39: Microsoft's #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager - Phil Terrill

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.

0:25 Scott Ingram: This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Leadfeeder. You can check them out right now and start your free 14-day trial at leadfeeder.com, and I'll tell you more about them in a little bit. My guest today is Phil Terrill, who was the number 1 inside sales corporate account manager at Microsoft last year. Welcome to the show, Phil.

0:44 Phil Terrill: Yeah, thanks a ton, Scott. How are you?

0:46 Scott Ingram: I'm great. I'm great. Now, the regular listeners to the show know that I always work to front-load some immediate value before we start digging into your background, Phil. So, what were the top 3 things that allowed you to get to the top at Microsoft last year?

1:01 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so some of those top 3 things, you know, right away, right, is, you know, I really wanted to go away from a lot of the admin and, you know, sort of just task work that we had to do as account managers. And I think it's just something that's a part of the culture, honestly, at Microsoft is one of the things. The second thing is I wanted to do things really differently as an account manager, which helped me. Like, what I did was actually attend some of my top customers' financial earnings reports, their earnings calls. That's one thing I did that was traditionally not the same as everyone else. Then the third thing I did is I actually spent a lot of time just building really deep relationships that garnered the trust of my customers versus let me really just get to the hope I have their trust and sell them a whole bunch of stuff. Those are the top 3 things that I focused on last year. Last year that helped me be really successful.

1:55 Scott Ingram: Well, and let's talk about each of those a little bit more. I mean, the, the first is, I, I think, a common challenge in sales, just the, the burden of administrative work that we have to deal with, uh, in, in the role, whether it's CRM or whatever else. So how did you manage that? How did you kind of manage that expectation with your leadership and, and everything else?

2:16 Phil Terrill: Yeah, for sure. So I, you know, I had a very transparent conversation both at the time with my sales manager and sales directors. And part of the reason why I did that is because I don't have a traditional sales background, and we can talk about that. But the way I did it was, look, I don't know these customers, you know, at all yet. You just get… we just got our book of business. And what I did was say, well, just let me do my thing based on my background of, you know, being around a lot of entrepreneurs, and let me figure figure it out that way. And then while doing that, right, the admin work, I was like, well, I was very hygiene-oriented. So what I mean by that is I would go into our sales tool and I already knew what they wanted, right? I asked them in the beginning, what do you really need to go forecast to your manager, to your boss, and so on and so forth? And so that helped me really give them true, true clear guidance from myself, right, as to, hey, these are the things that you're focused on. I'm going to make sure that you have this up to date at all times so I don't have to either sit in multiple meetings with you or you don't have to come ask me questions about deals or anything that's going on, is you have that access and visibility. So that helped take away even just the admin work of preparing for the forecast. I would just build it into my routine. And so that way the extra conversations and layers were removed. So that gave me more time to spend with my customers or partners, especially in the Microsoft world with our partners. So that's how I kind of managed that conversation of admin work.

3:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so it sounds like you just got real clear on what are the required items, what do you have to have, and then basically blew off the minutia beyond that that's not really being used. Is that right?

4:05 Phil Terrill: Yeah, absolutely.

4:07 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So then you started really trying to be different, and you talked about getting on the earnings calls with, with your clients. How did you then use that? What do you, what do you do with that information?

4:18 Phil Terrill: Yes, when I was sitting on earnings calls, at first I was like, this is crazy. There's no way that I could sit on, you know, 30 earnings calls, right, and gather all this data. And, and, and after a while, the first time I did it, I was I talked to one of my customers who was in retail and I said, I sat on the call and I listened to, you know, one, just the trends that were being reported about the retail space and such, you know, in an open environment. 2, you know, what were the impacts to their stock price at that time? You know, whether it was changing the customer behavior, you know, changing some of their operational things around, you know, how their products were being manufactured, you know, how they were going to market, what they were divesting in, you know, what they were actually going to invest in. A lot of the times it was, how can, in this case the retailer was, how can they change their brick-and-mortar presence to also be online to create a different customer experience? They were looking at how could they scale across multiple geographies and the investments that they were making. Then at the end of the day, you also hear the true, honest, here is where the company is headed. At its core, whether it's from the CFO, CIO, whoever it is, You know, really the CFO, like talking through these things, right? Or someone on that team, you know, giving you true insight into the business. And so what I did was I would then go back to my customer without them knowing I was sitting on their call, on their earnings call, and then I could help tie that into a business conversation, into a human conversation. Look, let's just not talk technology because that's what they're expecting, a Microsoft sales rep. To come do is let me just fire away at all the new cool things that we did or that we have released, and let's talk through, okay, before we get to the technology investment, there has to be some business reason or anticipated outcome that you want, whether it's for your internal customers in your company or it's the true end user, which is why anybody is… and any of our customers are really investing in technology. Is to make their solutions better for their end customers. I mean, so when I was able to do that and humanize the technology and using that kind of, you know, data, I was able to open up a lot of doors and show some different, you know, expertise, you know, that helped build that trust when a customer is looking at me or listening to me talk about their business, you know, versus talking about the technology investment that they have with Microsoft. So it helped me really transition from a seller to a, you know, more of an advisor or really true partner, you know, from the Microsoft side for the customer. So I use the data all kinds of different ways. And then I, you know, secondly, right, I used it when I actually was looking at their technology footprint over, you know, a 3-year period of time or whatever it might be, and then to help build out these different use cases or solution cases that would be beneficial to them, you know, based on X, Y conversation or milestone that I knew was coming that were like these sort of catalyst conversations or moments in time where, hey, there's this compelling event like your renewal coming and I know we're gonna have to talk technology, but the only way I can help solution sell you, if that's the term people want to use, or really just have a true conversation about what to invest in next, or how to amplify the current investment, right, or maximize what you already own versus buying something else, then I would… I had a lot of what I would call back-pocket information to really unleash that on a customer, you know, in a positive way where they really then would turn and say, well, I really want to do this based on what you said. So as a seller, I'm like, yeah, I know you do. Like, I know you want to do that, you know. So I put myself in a lot of great positions. And then at the same time, I'm building these great stories that I would put into my forecast, right, back to the admin, that my managers could then go tell great stories, you know, for some of these top deals.

8:17 Scott Ingram: Nice. And I imagine, like, building up that level of trust, that kind of ties into your third point, which was around the relationships. I mean, how do you think about those relationships? How are you managing them? What's your process there?

8:30 Phil Terrill: Yeah, I mean, especially in, you know, I give it in the from the inside perspective, right? Like, so I've done field sales where it's different when you can go in and actually, you know, say hello to a person, shake their hand, you know, take them to lunch, go play golf, do those traditional things that sellers do. You don't always have that luxury in inside sales, right? And so what I did was, like, I… and I go, I use this term a lot, but I humanized everything, right? Like, I took away that we were on Skype and like I turned the video on. And like I did that on all my intro calls, like all of them. And they're so used to just somebody calling them or not calling them actually. And what that did was help them say, well, there's actually a person that I know I can talk to. I can look at his LinkedIn. I've seen him blink at me. I've seen him smile at me. I've seen him laugh, you know, or whatever the case may be. And that was the first step for these relationships because they could see me. Just like I could, if they never turn the video on, at least they could see me. And then the second thing I did was I never spent time, every single time I talked to the customer, always talking about business. And the reason why I did that is I learned from both my parents and other people around me that have built really great relationships is they really focus on the person. And what happens when I did that is, or at least learned how to do it, is focus on my clients. I learned so much about who they were and where they were focused at and what was driving even some of their business decisions, weirdly enough, after getting to know them as a person. And then I could then really go deeper with them. I call it onion peeling. It's like, okay, I've already peeled back the personal layer. And so when we do get to talking about business, it's like people rather do business with their friends than people they don't know. And so I was like, well, I try to not become so much their friend, but comfortable enough for them to say, well, these are the pains, or these are the challenges, or these are… this is where we're doing really well. And I want to, you know, I want to pivot or tilt more to that where we're doing really well and start to get rid of some of these other things. Or I saw you did… you guys just released this. I want to get to know more about that. Or hey, you shouldn't talk to me about this. Maybe there's you know, XYZ person across the organization that you might want to talk to. And a lot of that breadth and, you know, going deeper in the customer came from my first interaction of just humanizing the relationship.

10:59 Scott Ingram: Well, and that makes sense too, right? Like when you have that type of human conversation, they're going to be more likely to make that introduction and feel comfortable sort of passing you along to somebody else in the organization, right? This is somebody that you can have a good conversation with and they're going to be helpful kind of stuff.

11:16 Phil Terrill: Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, like that, and then it's really that trust part, right? Because now that they've built that with me, they're… to your point, they do feel comfortable saying, go, here's this other person that you should talk to. Because they know that now that I've met them and have delivered or built this trust with them, I'm not going to go and mess up that sort of introduction or, you know, anything that they've done to introduce me to that person. Or that team or whoever it is, and I have their best interest at heart along the way. And that always helps, especially from an account manager and even beyond that, like just an all-up salesperson when you're trying to just dig into a customer. Having that initial point of contact trust, especially as you start to go up into the leadership of a company, that starting point is going to be huge to make sure you start off on the right foot.

12:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned that your background was maybe a little bit non-traditional and you didn't come from a selling background. So talk about that. How did you get into this?

12:20 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so, um, it's funny. I grew up, I grew up in Minneapolis and, you know, my great-grandfather actually owned one of the first Black-owned clubs in Minneapolis on the, on the river called the Riverview. And so I grew up picking up trash and things like that in the parking lot. But what I was actually able to observe as an 8, 9-year-old kid was our family running this, this first sort of my first perspective into what it's like to run any type of business and how you manage relationships, how you manage partners or vendors, customers, XYZ. And then over time, my parents also, I think it's just in their blood, they got into entrepreneurship. As well. And then, and so my mom also spent about 30 years at General Mills, and so I was able to see this blend of, you know, marketing and how marketing, you know, influences, you know, how sales comes together, you know, the importance, you know, just understanding financials. And so that, that really, you know, is what really started the whole, you know, earnings calls, right? So my, my background of just being around entrepreneurs and this different perspective that they take really around just this hustle mentality, which I think every seller tries to identify or tap into at some point and find that sweet spot of what makes them sort of go as a seller. But having that sort of entrepreneurial push really helped me when I looked at my… or approached my customers, approached the relationships or the partners. 'Cause I wasn't really looking at, hey, here's your investment, and that's all I care about is what's the next thing you're going to buy. I was able to take a step back based on my upbringing. My mom and my stepdad have a business, so I was able to take the learnings I had at that company where I used to sit every week with our CFO and actually went through our P&L statements, our earnings reports, things like that. Then that helped me really learn how to go look at a business. Because at the end of the day, a lot of people make decisions off data, and especially off their financials. And the financials tell the story. And so once I got really comfortable learning how to, A, look how businesses manage their money, and then how they make decisions off of their financial decisions, I became what I would call close to dangerous. I wasn't enough because I didn't study finance or any of these things. But this combination of entrepreneurialism, like going to actually work in corporate, you know, then smashing those together in a sales role like this one in inside sales actually, you know, really helped me just go to town in a different way, you know, than people normally anticipated. And it helped me have some of those even broader business conversations just given the background. And I was relentless with customers, especially internally, because I didn't have the 15 years or 20 years at Microsoft where you're used to the status quo of things. I didn't have that. And so when I would come in, it was like, I'm going to do whatever it takes for my customer to be successful. So that helped me even internally, right, where I'm pushing the envelope or trying to push the status quo of how things happened. To make sure that my customers have the best of the best resources. And when you come to the table with that sort of hungry mentality every day with them, because they're in the same boat, right? They're trying to deliver impact, they're trying to do XYZ in their company. So I used to, you know, bringing that mentality with them and that background, it really helped customers what I call relax. You know, and then they… we start to do other things, other projects, other… and then, you know, you retire quota. And then once you see it start to work for a couple customers, you're like, well, that's the formula for at least for Phil to go use with my customers. And that's what I did.

16:23 Scott Ingram: Well, so would you say that the business acumen and the financial acumen was more relevant and more valuable than the sales skills that you developed?

16:36 Phil Terrill: Oh, no question. You know, and I say that because after a while, like, you know, usually for us, your point of contact is an IT manager, IT director, and you're sort of in this middle management space, right, of technology owners is what I would call them. And so just being able to have this business finance, you know, experience and skill set, you know, really helped when you get to the decision makers. Right? When you get to a VP or C-level point of contact or relationship that you have to build, they're not focused on a lot of that day-to-day tactical execution like someone in the middle management space might be. So having this other set of skills around just having a business conversation, especially understanding financials, knowing and learning how the Microsoft sales cycle works is, For a lot of my customers, nothing moved until the CFO put his signature on it. Being able to just know when I got in a conversation with a CFO or a CEO, whatever the case may be, is knowing that I'm coming in with their lens or their perspective, spending time with CEOs before or CFOs. I know what you're getting ready to talk about. I'm ready for what you're going to say. And then I also, before the meeting, I'm able to really prep and make sure I have deliverables to the customer at that level that makes sense and that they're gonna be able to digest, you know, make a decision off of at the end of the day, which is yes or no. I just wanna get them to go forward or not. And so, you know, I definitely think the blend of the business and the finance skills You know, coupled with being able to sell, which is… you got to do that too. But before that, you have to be able to disarm them and make them, you know, credibility build with them. Like, yeah, you do know what you're talking about. And you know Microsoft, and you know our investments. Okay, so now what's the recommendation? So I can give them those recommendations, or… and it's funny because a lot of the times I would sometimes tell them, don't buy it. Like, I've done the research and Microsoft people listening are going to go, what? Why would you do that? But at the end of the day, a great seller doesn't always sell, right? We don't go in saying, hey, buy this, you need this, this is the newest and latest and greatest. Sometimes you have to tell the customer no, let them ponder on why you're telling them no because it's It's unexpected for one, like for a seller to tell you no and then to give you a recommendation as to why you're telling them no versus, you know, and then here's what we should do based on X investment, which are very different than buy this, buy now, it's the newest feature, you need it and you're gonna love it, you've never tested it, I promise you you're gonna love it, you know, and being overly salesy versus being really, really truly trust-oriented, which is Sometimes you tell the customer no, and my business background in the sense of looking at financials will help me do that. Like, you don't need to make this huge capital investment right now in some on-premise technology. Here are the reasons why. Even though you're currently doing that, here are the reasons why. You don't need to make an investment in going full cloud or fully in, you know, this device management strategy. Like, let's take a step back and really look at where you really do have you know, capital or budget to go there, but not budget for this year. Like, let's think about, okay, you do this, what's the return gonna be at the end customer level to make sure that you can validate the investment? You know, so we think of like, I would talk through those kind of things, and when you say no sometimes, or like, let's take a break, you earn even more trust. So when I do come back around and say, okay, it's renewal time, or it's X time of the year, or these things are going on, I think we should jump on this, you know, based on XYZ strategy. And they're more prone, or they were… I'm not even gonna say they are more prone or likely to buy, because the first time or at some point I told them to wait, right? So now that trust is like, I can… it's almost like I'm pulling the… I'm able to make the decision for them. And so then, you know, retiring quota is a lot easier. With that kind of trust. And even more, it's like influence, right? Like when you can build influence and extend yourself as a part of the team, you know, beyond how that phrase sounds. But like at the core for that customer, really help them feel like, man, this guy really cares about me and really my well-being as a company to not just strap me in a technology investment over a number period of years, right? Which is, you know, the Microsoft way, you know, really think through it methodically with them, you know, goes a long way with customers, especially in the corporate space.

21:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of the corporate space, I mean, give us some context. Talk a little bit about what exactly is your role and what was your territory?

21:53 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so I, in the inside, when I was in inside sales as an account manager, so I actually had, which is gonna sound insane, probably to you and the listeners, it's like I had 168 accounts. That was my book of business, and I covered Los Angeles, which anybody's done business in LA, it's how it sounds. I always… it's funny, the city itself is just full of energy and excitement. So it was fun to have customers in LA, and then simultaneously I had customers in Utah, which Very different markets, you know, very different approaches to business. One's, you know, traditionally just more conservative, but one, like Utah, very… there's a lot of emerging startups and, you know, mid-sized companies in that space. And a lot of my portfolio was either around the retail entertainment side in Los Angeles, and then in Utah I had a lot of customers that were either in that tech startup space, which was interesting for me to have, especially with my entrepreneurial background, you know, to be able to talk to some of those emerging companies that were looking to do some really cool things with the technology, short-term, long-term. And then also had some just traditional, like, professional services type businesses mixed with some financial… I had a few financial services companies too, which was good for me to be able to have this mix of of industries or verticals that I could, you know, touch on it at any given point. And then I had a good chunk of what I would call recognizable names, you know, so it was easy to have conversations with them because I was familiar with their, with their products or services as a customer, as a consumer. And then I had some that were, you know, global entities, right, where I was the US what I would call liaison. I was their account manager in the US, but at the end of the day, like, they were headquartered in Germany, you know, France, or somewhere where I was a support mechanism here in the US to make sure that the customer and the end users here were taken care of. So a few different varieties of how I managed, you know, 160 accounts.

24:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and we'll definitely come back to that, right? Because there's, there's definitely a strategy and approach to managing that kind of volume of accounts and really interested in digging into that. And before we get into Phil's results, I want to tell you a little bit more about this episode's sponsor, and that is Leadfeeder. Leadfeeder is a simple yet powerful tool that I've been using to help identify hot leads that are visiting your website, but maybe not identifying themselves and clicking on your forms. So this is crazy helpful intelligence that will help you identify companies that are likely in market for your services and even help you have more relevant conversations since you can know what pages they're looking at on your website. So check them out for yourself at leadfeeder.com. So Phil, talk about and quantify your results for us if you can and help us understand what did it take to get to number 1?

25:00 Phil Terrill: Yeah, I mean, besides the first thing is like, you know, I was… I had this commitment to number 1. Like, and it sounds like, yeah, of course we all want to be number 1, but number 1 comes with a price and I'm just… I I'll start with that part and then I'll really quantify like my, the numbers for you. But what I, why I lead with that is, you know, it's easy for folks to really want to be in any type of top spot, but when you do get there, there's also this other pressure that comes with you that's taxing, you know, mentally, physically. Like you're just like, I have to maintain this. But I also need to keep thinking about intelligent ways to preserve the best parts of me for my customers and personally. So that's just my own sort of contextual commentary before I tell you the numbers in my territory and things. So yeah, number 1 was interesting, right? So throughout the year, I wasn't at number 1, and I'm glad I'm okay with telling that, right? Think realistic is sometimes there are people that start off hot out the gates, you know, whether it's their customers just happen to be in a good cycle in the beginning of the fiscal year, which for us starts in July, right? So you come out of the gates and you're really hot, you know, but what you've done though is you had… this goes back to the admin… is they're spending so much time with their new book of business or even some existing, but you'll typically get a lot of new customers. Figuring out like, who are these people? So they're going through all this territory planning and they're wasting… and to me it was, they were wasting time, right? You're not gonna learn too much out, you know, you'll learn… well, you won't learn a lot from just looking at, you know, historical data at Microsoft. Like, you could get lost in the data forever, you know, because there's just data on data on every customer. And so instead to combat that or to… the alternative for me was I'm just gonna go talk to these folks. And by doing that, I built the pipeline up for later in the year because I knew about so many things happening. And so over this period of time, over the year, I wasn't number 1. It's funny, I didn't hit number 1 until… I knew it was coming, I could just feel it, I was looking. At the leaderboard, I was always in this like upper tier, like the top 10 reps. And I could see the pipeline of other sellers, it wasn't where it should have been, right? And so I knew, I was like, oh, if I could just land these deals, just doing the math, I'll be there. I'll be number 1 easily. I'll be number 1 by a lot. Unless somebody has some magnificent deal that just comes out of nowhere. And is worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. Got it. You know, but I took, I was, I think I took the number 1 spot mid-April, mid to late April, interestingly enough. And our end of the fiscal year for us is June, at the end of June. So at that point, like, so my quota last year was, I think I was around like $8.5 million. And it seems low, but with with inside sales accounts in this mid-market segment. It's pretty good. And so then what happened is, that was my quota, like just to target, that was what I needed to bring back in. Where I spent a lot of time is, I think about 30 to 40% of my book was on renewal customers. And so renewal customers are critical to hitting your number. At Microsoft. And I mean, it's to the point where you live and die by the renewals. Like, if you don't… one, if you don't get the recapture rate on the renewal, you won't even get close to target. But if you hit your renewals and don't grow the renewals, it's like, okay, well, same thing. You're kind of dead in the water. And so I spent a lot of time looking at those 30-40% of my accounts and going back to using some of those entrepreneurial principles. I mean, and creative thinking around how can I engage here to grow them. And so I had a really good growth rate, you know, around, I think it was like 40-something percent growth on my territory. So I think my territory finished at like $10.3 or $10.4 million, right? So I had this, you know, traditional, a great growth number, right, of, you know, $2+ million of just net new deals. And a lot of that was building a pipeline early on, right, in the year. And so I think attainment to, you know, to target was 124. It was like 124.88 actually, or something like that, you know, compared to the next person I think on the list, you know, which was like around 111, right? Which is still a great year, but I mean, 124 is way different than 111, especially on the back end, right? When you think about how you get paid. But I spent a lot of time throughout the year preparing myself for finishing the marathon. And I did it intentionally to build pipeline that I knew would close, or that I had already sort of worked through the deals and they were going to land at the beginning of our Q4. I had some deals that were processing late. In June, which was nerve-wracking because you never want any deals processing at the end of the fiscal, especially significant ones because of the risk. But, you know, that goes back to some of that trust is when the customer says we're going to do it, you're like, well, I'm banking on all that trust I built and hope that those deals come through. But yeah, 168 accounts. My territory was, yeah, it was 8.422814. I finished the year around $10.4, $10.5. So I had a great finish to the year. A lot of it was just doing some of those uncanny things to really unlock some of those deals that might not have been discovered otherwise by spending time doing other non-revenue-generating activities.

31:27 Scott Ingram: Well, and Phil, talk a little bit about… I mean, what was the overarching sort of approach and strategy to that? Because at some level, you have to do some prioritization, but it sounds like you were less worried about, you know, let me, let me try and dissect all of the data and try and have this big plan, but just go out and talk to folks. How did you do that? How did you manage all of that and set up a program where you knew in the end, you know, you were gonna be the turtle? You know, you may, you may not be running the fastest race, but at the end of the day, you're gonna win, right?

31:56 Phil Terrill: Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting, like, now that I think back on it, and I don't… it's crazy to think about. Like, I remember the first The first step I did is I took all my accounts, all 168 of them, I put them in this massive Excel spreadsheet, which is I think what half of Microsoft does. Like, we just get this Excel spreadsheet and we go to town. But what I did was I actually just took a few data points, like outside of the customer name. Like, I took their industry, I took that out, which, you know, in terms of like my filter on the data, and I looked at, yes, their historical spend over time, For Microsoft, that's important just in terms of like the customer's lifecycle, you know, lifetime value. But the thing I actually looked at were some of these other data points, right? I wanted to look at what they did in their last renewal, not, not the money that they spent. I just want to look at what they purchased. And then based on that, depending on where they stack ranked in terms of how much money they spent. So I did I did sort the customers by money spent or in one way. The second thing I looked at for us which is important is around active usage. Active usage is, is a customer actually deploying the technology and actually using the technology in their environment? Active usage can really give you some indicator of, well, do they know that they own this or Do they not know how to use this? And then in addition to this, here is the next logical, you know, path forward based on all these things they own and where their level of active usage is at across X products. So that was the second thing, you know. Then the third thing I did, which was I think straightforward, is I actually sorted my customers by name recognition. And there were a ton like between LA and, it's funny enough, Utah. And I don't know how I know some of these customers from Utah because I'm from Minneapolis. I'm like, I don't know any of these customers, but I actually did. And I actually sorted them by name recognition. And the reason why I did that is because I was thinking, well, if they were… if I could recognize them off name, they're either large privately owned companies or they're large or recognizable publicly traded companies. And a lot of them were recognizable publicly traded companies. Or sizable enough privately owned companies. And the reason why I wanted to sort it that way is I wanted to be able to have a sure set of like 20 accounts that I could just go have and test out this theory of if I just go talk to you, I'm going to learn so much more about your business than I am going to be looking at the data because the data might not really say where you're at in your cycle, right? In the buying cycle for that customer. So like if they just came off a renewal, like, you know, then I'm not gonna probably have a lot of time or I'm not gonna be super successful trying to sell you a, you know, a large amount of technology because you just reinvested with Microsoft in a large way, right? And so I don't, I looked at that as another data point for me, which is Okay, how many of these customers were on what we call enterprise agreements to where they made this 3-year commitment, right, to Microsoft as their technology partner? And so depending on where they were at in that cycle, whether it was, you know, they were just starting, especially if they were in year 3, then I would take all the year 3 customers, which, you know, they gave us that data anyways. I would look at that list and that was a prioritization. So anybody that had a renewal or an agreement coming due, then I would target and spend my time there to build out, you know, the right approach or the right plans. I would couple that with if they were publicly traded to go then, you know, do my earnings calls, you know, look at their financials, those kind of things. And I would start to move the pieces that way and build out, okay, this is my prioritization. And then the last thing I would do is look at any customers that had 2 or more churn signals, right? So either there were… there was a decline in consumption of any technology, but in this case specific to like Azure, you know, cloud services, or from an active usage point of view with Office 365, right? I would really look at those particular products because they're easier to have conversations at a broader level around like the themes related to them, like collaboration, infrastructure type of investments, XYZ. And so then building out this, what I would call this, I'm not gonna say hodgepodge, but this different array of customers that I could prioritize against, then I just went to town. I just started activating against that plan versus spending too much time looking at every single data point associated to those customers or even recent deals, right? So I just didn't really care to look at too much of that data because I wanted to hear it first from the customers. And then I would go back and if they pointed out or, you know, just disclose some information that might have made sense for me to go, you know, dig deeper in or, you know, bring in other, you know, technology specialists or, you know, do that kind of work, then I would do it. But otherwise, that's how I prioritize 168 accounts. And then the last thing is, you know, and I mentioned it earlier, is I had so many accounts that were what we call downstream accounts. Like, I don't… they're either headquartered or located outside of the US, so the business relationship sits outside of the US. So I would also just remove those customers, which was a small subset but enough to make me feel like I don't have 168 accounts anymore. So I filtered and sliced my customers that way. And I just, you know, went and executed.

37:53 Scott Ingram: So tell me, what did the execution look like? I mean, walk us through a typical day and kind of the level of volume and how you structure that.

38:02 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so the way I built out a day is I would typically spend, you know, especially early on, around 4 to 5 hours just talking to customers. And I mean, it was so tactical to the point of, you know, a lot of the times when you're the new rep, You know, there's this feeling of, okay, one, Microsoft did it again. They gave me a new person, you know, either after we made an investment or we're on the cusp of making an investment and we get a switch. But I would spend about 4 to 5 hours a day just talking to customers, whether it's the first introductory call or there might have been discussions already in progress and really getting involved that way. Or just spending time just reaching out and really having, you know, 30, which ended up being like 45-minute calls. You know, again, back to humanizing the conversation and get to know these folks and let them get to know me and ask any kind of questions they wanted to know. You know, I was very transparent. I said, these are the things from a solution area that I know about. You know, I'm very strong in these areas, and I was… I'm able to articulate these things a lot better than others. And where I have gaps as your account manager, best believe Microsoft has a shit ton of smart people and I will get them to you. So we would have, you know, I would spend about 4 to 5 hours talking to customers. The other part which helped me win really and scale is I spent the rest of my time talking to partners. And, you know, the nice thing about being at that time in Fargo, in the sales center in Fargo and having customers in LA is I always had a 2-hour advantage. Except I guess towards the end of the day, but I always had this 2-hour advantage of I can really talk to partners more than I thought I could because they also knew that I was in Fargo after a while. So they would get up or stay up, whatever you want to call it, or stay later in the office. And I built relationships and spent time talking to partners. So the combination of the two helped me, one, go broadly across my customer set, you know, and then, you know, also go deep with partners. So that was the first kind of things the way I set up my days is spend time that way. And what I learned and was interesting for me is I learned that partners, you know, because of their tenure or their deepness in a customer, they knew a lot about the inner workings of what was happening, you know, how to navigate, you know, where the landmines were. You know, who's gonna be, you know, your advocate from a technology partner point of view, you know, where you're gonna have some, you know, friction, you know, potentially, and then how to really, you know, sell up through this to get to the C-suite. And some… a lot of the partners have relationships there as well, you know. And so doing those 2 things right out of the gate helped me just get a true pulse and feel really comfortable for where each of the customers were and who the partners were. In market that were associated. So I never felt like, oh man, I have to be in LA every day to feel like I can win or build these relationships. I was doing it simultaneously in a lot of different ways, whether the customer knew I was doing it through the partner or not. I was scaling and just living through the partners, which helped. Then the thing I started to do was after I got into those customer conversations, I knew who the point of contact was. The relationships were established, I could then be very proactive and set up, spend time either setting up blind calls for customers I didn't know. I would reach out to customers I didn't know and just set up meetings. I had like an 80% success rate based on the way I phrased the emails or the calls or the voicemails and things to really propel or make a customer really interested in wanting to talk. Because I wasn't trying to sell them anything, but I was trying to position them to be successful based on their existing investment. So a lot of the times I would have these blind meetings, and I think I would have about 5 to 6 of those a week, which for me, 5 to 6 of those a week early on is probably 1 to 2 deals a month that were coming from this, what I would call, truly dark space of customers that if I didn't reach out to them, wouldn't care to talk to Microsoft at all, and we're going to do You know, one of two things, go to a competitor or just, you know, stay status quo with their existing technology, even if that means that it went out of support or something like that, because they just aren't aware of some of the opportunities that they have based on, you know, promotions or XYZ. So I spent a lot of time that way. And then the second thing is, you know, there's always this space of I can't be great unless I really know our own solutions, or at least know what's happening in the business, in the Microsoft business, and in the technology space. So I would spend some of my, what I would call that 2-hour breathing room that I would have from the time differences, especially in LA, which was where a bigger part of my customer set was at. And I would spend that time to do some of that admin work that I really didn't want to do. But then too, also just get really just versed in what was happening in the industry, in the space, and some of those top customers, like just really being able to immerse myself in non-Microsoft sales kind of things and really just get customer information, industry news, and things like that that would help give me this qualitative ammunition when I go talk to customers on a daily basis. So that's kind of how I structure my day and where I spend my time.

43:40 Scott Ingram: I have so many follow-up questions. So the one that I can't let go because my audience will kill me is if I don't ask you about what was the messaging? At a detailed level that was getting you sort of an 80% meeting rate?

43:54 Phil Terrill: Yeah, and so it's a great question. So what I would do is, so I, a lot of the times, you know, the seller, especially in the inside model or in general, when you send the intro email, you always are saying like new account manager, like new, right? The word new, or intro call, or, you know, using these like very starter phrases, or what I considered at that time, or even now, are these… like, they're scary, for lack of any other term. Like, this is just simple down, right? It's very scary for a customer to get an email from a seller or an account manager says, hey, I'm your new guy, right, or new girl. And the reason why I preface what I'm going to tell you, the specifics around the messaging, is Like when you get that mail, and I've done it before because I've done some other roles like that were more outbound related, right? And it's, it could be a turnoff for a lot of customers. Like they don't want a new person because it's their frustration, they had a better relationship, you know, regardless of if you do internal handoffs or not. Like just the way the customer psyche is, is they're gonna go back to their old person. Or their partner. And so what I did was I sent these messages of, okay, like I'm not gonna use the word intro or newer and some of that kind of stuff. And what I did was I said, and I'm saying the word introduce, but I didn't use the word introduce. I told them this story of, look, I just, we just started a new fiscal year. I'm your account manager. I wasn't even saying I'm your new account manager. Like, I'm your account manager. Here are the things that I have identified that we need to go through based on these compelling events that are coming. And so I would always include the compelling events. So for Microsoft, compelling events are end of life, end of support… those two can coexist… their agreement renewals, anything that was coming from, you know, what I would call an internal engagement. So like if we were doing like a software asset review, I would use some of these triggers, right? These compelling events to let them know like I'm very aware of you already. So I'm not just calling you or emailing you to say hello, right? I really want to say hello and talk and let you know and validate through this email or through this voicemail that, A, I know who you are, I know the business already, and I'm ready to talk to you and I have these resources available. Get it done, right? And then I was very transparent at the same time when I did get a response, you know, because I think the first response needs to be compelling, right, and create a reaction. But the second one is what really creates the conversation, is how you respond to what they say. Because they could… customers could respond and say, great, nice to meet you, and then that's it. And you're like, well, what do I do? And then, Scott, you're probably like, well, what did you do? And so in those scenarios, it's okay. That's when I would just, okay, I would schedule the meeting. I would schedule a blind meeting. Like, they didn't ask for it, I would schedule it. I would include the partner, you know, or I would bring in like even management, which was, I would do for certain customers, just given the scope or size of the customer. And a lot of times what I was doing were, it was just validation. All I was doing was validation. And once I got past validation points or I presented data that was interesting enough for them, and then if you combine that with deepness and understanding the industry or where they sit in that space, you create these compelling conversation events or triggers that make them want to respond to you. And then the other part is you might, and this is just awareness, is I'm not gonna say I got 80% the first time, never that. I don't want to say that, but in reality, if I reached out to them over a 2 or 3 period of time, I would get a response. I mean, it's not to be like an overly persistent salesperson, like annoyingly persistent, which is we can do that by just default because we want to talk to them and make money. But it was, you know, it was done in a few different ways, right? It's direct to the customer, direct to, you know, the partner, or was it combining the two, right? And a lot of the times you just had to, you know, trial and error those for our business, right? But I would do it in a few different ways like that. And then the nice thing about having like CRM, right, you know, is I have your… I have a lot of information. Like I can… I have one point of contact, I have another point of contact, and then I would just go broad across the organization. So I would intentionally not email the IT person sometimes and email somebody in sales or in marketing so they could redirect me, right? And then what they do is then copy that person or some other person in the IT space. And now what I've really done is I've let the sales team or marketing team or HR know that they also have a resource at Microsoft. 'Cause I'm gonna come back to them too, right? 'Cause their needs are gonna be different than, you know, what the IT folks are, you know, focused on. And then now I'm engaged with the IT person whether they want to or not. And then the other part, and I'll tell you this, this is kind of crazy, so I don't want the audience to do this unless you feel really comfortable about what could happen, right? Which is I would also go and like use LinkedIn and identify the C-suite, right? And so what I would do is is I would take the CEO or whoever it is, the CEO for sure, and then the CIO, CTO, whoever you feel most comfortable, or the salesperson, and I would add them to the mail. Either that mail or to a separate mail. And reason being is because at some point or another that decision is going up there, right? Especially if it's around one of those compelling events I mentioned, like it's gonna get to them regardless. Especially in the mid-market space, like A lot of those C-level folks are involved in just making decisions or signing off on some larger investment, especially with a partner like Microsoft. And so I would use these sort of, you know, put from the top down, the bottom up, left, right, to make sure that people knew who I was, what my intentions were, and how I wanted to support them. You know, so I did it a lot of different ways.

50:26 Scott Ingram: Phil, you're like totally self-interviewing, which is really fun for me. I just get to sit back and relax because you, I mean, you actually answered The other question I was going to ask there is how do you combat the new, I'm yet another new rep for you? I mean, and this is endemic for larger companies, right? It's like new fiscal year, I'm your 4th rep in the last 4 years, and the customers are really frustrated. And I think you've got a good way of combating that and shared some good tips. The other thing, the fact that you're going wide in the organization, right? You're making sure that you're not single-threaded. I'm not just pinging this one IT guy. Did you have a goal or way that you were trying to canvass the organization in terms of either the number of departments, the number of contacts that you were trying to cultivate?

51:15 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so we, you know, one thing we weren't trained on it, but one, one thing I started to realize, and it, I, you know, I think the first step is you have to understand like what you're selling, right? Or what you need to sell, right, to hit your number. And so I knew across our solution set, like I knew You know, solution set meaning across Office 365, and these are just the big buckets, but across Office 365, Azure cloud services, Dynamics for CRM. Like, I know across all these, you know, primary 3, and there's some others, right? But in order to have these conversations with the right people, like, I had to know those products and know who the intended audience or decision-maker might be that I need to really get to. Right, and what matters to them, right? So I spent a lot of time just profiling like a person or a type of person. So like after I had one type of conversation with a VP of sales, you know, or sales director, it's like, okay, 9 times out of 10, like at the end of the day, like that person wants to do the same thing as another sales director somewhere else, which is make money, like bring in new revenue, right? Or, you know, same across other functions. They have their intended results. And so what I did was then, okay, now that I knew who these, who my, what products I needed to sell, right, then I could then have a sort of North Star of how I can go broad across organization and where to focus at. So then that goes back to, I leveraged, one of the nice things about being at Microsoft honestly is the acquisition, was the acquisition of LinkedIn. Because now we, inherently have a ton of customer data and have this visibility into an organization that traditional sales folks might not have access to at this level. And so then when you have the ability to go really look at who's in the organization, cross-reference that to your CRM, then you can really start to narrow down the radius of who you should talk to. You know, and that's the… for me, that's the way I did it. And then I also, you know, I'm not gonna say leverage because it sounds… because it has a negative connotation, but, you know, I maximize, you know, the relationship with the IT person and to make sure that they were always front and center. Reason… and I'm sure the reason is straightforward, but Microsoft is a technology company, right, at the core. Yes, we want to empower people around the world to do great things, but at the end of the day, people look at what we have as either software and ability to be a partner with existing hardware investments. Okay, cool. But at the end of the day, they look at us as a technology company. Knowing that, it's like I want to be able to make sure I can continuously have that IT person be front and center. So when I do go talk to, you know, someone in HR, that either A, they're aware of it, or B, that they know that when it comes back to them, like, they're gonna be the point person in helping make sure that the IT investment is the right thing, even for HR or even for sales or whoever it is. Like, they're gonna be a part of the conversation regardless. And so, like, I… even as I'm going broadly across the organization, I keep that in mind because You know, that's, that's all usually the first relationship you create. And so, you know, just some relationship management there and awareness as you start to step outside of the IT, you know, org and go into these other verticals or spaces… not verticals, functions, excuse me. You know, there's, there's just some, some awareness that you need to have around how you manage those relationships. But that's how I targeted them, though, just based off my priorities and my quota. And then, you know, doing some of those, doing the due diligence across, you know, whether it's social selling kind of things or just looking at, you know, CRM data and getting after it like I would the IT person.

55:14 Scott Ingram: So Phil, what I'm hearing is there's a lot of moving parts to this, right? So you've got a lot of accounts, a lot of contacts, a lot of partners. You're generating a lot of activity. You're doing a lot of research. How are you keeping all of that organized? I mean, do you… did you have a structure? Did you have a process? How did you manage all this?

55:36 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so I leveraged, you know, you know, I leveraged at first, and it's funny because I'm a little bit old school, like I write stuff down, like I'm on a notepad. So my advice is to not do that. And I'll tell you, and I mean, it's just obvious, right? The notebook, it's just prone to just shit happening to it. It just is what it is. But I still have this old-school method of like when I was on a call, like I just handwrote, you know, things down. I just wrote things down. But the other thing I leverage a lot of our, you know, actual tools, right? So for me, and not to pitch Microsoft, but, you know, specifically like I was between using our own CRM system, which over time I became really efficient at using, you know, just to again minimize the noise from sales managers and sales leadership about where deals are at. You know, and the best sellers, you know, what I started to observe is the best sellers had great sales hygiene, right? They just had their business intact. It's the same as like how you would think about, you know, financials, you know, or anything like that is, you know, tight financials or a tight house, you know, is a great place, is a great place to be. And so One, I used our CRM. 2, I use… I had what I called the master playbook. And so the master playbook was everything. So when I would go to different data sources, you know, across Microsoft, which, you know, through acquisitions and, you know, 40-plus years of being in business, Microsoft just had data on data on some more data and some hidden data somewhere else, I'm sure. And so I actually started to centralize all of this information on my customers in one massive playbook in Excel. And then I had what I started going away from, and this is a little bit of redundancy, but it was good for me to be able to take really copious notes on a call and then transfer them or transcribe them back into our CRM in a consumable way for sales leadership because there were just some contextual things that I was taking notes on that might have been like, hey, you know, Scott's going on vacation in 2 weeks, like, you know, or whatever, some of those kind of things. But between using our CRM, using a combination of Excel and OneNote, those are like my go-tos, and then my little notepad that I just had on the side for scratch commentary or things. And I organized it that way, whether every time I got off a call, I documented it in CRM every time something major happened in the organization. You know, I put it in my OneNote, and major meaning, you know, role changes at a senior level or at any point, you know, and using Sales Navigator helped as well, right? Being able to just, you know, target or, you know, track people. This sounds so bad. But really just being able to see what, you know, what movements were happening in the customer. So I had… I used those 3 to sort of document those things. So both quantitatively and qualitatively, and then administratively for, you know, the sales leadership, you know, to have what they needed. And then so I had what I needed on a call. So that's how I did it, a few different ways.

58:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And then what about just… is there a particular way that you're structuring your day? I mean, we talked about that a little bit earlier, right, where you're doing some of the research and things, taking advantage of the time zone differential in the morning. Were you time blocking anything else through any of that, or is it just… you're just cranking?

59:14 Phil Terrill: Yeah, no, and I did, you know. So yeah, yeah, and I'll go deeper there on that. Is, um, in the, you know, I'll tell you, like, in the beginning of the day, I didn't do anything Microsoft, but I did block time to just, um, what I would call is my moment of gratitude, right? To just be… and I'm, I'm giving… I'm being very tactical, but it's important, uh, just given the stress I think that sellers have, is if you start your day off with just like being grateful for the moment you have to go be a seller or to help customers, you know, be greater than what they can think about based on whatever you're selling, you know, it's how I started each day. And I'll tell you, that helped me stay sane. As I started the rest of the day. The second thing after that is, you know, I did spend time with, you know, what I would call is making sure that my SLA, right? And so, you know, I had this what I would call quote-unquote an SLA, you know, a service level agreement with my customers, right? Which is I didn't want a customer to go 48 hours depending on, honestly, depending on who the customer was, to go 24 to 48 hours without hearing from me. And some customers I created a lower number, right? It might be like 6 hours, but it could be just dependent on the deal or what was happening. But the reason why I say that is, so I spent time in the morning just making sure that my responses and my inbox was clean. And I was very, very, very like, I don't like to have it, and it sounds crazy, but I don't like to have an inbox full of emails. And the reason is, is like you get lost. Like things can get… with 100, even 100 accounts, like there's just so many moving parts, so many people, so many emails, so many partners, so many random things that come from Microsoft, right? Where you need to really make sure that you're on top of all that. So I spent time in the morning, depending on where, like how clean it was, it might be 15 minutes, but I had about an hour block of just in that early time where the time zones were not applicable. I spent about 45 minutes doing all that admin work early in the morning. So throughout the day as I put notes in CRM or in OneNote or Excel, I had a very precise way to record data throughout the day and didn't feel like, oh, I still have a million emails to go through too. Right? Because we're gonna get… I'm gonna get some throughout the day. And so then I'm gonna have to do it again, right? You know, double work. I mean, so that… spend time doing that. And then again, like, I spent about 4 to 5 hours a block of time. A block I've spent about, you know, especially with the time zones, I would spend time… it's interesting, like, in Central Time, I would spend between 12 and 2 or 11 and 2 talking to customers, and then I would spend I would leave sometime in the afternoon, so in Central Time it would be between like 4 and 6:30 to talk to customers that, you know, I started to realize do business or like to have conversations in the afternoon or on their way home, right? Whether when they're sitting in the 405 in traffic, that's when they want to talk to me.

1:02:26 Scott Ingram: Been there, done that.

1:02:27 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so it's like, okay, I get it. I'm learning, like I'm learning LA without being in LA, and I've been to LA, so it was like, okay, cool. But I organized my day that way, and then I also blocked out like just my, you know, of course time for like lunch. But what I would do is I use my… a lot of times I use my lunch, and this is just personal preference, I use my lunch to one, decompress, but decompress into looking at or thinking about, you know, ways that I could help do other things in the business that were, you know, creative, or listening to something like the earnings calls. Like I would I would have a lot of working lunches as well just to maximize my day versus going to sit lunch and hanging out with… I know that sounds bad, but it's just like I was so focused on one, I only have 8 hours, technically 7, to where I can really get after customers and I don't really need to spend it just hanging out, shooting the breeze, especially my goal is to be number one. I have stuff to do, I'll hang out with you later. I'll hang out with you at the all-company conference when I know my payout is gonna be good and I've done a great amount of work with, you know, my customers to feel like I had a productive year. So that's kind of how I blocked out my day. And I really spent… and this is the other thing I would do, I would recommend to anyone is after you get off a call when the information is the freshest, in your mind to go document it. Because what a lot of us do is we think we're super, superhuman and are going to remember 5 conversations, especially when they're like 30 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour plus conversations, and you kind of took notes because you're having a dialogue. It's harder to go back and recall conversations that at the end of the day when you're ready to go home or you have to go pick up your kids or you have to go do something else, recall all these notes and nuggets of information that the customer probably gave you. They probably gave you some gems that could help you go present or build a solution for them, but you missed it because you'd rather go at the end of the day and write down all these things instead of just doing it right then and getting it over with. Then you'll have… then you can subconsciously reflect on the calls you've had throughout the day and And then you can go back, right? But getting some of that, the meat of that conversation done at the end of every call is important. So I blocked out, you know, 5 minutes for that, 5 to 10 minutes for that, just to quickly document what I just talked about. And depending on the length of the call, well, you know, you can, that time can be flexible or fluid to what you need to do. But that's how I really built out my day. And then there, and I'll tell you, here's the other thing, how I built out my week. I had one day every week where I didn't talk to existing customers. And what I mean by that are customers that I actively had deals or renewals with. So these were customers sitting in my white space. One day a week I would just go after all new customers. Like didn't have a partner associated, they were just white space, just nothing happening or I didn't have visibility into what was happening. Neither did the partner. And so I would just go after those folks. Once a day, once a day, once a week, you know, using one day to do that. And that was one of the, probably the most impactful things I probably could have done as an account manager is to go after customers that, you know, weren't sitting in my enterprise agreement list, right? Because we know with those, enterprise agreement customers, that's not to say guaranteed revenue, but it's at least revenue that, you know, you can go proactively have a conversation about because there's existing data, right? There's existing agreement. But this white space is like, I get to go really, really have this discovery, you know, phase or period where I don't know anything about, you know, what you're doing and really, you know, just learn, right, from the customer and have a conversation. And that's, that's really where that incremental revenue that I was able to get came from. Some of these customers that we weren't talking to on a regular basis because of X, Y, or Z, and by spending time just trying to penetrate this white space, I was actually able to create revenue from that, which helped me hit my number, which helped me exceed my number, landing me here talking to Scott. Beautiful.

1:07:04 Scott Ingram: Well, Scott's not having to work very hard because it seems like you say, oh, and one more thing, and then a gold nugget tumbles out of your mouth. So this is a lot of fun. Let's talk a little bit about the motivation. I mean, what I'm hearing so far already is clearly you had the goal and the desire, a deep desire to be number 1, and that was sort of pulling you a lot of the way through this. But how else did you stay motivated? Because this is a lot of hard work, right? And you kept your foot on the gas pretty hard the whole time. So how did you maintain that desire.

1:07:40 Phil Terrill: Yeah, and I, you know, I'll go back to, you know, probably something my mom told me a long time ago, and I'm very close to my mom. And so I've kept this with me, you know, and it's a really simple phrase and people have heard it before, but my mom always tells me, you know, what you put in is what you're gonna get out, right? And so I always took that to heart, like, to the most literal point, right? Which is, if I go 50%, I'm gonna be last. I'm not gonna… one, like, I'm just… I can't do that, right? I wasn't built that way to think, well, I'm just gonna, you know, half-ass it, right? Can't do that. And then, you know, that's like the drive. I think that was the driver, is, you know, like, if I could go… if I had to go back, you know, and I talked to my mother regularly. But if I had to tell her, you know, if she asked me how are things going, and I'd say, well, I'm middle of the pack, and I already know what she would say, which is why. You know, like, you have too many skills and/or you're way too competitive to be middle of the road. So I think my competitive spirit, you know, just, you know, I've never wanted to say, and I said it to people out loud, it's like, I want to be number one. Right? Like, you know, and then the other part is like I told myself that, right? So I committed to myself. If I wasn't gonna be number one, like I was damn sure gonna do everything possible, just like in sports, right? Like I was gonna leave it on the call, right? You know, there's no field, but I was gonna leave it on the call every time and I was just gonna go after it every day. You know, and I felt like people depended on me. Right? Like, I really felt that extra layer of dependency, or, you know, I'm not gonna even say pressure because, like, I appreciated it and welcomed, you know, that sort of responsibility of, you know, being sort of the last throat that a customer is gonna choke, you know, that quarterback mentality. And so I enjoyed it, but I also was with that, you know, being this… having the quarterback mentality, knew that You know, when you don't perform, it's all on you, right? And when you do perform, you can give other people the credit, which is great. You know, you still feel good that you all won, right? So I wanted to make sure I always had the feeling of winning, even throughout the year. Like, you know, you'll never… you know, you lose deals or, you know, deals get delayed or, you know, something happens. But, you know, my North Star is always what you put in is what you're going to get out. And I wanted to put in 150% So that way at least I hit quota, right? And anything extra was just like cool, like a benefit of just really, really working hard, you know, and investing myself in the business, which, you know, I think goes back to, you know, the entrepreneurial part is, you know, entrepreneurs are grinders. Like they just… there's nobody that is out there that's going to do it for them if in the mentality of like this is my business. Like this is I mean, these are Microsoft's customers, right? At the end of the day, like, these are Microsoft's customers. Like, I don't own Microsoft, but I removed that and said, no, these are Phil's customers. This is my business. And how I operate, how I talk to them, how I send an email, like every detail, every bit of energy, you know, or sweat equity that goes into, you know, a customer conversation or a deal or whatever it is, or you know, building relationships with the partners or even internally, right? Making sure I build the right, you know, internal relationships. It's all a part of the building of the brand's business, which in this case is my 168 accounts sitting in the portfolio. And so I wanted to make sure like every day I did whatever I could to make sure the business was successful. And so having that motivation, like every day was a new day. It was like, okay, like I'm, I have my moment of gratitude, my feet hit the floor, I'm breathing. And now I have to go get it. Like, I have to go after it because nobody else is gonna close these deals because they don't have the… they're not managing the accounts. So that was my approach. And with that, like, when the days got really long or when I was like, oh man, like, I'm only at 96%, like, whatever, I'm only at 70, you know, these things. Then when I got to 105, I was like, okay, 105 is great, but you can get 106. Like, so I kept putting… like, I was pushing myself because the business depended on it. Right? And then when you get to a point of, okay, you are exceeding quota, there's this other reality that kicks in of, okay, well, everyone on your team is not hitting 100. So you have to, you know, and this is part of just being like a peer, an individual contributor, but also wanting to be a leader, is, you know, you sit in a team review, you see the team gap, you know. Okay, like I'm doing great individually, but there's some of these elements that make sales this team sport, right? You know, I genuinely really wanted other people to do well or the team to do well, right? And so there's just this extra pressure that comes from, yeah, you are number one, right? You know, you're striving to be that and the numbers reflect it. But now you also have to help bring others along the way. And that was a challenge because, you know, you get locked into being focused on your numbers, but you also have to learn how to be a teammate, right? And to lead while trying to strive for your own individual goals. And so after, you know, after a while, especially in Q4 for us last year, you know, I had a different level of pressure, right? It was, we have this gap, and if you don't close your deals, like, the team won't hit the number. And so I'm like, well, well, damn, like, okay. Like, and I took it as like, hey, this is… we're giving you this challenge because you are showing that you've invested yourself in your business and And your business is responding, is reacting positively to your effort and to how you sort of help other people in your business like partners or internal folks really look at your business as something they want to push and be a part of to make sure it's successful. But now how do we help permeate that throughout other parts of the territories in their area, in their region, on your team? To help the team hit the number. So that was nice to be able to see the team hit the number and then also to see others on our team hit the number and share some of like what I was doing in LA, Utah, primarily LA to do that, and how I was moving the pieces around without having to be in market, which to me is still crazy to think about. Like I was only in market Honestly, probably like 4 times throughout the year where traditionally you're in front of customers every single day, right, in person. So just, that was really, you know, it's a long way of selling you, but at the end of the day, like, I was just motivated by, you know, one, making mom proud, which is like, of course you want to make your mom proud. But like, at the core, like, I really wanted to take her words to heart and go after it. And then I had a lot to prove to myself, right, which is You know, you can say you wanna be number 1 to yourself in the mirror or out loud, you know, but you gotta go get it and make it happen. And so I was motivated by that.

1:15:04 Scott Ingram: So that totally reminds me of what Mike Dudgeon and I have been talking about. So Mike was actually the very first person I ever interviewed on the podcast, and he was the number 1 AE at LinkedIn. And as we build towards the Sales Success Summit, he's actually giving a presentation called Treat Your Sales Career Like a Franchise Owner. So it's really that idea, right? Like, yes, you don't own the business and it's not your thing, but you have to have that mentality to take it to the next level. So, Phil, I know we don't have you 100% confirmed yet. Hopefully, that'll happen by the time we go live with this. But for those who are listening and want to hear from Mike and hopefully meet Phil and many of the others who've been on the show, we're going to be hosting the Sales Success Summit here in Austin, May 7th and 8th. And it is going to be an incredible event. I mean, we built it for individual contributor sales professionals. There's, there's plenty of other events for sales leaders and those, those types of roles, but there's not enough for the individual contributors. And this features only folks who have been number 1. They are top 1% at the top of their game, and we're going to learn a lot from each other. So if you want to go check that out, you can go to top1summit.com and you can use the referral code SSS. I actually bumped up the value of that. It's now worth $250. So go ahead and register today, and we'll hope to see you in Austin in May. So Phil, you talked about being a team player. I mean, you basically made a transition to be the ultimate team player. Talk about what you're doing right now.

1:16:41 Phil Terrill: Yeah, so, you know, I left being an account manager and transitioned to another role in Microsoft, which is… so I'm still within inside sales, but I'm actually in a role that It's focused on seller enablement, which is interesting, right? From my point of view, I'm sort of this nice buffer between the real world and the corporate glass box, right? Which is really now being able to take content and all these different resources around Microsoft and give sellers the best of the best so that they can go execute with their customers. And I do it at scale now, being able to support close to about 1,600+ sellers around the world in our inside model to go do that with customers. And it's funny because I think about it now, I'm like, man, I was just like one guy trying to help like our team at that time that covered the West Coast. It was, I think there were 6 of us, right? So now it's like, it was easier to talk to 5 people sitting right next to me versus being able to really help sellers around the world you know, go be great and love what they do through our sales enablement, you know, processes, you know, that, you know, I've been a part of helping create, you know, and build and then, you know, launch or go to market with internally and then see how that translates right to customer conversations and then ultimately, you know, revenue, right? And so that is just a beautiful role to be in, which I think was timely for me to be able to take some of the learnings, wins and losses and experiences that I had as an account manager and then share that at scale to others in this way. And so that's what I'm doing today, which is a great role and I love it. It's a great experience for me to really help sellers be great and actually be greater than they are and love what they do through, you know, digital and sales enablement.

1:18:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and it's exciting that, you know, one, that you stepped up to do that, and two, frankly, the fact that Microsoft is investing in that way and recognizing, hey, there probably is a better way and we can probably remove some of this administrivia and make our sellers more productive. And here's a guy who's absolutely done it. So, you know, let's take his advice rather than, you know, some consultant or some other approach. So, I mean, Along those lines, I mean, this is kind of the advice-giving section, and I'm curious to know what advice… and I imagine you get to have these conversations quite a lot now… but what do you tell somebody that's just starting out in a sales career today?

1:19:25 Phil Terrill: Yeah, and I do have that. That's why I just had this conversation. The first thing I really ask people to ask themselves is is do you really want to do this? And the reason why I start that way is because, and it's, you know, I usually don't ask closed-ended questions like that. But at the end of the day, like, it's, you need to know if you really want to do it. And the reason why is because it, you know, we just talked to this, right? There's a lot that comes with being an account manager, right? Or going into sales in general that is not the same as some other, you know, roles or professions. And, you know, there's just, there's things that are taxing on you, especially if you're looking at being in that 1%. You know, there's just more that you have to do, whether seen or unseen, that gets you to that point. And so you have to really want that, right? It's just like if you want to be a professional athlete, like that's like 2% of the population. Like, do you really want that? Like, and do you want what comes with it? It's not even do you want it, because of course you want it. It's like, but do you want what comes with it? So that's how, that's like my first question. That leads into advice. If no, then you should rethink doing something else. If yes, how are you going to prepare yourself to one, be able to differentiate yourself from the millions of other sellers that exist today, but two, how can you really go into your customers or whatever you're doing in a way that's still unique to you so you don't lose yourself, like lose who you are Because there's a corporate process or a corporate X, Y, or Z that you have to follow. Like, you can't… that thing that makes, to me, that made me, made me, you know, successful was I never lost who I was, right, by trying to do any other processes, right, or talking a certain way to a customer or whatever it is. So yeah, you know, I recommend my tip is figure out how you can one, stay true to yourself while still executing corporate priorities. Because that'll help give you these relationships or the context or comfort to go have conversations with customers that are genuine, like that are authentic because you're presenting your authentic self at all times regardless of any of these other, you know, I would call external pressures to you being you. The other thing is, you know, you mentioned this, Scott, you know, around what's coming up, you know, at the conference, right at the summit, is really thinking about as you enter, you know, a sales role, is think about that territory, that book of business, or whatever it is, as your own business. And I say that from my own background, is I was able to put that lens on my territory just because of my upbringing, but anybody can look at their territory and say, I'm going to own this and do what it takes to make my business, quote unquote my business, right, successful. And so if you go into any sales role with that mentality, like what comes from that, the reverberations are you're going to work harder, you're going to think differently, you're going to react differently. Proactively, you're going to do things that your competitors, other sellers next to you, and competitors at other companies aren't going to do because they're looking at how am I going to hit my quota versus how am I going to grow the business, which are very different mindsets. And some, you know, might take, you know, growing the business could be a longer approach depending on, you know, where your customers are at. But I would, that's the other thing I would say is, you know, make sure that you can maintain your authentic self while, you know, pushing corporate priorities. And then the second thing is for me, you know, I truly believe this is you know, have an entrepreneurial or ownership mindset to your business and really, you know, dive into that. And then the third part for me is like, I just had a lot of fun. Like, this sounds so ridiculous, but I enjoy sales. Like, I enjoy talking to people. So if you don't enjoy that part, like, yeah, you will make money if you, you know, do the other things, but you really should enjoy it, right? Because you're gonna be asked to do a lot and learn a lot and get stretched a lot of different ways. So you should enjoy it, and I mean enjoy it like with a passion, or you should do something else because you won't be successful. So I would do those 3 things, you know.

1:23:48 Scott Ingram: Amazing stuff. And, you know, one of the… I think your money comment is just around being who you are, right? If I look at… I mean, one of the things that I'm constantly trying to understand is now across 39 of these interviews, What are the commonalities? Like, what is that thread that connects the, the best of the best that we can learn from and apply ourselves? And I think the, the real thing there is there's tons of different styles and approaches, and there's a lot of difference in that. But the one thing that's consistent is everybody's basically an extreme version of themselves. Like, they do them really well. Right? So, that's the key. Like, you have to do you. And one of the things that I'm hoping that we really get an opportunity to dive into in the summit is how do you do that? How do you figure out what makes you great and what your unique value is and how you can play that up and how you can apply that and get to the top and beat out, you know, everybody else and just stand on top and be handed the ball at the end of the year because, hey, man, if you can't deliver, we're not going to make our number. You know, that's… there's so many sports analogies in sales, and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not. But man, that one's just, you know, give me the ball, coach, you know?

1:25:11 Phil Terrill: Yeah, exactly.

1:25:13 Scott Ingram: That's what you want. Yeah. So, Phil, does your advice change at all if you're sharing these suggestions with somebody that's further into their career, right? We talked about somebody that's starting out, but what about somebody that's been at this for 5 years, 10 years, and they're doing okay, maybe they're making their number, but I'm not making club, or I'm not in the top 10%, I'm not in the top 1%. What advice do you give to them to step it up and go to that next level?

1:25:40 Phil Terrill: Yeah, I think, you know, there's, you know, I think a lot of that still remains the same because you do want somebody to, even over a period of time, like, you know, maintain their authentic self, you know, and really look at the business entrepreneurially and want to enjoy it. But I think there's this pivot or this evolution that has to happen for somebody that's been doing it a long time, right? It's because you have to pivot on your authentic self and go one step further and evaluate, okay, I've been doing these things, I've done well, right? But I'm not hitting the 1% or the top 10 or whatever it is. So why, right? So I think there's just this humility check of which I know I've noticed, you know, especially at Microsoft, right, where there's longtime sales folks that yes, they're great sellers, but a lot of times you get trapped into I've been doing this so long that I've been doing this so long, right? And so you have to step outside of yourself for a second and just like any business owner would, and I kind of tilt back to that, is if you really look at everything you've been doing with this ownership lens or entrepreneurial lens is like you have to reinvent yourself, right? If you have been hitting status quo for 10 years, like you have to reinvent yourself, right? Something about you is not working or is not hitting or accelerating conversations or creating new deals or expanding relationships or helping you go deeper, you know, in customers or partners aren't reacting to you well or whatever the case may be. I think there's just this reinvention or evolution of yourself that you have to only… you can only achieve if you step outside of what you're currently doing and taking an honest reflection of or inventory of these are the things I do really well. And over the last 10 years or whatever it is, I feel like maybe I've had a gap in this place, but I've never been honest enough to recognize it. And so there's these things where if you get truthful with yourself and then identify, you know, this is where I need to evolve, especially over a period of time, right? You can… I think you can have a lot of, a lot better results. But then to also add that entrepreneurial lens is I look at like businesses today, or any… you can use Microsoft for an example. Microsoft 40 years ago when Bill Gates started Microsoft is not the same Microsoft that it is today, right? And entrepreneurially, the business had to shift. It had to adapt to the market, to the customers, to the people that work there, right? So same thing as a seller that is experienced over whatever number of times is you have to be able to readapt to the change in the climate. And if you haven't done that, that's probably why you're in sort of this stagnant space of I am just hitting my number, I'm hitting, I'm in cruise control, right? But sometimes you have to see what going above the speed limit is like, right? Which then once you know what that change of gear is, you can start to operate that way. Which is then you pivoting in a different place, getting outside of yourself to do something different than you normally would. Which once you do something different, you probably will get different results. And better outcomes. So that would be my, my, you know, advice if I, you know, if I'm in a place to give it to somebody that's been doing it longer than me is to really, really take an inventory of themselves, you know, while maintaining authenticity, you know, look at where they can, you know, go beyond their comfort, you know, identify where they can do more.

1:29:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, Phil, I mean, you really have interviewed yourself. I've prompted you way fewer than I do most of my guests. So before we wrap up, maybe I'll just ask, is there anything that we didn't touch on or you didn't get a chance to talk about today that you were hoping to?

1:29:39 Phil Terrill: No, I think I'm good. You know, it's… I just appreciate, you know, being able to share, you know, my experiences, you know, the journey to, to being a top seller, you know, and at Microsoft, you know, it's, it's always a competitive environment. I think in tech in general it is, but just being able to share, especially, you know, with even you know, younger sellers or newer sellers into the space in general or whatever it is. You know, I'm just happy to be able to have the conversation with you, Scott, and be a part of the broader group that's, you know, sort of sharing our stories. So I appreciate it.

1:30:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and this is how we all get better, right? You have to give back. You have to pay it forward a little bit. I like to think of this as, I mean, especially if you've got 1,600 sellers to support, you can't have this conversation that many times. So, you know, at some level, my hope is that this becomes kind of mentoring at scale and we can help every one of those individuals without obligating you to sit down and have coffee every day of your… every hour of your waking life for the next 3 or 4 years.

1:30:43 Phil Terrill: I appreciate that, Scott.

1:30:45 Scott Ingram: So, let's try and wrap it all up and make it actionable. So, if you were to devise a 2-week challenge that the person listening to this could take on to make themselves better before the next episode comes out and a new challenge gets issued? What would you have them do?

1:31:02 Phil Terrill: Sure. So there are a couple of things. The first thing I would say is take an inventory of yourself and really write down and physically write down, not like mentally look around, but like write down the things that you think you do really well when it comes to like sales and building customer relationships. And then write down where you feel you have opportunities or gaps. And I would take that and share it with your leadership. Reason being is that can help you, one, evaluate and review where you are, but two, give you a course of action even to move forward with just developing, you know, rounding out your skill set to go execute, you know, at a higher level. That's one thing. Just self-inventory. The second thing I would do is I would actually challenge a seller to actually go outside of their IT relationship or whatever their primary relationship is. I would challenge you to go find a different contact within the next 2 weeks to do that and jot down the process, right? Write down the process of how you did it differently. Than you would your primary contact, because it's easy. It's gonna be easy to say, yes, I know how to get my primary contact on the phone. Like, of course you do, or for coffee. But how did you do it for somebody outside of, you know, your primary contact? Because then what you do now, what you have is, you know, a documented methodology and approach to doing it that you can then, you know, replicate and then share with others. So then as you identify, you know, after it's successful, you now have, you know, something that can get you to, I would say, being on the call with Scott, right? The third thing, you know, there's for me is I would sit… I would challenge you to sit on, if you have a customer that's publicly traded, to sit on an earnings call and then take the nuggets of information and intertwine that into your next customer conversation and see how it goes. And I tell you, I would imagine that the benefits or the impact Whether you explicitly tell them you were on the call or not, which I wouldn't do. I would just weave it into your conversation and see what, you know, what the outcomes are. I mean, it'll probably put you in a different light and put you out of your comfort zone to actually go do something like that. So those are, those would be the 3 things for me as challenges, smaller compact challenges that I think will help, you know, long-term for anyone listening.

1:33:34 Scott Ingram: Great advice, great advice. And this is the time of year I'm doing an awful lot of annual report reading and looking at 10-Ks. So You know, those are also great resources. And if you are a person of action and you act on Phil's suggestion, I would love to see if you not only share the strengths and the gaps with your leadership, I'd love to see those too, particularly the gaps. It'll help me kind of devise questions that I can be asking or finding the right folks to interview that'll help you continue to improve in your own journey and improve yourself. So, you can always reach out to me, whether it's with those ideas, those challenges that you're looking to solve for yourself, or anything else. I'd love to hear from you. You can email me, scott@top1.fm. Phil, it's been fantastic. I really do hope that I get to see you here in Austin in May. I hope to see many of the rest of you there as well. So, don't forget to go to top1summit.com. Use the referral code SSS. Save yourself $250, and we will see you very soon. Thanks, Phil.

1:34:37 Phil Terrill: Yeah, thank you, Scott. 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.