, those are what I'm the most proud of. You know, some of those stickier, tougher deals. It's great when they're easy deals and it's a little bit linear, right? Don't get me wrong, I'm never gonna say no to those, but don't get any layups in the enterprise new logo space. Catching lightning in a bottle is not a strategy. So that, it really truly motivates me when we can get the group together and everyone is participating and everyone is like, this is my role. I know it. I'm gonna do this. Mm-hmm. Great. Where are you going? I'm going to do that. Awesome. Here's how this all comes together. This just orchestration, like those are the wins that I love and most proud of when you sell a deal the right way with true visibility and impact and getting those customers to like speak on your behalf at your conference. I've gotten a few of those, which that's a proud moment. Like, wow. I got a Fortune 5 on stage to speak on our behalf, and people aren't going to do that unless you've really made an impact. Those are the ones that I'm most proud of.

33:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Love, love that so much. I had a, I had a great conversation yesterday, just, you know, one of those sales deep dive geek outs with a, with a, with a fellow enterprise seller and just this idea of you have to be thinking and selling so far past the close or it just doesn't work.

33:35 Taylor Britton: Right.

33:35 Scott Ingram: It can't be like, okay, cool. We're going to get to this point. You're going to sign. And then like, good luck.

33:41 Taylor Britton: Yeah. Good luck out there.

33:43 Scott Ingram: Hope that works out for you. You'll never get there if you don't sell through that. It's like a run through the finish line kind of a thing. Like we have got to make sure that I, we have the path all the way through to you're going to be successful with this.

33:59 Taylor Britton: Right.

33:59 Scott Ingram: And, and I love that bar of, and, and I like creating these kinds of visions. Like, what would it look like? What would it take? For you to be on the stage at our conference? What would we need to achieve together? Those are the questions I love to ask customers. And that may be a new one for me, like that framing it in that way is such a… because they can visualize themselves, they can see themselves, they can put them on the stage. So what does that deck look like? What are you presenting? How did we get there? What did we have to overcome? Right? What are the landmines that we had to step around?

34:33 Taylor Britton: Yeah. You know, addressing that a little bit, I would say like for all the listeners out there, if, if the last, last item on your mutual plan is contract signature, stop doing that.

34:45 Scott Ingram: Yep. You're dead.

34:46 Taylor Britton: That's maybe halfway, right? We call here at UiPath, we've got the term, we call it day 2 ready, which I think is a great title on what a lot of people do, which is signing a contract does not solve your problem, guys.

35:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

35:01 Taylor Britton: It really doesn't. Signing a contract just formally allows us to begin working together. So what does post-signature look like? You know, from an executive perspective, I, like, I don't know many C-suites at the level I sell to that care if it's Teams or Zoom or SalesLoft or Outreach or our platform or another. They care about the outcome that gets delivered and you being able to clearly in defense articulate, this is how quickly you get adopted and back up to where this is a natural element of your day-to-day. That's where value starts. It doesn't start when you sign a contract. They haven't recognized any of the ROI you've been preaching them pre-contract signature. So taking them through what a day in the life looks like from implementation to adoption, education, training, et cetera, like when the team is actively using your solution in the day-to-day, that's when you can start harvesting ROI and value. It will not come before that. So you've got to be very clear on what success looks like, and it has to be a mutual conversation. You cannot define success for that organization. You can kind of point them in the direction of here's what others have seen, recognized, and do with this. But what does that specifically mean for you? And if that leader, buyer, influencer, champion can't articulate what they are gonna get out of this, you should spend a lot more time working on that because it will come up either right before signature or immediately after when someone says, I'm sorry, we just bought what? For what? Like you've got to bring that entire band along with you.

36:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So we've been talking about all the bright, shiny, fun stuff. What about the hard stuff? Like what, what challenges you the most? What, what do you struggle with?

37:08 Taylor Britton: Oh man, it's a people game. And so you can, you know, sometimes you can throw logic right on out the window. I mean, sometimes you see it where that's, that's a bold strategy. Best of luck out there. I would also say from our profession, what's challenging, like Gone are the days of sending 50 emails, making 100 calls, setting 10 to 20 meetings, getting 5 deals, doing 30 minutes of discovery, an hour-long vanilla demo, and then sticking your hand out for a couple hundred grand and winning. Like that early days of SaaS, like it's over. The market is far too crowded. Executives have been burned too many times.

37:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

37:53 Taylor Britton: The, Like just the general landscape is so fluid. It is, it's hard to keep up when it is, everything is moving. And so I would say like the hard part is kind of just like what gets people in the boat these days? Like from an outbound perspective, I'm willing to bet if you talk to any leader in this program or otherwise, like what does outbound and top of funnel look like now?

38:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

38:20 Taylor Britton: It is probably categorically different than it was 8 months ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago. So that's always a challenge and can be frustrating when success can be kind of like whack-a-mole, right? This worked one time. Now it's not working again. Well, why not? I, such is life. Well, how do you keep moving and finding the next thing? You know, I am, It's kind of like when you're picking up a bunch of stuff and you got your arms full and you try to pick up one more thing and one thing falls out. You're just consistently just trying to pick these things up and find them. It's tough. Market's so crowded. There's so much noise. How do you cut through the noise and differentiate yourself? You know, I'd say just like the Venn diagram, especially related to like what UiPath does, automation, agents, orchestration, like it's a very quickly overlapping circle between what the big, you know, your big enterprise, your Salesforce's, Microsoft, Snowflake's, ServiceNow's of the world, your hyperscalers, you know, your AWS's, your Google's, your Microsoft's again, your, you know, point solutions, like the just proliferation of these .io and .ai companies that have shown up in the last 8, 10 months, like Is this just a really sexy UX with a GP, just a ChatGPT wrapper? Is this a real product? Like cutting through the noise and having people that you're selling to kind of understand the value prop and why you're different is increasingly difficult. It's no longer of they can't do what we can do. And here's why. It's everybody can kind of get the job done in some way or another. So tying that off, I'd say the differentiation is a lot harder these days. And you've just watched the proliferation of AI and automated outbound. Like I heard from a VP of analytics 2 weeks ago, he gets approximately 2,200 emails a day. You can have the best email in the world and you're still not getting through. So how do you get in front of these people? I would say like that has, you know, ironically or coincidentally, like the pendulum has swung back. Like it used to be 2, 3 years ago, it was full auto, 10 million emails going out. Like we'll hit something inevitably back to this like very specific and get in front of people, right? You know, back to the human element. It can't be understated. It's harder, right? How do I justify going to a conference 2 prospects are at? With, I might come home empty-handed. I might not get the chance to meet them. Is that worth going? Maybe.

41:07 Scott Ingram: How are you? You said so much stuff that, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's the world. You know what? More of us need to do this because I, I have done this throughout my career because I'm, I'm honestly just genuinely curious about what is the executive buyer experience In this environment. And that's like, you gave a perfect example. Like, yep, my guy's getting 2,200 emails a day. So is that going to be the right channel? I would say probably not. So, and the other thing that you said that really struck with me is in a time when everything is moving, I think that is the experience of us all. Like, that's experience of all of us in a sales seat. It's the experience of our buyers. Everything is moving and it's moving really fast.

41:55 Taylor Britton: What are you doing?

41:56 Scott Ingram: What's working for you right now? How, how specifically, tactically are you adapting to that?

42:02 Taylor Britton: Yeah, I prey upon any sort of warm introduction or mutual acquaintance or connection that we can find. I'd say, you know, don't get me wrong, I still obviously Outbound is, I mean, it's been tattooed on my forehead for a decade. So it's just part of the role and it does work. Don't get me wrong. Like it does work. You've got to up your game, I would say, but right here, right now, what's working? Do you have board members at your organization that are executives at your prospects or that know your prospects? Is someone on your customer or prospects board a reference for you? How can you parlay an introduction from the president, CEO, CRO, CTO of your organization into another, like the executive to executive conversation is definitely a warmer path. I would say it's not a goal, it's no silver bullet, but it definitely increases the propensity of having a conversation. And then customer to customer, I would say anytime we can, we've got customer events, I'm immediately on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, trying to figure out who's in their backyard. It might not be the buyer we want, but if there's someone in the organizational hierarchy that's, you know, in the backyard, they're in Austin, Texas, arbitrary example, and we've got an event in Austin, like send them there. It's that kind of selling without selling of just warming people up to who you are and what you do. And I have sales in my title, right? So there's always some level of suspicion, if you will, when we approach And having an executive or a board member or a peer-to-peer reach out is a very good way to accelerate and elevate the conversation that you are having.

43:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm on board. Yeah. Taylor, what, what is your information diet? What, what are you listening to? What are you reading? What are you watching? And when does that happen?

44:10 Taylor Britton: I am, I'm all over the place. I, you know, as far as information diet, I'm certainly guilty of the early morning, like LinkedIn scroll, see who's doing what, where. I, I do enjoy and look for like what buyers, whether they're my buyers or not, just a persona. What are they talking about? Where are they speaking? What topics are they giving conver… like, you know, TED Talks or conference roundtable discussions, what have you. I, I read a lot of that of like, what's going on in the world of my buyer? So heaven forbid when I actually have a conversation, I can have some credibility around it. I've got some workhorses I read and reread again. Um, currently halfway through Extreme Ownership again, probably for like the 5th time. It's, it's not for everyone. It works really well for me because I just don't, you know, Growing up, I grew up with the 2x4, just the back of the head, like, hey, quit doing that. Start doing this. Like, okay, got it. You know, you have 2 options. You can do option A or option B. Here's what you expect. You can expect doing option A. Here's what you can expect doing option B. Choose your own adventure. So I geek out on a lot of the extreme ownership of like prioritize and execute gets me through my day. It's good grounding. And I also like outside of work, I spend a lot of time, I kind of geek out on like psychology, why humans do what they do. I think that just plays, one, it's interesting to me. You know, people will look you dead in the eyes and refute 2+ 2= 4.

45:51 Scott Ingram: Why?

45:52 Taylor Britton: Like, why? There are people that think the earth is flat.

45:55 Scott Ingram: Why?

45:57 Taylor Britton: Why? So I consume a lot of like why people make decisions they do. A lot of the psychology around that, which has paid some dividends personally and professionally. And so through LinkedIn, through that, and then I'm a big mindfulness guy, you know, get up in the morning, kind of bleeding into what's the routine look like, take 10, 15 minutes. You know, I'll be the first to tell you 3, 5 years ago, I would have, I kind of like rolled my eyes and scoffed like, uh, it's a little woo woo. Like, okay, sure. Do a breathing exercise. It's been incredibly helpful. So I consume a lot of that, like healthy mind, healthy body. I don't typically seek out a bunch of like business books per se. Like I gotta have a story, otherwise it gets really dry really quickly. You know, to each their own. Those are helpful. They're out there. That's not my cup of tea. But yeah, information diet. I consume a lot of like what helps me personally and professionally. And then specific to the role, I do a lot of like, what are the people I'm talking to thinking about, worried about doing? What are their industry peers doing? What trends are happening in the, in their industry and business? And oftentimes it's got really nothing to do with your product or solution at first glance. But when you really dig in and understand, I'll use manufacturing as an example. They've got a talent exodus. Like there's so many people in manufacturing that have worked the shop floor that hold a tremendous amount of tribal and colloquial knowledge that are retiring, aging out, leaving. And how do you backfill that? That's not necessarily like, oh, you need automation for that. Like that's not an immediate value proposition for you, UiPath. But if you keep pulling that thread, you can start to articulate when, where, and how your solution might be able to pick that up or offset it or diminish its impact or get them ready for when that really starts to impact the business. Those are the things I'm looking for to have a, like, very clear, coherent conversation. Because when you're talking to an executive at a Global 2000 or a Fortune 500, they're not necessarily worried about, like, is our invoice processing tool the best it can be? They're worried about, like, cash flow. Like, why are we holding cash and why is working capital tied up the way it is?

48:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

48:16 Taylor Britton: You've got to be able to make that relatable and a clear value proposition. So anything that can help me around with that, I consume. So a bit of a meandering answer there, but…

48:25 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it.

48:27 Taylor Britton: Thom's probably chuckling because I am a little all over the place, but here we are.

48:30 Scott Ingram: I'm a, I'm a huge Extreme Ownership fan. I, you make me think I'm probably due for my 3rd reread. It's, it's been a, it's been a good number of years. On, on the psychology and like just getting to understand people. If you were to name one book, 'cause you didn't name any, what, what, what's the one that you think would be the most helpful or, or that has impacted you the most in, in just your thinking and understanding?

48:52 Taylor Britton: Yeah, there's a, there's a great one. It's called Predictably Irrational. I think it's Dan Ariely, and it goes through the stories of like why, just like very consumed around like why people make the decisions they make, dives into all sorts of aspects in and around it. Good read. It's not too dry. It definitely can be a little dense at times with some of like, you know, I don't have a psych undergrad degree. So some of the concepts are like, let me Google this. What does this even mean? But that's, that's one I would point people towards is Predictably Irrational. Great read. And it, it's good to just kind of shine a light on, you know, cause when you think like objection handling, well, why are they objecting the way that they're objecting? Is this a personal, like, do they feel threatened? Is it just, did something bad happen? And now they've got this kind of preconceived notion that like, oh, we had a, you know, arbitrary example. We had a poor implementation with a similar product, ergo this product must also fault in the same way. Like things like that, like truly understanding the human element of why is a very big component and can be a huge leg up for objection handling.

50:02 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Very cool. Let's talk about the rest of the, not just morning routine, but kind of the way that you're structuring your day. Like I want the whole thing. So what time does your alarm clock go off and talk us through like feet hit the floor all the way back to head hits the pillow again?

50:19 Taylor Britton: Yeah. So a good day, if all is going well routine-wise, I'm, the gym is typically my anchor. So I'm a big wake up, I would rather be up early than be up late. I'm certainly an early riser, so it's get up, feet hit floor, mosey to gym, try to take a steam after that if I can, if there's time, come back. Typically at that time, I've got a 3-year-old son named Parker, so we're getting him ready for getting out the door, which is never a dull moment. He, I'll either do, I typically do drop off in the morning. So once I get back, then I'm Then I'm sitting down, getting mindfulness in, which is either anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes of just some grounding, like, okay, here's what we're going to do for the day. Here's how we're going to attack the day. And then looking at the calendar, you know, I always look at it the night before, make sure we're ready. Do we have prep calls scheduled? Is everybody rowing in the same direction? And then I go through my day. I've got at least, you know, I've I prospect every day. You've got to. Some, some are harder prospecting days than others. Get through the day. I like to typically structure, you know, I, some people to great success will bifurcate. Like I don't do morning meetings. I do them in the afternoon because the morning is my prospecting time, what have you. I'm a bit more fluid than that. Um, I think somewhat of the nature of just being an enterprise, like you got to take what the defense gives you and you meet when they're ready to meet. So I'm a bit fluid in that, that regard, but prospecting in some capacity every day, that could just be outbound cold email, cold calling. It could be, you know, event planning, introductions, research, you name it. It's got all sorts of different looks and feels to it. Get through the day. And then from then it's probably daycare pickup. I'm a big cook, so I'm cooking something for dinner. Wife laughs because I could eat the same thing every day. All day, every day. She cannot. So I'm typically trying to find something new to keep it interesting at the, at home. And then after dinner, wife and I will spend time together and then I'm in bed. I think I'm in bed, ideally head is on the pillow at like 9:30, asleep by 10. So I'd rather front load my day. Like if the, if the workday could start at 4:00 AM and be done at noon, I'd be happy.

52:41 Scott Ingram: Same, same. Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you weren't trying to cater to your wife's need for variety, what is that thing that you would cook and eat over and over? Like, what is the core go-to?

52:56 Taylor Britton: The easiest go-to, and this was, you know, prior to relationships, just making it easy when I'm by myself is like, I'll go to Costco, I get 2 whole chickens, roast them, and I'll do that with green beans and some sort of rice or starch every day. Like I will, I, I'll, I'll throw it out there now, like on Beat Bobby Flay or anything, like you give me a whole chicken and I could probably stand my ground. Um, that's just like the, the workhorse tried and true, but, um, somewhat tangential that I prefer to cook things I've never cooked before. Those are always the fun ones. Like figure your way through this. What could be better next time? But if it's like the work week, 'cause I'm like, just spend less time eating, right? Just get through the workday.

53:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

53:40 Taylor Britton: Uh, yeah, the, the meal prep is typically 2 roast chickens for the week.

53:43 Scott Ingram: Nice.

53:45 Taylor Britton: Nice.

53:46 Scott Ingram: What, what, what about the tools and the apps and, and all the stuff? Like what, what can't you live without in, in your kind of personal professional stack these days?

53:54 Taylor Britton: Oh yeah. I would say, you know, it's hard to have one of these conversations without AI. Like I live and breathe by my Perplexity app personally and professionally. For better or for worse, uh, just the time ROI on that for our day-to-day is huge. I mean, professionally, like being able to make custom deliverables, one-pagers, assets, pitch decks, it just cannot be easier to do with the technology we have that is certainly surplanted there. Professionally or personally, like, you know, workout routines, changing things. I played tennis growing up, getting back into it. Like, hey, Perplexity, what's a good way to get back into this? You know, write me a workout plan, a training plan, things like that. Spotify, I'm a big music guy. I listen to anything and everything barring pop country. Anything's fair game. So if I'm doing a lot of like, gotta get motivated, put some music on, then get into the day. So Spotify, Perplexity, and then like Sales Navigator, call it what it is, seems a little cliché, but like being able to see and like get a window into a day in the life of your prospects is just huge. I mean, it's telling, right? You can look at a LinkedIn profile and get a pretty good sense of who you're going after right there. Is it an active profile? Are they posting anything? Is this just a name without a picture? And I've been here 20 years. Like, okay. Like you could tell a lot about what people do and post on LinkedIn about who you are going to be interacting with. And that's kind of back to the psychology element of like, can you glean anything from what this person is about? To either increase the propensity of a response or like kind of put yourself in their shoes of what they're going through when you actually have a conversation. Uh, those are certainly the big 3 that I'd probably hang my hat on because I use them both personally and professionally. And they got a wide, wide ranging, wide range of use cases there.

55:54 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy? Or approach?

56:03 Taylor Britton: Kind of, you know, throughout my, my career, I would say I'm an amalgamation of strategies, concepts, things that I've picked up along the way that either come naturally, play nicely along with who I am as a person. You know, I'm probably, if you have to, probably have to like put a title on it, you know, I'm equal parts Challenger, Sandler, solution selling, I pick the pieces that work really well and mesh with me and go, go through that. And they each have a great role to play. You know, Sandler, I always love just because it's pretty psychological. Like, why is this person doing that? Are they trying to get promoted? Are they trying to keep their job? Are they trying to move up in the corporate world? Things like that. Challenger, you know, you mentioned it earlier, like, how do you lead someone through a cycle? By condensing the amount of options, you know, Like, you know, the 3 Ts, teach, tailor, take control, like reducing the scope of exploration, things like that. Like they're all really strong and applicable. Solution selling, like, you know, your ability to understand the business impact your product or service has and not talking about the features and functionality, but the outcomes. And positive business outcomes that you can get from that, or just speaking in those terms, bringing a customer story. Like, kid you not, like a good customer story will beat any and every fact sheet, feature sheet that you could ever put in front of somebody. And again, it's back to the human element. Like people like a good story and understanding, like how can you articulate their world look just like your world? Now, this is what they went through. These are some things you should probably take into consideration or be aware of. And here's the, here's what they, you know, here's the uplift they recognized or the value they saw, the ROI they recognized, customer stories. So an amalgamation of those 3, if I have to put a title on it, but nothing too rigid or defined. I'm a, I'm a sponge. I consistently seek out like, what are my blind spots? What am I missing? I consistently seek out like, we see, you know, everyone's got like a big deal win wire.

58:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

58:22 Taylor Britton: Internally, like, what was the motion like? I will go seek out that AE. What was the story? What was the buyer? What was the why? So just consistently seeking those things out to understand why people are doing what they're doing with our product. That's what I revolve around.

58:41 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. On the customer story front, how are you seeking those out? How are you finding those? How are you kind of making them your own so that you can tell them in a compelling way in in context.

58:53 Taylor Britton: Yeah. I would say the easiest source is go find the AE, the CSM, the TAM, whomever has been with your best customers. Like every organization's got the NASCAR slide on their website, big logos they do business with, people that speak at their conferences consistently. Like go seek those, the teams that manage that relationship out and understand the why, you know, and the reason I say CSM or TAM is like maybe the AE sold it is no longer with the organization, what have you. Who's got some tenure with this customer too that can internally tell you this is why they're doing this. This is the value they've seen. This is the challenges they've had. You, you got to go seek those out. You know, I'll find most of the, like, you know, the slideware around customer stories or probably a little fluffy. And I think that's equal parts, you know, you gotta paint the, paint the picture you want, but you know, there's oftentimes like if a customer is saving $70 million with your product, like they're, they may or may not tell you that. So you gotta use the information you've got, right? I would say that is start there, start with who your organization parades around. And go to get their stories about why they bought originally. And then equally important, why did they renew? I think, you know, buying something is, is great. It's a great story to hang your hat on, but renewing it is equally important because that means they've seen value. They believe in it. It's not just keeping the lights on. It's defensible. Why is it defensible? What is it doing for them that they can clearly articulate? And then I look for pattern matching. Pattern matching is, you know, it might not be the exact same use case, but it's all similar, right? You know, for example, I've got a big organization that does, you know, retail media networks, things like that, that how they account and accrue payments, invoices, proof of material and performance is Looks a heck of a lot like 3-way invoice matching that tried and true ARAP teams do. Like, so pattern matching, right? Like, this use case is eerily similar to how retailers account for end caps at the end of a grocery store, but you're talking to a discrete manufacturer, like finding those patterns and matching them and being able to articulate that story of like, this sounds eerily similar. To this story and then being able to relate that back to, this is what I heard from you. This sounds pretty analogous to what you are going through. Like change the verbiage, if you will. But if you swap those out for your terminology, the outcome is the same. The process is eerily the same. That gives credence and evidence to that. Like you've seen this and solved it before. And now you're back to like adding trust, adding value at kind of every interaction. So I would say kind of tying it off, go to your CSMs, go to your TAMs, go to the AEs, ask for the why and really dig in, you know, get past the like, oh, well, we, you know, we're gonna, we're 10% cheaper year over year on this. Okay. Well, like, but there's more to it. Like that's probably an element of why they bought or renewed, but there's more to it.

1:02:28 Scott Ingram: Why?

1:02:28 Taylor Britton: Get the user story. Like, what does the admin of your platform get out of this? Maybe he's not coming in on the weekends anymore to babysit this thing. Maybe he can have his weekends back. Like, those little nuggets are just, they're gold when you're speaking to a prospect or customer and you're able to like quickly pull out that value prop of what resonates with whatever they may be concerned about.

1:02:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, really, really good. I'm so glad I asked the question because the, I think the key to that is how do you get past the marketing slide? How do you get past the 2-page case study? Right? Like, sure, that's a good highlight, but that's not a story. Right? That's, that's not, it's not visceral. It doesn't, there is no human element in that. Right? It's like, we had this problem, we solved it this way. We saw numbers, numbers, numbers. Right.

1:03:19 Taylor Britton: It's, you know, we gave them 100,000 hours back in a year. Great. What'd they do with it?

1:03:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:03:26 Taylor Britton: Did they, you know, did they allocate that capital to like R&D and release a new product? Did they enter a new territory? Were they able, did it, was it FTE-er? Like, what is, what'd they do with that, you know, frontline level of ROI, whether it's dollars, hours, it's either time or money in some capacity. You know, how do you keep pulling that thread? Like, what'd you do with it?

1:03:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:03:52 Taylor Britton: Love it.

1:03:52 Scott Ingram: Love it. Taylor, what, what motivates you? How do you think about motivation in general?

1:03:57 Taylor Britton: Yeah. Open-ended question there for sure. I would say, you know, early on in the career when I was arguably a little bit lone wolfing it a little bit more, I was certainly a little more monetarily motivated than I am now. Now, you know, I've got wife, family, a little bit different perspective on my shoulders, which I go through. So being a provider for family is a huge motivation, right? And there's also like growing up, we, you know, we were able to take vacations and go to do things. And I want that for my family. I want the freedom to choose, right? And the freedom to be able to look past like the next paycheck to some capacity. But I, what, again, like the motivation there is like, Doing well and providing and being a good, being a good person to my, so my son can look up to me is a big motivator. So doing things the right way, it might be harder, but doing things the right way, that's a big motivation for me. I'd like to look back when it's all said and done and say, people look to me as a, as a leader, as a colleague, a friend, and a resource in a positive sense. And I don't get that by not putting in the work. And, you know, you can talk to any major sports figure, senior executive, successful businesswoman, successful businessman, people that are true masters of their craft. And it's like, the motivation is you've gotta be willing to put in the work. Like none of them have, they're like, oh, I just took 3 shortcuts and now I'm here and it's all great. So the motivation, I think, comes from understanding that you gotta put the work in upfront. You know, there's like that old platitude, the harder I work, the luckier I get. So kind of tying that back off, I would say, yeah, like the freedom to operate personally is a big motivator, and that doesn't come without putting in the work and understanding that, you know, trust me, I think everybody and their brother has tried to take a shortcut here or there, and you find out somehow, some way down the line, like, Like, probably wasn't worth it. You're either redoing that work or causing more work for you. So the motivation comes from just being able to execute and being looked at of like, okay, I did it and I did it the right way consistently, not when it's just convenient.

1:06:21 Scott Ingram: That's such a fun callout. I'm thinking, I'm sitting here laughing thinking, you know, the show's not called Sales Shortcut Stories.

1:06:28 Taylor Britton: Right.

1:06:29 Scott Ingram: Um, and, and what, and, and that's the disappointing part, honestly. Right. Isn't that what we would all love? Wouldn't it be amazing if you're like, look, if you just do this one super special secret thing, you, you know, you're able to short… the reality is there are no, there are no shortcuts. There is no silver bullet, right? Like you just have to do the freaking work.

1:06:51 Taylor Britton: Yeah. So growing up, big backpacking family, mountaineering, hiking, et cetera. Ed Viesturs, um, was an early role model. If you're unfamiliar with who Ed Viesturs is, he was the first American to do all 8,000 meters without oxygen. And he wrote a book called No Shortcuts to the Top. Great read, but it's just that, like, there are no shortcuts. And, you know, when you're strapped into the side of a mountain and all hell's breaking loose, like, he prioritized, execute, all these themes come back together. Um, but great read, No Shortcuts to the Top.

1:07:27 Scott Ingram: And it's, that sounds, that sounds way better than the, the one that I read where everybody dies.

1:07:33 Taylor Britton: Yeah.

1:07:33 Scott Ingram: There's a very famous, like, you know, anyway, I've read a couple of mountaineering type books and it didn't end well.

1:07:41 Taylor Britton: Yeah. He's got some harrowing stories, but yeah, the, like the, just the theme of like the trials and tribulations, like training, you know, you, and then also like at the end, like you did it. Now what? Like, how do you keep going? Like, what is the next mountain to climb, so to speak? So I think motivation is certainly something that's gotta come from within. I think being motivated by fear is one way to go about it, but it doesn't last very long. So you really gotta want it and really believe in the why of why you're doing it. And I think, you know, people would be pleasantly surprised of what happens if they stick through it.

1:08:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I, I had to look this up. It's Into Thin Air. Oh yes, that's awesome. That one is probably one of the most famous books about, about, you know, climbing Everest. But again, it's, it's not a good outcome. So no.

1:08:32 Taylor Britton: Yeah, that one is a little more tragic. But yeah, No Shortcuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs.

1:08:38 Scott Ingram: Very good. Very good. As always, we'll have all the links to all the things. So top1.fm/204 or top1.fm/taylor-britton will get you to all of the cool stuff. So Taylor, is, is there something you believe that, that the average or typical enterprise seller would think is crazy?

1:08:59 Taylor Britton: Man, there's a lot of things that come up. Uh, this one's hard to pin down, but I think, you know, if I'm looking at a much larger population, I'll speak somewhat in, in generalities that like, if you follow a sales cycle, success will happen.

1:09:16 Scott Ingram: No.

1:09:19 Taylor Britton: It won't. Like, I, you know, early and, you know, earlier in my career, it was like, okay, well, this is the playbook. So like you drag everyone through the playbook and then you get what you want. Wrong. Like, it is fluid. You've got to be able to either, if you don't have the experience, find a mentor or someone that can help you see around the corner until you can start to anticipate what's going to happen based upon Conversations you've had, but I would say like being too rigid of a sales cycle, like the if then very deterministic, like absolute fallacy. There's probably some people that disagree with that, but I think if you're too rigid and too gated in a sales cycle, you're going to hurt yourself. Even like even if you're too restrictive, like there is something to be said like not putting obstacles in your way. Now that's not the same as. Abandoning everything, you know, that makes good and good deal and getting happy ears and then wondering why your deal didn't close. But I think if you stage gate things too hard, too restrictively or too loose, like there is no, if you do this, that will happen. If you do this, that will happen. It just, it's really an art and science and it's really something you've got to learn how to feel of when, where, and how you either moving things forward or Almost kind of like the obvi… like strip lining someone. Like there's a lot of power in being like, hey, I just don't think this is… you're ready for this. Like the power of no, like, hey, here are the concerns that I have. And like, here's what's going to happen if we keep going without solving or getting these taken care of. Like, it's just, you've been doing this too long to like, this is not going to go well. And despite what might come back, you probably get some pretty emotional responses, but like, you kind of got to stick to your guns. So I would think If someone's going to tell me like, we've got a sales playbook and it works every single time, no chance.

1:11:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah.

1:11:15 Taylor Britton: No, it's funny.

1:11:15 Scott Ingram: I had a conversation with a friend about this yesterday and it's, you know, all of these are designed to be linear and the idea that like, yeah, it's all gated, stage-gated, and we go and we go and just, just the idea he called this out. He's like, a lot of these systems don't allow you to go backwards and don't recognize that deals go backwards.

1:11:35 Taylor Britton: Oh yeah.

1:11:36 Scott Ingram: It's not a straightforward linear one foot in front of the other progression. We all wish it was. That would be freaking amazing. That is not how the world works.

1:11:44 Taylor Britton: Yeah. You're not guaranteed a sale. You know, if you were guaranteed a sale, like comp OTE would be fractions of what it is. You're not guaranteed a sale. There's no Shopify backend on our website to add to cart.

1:11:57 Scott Ingram: What, what about the flip side? Is, is there something that most enterprise sellers believe or is kind of the sales dogma that you're like, Nope. I, that's actually, that's wrong. I think that's, I think that's garbage.

1:12:09 Taylor Britton: The one thing I'd probably lean on is the product or solution selling itself. Like, especially today, like, you know, for software, like there's no way to articulate this, you know, this widget spins at a faster RPM. It's not capital machinery. It's too esoteric. And that like Like there is no such thing as the product sells itself. You'll see a lot of hype and brands pop off because they're in the right place, right time, but that is certainly not sustainable. So I think the product, like product selling itself is like, no, you've, there's far more to it than that. Now, not going to, like, you can have a great product that helps, a mature product that's market tested and market proven, but like, there's no such thing as a product selling itself. When I hear that, like caution flag goes up. I have more questions than I do answers when I hear that.

1:13:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What, what advice do you have to somebody that's, that's just starting in their sales career today? What do you, what do you tell them?

1:13:11 Taylor Britton: If you are really looking to go the distance in this game, like you've got to find people that have been playing it for quite some time. Sounds cliché. Find a mentor, find someone who's just senior to you that have, they've got some scar tissue, they've got battle scars, they've got a lot of trophies on the mantle as well. Pardon me. Where the quicker you can start to learn and anticipate through a cycle, the better. And I would amend that with, you should be very articulate and have a true mastery of the outcomes your product or service delivers. Like if early on, I was guilty of this, like, well, this feature sheet says we do X better than competitor Acme Core competitor Y, blah, blah, blah. Customer story and understanding what the actual outcome was. What did they do with the ROI? Being able to articulate that, if you can have that conversation early and truly master the outcomes your product or solution or service delivers, coupled with some help to see like, hey, this is the scenario I have. What would you do here? What are your thoughts? Like you will quickly accelerate, you know, lone wolfing and struggling and banging your head against the table going, I, you know, on paper it says I should do all this, but it's not working. You know, it's kind of like, I don't know, someone analogous, like you've got people that have read every user manual out there, but never put their hands on the product. Like, that's not the same. You gotta go, who's used this? Who's used it successfully? Being able to do those 2 things would just, that would've been what I would've looked for early on if I could go back again to just accelerate that, find a mentor.

1:15:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:15:14 Taylor Britton: And master your value proposition to the persona that you sell to and the personas that you influence.

1:15:22 Scott Ingram: This, this is totally leading the witness, but, but I think it'll, it'll maybe even help you articulate even better what you're saying. What, what's more important, product knowledge or customer knowledge?

1:15:33 Taylor Britton: I'd say customer knowledge, really, truly, because knowing the customer and knowing the buyer There's some things you can kind of, you know, horizontally spread that'll be true for everybody you go talk to if there's a problem statement that's, you know, just horizontal to every business. But customer knowledge, being able to really articulate that you understand the day in the life of the person across the table for you is far more important than being able to just articulate features, bits, and bytes. Now you got to know the product. You have to be able to at a baseline, tell people where it plugs in, but you'd be much rather better off knowing the ins and outs and nuances of the organization that you were selling to than the product, in my opinion.

1:16:21 Scott Ingram: What, what about somebody that is further into their career and either, you know, they've, they're doing well, they're doing okay, but they haven't found that gear that is greatness, or maybe they're struggling. What, what do you tell them? Yeah.

1:16:37 Taylor Britton: Ask for help. I've certainly been there, right? You just kind of, you get in a doldrum, everything you do, you think you kind of, you're gripping the bat too hard. You kind of get erratic. You move away from your tried and true routines and you just sink quicker and quicker. I'd say ask for help. It's okay to ask for help. Like I was certainly a little bit more obstinate and hardheaded earlier on where like, didn't want to ask for help, wanted to figure it out and go, And you either don't have time for that because the quota clock is ticking. Ask for help, find a mentor, and it might not be a sales leader. Like, find somebody in product, find somebody in marketing, find somebody in the engineering org, find an executive, like, go ask for help. It's okay. And you'd be shocked at, you know, you might not walk away with some epiphany with one conversation that changes the outlook and trajectory of your life, but I'd be willing to bet But there are a couple things that you can take back to your desk immediately. So go ask for help, get some outside perspective. You know, I, back to the human psychology, humans naturally will over or underestimate where they actually are. You see the extreme examples of really people who are just like really not confident in the day-to-day and people who are hilariously overconfident in their day-to-day. Yeah. Like, you've got to be able to get some triangulation there of like, here's where I think I am. What's an outside perspective? Like, what are my soft spots? What are my blind spots? It can be uncomfortable. You know, you kind of find that balance of like someone who knows you well enough or has interacted with you in the workplace enough to give that perspective, but seek those people out. And I'd be willing to bet getting some outside-in perspective is going to unlock a few things. Sometimes it's just a quick shot across the bow of like, oh yeah, like I'm, you know, if it's your frontline leader, like, yeah, I was listening to your, like, you talk over everybody and people get at the 3rd or 4th time, people tune you out. Or it's, hey, like, you're so quick to just go straight to solutioning after the first quasi-positive or interested remark. Like, whatever that outside-in perspective is, probably going to help you out in some capacity or another.

1:18:52 Scott Ingram: Love it. All right, man. Sidebar. Do you know about the Sales Success Summit?

1:18:58 Taylor Britton: I, Thom has mentioned it. I think it's coming up, correct?

1:19:01 Scott Ingram: It is. It's, it's next month. It's October 12th and 13th. So Thom's coming. I'm just, again, I don't know if you've talked about it enough, 'cause I'm, I'm gonna mention it here. Like the ideal mention is, and Taylor's gonna just be there, but I don't know if that's a, a possible, if that's a possible thing with, uh, from starting at zero, if, if you've only just kind of had soft conversations with, uh, with Thom about it.

1:19:23 Taylor Britton: Yeah, I, I'd like to learn more about it. From my current understanding, it seems like a great place to be, candidly. Like it literally, great segue, 'cause it's get yourself in the room with people that have been there and done that before.

1:19:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:19:34 Taylor Britton: Like, again, I'm nothing more than an amalgamation of like, I like the way you presented that. Or I like, that was a great one-liner. I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal that. Or like, wow, that really made our problem statement relatable. I'm, I'm taking that. Or, huh. I've never tried that before. So all, it's all net positive. I think some people are too quick to kind of roll their eyes at all that stuff, but it's like, dude, if you can get 10% better, that's 10% better than you were yesterday. Like take that as a W. But yeah, certainly interested in schedules permitting and, you know, 3-year-old permitting, would love to attend.

1:20:12 Scott Ingram: Totally. At the end of the day, it's taking that step back. Being introspective, right? Taking the opportunity to continue to learn, to find the people who are ahead of you. It's why I do this show. It's why we do the Sales Success Summit, which after we release this episode will be very, very close. So if there were ever an opportunity for you to jump on right now and put yourself in this situation where you get to spend 2 days with me in Austin, with Thom Wright in Austin, hopefully with Taylor in Austin, but we haven't confirmed the details yet. Um, hopefully we'll be able to To get him there in the room where the people on stage are those who we're actively selling, right? We're not, we're not trying to position something else and pitch something else. We're all learning from each other. And it's people who… incredible, incredible stories. I put this in the newsletter. Maybe I will tell the story. And I'm still not going to out this person until we get to the summit. And then I told them I'm going to out them. Super, super Humble, like the level of humility and, um, you know, paying it forward. I mean, Taylor, you talked about being proud about the, the player coach, right? Like, how do I help my team grow? How do we succeed together? Is such the feeling at, at the summit. Like, so much success, but so much willingness to, to pay it forward. I was checking in with one of my speakers earlier this week, and they were telling me, they're like, hey, Scott, I know you'll appreciate this. And, and they said, Um, so again, the quality and caliber of folks in that room and, and really tying back to your even earlier point about outbound is so difficult now. And one of the things that I'm really trying to create in this environment is how do we connect the connectors? How do we find people who are able and willing to open those doors for each other? Right? To tell the story of, hey, I've actually sold to that account. Here's how they buy. Here's what you need to think about. Here's how their cycles work. And maybe there's somebody that I can introduce you to, to help further your, your deal, your relationship. That's the way all of this is starting to work now, right? Like, if you're gonna break through the 2,200 email a day inbox, you're gonna need somebody to open that door for you.

1:22:36 Taylor Britton: Right.

1:22:37 Scott Ingram: So that you can walk through that open door.

1:22:39 Taylor Britton: Yeah, without question. You know, back to your, the comments of like an exec to exec intro, it's, you know, like worst case, well, worst case scenario is they're like, thanks, but no thanks. Second worst case scenario is like you get the opportunity to give the commercial, which I would say in our day and age is, you know, better than nothing, right? At least educate them on, because to your point, my partner, there's so many preconceived notions about who does what, where, use the product, not use the product, heard about next door neighbors, brothers, cousins, best friend who used the product one time. Like being able to control that narrative and tell people who you are and what you do does a couple things. One, if you're aligned at the executive level, two, it's gonna accelerate things and elevate that conversation. But also if the answer's no, now I know I don't need to spend 6 months prospecting into this person. If I'm only gonna do that just to get met with a no from the executive buyer anyway, like it's all good. Like nos are great.

1:23:37 Scott Ingram: Yes.

1:23:38 Taylor Britton: Yes is even better.

1:23:39 Scott Ingram: Oh, that's a good line. That is a really good line.

1:23:42 Taylor Britton: Those are fantastic.

1:23:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely.

1:23:45 Taylor Britton: You have to be able to prioritize and execute. Back to Jocko here, like, where do you spend your time?

1:23:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:23:52 Taylor Britton: And it's tough because you get handed a territory, you get handed a customer list, and if you're first sitting down, it's like, couldn't tell you. Like, I can go look for some common buying signs, uh, previous conversations. Heaven forbid there's a closed loss or 2 you got some nuggets out of, but like, if you can't get that warm introduction to just break through, it's tough sledding. It really is.

1:24:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Here's, here's, here's a little tip on, on that side, because I've, I've been doing this in a couple of things that, that I'm working on. If you, so if you walk into a fresh territory, somebody was, in most cases, like somebody was in that seat before, or somebody held those accounts before, go talk to that person. Like, hey, if you're in my shoes now, how would you prioritize this? Like, you don't have to go figure everything else out for yourself the hard way. So, I'm going to go against myself here a little bit and say, like, there can be some kind of shortcuts, right?

1:24:50 Taylor Britton: Sure.

1:24:50 Scott Ingram: Like, it's the ask for help kind of stuff. Like, go to your leader. Like, they managed the person who had that territory. What did they do well? How did they think about it right? Where did they spin their wheels? Like, which, which, which ones are quicksand? Like, yeah, maybe don't worry about that one so much. You're, they're just gonna eat you alive.

1:25:07 Taylor Britton: Yeah.

1:25:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:25:08 Taylor Britton: Wholeheartedly agree. I, you know, unsure if I would necessarily define that as a shortcut versus just like, that just seems like a logical, like, well, what's been happening?

1:25:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:25:20 Taylor Britton: Yeah. What has worked? What hasn't worked? And that's back to like, you know, whether it's pattern recognition, but anywhere and anywhere you can glean some insight is better. And I would say, you know, with all the tooling that's out there from like account research, Perplexity, GPT, Insert your AI model here with the internal knowledge. You know, if that AE or maybe there's a TAM or an SE, like, just keep asking. Like, it's like heaven is a pretty low bar internally to say like, well, what happened? Like, you might not get the answer you're looking for and they might not put it on a platter. Like, the answer is probably there's still work to be done. And here's, but here's what I learned and just anything and everything you can get that insight. For is just one more thing you don't necessarily have to figure out yourself. Like, I'm huge on that. Like, don't reinvent the wheel.

1:26:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yep.

1:26:13 Taylor Britton: I spent too much time early in my career trying to reinvent the wheel. And I found very quickly, like, if you let go a little bit and just ask for help, you'd be pleasantly surprised as to what comes back.

1:26:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. The nod of been there, done that.

1:26:30 Taylor Britton: Yep. Cheers.

1:26:30 Scott Ingram: You know, some things you just, you have, you have to learn the hard way. I will also call out my favorite quote in the whole of Sales Success history. So, you know, hundreds of hours, hundreds of interviews, 8 summits or whatever it's been, is, is Katie Jane Bailey, who is at Figma, who said, discovery is a lifestyle, not a stage. And I just…

1:26:54 Taylor Britton: Never stops.

1:26:55 Scott Ingram: I live that inside and out in every way. And, and discovery isn't something you only do with your customers. Discovery is something you do across your territory and across your team, and you figure out where is the leverage in this organization? Who are the people that are going to mesh and be able to help me take this deal forward? Who can I ask for help that's actually going to be helpful?

1:27:21 Taylor Britton: Yeah.

1:27:21 Scott Ingram: All of those things. It is by far and away my favorite line. Taylor, What are the things, what would you want to know or learn from the top sellers in other organizations?

1:27:32 Taylor Britton: Broadly speaking, like what's working? You know, that's, I, I ask that question internally a dozen times a week across teams, uh, across verticals, what's working? What's not working? What's working? What's not working? And just anywhere I can find something to like pattern match or use in my day-to-day? Like, that's the big question is what's working.

1:27:56 Scott Ingram: And, and what is, what is that for you right now? What's, what's working, Taylor?

1:28:02 Taylor Britton: Yeah, I would say from a like top of funnel perspective, like you've gotta find warm connections, customer to customer, executive to executive, even internally. Like, hey, we've got an industry expert that ran this line of business for a company for 20 years before he became a consultant. And what if you got him in the room with the prospect who's responsible for that today? Like, just whenever and wherever you can connect the dots, like, is like how people are doing that is my first question. Again, that's what I'm looking for, like the warm intros, what's working in person, virtual, what's, what's working outcomes. Because in the enterprise game, like, it's not a volume game, right? It'd be great, but it's not a volume game. So any, any insights I can glean or things I can use to like getting conversations started. And then I'd also be curious to like, what does the internal sales cycle look like for, for these teams? Like who else gets involved? Because it's in enterprise, it rarely is like, well, an AE and an SE just went out and Right. Found, you know, found gold in the hills. Like, who else gets involved? Like, are you leveraging your product team more than you used to because insert qualm or objection here? Like, what are the internal teams looking like that get deals done? Is it, you know, are you bringing in subject matter experts early, late? How is that influencing things? Are you leveraging board members? What, what have you? So what's working and like, what does the internal motion look like? Because those are typically 2 things that I can find at least 1 or 2 nuggets to go put into practice and take from generalized theory.

1:29:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Taylor, we, we have covered a ton of ground. This has been a ton of fun. Is there anything that I didn't ask? Is there anything that we didn't get a chance to talk about that you're like, oh man, I want to talk about this one thing?

1:30:08 Taylor Britton: No, we did cover good ground. This is fun. I think we could probably keep this going for quite some time. I did take a few preemptive notes here, and I think going back to like, is there something you think the average rep would think is crazy? And you might see this a little bit earlier on, but like one thing I'd like to call out is in the enterprise game, like titles don't mean anything. Like champions, influence, and authority come from anywhere. And anywhere you can generate a relation, build a relationship, like a true relationship, like like with someone with influence, maybe not authority, you'd be shocked as to how quickly things can move within an organization. So like if you're a junior seller or kind of stuck, like broaden your horizon just because product marketing or the organization says this is our buyer, you get into the enterprise, you can rip that up because it's going to be, it could be 10 people that you got to get in the room. So I think that's one thing that can't be overlooked is big enterprises are a living, breathing thing. What was true yesterday may not be true today. Discovery never stops. Art, like what's happened in the last week since we spoke? Is this still a problem? What have you tried to find out, et cetera? Building those relationships and the fact that like influence and authority come from everywhere. Yes, titles matter to some degree on paper, but you'd be shocked the amount of executives that you kind of meet and you go, huh? Like what? Like I, you know, I'm not a Harvard MBA, but I don't think that's a good idea. And lo and behold, you find out like other people are really driving that. It's some shadowy AI committee that meets that your buyer isn't even aware of things like that. But beyond that, I think we covered a good bit of ground. This is fun. Again, like this is certainly something I could, we could spend all day on. Yeah.

1:31:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. The, the, the one thing I think you didn't call out that I'm sure you're also doing that we cannot overlook is internal referrals inside the organization, right? I feel like so much of what I do is I just kind of search Surf the org. Like, okay, let me talk to somebody on this team, learn what I can. Again, it's like discovery is a lifestyle. So let me just learn what are the dynamics? What are the politics? Which team has the power, right? Is this more of an IT-led thing or is it a business-led thing, right? Where, what is that particular dynamic? What is the buying dynamic? And then if you're doing a good job and if you're creating value and helping people and having good conversations, proof of that is they're willing to introduce you to their peers in other parts of the organization. So now I've broken out of the cold game and I just go conversation to conversation. Like, from here, can I get up? Or do you, like, can I have you, would it make sense for me to talk to this member of your team? If your boss says, hey, you should talk to this person, we're having that conversation. It's happening. Right.

1:33:05 Taylor Britton: Yep. Oh yeah. And again, it's a living, breathing thing. I would say, you know, when it comes to like developing a champion, you got to identify, is this a coach? Who's gonna feed me information, but not necessarily go out of their way to push things along? Or is this a true champion who's gonna take what we're working on and, you know, raise their hand in that internal meeting and say, no, I think this is the route path we should take. Here's why. They come from anywhere. Like I've had champions in procurement.

1:33:33 Scott Ingram: Yes.

1:33:34 Taylor Britton: Procurement. They're supposed to be the, like, you know, the enemy.

1:33:37 Scott Ingram: The evil empire, right?

1:33:39 Taylor Britton: Love our procurement teams because they got a job to do.

1:33:41 Scott Ingram: Right.

1:33:42 Taylor Britton: Um, and I think appreciating that, but like, they can come from anywhere and being able to like truly understand what motivates, you know, to your point, like, okay, we've got a new C-suite. Is he about to bring in his team? Is the team you're talking to looking over their shoulder because new people are showing up and, you know, do they feel threatened or are they looking to kind of put their flag in the ground? Like, understanding what motivates a human being will accelerate your sales cycle and make it very easy for you to tell when to maybe qual out versus keeping your, keeping that one in pipe.

1:34:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. All right, man. Let's tie a bow on this thing.

1:34:18 Taylor Britton: Sure.

1:34:19 Scott Ingram: Let's make, let's challenge our listener with, with something they can do, something actionable to improve themselves, improve their results in say the next 1 to 2 weeks or, or before we see each other at the summit.

1:34:32 Taylor Britton: Yeah. In the theme of keeping things, you know, linked here, I would say if you're sitting in your role right now and you don't have at least 3 customer stories that you can make your own and know up, down, left, and right, go find them. Like that is an actionable thing that you can get done in the next week or so. Find 3, keep them in your back pocket, pull them out when or if as needed. You should be able to have like the long version, the middle version, and the like, you got 10 seconds sales guy. Version to articulate this value proposition. So go find them and understand the why. Like, you've got to understand the why behind this. And that's not found on a feature sheet. It's not found on the website. That's through a human-to-human conversation. So like, go seek out your best customer. See if you can have a conversation with them. Buy them lunch. Like, hey, I'll buy you lunch if you can give me 15, 20 minutes of your time next week to understand why Get the, get the approval internally. Don't just go parachuting into some customer. But yeah, I would say do that. Being able to clearly articulate the why and having a mastery of that story and messaging is something you should be able to get done in the next couple of weeks if you don't have it. And if you do and you know all those things and it's still not working, go find a mentor. Like, and that doesn't necessarily mean you gotta be attached at someone's It 7 days a week for 2 hours a day. It might be a check-in once a month, once a quarter. How are things developing? Like, find a mentor, find someone who's got, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and get their perspective. 'Cause some outside perspective, typically, I'd be hard pressed to believe someone talks to 3 people they don't typically talk to and they go, I didn't learn a single thing about anything.

1:36:18 Scott Ingram: Love it.

1:36:21 Taylor Britton: You're gonna learn something and you're gonna have a takeaway. It's gonna be great.

1:36:23 Scott Ingram: Love Love it, Taylor. So, so good. Thanks for, thanks for spending the time. For those of you listening, top1.fm/203 will get you to all the details. You can connect to Taylor from there. You can find details about the Sales Success Summit from there. You can check out our new answer engine where you can ask questions about the entire corpus across all of these interviews, and it will take you directly to the specific quotes and the answers that you need based on, on what you're working on. Uh, go, go check that out.

1:36:54 Taylor Britton: Yeah.

1:36:56 Scott Ingram: And thanks for listening.

1:36:56 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.