47: Seismic's Mike McDonough – From Firefighter to Top B2B Sales Pro

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.

0:21 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm joined by Mike McDonough. Mike was the top seller at Seismic in his enterprise sales role before recently being promoted into his current role as a regional vice president. And what makes that even more impressive is the fact that just over 3 years ago, Mike started at Seismic in his first ever sales role as a client development rep. So we'll definitely be talking about his rapid career progression, among other things. Welcome to the show, Mike.

0:53 Mike McDonough: Good morning. Thanks for having me, Scott.

0:55 Scott Ingram: I'm glad to be here. And once again, I've got another fan of the show to thank for introducing Mike and I, and that is Evan Kelsay, who after contributing to the book campaign. Thank you for that, Evan. Connected me with the number one seller in his own organization. So if you haven't figured that out, uh, Evan is a colleague of Mike's there at Seismic. So thanks again for making that happen, Evan. And finally, before we get going here, I also need to thank Story Dimensions, who is the sponsor of this episode. I'll be telling you a little bit more about them in just a few minutes. Mike, let's jump straight into this thing like we always do and talk about what you believe to be the top 3 things that have contributed the most to success there at Seismic?

1:37 Mike McDonough: Sure. You know, for me, it was the ability to come in, as you mentioned, as a CDR, client development rep, a little over 3 years ago with the background of being a firefighter and paramedic with no experience in sales, to be a sponge, to be a, you know, come in as a clean slate and recognize that I just had a lot to learn. So some of the typical things that you'll hear is just the coming in early, certainly leaving late and working weekends and those sorts of things. But the ability to listen to peers, right? Take the initiative to… when, when I first started at Seismic, we were such a young company, there wasn't a lot of structure, which I kind of enjoyed at first. But to take the initiative to reach out to people that seemed to be successful, seemed to know what they were talking about when I first got in the door, and, and, you know, uh, kind of latch on to them, if that makes sense.

2:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it does. So, so just really that, that willingness to learn, to reach out, take control of your own development, which was… I mean, you had to develop everything. This is, this is your first time doing this, right? Yeah.

2:37 Mike McDonough: I mean, to be honest with you, when I first started, I would hear some of the acronyms people were saying. Like, as silly as this sounds to probably, uh, some of your listeners who have been in sales for 20 years, when I'd hear things like SFDC, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't want to feel foolish in the meeting room, so I'd Google it and be like, oh, they're talking about Salesforce. Okay, great. I know what Salesforce is because I watched a video on that. The night before on trying to train myself on how to use Salesforce and things like that.

3:03 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. I, I love that. And give just a little bit of context around, you know, how big was Seismic when, when you joined?

3:09 Mike McDonough: Yeah, so we had roughly somewhere between 30 to 40 employees, I would say. Offices in both Boston and our headquarters is out in San Diego. So we were small. We had an inside sales team. I was, I believe, the 6th person on our inside sales team, and maybe 2 enterprise, 3 enterprise sales reps that we were then supporting.

3:27 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. And now, you know, a little over 3 years later, you're what, 10 times that size?

3:32 Mike McDonough: Yes. So we're right around 500 employees, global business with offices throughout the country, London, big presence in Australia as well. And as far as the sales organization, I think there's, let's say, 50 inside sales reps and 50 enterprise sales reps, give or take. And that's probably… there'll probably be a email going out today letting everyone know we hired 3 or 4 more people. So it's been a fun ride.

3:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. That, that is always a fun ride, especially that kind of growth, and to have seen really the whole thing progress. So we started with number one was just that, that willingness to learn and absorb, take control of it for yourself. What was your second kind of key to success?

4:12 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I would go with mentors, mentors, mentors, and I think they come in all different shapes and sizes, right? So kind of touched on that with the first one there, but finding people that A, had experience, had been successful. So just understanding, hey, these are the men and women that are out there closing business. And then not just following them around and asking them questions and being a pest, but really trying to provide value to them. So when I first started as an inside sales rep, the best thing I could do would get on the phones, email, get creative about bringing in, you know, VP and C-level folks at all of their target accounts and setting them up for success and If I could do that, they'd be a little bit more willing to answer some of my questions and bring me along the ride. Because I knew at the time I was a 32-year-old inside sales rep working with people 10 years younger than me, and I had aspirations of wanting to go out there and close business. I just had no idea what it took. So looking at the top sellers and mimicking some of their behavior and providing value to them was a big piece of it.

5:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, I, I certainly believe in that model.

5:19 Mike McDonough: Yeah, for sure. And it wasn't just the salespeople either, right? So for me, and it continues, I look for mentors and people to learn from. So I, I have a handful of mentors at Seismic that have really brought me along over the past almost 4 years. But I think in general, just knowing the people that work at your company and learning from them. So whether that's on the product side, whether that's on the, you know, your sales engineers who you're hopefully working closely with all the time, to our customer success team, to really any part of the business, not only learning from them. But I think as sales individuals, you have to recognize other people's strengths within the organization. And when you're working 6 or 7-figure deals, it takes a… takes an army of folks to get a deal done. So knowing people's strengths, quarterbacking them, and when to bring them into deals is incredibly important, as you know.

6:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So how has that value equation evolved over time as well, right, as you've progressed in your own career and your own development? What do you think about bringing to new mentors that you're onboarding, if you will, today to help them help you?

6:21 Mike McDonough: Yeah, that's a really good question because it's, it's obviously evolving as I move into a new role. So, hmm, you stumped me. That doesn't happen too often. But there was a, uh, I, I think about it, let's take a step back. When, when, you know, as the, as my role has evolved, the business has obviously evolved as well. So when you think about a young company that is, hey, we want people just to know who we are, so awareness and just getting our name and our brand out there trying to get some customers and those sorts of things to being now a well-established business and the leader in our, in our space, a lot has changed within the business. So what I mean by that, when I first mentioned there was a lack of structure when I first started, I think anybody who is an early-stage startup would agree with that. You're doing multiple different roles. You're just go, go, go, go, go. And one of the things that I lacked as we've brought in more mature salespeople and more experienced sellers and managers and those things is the sales process, which was something I don't want to say I struggled with because I was successful as an individual contributor, but it really elevates your game to the next level and bringing some of that structure around the way that you go after deals. It was incredibly important. And now that I'm managing an enterprise sales team, that's a completely different role, something I've never done before. So whether it's my president or my vice president of sales, the best way to bring value is to help my team bring in business. You know, I need to lean on them to guide me in this new role as well. So I don't know if that's exactly what you were looking for, but…

7:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it makes sense. And again, I think it's just the awareness that as you evolve and your mentoring needs evolve, right? Like when you come in as a client development rep and you're just banging the phones and working on setting appointments, that's really, really different from closing enterprise sales. And so you just need to kind of find the appropriate fit and continue to find different ways where you add value and what you bring to those relationships. So what's the third thing?

8:21 Mike McDonough: Mention this, you know, I say this to my team all the time, but just shutting up and listening.

8:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I'm going to absolve you from having to do that for the rest of our time today. I'm going to say that you… I'm going to do the shut up and listen. And you get to kind of share with us what's going on. But I think that's great. So to recap the 3, it was just that willingness to learn and owning your own development. It was mentors like crazy. And then shutting up and listening, which goes really good with mentors as well.

8:51 Mike McDonough: Yes, for sure. And I learned that from mentors. So to give you an example, again, I think I am still raw when it comes to my development. You're talking 4 years in sales, and I see people who have been selling for 20, 25 years that are continuing to try to get better and learn. And they're like, hey, I don't have this thing figured out yet. Right? So I think that's what's exciting about sales. So when I first started, first of all, to be honest, I thought salespeople were jerks because I was a firefighter paramedic and all I thought about was people pushing product on me. So it was nothing that I really wanted to be a part of. And then when I began selling, I thought it was about talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I really did. And I kind of stunk when I first started when it came to that. You get somebody on the phone and if you threw enough at them, you know, the sense of either product or customers that you're working with. You're on a call for 30 minutes. If you got everything you had out there, it was a successful call. And I wasn't converting leads into opportunities right away. And I honestly couldn't figure it out. And luckily, one of my mentors here at Seismic gave me that simple advice, right? It's more about them than it is about me and to ask open-ended questions. Short and sweet and simple and, and get them talking and learning about their business, their role, some of their challenges and pains. And that was instrumental in, in just not only evolving from an inside salesperson to an enterprise salesperson, but it's… I think it's just a critical skill. And I honestly hear to this day too many salespeople doing all the talking, and it's just a bad, bad approach.

10:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, let's provide a little bit more context as, as well, because you've had I think 4 different roles across those 4 years. So talk about kind of each of those and what those were and where you are today.

10:43 Mike McDonough: Sure. Yeah, it has been a fantastic ride. And again, it's a, it's a tribute to the company I work for. So they've taken me under their wing and given me opportunity. When it, when a business is scaling the way it is, you get a little bit of luck as well, right? So when I started as a client development rep, I was in that role for about 6 months. In my mind, it was more about quality than quantity. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to provide those enterprise sales reps with the best possible leads and opportunities and not just get meetings and meetings, meetings. So that's where my head went originally. Hey, if I can get C-level folks from some of the largest companies in the world on the phone with my reps, they're gonna notice me as an inside sales rep, as somebody who's serious about doing this. So in that role, I wouldn't even say I was the number one client development rep as far as meetings, but I would certainly argue that I was the number one rep as far as bringing quality meetings to the board. And I thought that would be a great way for me to get noticed by our executive team.

11:43 Scott Ingram: Love that, love that. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's, it's about the size of your pipeline, not the number of meetings, right?

11:48 Mike McDonough: Of course. Yeah. And I just thought that would be a unique way for me to separate myself from the the small pack of us that were doing that.

11:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So after those 6 months, then what happened?

11:59 Mike McDonough: I got the opportunity to work as really the first inside sales manager. And I jumped at that opportunity because I was certainly the oldest person on the team. So it made sense there. I had a little more life experience, but I liked the idea of hiring, training, and coaching folks. So I did that for… it was about a year, maybe 9 months actually is what it was, and helped interview, hire, train that team, and we scaled pretty quickly. So I hired 6 or 7 people, 7 people onto my team, got them trained, and then we started to verticalize the business. So we started thinking about structure maturity. I think that was the first time we did that. So really my team started going after technology companies here in the, the East Coast back in those early days, and it was a fun ride. So for me, that was demoing a lot, managing personalities, and driving pipeline for the enterprise team that we had a lot of success doing and I enjoyed it.

12:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So then from leading a team to you picked up a bag again.

12:59 Mike McDonough: Yes, in a much different way. And I had, man, I had a lot of failures at first. I know a lot of salespeople maybe not like to admit that, especially as they're being recorded, but I learned so much in that first year, the enterprise sales rep covering the Northeast, going after some of the largest accounts in the world. And I thought that transition from, you know, even to take a step back when I was an inside sales manager, I remember getting off the phone, you know, whether it was a demo or whether it was a really good discovery call and just identifying a ton of pain and say, hey, there's, there's budget here. They're excited to move forward to that next meeting. And I'd hand it off to the, the outside sales rep like, oh, that thing's gonna close in 2 months, you know? And then I moved into the outside sales role and I was like, oh my goodness, I can certainly understand why that did not close after 2 months. But I thought that the enterprise reps were either being lazy or they didn't know what the heck they were doing. And it was that for me, going from the inside sales manager role to the enterprise sales rep role was the biggest leap in where I totally underestimated how challenging that role was going to be.

14:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So talk about… I get a lot of feedback that, I mean, we call the show Sales Success Stories and we talk a lot about success, but I think that failure is oftentimes even more instructive. What was that in the early days like? Where did you fail the most and how did that teach you the most?

14:22 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I, you know, I think I had in my mind that we… I was going for this ride with this just journey with the customer or potential customer, I should say. And I kind of let them lead me down the path to closure, which is not a good thing. Right. And I, you know, I was going from meeting to meeting to demo to demo to demo and not, not much was happening. Right? Like, people are, hey, this is cool, or they'd be really excited. And coming from my former role, it was, it was certainly about awareness and driving into enterprise reps' hands, but I didn't really know how to stop with the, the selling of just the product or what it took to say, hey, once they've actually decided, hey, we have made you vendor of choice, or whatever it may be, to stop the selling and get to the execution. And I, I struggled with that. My sales cycles were too long. I didn't know how to surround sell or, or frankly think strategically about the accounts. So, you know, for instance, like, why are they actually even buying this besides it being a really cool shiny tool that they like? Like, getting into the reason the business is actually doing this and not just taking the word of one person, but really surrounding the account with, you know, 10, 12, as many people that can get involved, uh, into the deal, because these enterprise deals are, are massive. So I struggled. I was good at building the pipeline, but I certainly wasn't that good at closing deals when I first started.

15:44 Scott Ingram: Nice. So we'll probably come back to some of that just process and, and approach type stuff, especially as that sort of developed and, and what you found ultimately to be successful and, and when you got better at, at sort of closing and executing the deals. But let's take a step back and Go to, you were a firefighter and then you went into sales. How did that happen?

16:10 Mike McDonough: Sure. What had happened? So I always wanted to be a firefighter ever since I was a little kid. And I thought it was just because I thought it would go away. I just liked big red trucks and the, you know, the idea of being in a, in a uniform or something. But as I got older, it never went away. So I got into the fire service. I loved that job. I loved the camaraderie, the brotherhood and the sisterhood of that job. Fantastic people. But I had had multiple back injuries. Uh, one was in a fire, another was on a medical call, another was taking a woman, carrying a woman out of a building and, uh, on a medical call. And 3 back injuries in a row. I, I don't know how many different cortisone shots in my back, 9 months of physical therapy, was staring at pretty significant back surgery and potentially going on disability as at the time a 32-year-old guy that just got married who wanted to start a family. So I really had to take a step back and think about, is this worth it? You know, it was for me, but for my future, my family. So I just really started thinking about other opportunities, and I, I didn't… sales wasn't even on my mind at first. And luckily enough, I got introduced to Seismic. So I had a younger brother that was instrumental in getting me into Seismic Software. He was the first inside salesperson there, and he introduced me to the president at Seismic. And I showed up like a little kid, no resume, nothing, because I didn't think any of that would actually matter and got introduced to our president, met a few of the other salespeople, went through multiple rounds of interviewing, and they took a shot on me. This was, again, before our B round of funding. We're very early. It's something that I'll never forget. I owe them quite a bit for taking that chance on me.

17:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. Well, I'm going to ask next about how do you translate firefighting skills to sales? But before I do that, let me talk a little bit about Story Dimensions, who is the sponsor of this episode. So Story Dimensions is a SaaS sales enablement company. As, as you know, I'm a big believer in the power of stories. We're talking about one right now. And when I saw what they offer, I was really, really impressed. So Story Dimensions is the only solution that captures and packages real stories from your customers into easy-to-digest and deliver formats that salespeople can then use to build credibility and trust with their buyers. And I have so much confidence in the value that that solution brings to sales organizations. Organizations that have actually taken on an advisory role with the company. And I encourage you to check it out. If you go to storydimensions.com and request a live demo, that'll give you a chance to see how they can help you accelerate your own sales cycles and close more deals. So Mike, let's come back to this idea of you were a firefighter for 8 or 9 years or whatever that was. Were there transferable skills from all of that experience that you took into the sales role?

19:09 Mike McDonough: 100%. And I never thought I would be able to say that, but I also didn't know what sales was all about. So, you know, for me it was more on the EMS side of things. So in depending on, I guess, where you live in the country, a lot of firefighters also double as either EMTs or paramedics. And so we, you know, a big part of the job is medical calls and riding the ambulance as well as being on the engine or the ladder truck or depending on your role. So Um, you know, when you go into a medical call, you're a bit of a detective, right? You're, you're there with either your partner or the rest of the, the rest of the crew, and you have to play a bit of detective. So some of those things that you go through… and frankly, 4 years removed from it, my skills are a little, a little rusty now… but you got to figure out what's going on with the patient. So what is their… what medications are they on? How are they presenting? You know, their skin color condition, all these, these things that you look at on a patient. What are their complaints? What was the last thing they had to eat? All these silly things, right, that, that probably people right now are saying, how does that… what does that have to do with sales, right? What it comes down to though is you have to assess what's going on. You have to identify the pain, if you will, and kind of go from there. And then you have to sell that person on the idea of, you know, at times I've talked about you have an 80, 90-year-old gentleman that is a war veteran that has all sorts of medical ailments, and he's… he is committed to staying home and there's nothing you could do to talk him into it, even if you know it is in his best interest. And you have to be able to sell them on that idea. So I think the 2 biggest skills is discovery, understanding what's going on, understanding the situation, as well as the ability to convince somebody that, hey, you need to go to the doctor, man. You're not looking good, especially if they don't want to go. I was surprised at that sort of skill set. And And I'd actually, I'd layer in one more thing that has been valuable as I've brought a little bit more process into my own selling. You know, as a firefighter and/or paramedic, there's a lot of structure and there's a lot of SOPs and SOGs, so standing operating procedures and guidelines, to go along with just about everything that you're doing, especially in the back of an ambulance. And taking some of that and putting some of that structure into my selling I think it has been helpful.

21:26 Scott Ingram: That's, that's awesome. And again, I'm going to keep teasing it because we'll definitely come back to the process and sort of what you've evolved to from an SOP sort of perspective. But I'm curious about, again, just looking at your evolution, if you could go back and talk to Mike McDonough 4 years ago, right? He's, he's a firefighter. He's just getting ready to make this transition into sales. Clearly, you have all kinds of misconceptions about what this is. Really going to be about, what would you tell that guy? Like, what would you want him to know that might have helped you even more as you progress through your career?

22:02 Mike McDonough: Yeah, for sure. That I think selling is a really exciting, fun experience in that, that you can do it because I didn't think I could do it. Right. So something as simple and as foundational as that, and also that it's less about selling and I mean, there's certainly an art form, I believe, to sales. And I think if you can get the art of selling mixed with the process, you're in a really good place. But that there needs to be a healthy dose of both, that you can't just hop on a phone call, know the product pretty well, and expect every call to go well. So study, research, understand your clients, you know, understand the roles, understand their background, where they've come from, those sorts of things that I thought when I first started, hey, just bang the phones, emails, get somebody on a meeting. And sell, sell, sell. And some of that upfront work I missed at first.

22:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, same question, but now let's apply it to as you went into the enterprise sales. Now you've got a quota and you're working through that process.

23:03 Mike McDonough: For sure. So I think that's when I really started understanding the importance of research, the importance of not only surrounding an account with, you know, getting as many people on the prospect side involved, but really that I couldn't do it alone. So there's a saying that firefighters are really good at helping other people, but they stink at getting, you know, asking for help, I guess. And so I thought that in my mind, I probably fit into that category pretty well. But in my mind, I thought, you know, I was going in to sell. It would be me and my sales engineer and, you know, get as many meetings in front of clients as much as possible and go, go, go. I would have told myself that it's going to take, especially when you're talking about doing deals with 5,000, 6,000, 10,000 salespeople, you know, for us, that's kind of how we look at the size of deals, that it's going to take a heck of a lot more than just you and your sales engineer and maybe bouncing ideas off your VP of sales or whatever. It's going to really take the whole company. And I didn't… I wasn't even close to fully understanding that.

24:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great stuff. So from a results perspective, I mean, quantify that for us. Talk us through, you know, what did it take to end up up as, as the top enterprise seller there at Seismic?

24:16 Mike McDonough: For sure. So it was on my team in 2017. So if you start thinking about our quota, and again, in 2016 was really my pipeline building year. So if we could even look at 2016, at first I would say that's what set me up for success in 2017. So I've really hit my stride, I'd say, in Q4 2016, got in my first really 6-figure deal that I felt very excited about and felt like, hey, I've made it, right? I'm no longer the rookie. I think I could compete with all the, the sellers on my team. And going into 2017, I just had put the work in to build up a really strong pipeline. So from there, I was lucky enough in Q… I don't want to say lucky enough, I worked hard… but in Q1 of 2017, I was able to hit about 250% of my number. When you could do that in Q1 You have a pretty exciting year in front of you. And come Q2, but by mid-year, let's put it that way, I was within a few dollars of being at my number, which is a really good feeling going into the second half of the year. You know, I had one of our largest accounts and spent an incredible amount of time. So myself and we had just started an ABM team that grew, you know, turned out to be incredibly important as well as with my inside sales rep. We attacked one account. That's where I'd say 90% of my energy and a big portion of my pipeline came from. So I did just south of $1 million in 2017 on one account, and that was a big, big chunk of my, of my pipeline.

25:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And in terms of the overall, I mean, how big of a percentage was, was that? How many other things were you working on?

26:03 Mike McDonough: Sure. So I think I wound up at 156% of my number for the year on, on my team, which put me at the top of the leaderboard.

26:11 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So given that you had so much energy in one particular deal, how did you mitigate the risk of that? Right? Because the challenge… like, that's the type of opportunity where, well, I could either be number one or I'm gonna fall flat on my face if this doesn't all go right.

26:27 Mike McDonough: Yeah, it was a risk. So I thought in my mind for this account, when you're talking about what I thought the total opportunity was there, I knew it was just going to take a ton of energy. And, and, and honestly, I had done enough research and had enough conversations that I felt like if we do this thing right, this is my best chance of not only hitting my number but making a huge impact, uh, on the company. So I, I certainly worked other opportunities, brought in other opportunities, closed other deals, but it was a huge risk. And I'm not sure I did a great job of necessarily mitigating it. I… if I hadn't brought in a deal with that one client, I would've been in a pretty tough spot. Fortunately, it worked out for me.

27:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And then how did that lead to… I guess we didn't really talk about your current role and how that promotion came about. Give us some context there.

27:19 Mike McDonough: Yeah. As we continue to mature as a business, my… so the one thing for anybody that's listening, if you're part of a company that's growing at the pace that we are, I realize how lucky I am, and this doesn't always happen. You have to be ready for change, constant, constant, constant change. And just when you start to feel comfortable, get ready to be uncomfortable again. And my boss, who was one of my mentors, who was my VP that I had done so much work with, moved on to another opportunity within the business to be a VP of sales of another division as we begin… as we continue to verticalize to different groups. And, um, Um, so I, I had a new boss and, and a new boss that came from the outside. So I wound up working with over the second half of, of 2017. And as he looked to expand the business, add more salespeople, I'm always advocating for myself and talking about my career goals and plans. I like the idea of sales leadership. You know, I had this opportunity to move into this RVP role to build out a team. And similar to going back a few years to my inside sales managers, they, hey, this is going to be a new team. You have to build a whole new pipeline, hire 6 new people. That's something that I wanted to do, so I began exploring that idea, uh, still thinking about my pipeline and closing deals. And yeah, that, that's kind of how I wound up in my current role. And I've been building out this team this year, building pipeline, and it's been exciting.

28:44 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Now let's come back to… you, you talked about you do a good job of advocating for yourself. How do you do that? What does that look like?

28:53 Mike McDonough: Well, I always think you have to be smart about it, right? You don't want to be a salesperson that's behind your number or just not having a lot of success and then going out and saying, me, me, me, I need this, or I deserve this. I think you always want to be able to negotiate from a position of strength. So you have to be strategic about it. When you are in a position where you're already way in front of your number and you want to look at advancing your career a bit, it's usually a good time to strike and have those types of conversations. For me, during my one-on-ones and talking to different people, whether that's my VP or Letting it just be known, hey, this is where I want to go with my career. It's really important. And, and that's what I did with my inside sales team. And now I'm doing with the enterprise sales team. I mean, my goal when I manage a team, and I'm going off track here as I tend to do sometimes, but my goal as a manager is, hey, I want everybody on this team hopefully be off it in the next year or 2 years or whatever that timeframe is, because you all have goals and aspirations to get to where you want to be. So I, I want to get you there. And as a result of getting you there, I'm being, uh, I call it basically being selfless for selfish reasons. So if I help you to get to where you want to go, we're all going to wind up in a good place. And I think that's the way a lot of people, whether you're a manager or a rep or in any part of the organization, you have to advocate for yourself and make sure that your manager really wants to get you there as well.

30:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I imagine your mentors factor into that equation and that approach quite a bit as well.

30:21 Mike McDonough: Of course. Yeah. I mean, I saw from when I started Our founders are just really about empowering people, fantastic people that empower people, that wanted you to get out of your comfort zone. But it's, it's a pretty unique culture in that sense. And I'm fortunate to be able to work with them because they… whether even still with 500 people, if you're just getting started here, you've been here a long time, your voice, your opinion matters, and they want to see you succeed.

30:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome stuff. So I imagine that you have lots of stories and lots of experiences that you've had over the last 4 years. Is there a favorite story or one that you learned the most From?

30:57 Mike McDonough: Yes. So there's, there's 2, and it all has to do with that, that larger opportunity that I was, I was speaking about. So I'll try to be quick, but I'll talk about both of them because I think it's important. So one is a little more serious and one's kind of funny. So originally, I'll tell the funny one first. I was heading down south from… so I work out of our Boston office. I was going to a pretty big meeting, just cutting my teeth in the enterprise sales role. I'd done a bunch of research, was really excited. But you got to keep in mind that I was a… just a couple years ago, a pretty broke fireman. And so I booked really one of my first company trips, I guess you'd say. And I flew down and stayed in a really cheap motel because I thought I was doing the right thing by the business. And I bought a new suit and I was really excited to get in front clients, especially this sort of executive audience for the first time. And I was lucky enough to have a member of my executive team to be able to come with me. So I was excited, combination of nervous, and I had had in my suitcase, it was a, like a hand cream or something like that exploded in my bag and absolutely ruined the suit that I had in there. And so I had to go first thing in the morning, go find a suit at a local, local store, pick that up and went and go met my boss. And I was really nervous because I didn't like the thing that I just picked up and he actually mentioned, hey, you look really sharp in that suit. And then went off and had a fantastic meeting. So to me, that was just funny to be that excited about having a meeting and having something like that happen. But from a more business standpoint, I think for me, and I think it's critical for any salespeople that are breaking into this role, into an enterprise sales role, is you're never going to be really ready for anything. You just got to kind of have to do it. So certainly you want to be prepared and focused and have all the things that you need to put yourself in a position to win. But if you're waiting to be fully ready to sit down in front of a C-level executive, you're never going to be until you do it. So for me, really excited to go down and sit in front of a C-level audience. And again, I was leaning… I think I was leaning too much on my executive team to start off, which I think is a whole nother topic that reps need to be better at. But in those days, we didn't have a lot of… so I don't want to say didn't have a lot of support, but we were small. And my executive sponsor on that call couldn't make it because he was getting pulled in another direction, which was fine. So for me, all of a sudden I was sitting in front of a C-level group of folks that I had never really engaged at that sort of level with before, trying to bring in a very big deal. But I just went with it and I got in front of a CIO of one of the largest companies in the world and we went head to head in a challenging but respectful way. And we went at it for about 45 minutes, had a really productive conversation and call and I walked out of the room and for me that was like, hey, I can do this. Right. And that was instrumental in my growth and my ability to say, hey, I can sit down with just about anybody. And it's not always going to work out the way that that did. But for me, that was a really big stepping stone in my career.

34:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's such a good, relevant story. You know, I think about… I've spent quite a bit of time with Trong Nguyen, who's been just a huge supporter of the show. And we've done a number of different things together. And, you know, he talks about he would try to He was doing just these mega, mega deals at Microsoft, managing these huge teams. And he would work to really just humanize the executives for the rest of his team. Right. Because when you're talking with a global company and their CIO and, you know, this guy makes millions of dollars and he's, you know, he manages this team of thousands of people and, you know, you've just got them on this pedestal, but at the end of the day, they're just people. You know, they wake up in the morning, they brush their teeth, they've got kids, they've got families, they've got bills. They've got all the same crud that we have. And I think that that is such an important part of your progression that at the end of the day, regardless of the title and the position and the, the dollars that might be at stake, they're just people, right? And so I think that's fun. And then your first story totally makes me flashback to… reminds me of one of my very first trips. I also rode a startup rocket ship in my days with Bazaarvoice. And when I started in that role, previous to that, all of my sales had been local. You know, when I traveled to go see a client, I got in my car. And so there, I was managing a Northeast territory out of Austin. And so I went, I had this big trip with a bunch of client meetings or prospect meetings, and they were all on Long Island. And I went there thinking, oh, well, it's New York. Nobody drives in New York. So I'll just, you know, take a… I mean, this was like the days just before Uber. So, you know, I was taking cabs and stuff. And on Long Island, they don't take credit cards. And, and the distances are way greater than what I had in my head. So, you know, I'm taking cab trips that are like $150 a pop and, you know, we'd have to like stop at an ATM because they would only take cash. And so I finished, it's my first trip and I come back and I have like $500 just in cab fare and it's all cash. And I'm like, I'm going to just get fired. Nobody's going to believe this. This is insane. So, you know, it's, it's just funny that the expectations that you come into and, and and the way that where you stay and just the professionalism of travel evolves. There's a lot of lessons I think we all learned through that process as well.

36:29 Mike McDonough: And it's fun too, right? And I think actually one of the things that you had mentioned that is important, especially for people who are growing their sales careers, and I still consider myself one of them, right? I've been doing this only 4 years, is that usually when you walk into the room, if you know your product and your business well, that you're the expert regardless. And you can be sitting with somebody who's incredibly bright, and if you were to go head-to-head on a million different topics, they might just wipe the floor with you. But when it comes to your company, your product, the problems that you solve, your customers, all of those things, if you know your business and research and you feel like you know theirs pretty well, you're able to have a conversation with anybody.

37:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And I just came up with it. The term is, it's the curse of knowledge. It's one of those things where when you know something and it's just easy in your mind because you've, you've done the research and you've steeped yourself in that, you forget that almost everybody else doesn't know that. And so that, that's the value that you bring is the knowledge that you have. And we so often forget that, oh wait, I do know this and they don't. And that puts me in that position to, to help them and to serve them. So, Mike, from an accomplishment perspective, you've done a ton. What are you most proud of?

37:41 Mike McDonough: I think it's truthfully just being a part of, being a part of the team. I'm proud that I've been able to watch this business scale. I'm proud of the fact that I've had at least some impact on, on our growth, however small that is, to see that we're where we are today, that I've been a part of that. But I think I'm also proud of the fact that I was willing to take a huge, on a personal level, a huge risk and see it through, through and to the other end here, to be able to sit here and say, I'm on a podcast for sales success stories. To be honest with you, it's a… it's not only humbling, it's shocking because I never thought I'd be in a situation like this.

38:22 Scott Ingram: That's, that's awesome. Well, and I think that clearly you have the right mindset and I'll kind of call this out for the folks listening. One of the challenges of talking to people who are number one or top 1% and really trying to focus on like quota-carrying individual contributors is, man, I have to strike fast because, you know, before you know it, they move into an RVP role. And so I'd like… but I think it's important for people to understand and sort of think through what is that progression? Where do you want to go in your career? And what I hear from you is, I mean, you care about your team, you care about your people, you care about how they're progressing in their own careers. And those are absolutely the best kinds of managers where it's not all about you and your results. But when you treat it that way, amazingly, you tend to get the, the best results. I've also got an interview coming up. It's a little bit more removed than I would like in terms of how long ago they were a top 1% individual contributor. Not too long, but, but long enough that I, I'm a little bit on the fence about it. But they are now… have raised money and are a startup founder. So I think that's another path that a lot of us don't think about as much. So I'm looking forward to exploring that, and I think it's just really important that we consider and think through where, where do we want to go? What are those career aspirations? How are you advocating for yourself and, and those kinds of things? So, Mike, now let's look at the other side of, of the equation. We talked about what you're most proud of, and, and we've probably touched on some of this stuff, but let's dive a little bit deeper into what's been just the biggest challenge or, or the place when you struggled the most.

40:11 Mike McDonough: If you think about, again, a company that's scaling, resisting change at first, I think I was a part of that where there's so much that goes into going from a company of 30 to 500 people that at first I struggled with not just being a cool startup company that works really hard and hangs out and have some beers after work and we think we're successful and turning into a real business. I didn't really think about my opportunities and kind of the way in which I eventually grew into. It was just more about go to the next meeting to go to the next meeting. And for me to start thinking more about from a strategic level, it took me longer than I'd like to admit to get there. But once that started happening as a salesperson and I started thinking about the account significantly more strategically, started thinking about the real business problems that we were trying to solve and not just clicking on certain things within a demo, uh, really started to change the way that, that, that I sold. But it was certainly a, a challenge for me to kind of take that leap, and I think will continue to be. I think, I think a lot of people, they want to be honest with themselves, when you're in a startup that's growing so fast, things are constantly changing. And if you're not willing to adapt to that change, you're going to be in a, in a tough, tough spot. So I've learned from those kind of early days that adapting to change is crucial, but I wasn't that great at it first. Yeah, yeah.

41:37 Scott Ingram: Well, certainly a startup growing that quickly will, will certainly force that upon you, and you're either going to adapt or you're going to go want to find something a little less, uh, turbulent.

41:48 Mike McDonough: Sure.

41:48 Scott Ingram: So Mike, let's talk about kind of the habits and the routines and the process and, and some of that stuff now. Talk… just walk me through kind of your day. What, what is… what does your morning routine look like? Your alarm goes off when? What happens from there, kind of Sure.

42:04 Mike McDonough: I think it was Benjamin Franklin. Tell me if I'm wrong, Scott, but it was early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, right?

42:11 Scott Ingram: I love that quote.

42:12 Mike McDonough: Yeah. And that's something that I bought into. So I'm… I try to go to bed early. I'm not the best at it sometimes because just because I've got a mind that's always kind of running. So whether it's just trying to relax at night with my wife and read a little bit, anything from professional, whether it's a sales type book or something that I'm just personally interested in, and then get up in the morning, it's early. So I I don't really need to set an alarm at this point. It's oftentimes my daughter's waking me up in the morning pretty bright and early, get her ready. My wife works as a trauma nurse here in Boston. So we're kind of both up early and I'm fortunate enough where my mother takes care of my daughter. So I drop her off and I'm at it. So I'd say 5:00, 5:30 is when my day kind of gets started. From there, sending out emails at this point. It used to be to prospects, potential clients, and now it's more to the guys on my team, or maybe I'm working hand in hand with them on certain opportunities. So just to kind of get the day going. From there, I'm reading… a shameless plug of my product here… but I actually get on my phone and I look at our own product to get our own industry news and understand what's going on within my world and see what my marketing team has put out there, what my product team's put out there, And that's kind of how I get my head around getting my day started. And then throughout the day, I mean, shoot, in my role, things are different. So lots of airplanes and traveling, but I try to stay at least the first few hours of the morning, I think are incredibly important to having a successful day.

43:47 Scott Ingram: And then what about the back end? So what does the evening look like?

43:50 Mike McDonough: Yeah, lots of follow-up, lots of follow-up emails, although what I have found You know, on a personal level, as my wife has asked me when I get home from work, because typically, let's say I'm at the office until 6 o'clock, 5:30, 6 o'clock. I've… I sit in Boston traffic, so I drive. It takes me quite a bit to get home. I'm usually on the phones the whole way, just checking in with my team, how their meetings went, what I can do to help them out, etc. I get home and I put my phone away for an hour, and that's because my boss, my wife, tells me that's what I have to do. And we have dinner together as a family. I think that's actually really important. Important for salespeople because if you just go, go, go all the time, you're going to burn yourself out. I've done that to myself in the past. And then my evening is follow-up emails, whether that's with my team, with meetings that I was in that day where I want to follow up on. And then I'm already looking at tomorrow, right? So what are my meetings tomorrow? Who am I going to be talking with? What preparation do I have to do? Those sorts of things.

44:46 Scott Ingram: Got it. Okay, so it's, it's prep the day before, kind of get that, get that day set. And I think you've got a good boss. That sounds like a really good rule that, you know, at least for that hour, you're 100% with, with the family, phones are away. You're just not being interrupted.

45:00 Mike McDonough: Yeah. I can't say I do that at end of quarter, Scott. I tell her that when it's end of quarter, the phone is on all the time, but there, yeah, I'm pretty good with that rule.

45:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I think we have to sell our significant others on, on how that process works because that is definitely a different kind of time. And then, you know, you, you start the next quarter And hopefully you're taking them out to dinner and thanking them for their part in the process.

45:24 Mike McDonough: Yeah. Being married to sales professionals is not easy.

45:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, I don't imagine being married to a firefighter or a nurse is either easy either.

45:32 Mike McDonough: Um, maybe, you know, it's funny when you talk about transitioning and stress, it's 2 totally different types of stress, 2 totally different types of worlds. So there's sometimes I am more stressed as a salesperson than I was as a firefighter. I know that's hard for some people to believe, but you know, you bang in and bang out as a firefighter, you go to a fire, which I thought was really exciting and fun. To go to a fire or you get a chance to help people. And certainly you're exposed to some things that are pretty tough to do and see. But when you get out of work, you got 2 or 3 days off or whatever it may be. Like, there's no work to do until you go back. With sales, I've… I mean, it never stops, right? It never, ever, ever stops, whether it's educating yourself or preparing or, you know, you hit your number and it's great. You're at zero again. Let's go. And that's a totally different mindset than a firefighter.

46:21 Scott Ingram: So, well, so, I mean, that's a fact. Fascinating, you know, idea, right? The… on one end, you're dealing with literally life and death scenarios. On the other one, we're dealing with sales. And as far as I know, like, basically nobody's died in a sales process, or not related to the sales process, I hope, right? And that's more stressful. How do you deal with that stress?

46:46 Mike McDonough: Sometimes not well. Other times, I think I do do a pretty good job of it. Like anything in life, for me, I spend… I do 2 things at this point in my life, and I probably need to expand a little bit on either a hobby or a release, if you will. But I work, and then I spend time with my family. And my family is my, my ability to relax and get rid of that stress. And, you know, I've got a beautiful 18-month-old daughter. When I walk in and see her, I decompress pretty quickly. And then I got my dog running around, and I'll, I'll play with her and see my wife, who… we got another kid on the way. So for me, that's what grounds me and centers me and allows me to just kind of put some of that stuff away. Uh, but I should be, you know, out there running or mountain biking or doing some of these other things that people do, but I just work and, and spend time with my family.

47:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, having, having been there, that's a particularly tough phase of life to be super balanced in that way. And when you have really young kids, because they, they certainly, uh, dictate some sleep schedules for sure and things of that, of that nature. Now, what about the weekend? Right. We've talked about the week and I can tell that you're still carrying some of this through on the weekend. Like, how are you managing that time and what does work look like, you know, during quote unquote non-working hours?

48:05 Mike McDonough: Yeah, it's important. So for me, and again, being married to a nurse, it has its more advantages than anything. Right. But oftentimes it's odd hours. So she works nights, she works weekends. So there are certain weekends where it's just my daughter and I, to the extent of where my wife's at work, and I don't really have much else to do besides, although I've gotten better at it, just her and I and going throughout our day together. And then to be honest with you, by the end of those days, I'm pretty darn tired. I don't have much time as far as work goes, but it's really great to have that ability, especially as an enterprise sales rep and now as an enterprise sales manager who travels so much to get that time with my daughter, because it goes back to A, the stress question. And, you know, there might be 4 or 5 days where I don't get to see her, and that's… it's really tough. On the weekends, I really try to take Saturdays, um, to just be with family. I love doing yard work. I think that's a big stress reliever. You know, some people think I'm crazy, but I love being out in the yard and doing yard work. And then on Sundays, you can't help but kind of switch into that mode of, hey, what's going to happen? So throughout my career, to go… not to dig into every role, but I actually found Sunday is a great day to prospect when I was an inside salesperson. There are C-level executives that are watching So whether that's just going on LinkedIn and thinking about my Monday while I'm watching, for me, a Patriots game. I don't… you probably have some people here that aren't listening that aren't Patriots fans, but I'd watch that game, gather a bunch of, let's say, 20 contacts at a key account that I'm going after, right? Like, that, that's sometimes… and that's easy to do while you're, while you're watching a game and eating some wings. But I would actually send thoughtful notes to people that I had been prospecting on a Sunday, know what type know where they live in the sense of what city they're in. They're probably on their Twitter feed, have been tweeting about the Pittsburgh Steelers or whatever it is, and send a, a 2 or 3 line note with hopefully some value and saying, hey, something about the game to try to get their interest, right? So that was early days on the inside sales team. And now a lot of the time, I know I'm hopping on a Monday morning flight, I've got my executive pipeline meeting, so I'm, I'm looking at our pipeline and, um, getting ready to, to get my week going. And I just find doing a little bit of work on Sunday sets me up for success for the rest of the week.

50:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's such a good tip. I mean, something I learned from executives I've worked with, right, just sort of looking at and understanding their own work schedules. And it's pretty common, you know, most people at that level are doing work sometime Sunday, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening. And it is just the perfect time to break through and, you know, separate yourself from everyone else. One, it shows your commitment, like, hey, look, I'm in, I'm working too, you know, we're on the same level. And, and you also get to be, I think, a little bit more kind of personal. So not just prospecting but moving deals forward, right?

50:52 Mike McDonough: There's 100%…

50:53 Scott Ingram: you're in meetings wall to wall the whole rest of the week. There's, there's no white space. That Sunday time can be just a, a golden opportunity to, to get through and, and, uh, you know, make a difference. So let's go to the travel, uh, you know, what have, what have you picked up? I'm sure you've learned a little bit since exploding hand lotion and ruined suits. You know, what, what are kind of the, the core tips that that you've got there just to manage the madness that is the road?

51:20 Mike McDonough: Yeah, and it's changed from role to role, but I like to, if I can, leave early in the morning and just be traveling on kind of off hours in general, right? Just because I do a lot of my business over the phone if I can instead of just email, and it's tough to make phone calls on an airplane, right? It's tough. So I mean, to give you an example, I think it was 2 weeks ago I went from Boston to Chicago, Chicago Las Vegas, Las Vegas to San Francisco, San Francisco back to Chicago, Chicago back to Boston. That was in a 4-day period, and it's exhausting. So for me, there's a number of things from a professional level of just managing your time. Like when you're on the airplane, even though sometimes you might want to sleep and you're going across time zones, I think it's really important to just stay awake, keep working. I find that really good time to read, uh, whether that's catching up on email or a book that you're reading. A number of different things while, while on the airplane. But there could be… that's some crucial hours where you can't just not work, right? Um, and then you get… you wind up in a different time zone and you're well rested, which is a bad thing. And I know it's not an exciting thing for most people, but my early days, uh, I would, I would probably go out and whether it was the prospects or my, or my colleagues and stay out and have food and drinks and have some fun late night. I've kind of cut that nonsense out and I actually don't even drink anymore And just focus on when I'm on the road, I'm there to work. And if we're out with clients, great, but kind of cut out the noise and just, you know, be professional and do your job.

52:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's interesting. So let's dig a little bit more into the information diet too. I mean, you've hinted at pieces of this. It sounds like there's a lot of book reading happening. You're getting your industry news from your own solution. You know, what are the books that you're reading? What does, what does that typically look like?

53:01 Mike McDonough: I know I'm trying to think of one that I've just… and I would actually even submit that some of the books that I read are always sales books, but there's other books that I'm reading out there that are like, I think you could flip anything into it. So I'm drawing a blank on one of the books that I read, and I know this is one of the things that was going to come with. But at first, let's say I would read things like The Challenger Sale, right? Just to start off, I didn't know what that was, but I heard a lot about that. I think there's some good stuff in there. I don't necessarily take it as the gospel, but that's one of the first things that I've read. And then, I don't know, I'm drawing a blank on what the most recent books that I've read. I'm sorry, Scott.

53:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no worries. Well, let's, let's do this. I will follow up with you on that and we will just put them into the show notes. So we'll have some, some impactful books that Mike has read with, with links to them. This will be, I believe, episode 47. So if you just go to top1.fm/47, the number 4-7, we'll have all of those, those details in there because I'm with you. Sometimes that is hard to pull off the top of the head, especially when we're doing an early morning interview this morning like we are. So what about… oh, I was going to ask about anything that you're consuming in the car, but I think you said that you're mostly on the phone during your commute, right?

54:15 Mike McDonough: I am. And my wife's told me that I should be listening to… she lists off some podcasts and not necessarily sales podcasts like you have, but a podcast that'll relax me a little bit because I usually come through the front door like I was shot out of a cannon. But yeah, I'm usually working the phones, just calling the guys on my team because we're scattered throughout the country, and I want to know what happened in their meetings and what they need from me and how we can accelerate deals. And yeah, my whole ride home is working with the folks on my team.

54:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. You know, I've used different strategies in my past. I don't have a commute anymore. I've worked from home for the better part of the last, gosh, 7 or 8 years. So making that transition is a little bit different. But I know back in the day when I was commuting, you know, I'd get to a certain point, a certain intersection or a certain store and like, okay, let me change modes. We're going to go from sales podcasts to something a little bit softer just to create a bit of a transition. So maybe something in there to, to try. So, Mike, I mean, you mentioned the Challenger Sale. Is there a particular sales philosophy that you find that you subscribe to?

55:24 Mike McDonough: I would say, if I'm going to be completely honest, no. As far as a specific philosophy. And the reason why I say that is because I'm probably, especially in my role, pretty atypical as far as the people you interview where I'm still frankly figuring a lot of it out. I don't have all the answers. So I'm going through, I certainly believe in having a process and I am a huge proponent of heavy discovery just as one piece of that. And, but like, I don't, and I obviously like the ideas behind, there's a lot of good stuff out there, whether it's, you know, MEDDIC as far as understanding understanding to do deal evaluations and really understanding the metrics and who your buyers are and those sorts of things. But I'm not totally tied into necessarily one philosophy because I think I'm still pretty green, believe it or not, and I'm working through it.

56:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and I'm so glad you said that, right? I think you're in a position where you're calling it out a lot more than most. And to be fair, most of the folks that I've probably interviewed on here have been at this game for quite a bit more time. But I was really struck by when we did the Sales Success Summit here in Austin in May, you know, everybody on that stage was a top 1% performer, some of them having been at that level for decades. And even those folks, you know, like you're never done learning in this game. I mean, talk about change, right? Like just the world of sales evolves, the needs of customers evolve, technology evolves. And I think you, as much as you you can maintain that philosophy and that feeling of, man, I still have a ton more to learn. It's why I do this show, right? You know, I do well. I've been at sales for quite some time. But man, I still feel like there's so much that I don't know and so many ways that I can still continue to improve. So, I love that you called that out. And I think, you know, the best of the best, we're all students of, of sales. I, I would never consider myself a, a sales expert, you know, that I, I can't imagine ever getting to that level, right? I, I just, I'm, I'm a student of sales.

57:36 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's people who listen to your podcast now that I can certainly learn a lot from, right? I, I, um, I think I've just hit the… again, I think I still consider myself a bit raw. There's so much that I can learn and do, and I think that's for somebody, you know, just the the way that my mind works and the way that I, I like to work hard. And it's… I think that's what's… I think it's all about with sales. I think that's why it's so exciting, is it's… there's never a shortage of things to do. There's never a shortage of things to learn. Um, there's so many bright people and resources out there. And just when you think you know something, everything changes and you got to figure it… figure out something new. So I'm, I'm looking forward to it, man. You know, I'm 37 years old, only been in sales for 4+ years or whatever it may be. But I, I think I'm just getting this whole thing started. I'm excited to see where really reaching my potential at some point, but I'm not there yet.

58:25 Scott Ingram: Love it, love it, love it. So how would you describe then your style or, or in your approach?

58:31 Mike McDonough: Yeah, you're thinking more around just how I, how I sell it when I was an individual contributor, because I know that's a big part of this focus here.

58:39 Scott Ingram: Yes.

58:40 Mike McDonough: Okay, so I think having… so like preparation, preparation, preparation all day long, go… going into meeting and just being confident that you know everything you possibly can know about this client and what their pains and challenges are. And obviously from the beginning and to the end of the sales cycle. So for me, our sales cycles can be 6 to 9 months depending on size and industry and plenty of other variables that go into that, right? But my approach is I want to bring a ton of value to the customer. I want to make it about them, not about me. And that's throughout the process. And then I think it's incredibly important You know, there's relationship stuff for sure, but not in the kind of old-fashioned sense of it. But people tend to want to buy stuff from people that they like. I believe that. That's not the only reason, but I think building rapport and trust and relationship with people, especially when you're asking them to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, is important. I think one of the most important things that salespeople don't… well, not all salespeople, but aren't doing well enough is is building out a plan to get something done early and constantly disqualifying champions or clients in general. People are just kind of going along for the ride too much. So for me, when I get to a certain point where I've built up that rapport, I identified the fact that, you know, they do want to, they really do have a project here and hopefully they're leaning in our direction. I want to put together a plan to execute on something even before they've decided they want to go with us, right? Because it's our, it's our job as salespeople to, to help them, uh, get down that road together. So that's just kind of a couple things off the top of my head here that I, that I'm thinking about.

1:00:19 Scott Ingram: I have like 18 follow-up questions now. So let's start with that qualifying conversation and that you were just kind of hinting at. What does that conversation sound like? How are you positioning that and at what stage?

1:00:33 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I mean, I think it's almost constant, right? Because you want to see if what they told you before, even if it was a month ago, is still the same thing. And then if things have changed and evolved in the business where what they told you wasn't true is no longer as much as a priority as it was before, those sorts of things. So I think qualifying a champion or qualifying an opportunity is something that could… it's an ongoing process to make sure that you're hitting the mark and that you haven't been deprioritized, but you're still kind of just going through this thing with them. You know, as far as just specific questions, I think for me, if you know enough about their business and you know enough about your own business, it doesn't have to be, hey, I've got 10 questions and I want to check off these boxes. I think that's a really bad place to be in. I think it's part of a larger flowing conversation. And when you get into a meeting, well, well before you get in there, you want to have an idea of, you know, I want to have these goals, I want to get these questions answered, but I really don't want the person feeling as if that they're being interrogated, right? So it, it's, it's a bit of an art form. It's something I continue to work on, and I don't always succeed at, but that's kind of my, my thought process.

1:01:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great stuff. And then going back to… I mean, you kind of opened the door when, when you qualified my, my previous question about kind of your style as, as an individual contributor. What is your style as now an RVP?

1:01:59 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I think Uh, you know, I, I'm, I'm lucky enough… so there's somebody that's, that's a mentor of mine that I didn't… I haven't even mentioned, but my, uh, my older brother's been a VP of sales for quite some time, so I, I've leaned on him a bit. Um, so it's a nice resource to have in my back pocket. But so one of the first things he told me is don't hire jerks, and I think that's really important. Like, you can have somebody that has this fantastic resume and a great skill set and could be even a great individual contributor. Uh, I think you have to be really really exceptional. If you're a jerk to, you know, you're hitting 300%, 400% of your number or something, then it's tough to argue with those results, right? But for me, I think it's important that to build a team, it really is that… it's a team. So I want to have people that are hardworking, ambitious, motivated individuals that their end goal isn't just to be a sales rep on my team. They want to get somewhere else, and I want to help them get there. And if I can help them get there, they're going to be successful. That's the way I think about it. I, I like a nice mix of people that have experienced as well as people that are just dying for a chance because they think they can do it. You can't have all brand new sales reps that need coaching and training from the get-go, but I think having that, that mix really helps people to challenge each other within the team. And then I really care about my team. I think it's important to care about them. I spend more time with them than I do my own family, and I genuinely care about them as human beings and getting them to where they want to be and helping them reach not only the professional goals but their personal goals. And connecting with them is incredibly important to me.

1:03:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, such, such good stuff. So, so the no jerks thing reminds me of actually one of the stories that I wrote for the book project is about the title of the chapter is something like Getting It Done and Doing It Right. And it's about sales culture and some stuff that I learned from one of the best sales leaders I've ever worked with. So I know you already have access to that. So you may want to go in and, and read that story. I think you'll, you'll get some value out of that. What advice, though, would you have for somebody? Because I have to imagine there's somebody listening to this show, they're doing well, they've been in this individual contributor role for a while, they're thinking about going into and taking on an RVP type of role. What advice would you give them? What can they do now to… I don't know, whatever advice you want to impart, whatever you think would be most valuable to that individual.

1:04:25 Mike McDonough: Yeah, for sure. So I think there's a couple pieces. So one, if again, if you're not advocating for yourself, and I don't mean this as in, hey, I deserve I don't think anyone really deserves anything. I think you earn stuff in life, but I think it is your job to let the people that you're working for, especially if you're successful and you're bringing in revenue for the company, that you want to progress your career and you want to talk to them about the reasons why and those sorts of things. You can't wait for somebody to come to you and say, hey, you know, we've got this opening, are you interested? Like that, you're never going to get to where you want to be, in my opinion. You really want to let the right people know that you're trying to get somewhere and hopefully they're they're investing enough time and energy in you where they're, they're having those conversations. But you, you can't wait for that to happen. Um, and if there's an individual contributor out there that's kind of on the fence, I mean, there's unique challenges in it, right? When you're, when you're out there carrying a bag, closing deals, and you get good at it, there's comfort in it to an extent where you're like, hey, as long as I have a pretty good territory here, I've got this install base where I can do some upsells, and I've got a bunch of, you know, net new accounts that I can go I know how to close deals. I work for a good company. We've got a good product. I'm going to hit my number, right? And there's comfort in that, right? If you have that level of confidence in yourself. Now, when you go to manage a team, it's a bit different, obviously, because now you're managing kind of a portfolio of folks and their own numbers and trying to help them hit their numbers. And it has its own unique challenges. And there's certain things that aren't in your control. But once you move into this role, I think the hardest thing for me at first that I'm… again, I'm still learning so much is that I couldn't be a rep anymore. I had to be a manager and I had to work with them and help quarterback the team, but I couldn't quarterback the deals anymore. And that's, that's a really hard thing from somebody that enjoyed selling as an individual contributor to step back and realize, hey, you're not the salesperson anymore, dude.

1:06:20 Scott Ingram: So, so much good stuff. That's, that's awesome. So I'm done teasing it. Let's talk about kind of the sales process stuff. Like where, where have you landed? What, what's… if there is such thing as a typical approach and an SOP that you're bringing to your deals? What is that looking like? Or where did you find the most success from a process-wise as you kind of finished your time as an individual contributor?

1:06:47 Mike McDonough: Yeah, and again, most of that is through failure. So understanding early, you know, again, goes back to having good mentors. A lot of… a gentleman that's still a mentor of mine here at Seismic, Seismic. He told me, you know, it's okay to get to the nos. You want to get to the nos as quick as possible, push through them to find the yeses. So that was like foundational stuff for me to learn. And get, you know, there's comfort in pipeline, right? So, but getting through that stuff and disqualifying folks. And so for me, working through a sales cycle in a process is, is that again, it's constant qualification, which I've already kind of touched upon. It's getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders and getting sponsorship from, you know, an executive team throughout the process. And it's funny, I think a lot of us as salespeople sometimes don't want to ask tough questions. I'm not sure why, but like the tough questions throughout the sales process is really important because you don't want to just be spinning your tires and you don't want to be wasting people's time. And it's constantly about bringing value to the prospect, whether that's their own personal stuff, the goals that they're trying to achieve, you know, hopefully the larger company goals that we're trying to achieve with them. So that's kind of how I think about it. I don't necessarily have like a perfect process that I work through, but throughout that process, it's constant qualification. It's working with a champion. And I think what I've learned recently is qualifying that champion and seeing if they're ready to engage with you on the level that you want them to. And if they're not, they're not truly a champion. I hear some people saying they have a champion just because it's a point of contact in the sales cycle. That, well, that's not your champion. So working through that and then getting people to get to a point where they want to engage with you, not just on your terms, but into your process based upon the value you bring to them, if that kind of makes sense. Like, hey, this is how I'd like to go about working this deal with you. But the reasons I want to do this is because you're going to get A, B, C, D, E out of it and having checkpoints and having… I don't want to give away too much here, but having on calendar, as silly as this sounds, but whether that's weekly or biweekly cadences of calls with either the person or hopefully multiple people that you're working an opportunity with, that's set up throughout the process. And I think lastly is not going into a meeting running through, you know, whatever it is, whether it's a demo, whether you're doing a whiteboarding session with them, whatever the kind of the agenda is for the meeting, is not all of a sudden at the end try to get next steps with 30 seconds to go. I think what you should do is predetermine next steps before you even walk into the building. And if we do A, B, and C, then this is where we're going, you know, next week, uh, and ideally Tuesday at 9 AM next week. That's not always the case, but that's kind of how I think about things.

1:09:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so, so much great stuff in, in that. I love that. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about… I mean, you're, you're doing a lot of good hard work. What motivates all of this, and how do you think about motivation in general for yourself?

1:09:59 Mike McDonough: Yeah, so for myself, there's so much. So for me, it's again starts with my family. That's literally all the motivation I need, uh, is my wife and my daughter and my soon-to-be second daughter. That gets me up in the morning, that the reason I want to rush home at night, uh, that's, you know, I don't… I'm not a person that you're not going to see me driving a Maserati I could have bought a bigger home than I did. Those things don't… have never really mattered to me. And again, coming from the fire service, I didn't necessarily have a lot of money. I'm not saying I'm super wealthy now, but there's definitely a pay difference from the fire service and enterprise sales, right? I'm motivated by money just because I really… I spent so much time without it. But it's not for those kind of materialistic reasons. I would also say, you know, for me, I think as a salesperson, there's a lot of weight and responsibility that comes with being a sales rep. But I, and, and I mean that as far as the peers that I work with. So at my company, I'm fortunate enough, I've been here for, for, you know, 4 years in the startup game. It's like an eternity, right? So I've been blessed to meet so many wonderful people that aren't in the sales team. And I think about them throughout the year. And what I mean by that is if I'm not executing, if my team's not executing, we're not closing deals. You can have people that are exceptional at their jobs, but they can't affect revenue. And if they're not the one out there closing deals, or let's say that's what I'm tasked with and we're not doing it, it can impact their ability to get promoted, their ability to scale their team, their ability to keep a job. I take that really seriously. So for me, my job is to execute and close deals. Now my team's job is to do that so I can ensure that the great people that I'm working with, you know, whether it's customer success, getting new customers, whether it's the product team wanting to build that out, whatever it is, it all starts with revenue. And if we're not doing what we're supposed to do, kind of shame on us.

1:11:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man, you're, you're on a roll. We, we got to keep going. So is there something you believe that the average salesperson would think is crazy?

1:12:00 Mike McDonough: Loaded question, Scott. I think I'm a little, I'm a little different in general just because I have such an untraditional background. But I, I can certainly… I don't want to necessarily give any examples, but I could certainly say and do things that are a little non-traditional in during my sales cycles with product prospects. I'm not talking inappropriate, right? But I think just my approach in general, I like to have fun with… I like to make people laugh a bit or disarm them a bit. And there's, there's a method to my madness. I think sometimes people on the outside look at that and think maybe I'm a bit crazy, but I think there's power in disarming a room in the sense of going back to our original conversation. You can't just joke and be the relationship guy by any stretch of the imagination. But when you walk in a room and it feels a little bit tight and you feel, I mean, reading a room is crucial to being a sales individual. Sometimes disarming that room or getting everyone to realize, hey, we're all just human beings and whatever you want to do or say to kind of achieve that. There's a whole spectrum of probably I've done from very just kind of what most people do to maybe say or do things or have a slide that makes people kind of like, wait, who's this guy? What he's doing? I think sometimes it's helpful. And I don't know if that's kind of just off the top of my head where I'm coming from with that.

1:13:16 Scott Ingram: I love that. Is there, is there a particularly out-there story or, or maybe you want to tell us about one of those slides? Like, what does that look like in practice?

1:13:27 Mike McDonough: I don't know. You know, like, it's, it's just to me at more of a high level, like, it's, it's often situational. So like coming into it now, you could have… I don't have sort of an example of a slide that I've used. But, you know, because that would be a little more premeditated and it's people that you're very comfortable with that you can then do something like that, right? You can't really predict the unpredictable there, I guess. But when you're just in a room in general, I think for salespeople, sometimes you walk in and it's stuffy or you're looking around and it's like, hey, people are looking at their phones, they're not really engaged. Are you just going to go to your next slide and just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Are you just going to click on the next thing as a sales engineer to talk through it, or are you going you're gonna say something, whatever that may be, that's going to kind of get the room just like, wait, what did he just say? You know, and I, again, I've learned that from, from a mentor. Like, you have to be, you have to be interesting to people to keep their attention. And sometimes it's all business value and boom, boom, boom, and people love that. Other times you got to bring a little bit of a sense of humor and a little bit of authentic, you know, be a bit authentic to get people to, to listen to you. Because if you're in a competitive situation where other people have come in and they've sat through 3 or 4 or 5 demos. And, um, you know, that you might have just drawn the short straw and you're the last one to come in and they're hungry or cranky and they haven't had their Snickers bar today. And you just gotta, you gotta do something to cut through the noise and get them to listen to you.

1:14:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's great stuff. And I think, you know, the, my takeaway from that is, you know, it's, it's okay to be human. You know, we don't have to be robotic or quote unquote professional, you know, all the, all the time. And I think the key I think the key word that you said was just the authentic piece, right? Like, I think we, we can't be afraid to be ourselves and whatever that is. And that might be very different. And I think that's in this instance kind of where the crazy comes about is, you know, what is very natural and comfortable for you because of who you are and your background might be absolutely crazy for somebody else. But then same thing for them. Like, they could do something that would be very true to them that you or I would look at and go, there's no way.

1:15:32 Mike McDonough: Right. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And I think I say to my team all the time, like, coming from where I came from, and listen, there's days at the firehouse that are pretty slow, right? I didn't have fires every day, but it's the idea of, hey guys, we're just… I don't want to say just selling software because there's so much more to that and I don't want to minimize it. But at the end of the day, like, take a deep breath, have some fun with this stuff. We're not saving lives. You're not ripping a car apart with the jaws of life at 2 o'clock in the morning. You're not doing a bunch of other things that, you know, like my wife, for instance, being a trauma nurse. Like, we're here selling software and it's okay. Okay to let yourself come out and, and be, be interesting to people.

1:16:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. And, and there's humans on the other end of the equation too, right? We can't forget about that. Like, I've never closed business with a company, right? Somebody, a human, has signed that contract, right?

1:16:20 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I think that gets lost on people sometimes.

1:16:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what about the flip side? Is there something that the average seller, like not at the top, believes that you think is crazy?

1:16:34 Mike McDonough: So something the average seller believes that I think is crazy. Yeah. So I think from like a, from an enterprise sales role that, and I know there's so many different models and I've only really been exposed to ours, but from an enterprise sales role that somehow I've seen this as people, you know, that pipeline is something that's built by your lead generation team and just like you get and then you run with. And there's a lot of people that maybe it's just from the culture they came from or the companies came from, like that's it. That's insanity to me. Or to me, like your pipeline is something that you own. You have to know every accountant in your territory. You have to be actively working and coaching and mentoring your inside sales, lead generation folks. You have to be having events, working with your marketing team. Like you own it as your own book of business. And if… and I've just seen people just thinking like, yeah, well, I'm just gonna sit back And once I get some leads and opportunities, I'm gonna run with it. And like, to me, that's the definition of insanity. I don't even know how people operate that way.

1:17:34 Scott Ingram: That is a great one. So is there… I think we're about ready to wrap up. I've got a few more questions, but I just want to ask sort of an open-ended: Is there a story or an example or something or some point that you were hoping to share and get across today that we haven't already covered? Covered?

1:17:52 Mike McDonough: I don't think so, outside of the fact that just keep learning to everybody, right? Like, I think that's kind of the message that I have for everyone. So I think we've covered that quite a bit. And yeah, I don't think I have anything in particular.

1:18:03 Scott Ingram: Cool. So along those lines, it's a perfect transition. Thank you for that. What would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations?

1:18:12 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I would… everything, the short answer, uh, just to understand how they go about their day-to-day. I think there's so many nuances to sales, and some of them are, you know, industry or product specific or what have you, but I think there's repeatable behavior across multiple organizations. So just trying to understand what their day-to-day is, like where I could find efficiency gains, what tools are they using that they've been really successful with, their own process, their own techniques, their own, um, like literally everything that top sellers are doing is, uh, stuff that I want to hear Because especially those folks that are on the cutting edge, and that doesn't mean brand new salespeople. I mean people that are constantly evolving because what I think is a good idea today might be terrible tomorrow. So my short answer is everything, everything they're up to. I want to hear.

1:18:59 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Well, and I guess I didn't ask about kind of tools and apps, and I typically do. Are there particular tools that you have found to be particularly helpful in the way that you've gone about things?

1:19:11 Mike McDonough: Yeah. So another shameless plug for the company I work for. But yes, and I 100% mean it, is using a sales enabling tool like Seismic is incredibly important for you to be successful as a salesperson in today's age. I don't want to go into the pitch, I promise, but…

1:19:25 Scott Ingram: No, do. I think, I think that's totally relevant here. So what, what is it about that? Like, what, what is… without the pitch, let's talk about how you use it in your day-to-day life when you were in an enterprise sales role.

1:19:38 Mike McDonough: Yeah, absolutely. So the idea of not having to look for content and having it served up to me is Especially for a new rep that doesn't know, right? That's really important to have the content I need. The idea that I don't have to put together a slide deck by, you know, going on my desktop and looking for 5 or 6 different ones I used in the past, copy and paste it, do all that stuff that sales reps, you hear a million times that I hear every day. Luckily, I've never had to deal with any of those pains because it's the first company I've worked at and I've used it the whole time, right? But, and then automating things like QBRs is incredibly important where like, I don't want to have to spend all that time. Automation, a lot of different documentation is crucial for me as an enterprise salesperson. And then other levels of collaboration. I'm sure most of your listeners and people that get on the phone with you or in these interviews, you have to get a lot of people involved. So the ability to collaborate with other, whether it's your sales engineer, your product marketing folks, etc., all of those things are crucial. And technology is not the answer to all of it, but it's certainly important. Piece.

1:20:39 Scott Ingram: So excellent. And beyond Seismic, like what other tools, apps, and anything else that have helped you in kind of your own efforts to be more efficient?

1:20:50 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I mean, the obvious ones, right? Like CRM for sure. I think any sort of sales readiness training tools, whether that's the BrainSharks, the MindTickles of the world. I know a lot of sales reps are like, I don't want to have to do that. But if you really want to be honest with yourself, and get better. Those things are important. And, you know, we're starting to look at some additional tools for my team right now, just on the ability to record some of the calls that I can't be on with our Insights sales team so we can have handoffs successfully. And it takes you… there's AI machine learning that takes you to some pretty cool places to understand when they talk about pricing. So that's more of a sales manager to be able to review calls and stuff. There's a lot, but I think there's also the important… there's an important thing where I talk to companies all the time and their sales, their sales teams are inundated with like 15 sales tools and that's too much. So I think you really need to pick your spots and understand these are the 3 or 4 or whatever it may be tools and how do they all integrate and work together so that I'm being as productive as possible as a salesperson.

1:21:48 Scott Ingram: And so here's where I'll ask, sort of looking across your team, for you, what are those spots, right? If you had to narrow it down and you could only pick 3 things given your business, what are those and why?

1:22:02 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I mean, the idea, right, was we want everyone in Salesforce. For us, it's Salesforce, whatever your CRM that you might be using, email, and for us, Seismic. Like having those 3 things together and understanding because they all work together perfectly. That's an important piece of it as a sales tool. And then there's incredible value in the obvious, you know, like a LinkedIn Navigator. That's really important to not just attack your accounts, but understand share connections where there's, you know, investor connections, board connections, all that fun stuff. I think, uh, for my team, LinkedIn Navigator has been a very helpful tool.

1:22:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great stuff. So who is the most successful salesperson you know personally?

1:22:47 Mike McDonough: Yeah, I mean, personally, it's… there's a couple of them. So most of my exposure at Uh, has been through Seismic. So there's a gentleman, George Snook, on my team who's… I… he's an individual contributor, but I also consider a mentor, and I've learned an incredible amount from him. As I mentioned, my older brother. There's also a, uh… I don't like to give him too much credit because his head gets too big, but there's a gentleman, gentleman Miles Kane, who's a friend of mine I've known for a long time. He's out on the West Coast. He works for a company called Drift now. He just went over there, who's a fantastic salesperson that I've picked his and learn, learn quite a bit from as well.

1:23:26 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Fantastic. Mike, this has been really, really a great, great conversation. I've enjoyed it a ton. I hope the folks listening to this have gotten as much out of it as I have. And the way we try and sort of summarize this is, you know, talk is good, but action is better, right? So if we were to kind of summarize this and boil this all down and you were to create a challenge for the person listening to this, something they can do over the course of, say, the next week or the next 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results, what would you suggest you do? What would you challenge them to do?

1:24:00 Mike McDonough: I would challenge them, and I guess it depends on the individual, but some of the things that we discussed here today, like, like the simple foundational steps… go to bed at a decent hour, wake up early in the morning, get at it, work hard, don't waste time. Time is… it's either on your side or or it's not. So I think getting up in the morning, and, and if you feel like it's 8:30 in the morning and I've already got a lot done, you've had a really good day. And then try to do that the next day and the next day and the next day. And, and those sorts of little wins lead up to the big wins. So that… if, if you're not doing that, I hope everybody is. If you're not, that would be my biggest challenge to you. If, if you're not getting up early and attacking the day, uh, and being proactive and just waiting for everything to come to you, And you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing as a salesperson.

1:24:46 Scott Ingram: That's a great one. I'm a subscriber. So before we wrap up here, if you are listening to this in the first few days after we release the episode on July 17th, we are almost done with the crowdfunding campaign for the book that runs through this Friday, July 20th. So if you're not already familiar with that book, it will be called appropriately enough Sales Success Stories and includes written stories from over 20 of the guests you've heard me interview here on the podcast. Podcast, including Mike McDonough, who's agreed to contribute some of his own stories. So we'll be publishing that book in October, and it'll be available in every format you would want. So it'll be ebook, paperback book, and since this is a podcast, of course, we're going to have an audiobook. And you can pre-purchase the book and support that effort by going to top1.fm/book. And if you happen to be listening to this after July 20th, no problem. You can still go to top1.fm/book, and I'll just have that redirected to a more relevant location. Depending on, again, kind of where in the where in the space and time continuum you happen to be listening to this. So thank you so much for your support. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned next week for another sample story from the coming Sales Success Stories book. And thank you again, Mike, for joining me today.

1:26:05 Mike McDonough: Thank you, Scott. Appreciate your time. 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.