60: Nate Branscome - Chili Piper's Top AE - Prioritizing Values & Providing Value

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.

0:18 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Nate Branscome. Nate is the top account executive at Chili Piper out of Denver, Colorado. Welcome to the show, Nate.

0:34 Nate Branscome: Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you having me on.

0:36 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Really glad to have you here. Now, I'm going to go out on a super scary limb here and say that this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the brand new Daily Sales Tips podcast. As I'm recording this, that show doesn't even exist yet. So nothing like a little public social pressure to ensure that I actually deliver on this. So to learn a bit more, we'll talk about it more in a little bit here, but if you visit dailysalestips.com, dot tips, you can get the details. All right, Nate, let's jump right into this. Talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed most to your success in sales.

1:10 Nate Branscome: Sure. So, I mean, I think the first thing is something called essentially the growth equation. So we have a required reading at Chili Piper. When you start, you get a list of, you know, a couple books that they want you to read, and one's called Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg. But he pretty much outlines the growth equation and how you can essentially apply it to not only professional life, but really anything in life. I mean, what the equation is, is essentially stress plus rest equals growth. So very similarly to like if you're at the gym lifting weights to achieve that muscle growth, you know, you need to stress the muscle, but where you actually get the growth is when you rest and, you know, relax it. So it's kind of going into, you know, applying that to your professional life as well and pretty much everything in that you need to push yourself, you know, past your comfort zone, but also make sure you have that time to rest and recover and grow. 'Cause if you keep going nonstop, you know, you're eventually gonna burn out and you're not gonna be able to, you know, do that consistently. So what I kind of took out of that is, you know, not only taking, I think you need to take like vacations after periods of rough work, for example, like end of quarter, end of year. I know we're talking between, you know, Christmas and New Year's. So this is probably a prime time for someone to take some time off, but also on the daily. I mean, if you have a busy morning, back-to-back meetings, maybe like 10 minutes of meditation kind of midday. So I actually use, I try to use Headspace's app, which is kind of a, just an app on your phone to make it really easy to meditate, but essentially just taking a break midday to kind of reset and allow you to, you know, essentially keep going, but at a more reasonable rate. So this is how I personally, you know, prevent burnout kind of with the daily grind, but also in the long term. I mean, it allows you to really keep yourself happy and motivated so you can take breaks, you know, doing the things you love. So, you know, hanging out with your family. I have dogs, a fiancée. I like snowboarding. I like going on vacations and traveling. So It kind of also reminds me why I'm working so hard and keeps me motivated to continue doing so while also giving me the time to recover and grow.

2:59 Scott Ingram: Nice. So a couple of… I don't want to interrupt the flow on the top 3 here too much, but I've got a couple of quick questions. So what else is on that reading list as you guys come on board there? Oh, and we'll link all those up at top1.fm.

3:11 Nate Branscome: Sure. So we have The Way of the Wolf as well, which is a great book that kind of goes more into the technique of actual sales. I'm sure a lot of the sales professionals listening to this are pretty familiar with it. Where this Peak Performance book is a lot more geared to kind of your, you know, work-life balance and balancing your professional life. Those are the 2 that we basically have off the bat, so we get those before we even start, so we try to knock those out early. To be honest, we have a bunch of different readings that kind of rotate depending on what makes sense. Another big one is Never Split the Difference, which is one of my, you know, one of my honestly favorite books. So I'd recommend that to anyone that hasn't hasn't read it, but essentially it goes into, you know, a hostage negotiator kind of explaining how they do negotiations and how that can apply to, you know, business life as well. So the books do kind of rotate, but those are the top 3 that, you know, we focus on when someone initially starts at Chili Piper.

4:04 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then I think the rest phase of the growth equation that you described makes sense, right? That's pretty self-explanatory. How do you think about the stress phase? Like, what are you doing in that phase?

4:15 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just, it can really apply to, or I guess it can really be a bunch of different things. But for me, like for example, when I started, I mean, I was essentially working my ass off in that I wanted to ramp as quickly as possible. So, you know, you might be working 12-hour days, you might be working nights and weekends, which is totally fine, but I don't think it's completely sustainable. So with the rest piece of it, I think it's saying, hey, it's okay to really grind and push that out. And I think that's what a lot of sales professionals are talking about today is you need to be go, go, go, you need to work long hours to be successful. So I think it kind of goes into that in that, yeah, you can push yourself, but just make sure that you're also, you know, having that recovery time. If you're working, you know, a week of 12-hour days, you know, maybe take a half day Friday and kind of do something that you love or spend time with your family so you can kind of reset. And that way when it comes, you know, Monday, you can, you know, go right back to it.

5:03 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now what was your second point?

5:04 Nate Branscome: So the second point is essentially providing value quickly, constantly, and concisely. So I guess to kind of dive into that, obviously both, you know, your time and your prospect's time is super valuable. So what I try to do on calls is basically provide as much value as soon as possible, but also try to be concise as possible. So I think being like direct and specific about the value that you can bring to that specific person at that specific company in that specific role, and, you know, the results they can expect to see will help build, you know, immediate trust. And not only that, but allows you to essentially earn the right to, for more discovery questions. And then the answers to those discovery questions, you can obviously, you know, continue to build value off of. And I think with just being concise, I mean, you're essentially respecting their time and a lot of prospects are very respectful of that. They're like, hey, this guy's not trying to waste my time. He's getting straight to the point. This is how he can help. You know, I'm gonna be a little bit more responsive to discovery questions. Whereas, you know, if you're asking 50 discovery questions off the bat, which I see in a lot of calls, I feel like it kind of turns off that prospect. And they're like, hey, you haven't really provided value. Why are you asking me so many questions? You haven't really earned the right to do that yet. And another benefit is, you know, if it's a bad fit, you're gonna find out really quickly and you're gonna save both your time from being wasted. So I usually try to disqualify a prospect within the first 5 or 10 minutes of a call, and I have no problem telling them it's a bad fit so that way I can spend more time on realistic deals. Another specific tip, I guess, for specifically emails or demo follow-ups that I found useful in providing this value immediately is just using screenshots or GIFs that kind of provide value. So maybe you use Vidyard to kind of create a GIF or video on their actual website showing them the value you can provide. I think that's kind of a specific tip on how you can apply that for cold email outreach, for example.

6:51 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And let's talk more, but let's save it for later. I want to talk about more about kind of what the value can be specifically, because I think that topic can be really nebulous. So I'd like to dig into that in a little bit more detail. Before we go there, let's talk about your third point.

7:05 Nate Branscome: Yeah. And I think the, so the third point is build consensus. And I know I switched this up on you kind of last second, but as I was thinking more and more about it, I think that's something that really got me to where I was and that not a ton of sales reps are doing. You know, perfectly today. So I think it's a good area of improvement. But to dive into that, I mean, like, very rarely do we have a first call where that initial person is ready to pull the trigger, or the, you know, the initial group of people you're talking to. I mean, whether your prospect admits it or not, I mean, there's going to be other stakeholders in most cases, even if it's just for, you know, a budget approval or something like that. So I think just making sure you're building enough of that value and rapport on the initial call will essentially allow you to get that buy-in from the initial stakeholder which should in turn earn you the right to ask more about who needs to be involved, you know, how are they gonna be involved and talk about, you know, how you can work together to get them on board. So, you know, for example, if someone, you know, if 3 other people need to see the demo, you know, you could say, hey, perfect, you know, do you have access to their calendars? Let's get a time when all 5 of us can hop on a call, you know, walk through this in more detail, talk about the value we can provide and get consensus on if it makes sense to move forward or not. And if you did your job well and they see the value, you know, they're going to be happy to loop in their team and kind of share that with them. Hey, I did this work and this is what we can do with this company. The other benefit is you also get the opportunity to set that expectation. Like, hey, we already did all this discovery. Let's get everyone we need on the next call and then you'll have everything you need to make the decision. So I think that really helps out with like shortening the sales cycle as well as building momentum, which I think is huge in sales, but it also avoids you having to have multiple calls with each new stakeholder, you know, as the deal goes on. And what's cool about that is when you have everyone on the call, I mean, I'll often see the initial stakeholder like pitching our solution to their team, which is obviously something that a sales rep loves to hear. You know, hey, we can use Chili Piper this way to improve these processes and see these results. And you're almost setting up the call as, you know, hey, you're on board. Let's, let's work together to get these other stakeholders on board.

9:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Great, great stuff. I mean, I think that, I mean, really you're just running a very tight sales process by adopting that and you're leading what that is, right? You're, you're just asking, hey, who else needs to be involved in this? Your next step is built in, like, okay, when, when are we going to do that? Let's keep this moving. So I think you keep a lot of things from being left to chance, right?

9:22 Nate Branscome: Yeah, exactly.

9:22 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So you sent me another point and you mentioned you kind of switched things out and I think it's worthy of talking about. So what was your original point number 3?

9:31 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I was kind of teetering on a few of them, but the original point number 3 was essentially being self-taught. So obviously reps, you know, in most companies are getting feedback from their manager or their peers, you know, which is obviously going to help them get better. But I think it's also really important to, you know, help yourself and take ownership of, you know, teaching yourself. So one example of this and something I do and that I've improved a lot doing is just listening to a recorded call, even, you know, maybe once a week. And I'll go through that call and listen through it and maybe just find, you know, 3 things I want to improve within the next week. I'll write them down on a sticky note and I'll put the sticky note on my laptop. So I literally see it on every call and throughout the calls that week, I'm not gonna try to, you know, overhaul 10 or 20 different things that I need to fix. I'm just gonna focus on those 3 things. Then the next week comes, listen to the same recorded call, kind of judge yourself. Hey, did I… am I where I want to be for these 3 points? If not, maybe give it another week and keep working on it. If so, you know, swap them out for kind of new things on that call. I mean, that's the way I've really been able to improve myself, especially being remote. So I'm not, you know, I'm definitely getting feedback from my team, but I'm not surrounded by a team where I'm hearing, you know, different messaging. And, you know, when I hop off a call, I'm not getting direct feedback from someone that was sitting next to me. So that's a way I can kind of take ownership of, you know, teaching myself and building my sales skills.

10:51 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, and that is a big part of the reason for this, this new idea that I had. And those who know me, when I have these ideas, I tend to execute very quickly if I think it's valid and I validate it with enough kind of friends and fans of the show that I feel like this is legit. So this whole idea of the Daily Sales Tips podcast, this show is so deep dive, right? I mean, I used to say that the average episode was 75 minutes. I've been shooting way past that lately, right? We're trending much closer to 90 minutes. And I feel like that's… it's such a commitment. And that's great. And thank you for listening to this and taking the time. I just I can't thank you enough for that level of commitment. At the same time, I want to make some of this information more accessible. And initially my thought was, you know, I'd been capturing all of these clips and quotes and putting them on YouTube and got out of the habit because it was insanely time-consuming. But I'm in the process right now of hiring a full-time virtual assistant and just to put some of those things back in place. And I thought about what if I did just a short daily podcast where we featured one of those tips and a little bit of commentary and just made something that was much more snackable and accessible without having to make that 90-minute commitment. And then the vision grew. And then I thought, you know what, this shouldn't only be clips from the Sales Success Podcast. I think this can become a discovery platform to help people develop themselves. And that'll actually be the first tip that I share on that new show is just this idea of you have to own your own development. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Sales has gotten to a place where, because there's no guarantee on either side of the equation, people aren't going to make a giant investment in your training and really commit to making you better. You have to be the one to own that, and you have to go find the resources and the content and the mentors and all of those things. So hopefully I'm able to deliver that to you in this show and through these conversations, but there's a lot of other really great stuff out there, and I want to expose people to those opportunities, those books, those events, those webinars, all of that different type of stuff. So that's really what the show is going to be. I'm going to set it up so that it is literally 5 to 10 minutes every day and not more than an hour a week. So if you only check in once a week, you will be able to binge through the whole thing in less than an hour. So like I said at the top, I am putting myself out on a giant limb and committing that this thing will actually exist by the time this show releases on, I believe it's January 22nd. So if you go to dailysales.tips Or hopefully, and sometimes the searchability lags a little bit, but you should be able to go into your podcast player right now, type in Daily Sales Tips, subscribe, and go, go check that out and share that with your friends. I'm really excited about what that has the possibility to be. All right. That was the longest self-promotional thing I've ever done on this show. So with that, Nate, talk about, just give us the context here. Talk about your role, how you got to number 1. I know it's been a real short period of time and also give us the context of Chili Piper.

14:10 Nate Branscome: Sure. Yeah. So I'm an account executive at Chili Piper, as mentioned, though we are a pretty early stage startup. So I do wear a lot of hats as well. So I'm not strictly just doing selling. I help a lot with like the outbound prospecting process and things of that nature. If you're not familiar with Chili Piper, we're essentially a software platform that integrates into your existing web forms to allow qualified leads to either initiate a live call or book a meeting directly from the form with the appropriate rep. So Essentially, we're focusing on increasing inbound conversion, you know, meeting completion rates, and essentially just eliminating the manual back and forth of scheduling that, you know, every sales rep that's probably listening to this, you know, hates doing. I'm pretty new there, so I started in July, so I think it's been about 6 to 7 months or so. I actually came on as an SMB rep, and now I do more of the enterprise, you know, and strategic accounts. So kind of moved up the chain there pretty quickly, which, you know, is a great benefit of working for a startup is there's a, you know, there's a ton of room to grow. As far as how I actually, you know, got to number 1, I mean, the biggest thing, and obviously this is fresh in my mind since I'm pretty new to the role, is just adaptability to change. And with that, you know, just really hitting the ground running. So, you know, I started doing my own calls, running my own calls the second week I started. And the first week I started was July 4th week. So we did have, you know, some holidays there as well, but I just made sure to like really study the product and the pitch before I started, you know, I was working nights. Essentially my goal was just to ramp as quickly as possible because, you know, when you're ramping, you're not making as much money essentially. So if I can get ramped, you know, as quickly as possible, you know, I'm gonna be successful as quickly as possible. So, and, you know, props to Chili Piper as well, 'cause they really trusted me with, you know, taking calls on the second week. At the time I was the second AE, so I was essentially the second source of revenue for, you know, new business. So just getting that trust from the team was really, you know, a great first impression for me as well. But I was at a point where I was getting, you know, 6 to 10 calls a day within my first month. So, you know, I kind of got thrown to the wolves, but at the same time, you know, I might be doing 25, 30, 40 calls a day or a week, not a day. And at the end of the week, you know, it's a complete night and day difference. After you do that many calls, you pick it up really quickly and there's no better way I could have learned it other than to just practice. And our enterprise rep actually ended up moving to another position. So, you know, to kind of piggyback off that, you know, our CEO Nicholas said, hey, you, you pick things up like super fast. You're already seeing success within your first couple of months. Let's just move you to enterprise and then we'll backfill your, your spot instead. So everything worked out really well. And I think that's, you know, kind of the biggest contributor to where I am today.

16:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So we're going to circle back and as we talk about your results and things like that, I want to talk about, and the reason I thought it would be really interesting to have you on the show is just getting the perspective of somebody that that is in a very early stage startup and what that looks like and what that feels like. Before we do that though, let's talk about sort of your origin story and how you got into sales in the first place and what you've done.

17:08 Nate Branscome: Yeah. So to be honest, it's a pretty long story as it usually is. What's funny is in, so in middle school, I was actually selling like Pixie Stix for nickels and I was selling burnt CDs for $5 in the school. In high school, I used to preorder like, you know, the game consoles. So like PS3 would come out, they'd sell out immediately, and then you could resell them at a higher price. So I'd buy a bunch of those en masse, invest all my money, and then resell them at a higher price. Then I finally got to college, they asked what I wanted to major in, and I couldn't put 2 and 2 together. I had no idea. So obviously it probably should have been something to do with business or sales, but I ended up picking psychology. Got to the end of college and I was Had no idea what I was going to do with it. Stayed an extra year because I actually decided, hey, I want to pursue healthcare. So I was an EMT, stayed an extra year in school, ended up getting out of school and worked in the field for about 6 months or so. And I hated it, not because of the field, but because I didn't have the grades to get into med school. It would have been a very long road for me to see any type of success. So I kind of stood back and thought, okay, now what? What am I good at? I have to essentially restart. And I thought of business and sales. So I found the first sales job I could and took the offer. My first sales job was a very like rough B2B door-to-door knocking on businesses. And we were doing outsourced sales for Staples and Verizon. So selling office supplies and, you know, essentially internet and phone contracts. It was 100% commission. So I was making $0 some weeks. Some I would max out maybe $500, $800 the whole 3 months I was there. But it was an awesome experience. I wouldn't want to do it again, but it gave me some tough skin and really kind of learned the initial kind of sales skills you would need. And then I actually went to a government value-added reseller from there that is essentially a middleman for the government to buy software. Didn't see a ton of upward mobility there, and honestly, government sales, you know, wasn't really for me. Ended up taking a full sales cycle account executive role at a company called ShopKeep out of New York. And they actually had set up a pilot office in DC for a product that they recently acquired called Amber, which is a competitor of Toast. So we were just 4 people kind of in this startup office environment, and we were essentially just testing the product in the market. So we weren't really too affiliated with ShopKeep. We were just kind of testing this new product to see how it would fare in the market. Ended up moving to Colorado. That was in DC. So I moved to Colorado to where I am today to pursue an MBA at CU Boulder and worked remote for that company. Then eventually went to Xactly, which is an awesome company, great products, good people out of Denver. And had to restart as an SDR because I didn't have the experience, you know, with enterprise software companies because I was selling to restaurants. Picked that up pretty quickly, you know, was promoted to AE within 9 months and then got the offer from Chili Piper and made the jump to my role today.

19:54 Scott Ingram: Nice. So a lot of interesting stuff in there. Given that journey, is there anything that you would have done differently knowing what you know now, if you could sort of start that over again?

20:06 Nate Branscome: Yeah. I mean, I wish I put the two and two together and the fact that I was selling Pixy Stix in middle school and then, you know, why wouldn't I pursue a career in business? I remember specifically shying away from business or majoring in it and pursuing it because I always thought of it as kind of like a suit and tie cubicle, boring job. My dad, who has drilled work ethic into my head since I was a baby, worked for Leidos and SAIC and, you know, essentially the government contractors. And it was very corporate. You know, he worked long hours away from home. But he did really well and he was able to support us, which I'm obviously grateful for. But it wasn't anything I wanted my life to be. And that's kind of what I thought business was. For, I guess, the kids listening now, I work from home or a coworking space or an Airbnb on vacation. And, you know, no one knows if I'm even wearing pants and I can spend more time with, you know, people and things I love. So, you know, it was nothing like that. And then also I just wish I put more effort in. You know, I had fun as a kid in high school and college, but I wasn't doing a lot to kind of set myself up for success, you know, other than the bare minimum and kind of skating by back then. So, you know, I wish I applied myself more back then, but, you know, at the same time, I don't, I don't really regret it because it kind of got to me, got me to where I am today. And I think it kind of put me in a place to where I'm a lot more motivated to be successful in this role. Yeah.

21:23 Scott Ingram: So you went from, you know, a well-established mid-sized company at Exactly. And let's talk about kind of your results there, your results at Chili Piper, and then also dig into this idea around just making that choice to go with this early of a stage of startup, because I know you looked at a number of different opportunities. So talk me through just all of that.

21:45 Nate Branscome: Yeah, so I guess to kind of start with quantification, so when I started exactly, I was in, you know, obviously came on as an SDR there. I hit 100% of my ramp quota the first quarter. Second quarter was 121% of quota, and I was the number one SDR there. Third quarter I was at 190%, and fourth quarter I was trending at 290% when I was promoted to account executive. I guess I took the role pretty quickly after I got promoted to account executive to Chili Piper. And what's interesting about Chili Piper is we don't actually have specific individual quotas. So I know I probably cheated my way onto the show because I know you only interview, you know, technically quota-carrying reps. But to kind of give you an idea of where I was is in terms of revenue, I mean, my first month I closed $10K. My second month I was at about $50K, and then last month, November, I got right over $80K, which is a month we actually hit a team goal. So to kind of go more into that, obviously we don't have, you know, individual specific quotas just because how early of a stage company we are, things are, you know, essentially constantly changing. But what we found is we can do, you know, we'll create these company goals where it's, you know, the benefit is, you know, we have 14 people in the company right now, so Kind of creating a quota month by month based on things that are constantly changing doesn't really make sense. But with the team goal, it's really cool because everyone, you know, works together to hit, you know, the specific goal. So you have people that are on more of the product side, you know, helping out salespeople, you know, really trying to hit this goal. So this most recent goal in November was basically hitting $200K in new business. So obviously a lot of that's going to rely on the sales team, but the whole company was working together you know, to hit that goal. And that was my highest month to date. So I was a little over $80K. So we hit that last month. And then the reward was essentially we got to go to Paris. So we literally packed up our bags and went to Paris, you know, 2 weeks later. So I guess second part of the question where, you know, coming from, you know, Xactly and then going to a super, you know, small startup, I'd always been interested in kind of the startup atmosphere. I think I'm a big risk taker in that, you know, the smaller the company, obviously it's going to be a lot bigger risk. You might be lacking in you know, certain resources or training time, or, you know, everyone's wearing a ton of hats, so maybe you're not getting the coaching you need. But if it is successful and you have a much bigger impact on making it successful, there's a lot more upside to it. And that's something that, you know, kind of excites me. There's no possible way that you can just get into the groove of your job and just kind of go day by day. I mean, every day you're really pushing and the company's, you know, working together kind of for a greater good. I mean, and that's reflected in our company goal. We're not you know, with the individual quota, you're focused on your own quota, hitting your own number. But with this kind of startup atmosphere and having these team goals, we're all working together kind of for one common goal, which is to better the company, obviously. And then we all have, you know, skin in the game being such a small company. So we all want to see, you know, the business succeed as opposed to, you know, being tied down, I guess, to an individual number where it's just your own self relying, you know, relying on hitting that number. Whereas you know, the whole team's relying on, you know, me to contribute so that we can all go to Paris. So, I mean, it's a big, it's definitely a big change, but it's something that keeps a lot of excitement in my job and I love doing it day to day. And then you grow closer with the company because everyone's kind of working towards, you know, that common goal.

25:02 Scott Ingram: Now, why Chili Piper at the end of the day? I mean, given all the other opportunities that you had as you were interviewing and looking at other roles, why did you choose this and not something else?

25:14 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple reasons. I mean, the first reason is obvious in that the product is awesome. We have no direct competition right now, which I understand is very lucky being in a sales position. And it's just a concept that, you know, what the product does in helping with inbound conversion is just not something that a lot of companies are thinking about. So, you know, I directly relate it to the product. The sales rep is generally the end user. So it's something, you know, I was having challenges with, you know, previously at all my other roles. So finding a tool that can really help out and kind of streamline that inbound process and help with scheduling is something I believed in. And I mean, what rep doesn't hate going back and forth, you know, via email trying to schedule time? So A, the products. 2, I think the people just in general. So, you know, I was coming on as an SMB, you know, account executive, and my second interview was with the CEO. Actually, my first call was with the CEO. So before I was even like a qualified candidate, I was on a web call, video call, you know, with the CEO for, I think, like an hour or something like that. So that really attracted me to it in that like, hey, I'm going to be interacting with the C-suite. Whereas maybe at other companies I've met, you know, the CEO maybe once or twice. So that played a lot into it. And then just during the interview process, I mean, everyone I was meeting was just very intelligent, knew what they were doing, well-respected in the space. So I just knew, you know, kind of surrounding myself with that group of people would really help improve my game. And then from a size perspective, I mean, being in a small company, you have a lot bigger impact on the company. So if I miss my quota or I miss my number at a large company, that sucks for me, but it's not really a huge deal. Whereas if I'm missing my number, if I'm not doing well in a small startup where I'm one of 3 new business revenue streams, that's a big deal. And then the other side of that, if you are doing really well, you're having a huge impact on the growth of that company. So I think those are kind of the 3 main things. And then it's just a lot more exciting. I mean, there's not, you're not going day by day, you know, just kind of getting by, you know, every day is different. We're constantly releasing new products. We're constantly changing. We're hiring right now. So there's just a lot of upside joining a small type of company, but obviously, you know, it comes with the risk as well. Yeah.

27:21 Scott Ingram: Well, and you said you're also remote. Most of the team is remote. Talk about that experience a bit. Yeah.

27:27 Nate Branscome: So it's honestly awesome. It's going to be really hard for me to ever go back to an office if I need to. I think there's a lot of benefits. Of it. I mean, A, flexibility. Obviously it gives you a lot of access to talent because you're not constrained by where the rep is or where the candidate is. So we can be, we can also be a lot pickier in that, you know, we don't only have an applicant pool of, you know, Denver or New York or whatever it is. We can hire from anywhere all over the world. We could hire someone in London, you know, California, whatever it is. It really gives you access to the top talent instead of constraining you to, you know, a specific location. But on top of that, I mean, you just get the flexibility in your schedule. So I can, you know, depending on when my calls are for the day, I cover, you know, the whole world as far as the territory. So I have a lot of early calls. Sometimes I'll have late calls. So I can just be a little bit more flexible with my schedule and when I'm working. And maybe I can knock out an errand during the day and then work, you know, late through the night. And then, I mean, another huge benefit is just you don't have to go into an office. So like a lot of the times I'll do, you know, I'll go on vacation or something like that and I'll still work, you know, maybe a half day or something like that. And then it allows me to essentially extend my vacation. So like I went to Hawaii and, you know, earlier this month for 7 days, and that's not something I could do if I needed to be in the office. So I could, you know, work half days, you know, 3 or 4 of the days. And that way it allows me to kind of extend out that vacation. But I think everyone's just also a lot happier as well. You know, they don't have to deal with the commute. They don't have to waste time, you know, going back and forth. So honestly, it's been awesome. I don't know if I could go back to a strictly office environment. Just because I kind of got used to this. And honestly, the biggest piece I noticed is just time efficiency. Like, I can make the best use of my time. I can work when I'm most like ready to go. I mean, if I need a break or need to knock something out during the day, you know, I can do that and then, you know, get right back to work. So I think a lot of huge benefits, and it seems like it's, it's an upcoming trend. I mean, it seems like a lot of companies are starting to hire a lot more remote. So hopefully we'll see, you know, more of that in the future.

29:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So Let's talk about the highlight reel. Pick the one thing that you're most proud of and whether it was at Chili Piper or exactly or anywhere before, like what's been the biggest highlight so far?

29:33 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I think there's, I mean, I kind of touched on, I guess, 2 kinds of things. So, I mean, the first thing is fresh in my mind because, you know, we just hit it. So this end of month, November team goal that we hit, it was awesome. So we had a monthly team revenue goal that I mentioned where we'd all go to Paris. You know, if we hit it and we didn't know at the time, but that trip was supposed to be 2 weeks after we hit it. And we weren't 100% confident that we were going to hit it because we had lost the enterprise AE just a month before. We just hired 2 more AEs on. So they're, you know, completely ramping. They were still in training at the time. Obviously Thanksgiving holidays don't help out, you know, with November revenue. So there's just kind of a lot going on, but within the last week, it was just really cool to see. I've never seen a company work so tight-knit, especially from like different departments. To really like accomplish this goal or work towards a team goal. So it was just really cool to see everyone was working, you know, super long hours and weekends to try to get, you know, where we needed to be for this trip. And it was also really cool for us because again, we work remote. So we're not, we've actually, most of us have never met in person. So this was an opportunity to not only meet in person, but, you know, in a really cool place like Paris. And it ended up coming down to the very last day where we beat the goal by like $5,000, I think, in revenue. So it was just kind of a huge team and individual accomplishment, and it was just great to have everyone out at the trip and, you know, meet each other and seeing our success pay off. And I think it really like rallied the company morale because now we're… I think we're a lot closer now that we all have interacted with each other in different departments and really worked together, you know, for that one goal. I would say just another thing is, so obviously I was pursuing an MBA while I was also working at Xactly, so that's kind of a big accomplishment for me and not Not necessarily because of like the challenge of the actual course, the course material, but really what I learned was like what's valuable to me. Like what are my values and how can I manage my time to, you know, to focus on those values? So going to work with like a quota and, you know, having a school part-time and then balancing, you know, my friends, my girlfriend, my hobbies, my dog, it was just a lot to manage. So I was able to essentially prioritize my time better during the program by focusing on like what's specifically valuable to me. And then now that I'm graduated, I have a lot more time and I can be a lot more efficient with my time. So I think those are the two things that stand out as far as, as far as biggest accomplishments.

31:49 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now, what about the other end of the scale? What do you find to be the most challenging? Yeah.

31:54 Nate Branscome: So I think as far as like the biggest challenge, I would say it was almost more of an internal challenge up until probably my SDR job at Xactly. I was kind of just like going through the motions with these jobs. In my head, I thought I was trying, but it was more, I think subconsciously I was like, hey, this is a stepping stone of a job to get, you know, where I want to be, which is living comfortably, obviously, probably being in a full closing role. And I got a reality check in my first month at Xactly as an SDR because I scheduled one meeting. And I had a ramp quota and that was definitely not it. So in order to hit my ramp quota, I had to make up, I had to book 9 meetings the next month. So obviously, you know, I wasn't on pace. I was also exhausted, not only from work, but also doing part-time school, balancing my hobbies and relationships and things of that nature. So one day I just made like, I was in the car, I think, or something like that. And I just made like a conscious decision that I was going to do my best for myself and my career. So just going through the motions, I was like, you know, if I'm in sales, like I'm going to go all out and see what I can do with this. And that way I'll know, you know, if this is for me or not. And I mapped out basically, you know, all the things that would help me get to where I wanted to be. And that included, you know, mending relationships and having personal time, not just from a work perspective, and committed to it. And on the last day of the month, you know, I got the 9th meeting for 100% quota. And since that day, you know, my numbers have gone up every quarter exactly. And then they've gone up, you know, monthly as far as revenue at Chili Piper. So something I, I talk about a lot, just making like that conscious decision because it seems so simple, but I think a lot of people just kind of go through the motions and don't, you know, aren't focused on, you know, doing the best they possibly can. And they might think they are, but like making a conscious decision like, hey, I'm gonna be successful, this is how I'm gonna get there, really kind of changed the way I thought about, I guess, work and sales in general.

33:41 Scott Ingram: Nice. So is that sort of a… was that just a one-time like flip the switch? Like, okay, you know what, like I'm gonna take this seriously, I'm gonna give it my best, I'm gonna go all in. Or is that sort of a Do you have to regularly recommit to yourself to stay at that level?

33:56 Nate Branscome: I mean, I think there's a level of recommitment, but for me it was more of like an on-off switch. I mean, I was like, I was kind of balancing like work and school and I'm like, okay, I just want to, you know, keep my head above water. But that's not a reason to be in sales. You know, to be in sales, the benefit of it is you're the only constraint to your success. So I think just making that conscious decision like, hey, I'm not going to just keep going through the motions. I'm not going to be number 2. I'm going to do what I need to be you know, to be number one and put myself in a place where I want to be. And then I think just backtracking from there, okay, how do I get there? And then sticking to it and actually committing to it. And I was surprised because it, like, it worked perfectly. You expect, like, it's going to be a lot harder than you think, but if you map it out into, like, digestible steps, it's a lot easier to kind of tackle. And then once you start seeing results, I mean, it gets very addicting. It's similar, like, if you go to the gym and you start seeing those results, you know, you're going to keep going to the gym. The same thing kind of applied to me, you know, in my role. I just kept seeing, you know, I hit my ramp quota and I was like, oh, that's awesome. And then I hit, you know, 120% and I'm like, you know, pumped up. Then I hit 190 and it just, you know, kept going and going from there. Love it.

35:00 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. So I was going to ask about motivation, but it sounds like a lot of that is just feeding on the results, right? Realizing, hey, when I put in the work, I get these results and it keeps getting better. I'm going to keep going after this.

35:12 Nate Branscome: Yeah. It's just, I mean, I love the sense of accomplishment, I guess. So like, you know, setting a goal and then actually accomplishing it. You know, it was a great motivational factor for me. Obviously being in sales, you know, money's gonna play into it as well. You know, for a long-term goal, I'm essentially just trying to get to where I can to put my, you know, myself and my family in the best position possible. But yeah, I mean, I, I think accomplishing those goals is super, you know, satisfactory. It feels great. And then you can just continue pushing yourself and, you know, pushing yourself, getting harder and harder goals. And as you keep hitting 'em, you know, it definitely continues to motivate you. Throughout the role.

35:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now let's get super granular. You say that you basically built out, you broke it down, you built this map to success. What were the components? What did that map look like?

35:53 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, and I do this with a lot of my goals, is obviously if you, you know, you set a long-term goal, like where do you want to be next year? That's not something you're really attacking day to day. So you're like, hey, I want to be at this role, you know, one year from now. I think it's super important to kind of backtrack from there. So, okay, to get to that role, you know, I need to hit quota these 3 quarters in order to hit quota these 3 quarters, I need to, you know, have this many metrics or get this many meetings, you know, a week or whatever it is. But I think what's important is not to focus on metrics. So, you know, 50 calls is gonna get me 2 meetings, 2 meetings a week is gonna get me, you know, to where I want to be. It's more about getting the actual results. So like, you need to focus on the 2 meetings, not the 50 calls, because worst case, you know, if the 50 calls don't get you those 2 meetings, you didn't hit your goal. So I think it's important to just kind of track those metrics so that way you kind of have a guideline of where you want to be, but it's definitely, you know, not set in stone. But I guess long answer, or, you know, to kind of shorten things up or summarize, I think just creating those long-term goals and making sure you have short-term goals that will get you there is kind of how you, you know, would backtrack that. So like for me, I wanted to be an AE, which I expected to be, you know, at least a year out. So I knew I needed to kind of blow out my quota. In order to do that, you know, I need to work X amount of hours or get X amount of meetings a week, whatever it is for your specific role. And then just stick to it and commit yourself to it. And worst case, if you miss it, make up for it, you know, another week or another day, whatever that goal is. I mean, that it makes it a lot more digestible and attainable when you can focus on, you know, short-term goals that are going to get you where you want to be, you know, long-term.

37:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's start to dig into your routines and the way you structure your days. And I'm really interested in kind of the time management piece. It sounds like you really figured that out through the MBA process. So, I mean, the way I typically ask this question is just, alarm goes off in the morning, what time did that happen? And just give us the blow-by-blow from there through the whole day. Yeah.

37:45 Nate Branscome: So I might not have the best answer for you on this question because I honestly don't have a specific morning routine. I think a lot of that plays into my current role today. So like I mentioned, I'm handling pretty much all time zones. So depending on the day, I might wake up at 5:00 AM, grab an espresso, get to the home office and just jump on a call. Whereas, you know, if I'm working more like East Coast hours or something like that, I'll have time in the morning, I can hit the gym beforehand, and then kind of get into the calls. And that's honestly something I really love about the job, in that when I get into a routine, I kind of get bored. And again, I've been talking about this a lot, but just kind of go through the motions. So having like my schedule vary a lot kind of, you know, switches things up on me and keeps it a little bit more, you know, exciting, but also gives me, you know, flexibility in my schedule, you know, when I'm actually gonna work. So I know it's probably not the most efficient, you know, thing. Obviously people talk about like, if you have a specific routine, it's going to make you a lot more efficient. You're going to see a lot more success. So it might not be the best answer for you, but yeah, I mean, everything kind of changes really day by day and it's something I actually enjoy and prefer rather than sticking to a strict schedule.

38:52 Scott Ingram: So given that model and that structure, how are you deciding really what the priorities are? I mean, that's ultimately what a lot of this stuff comes down to.

39:01 Nate Branscome: Yeah, so, and that's probably one of the bigger challenges at, you know, at the role. And what's specific to our company is we, our tool actually integrates into our calendar. So that's how we know what our availability is. That's how people book calls on our calendar and things of that nature. So it actually forces me to stay super organized in that, you know, if I'm going to the gym or if I have a chore or something like that, I mean, I need to put it on my calendar. Otherwise someone's gonna book a time or book a call or something like that and have access to that. But as far as how I try to stay organized, I usually leave like 8-ish hours a day open to customer calls, and I'll vary, you know, that slot depending obviously on time zone. So I'll kind of vary that, and I'll usually work longer than that. But worst case, you know, if you're doing 8 hours of back-to-back calls, you know, I'm gonna burn out. So I don't want to overdo myself in just calls. But then, you know, obviously, you know, you need to catch up on emails, you need to prospect, you need to create proposals and quotes, etc. So You know, on those busier days I might do a little bit less of that, but if it's a bit slower or calls reschedule or move, you know, I have more time to kind of knock things out as far as like an administrative or prospecting perspective. So it does vary a lot. You know, I'll work some days where it's 12-hour days. You know, other times I'll work kind of shorter days or maybe cut a Friday off to relax or go snowboarding or hang with my family or whatever it is. So it all kind of, you know, evens out there. But yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of tough where we're at, especially in a sales role because, you know, it changes day by day. So. I think just making sure you're, you know, keeping consistent because it's easy if you're, you know, if you're busy, you're like, hey, I don't need to do prospecting because I'm busy. I think just making sure like you're still knocking out everything that you need to knock out for a given week or a day or whatever it is, just making sure you're still doing that. But I don't think there's a huge, you know, I don't think there's really a problem with kind of varying how you do that or, you know, which days you do it.

40:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and I think that's an important callout that it's just the environment you're in, right? When you're working with a very small startup and you're wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot of things, like everything's changing all the time and you just have to figure out how to be flexible, how to adapt, how to figure out what those priorities are and what has to get done and fitting it all in. It sounds like you're leveraging your calendar quite a bit too, just in terms of holding space for some of those core activities and things like that as well.

41:12 Nate Branscome: Yeah. I mean, we have to keep it, you know, you put every chore on there, every block, you know, if you're going to go grab lunch, you need to put a block on the calendar so no one books over it. So it definitely, you know, will keep you honest. And, you know, that's something our customers have to adapt to as well because they're, you know, they'll implement the solution and they'll get, you know, random demos kind of thrown on their calendar. So I think it's a good thing though. It keeps you honest and it keeps, you know, your calendar up to date. You know exactly where, you know, what that rep's doing or whatever it is. So I think it's a good, you know, people talk about all the time is you should structure your calendar. You know, I'm going to do prospecting from 9 to 10 or whatever it is. So I think it just kind of helps you, you know, keep honest to that.

41:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and again, especially from a team perspective, right, if you're keeping that open and other people are looking at your calendar and looking for time It just, it saves a whole lot of headache if that's accurate, right?

41:57 Nate Branscome: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, if someone books a call on our calendar, I'm not going to, you know, I don't want to reach out and say, hey, this time didn't work, even though you used our tool to actually book on our calendar. So, you know, I'll pull some strings, make it work.

42:10 Scott Ingram: Not the right impression. Yeah. So we've already talked about your calendar. We've talked about Headspace. What are the other tools and apps that are really core to your day-to-day?

42:19 Nate Branscome: Yeah. So, I mean, we use Salesforce. SalesLoft is a great tool that we use. Sales Navigator. We actually use LeadIQ. I know you had Jeremy on the show pretty recently. So we use LeadIQ, which is a great tool for prospecting. Zoom Video, you know, we use Chili Piper internally to book, you know, all our meetings inbound and outbound. Slack's a big one. Love Slack. You need the Giphy integration if you don't have it so you can send GIFs all the time. We use PandaDoc, but yeah, and then obviously, you know, Headspace. We use Audible and Stitcher, you know, for audiobooks and podcasts. You know, love jamming to Spotify when I'm not on calls. So those are kind of like my daily go-to apps and software.

42:56 Scott Ingram: Nice, that was a solid rundown. So what about the information diet? What are you reading, listening to, and watching?

43:01 Nate Branscome: So I guess to start off, I mean, I love podcasts. I listen to Audible all the time. Honestly, your podcast is awesome because you're interviewing people that are good at sales. So that sales, you know, they're essentially giving away their secrets and how they got there. So, you know, you can just scroll through your list and say, hey, this company's relevant, I'm gonna listen to this podcast, see what this top rep did to get to where he is. So it just seems kind of obvious that, you know, that should be something people are listening to. But yeah, content like that. I love John Barrows. You know, we, he actually came to Xactly to do a training before I started there, but they were still, you know, talking about the things he mentioned. And one of the big things that stuck out is just kind of the why you, why now with the messaging. So, you know, when you're sending a message to a prospect, you know, why do they care and why do they care now? That's something that's always stuck in my head. And I use that pretty much for any messaging that I do. And all his content's very, like you mentioned with your new podcast, it's very digestible and he's very direct and to the point. So I pick up a lot of his stuff. You know, you listen to 10 minutes and you have an actionable item, you know, you can take out of that. Another great podcast, and I would recommend this depending on the industry you're in, is Demand Gen Chat. So it's a podcast our director of marketing, Emil, actually has, and it's a marketing podcast, but the reason I listen to it is obviously our internal podcast. But also my target customers are, you know, it's talking about things that are relevant to my target customers, which is usually, you know, marketing. So it's really good to learn about what they care about and kind of be in the know of that industry as well. So I'd recommend for like anyone in sales is, you know, listening to podcasts or content that's relevant to the people you're actually selling to. So that way you, you know, you can be an expert in the space and, you know, be relevant essentially. And then, yeah, I talked about kind of the books you read earlier. But I'm a huge fan of just Audible and podcasts. I think you've talked about this before, but you can listen to it when you're driving, at the gym, traveling. I'm not a huge reader, to be honest. I have a pretty bad attention span, so I'll read the page 10 times and forget what I even read. So with Audible, you can easily just scroll back if you stop paying attention, but you can also speed it up. So you can… I do 1.25, which I know is amateur hour, probably compared to you, but it allows me to consume 25% more content than I would if I was just listening to a standard. So it's a whole lot of everything, but yeah, mostly podcasts, Audible, LinkedIn content. I try to just stay up to date with the industry. Yeah.

45:18 Scott Ingram: Good stuff. So in the last year, what's your favorite thing you've listened to on Audible?

45:23 Nate Branscome: So in the last year, I'd say probably Never Split the Difference. I think that's my favorite sales book. It's just pretty badass because this guy's talking about hostage negotiations and then relating it to business. So, you know, it's not one of those books where you read it and it's like, you know, you're just kind of like bored, but you're doing it to kind of better yourself. It's a pretty cool book and it's really exciting. He talks about these different negotiations and, you know, how you can use these same tactics, you know, in sales or business. So I would say that's probably my favorite business-related book. Actually, right now I'm listening to Sapiens, which is kind of the… it goes over like the history of humankind. So I do also listen to like some things that aren't strictly business related that I enjoy as well. So that's kind of my top right now as far as business and more personal, I guess.

46:09 Scott Ingram: Awesome. I got stuck on Sapiens. I don't know why. I never made it past about the halfway point. It just, it couldn't hold my attention.

46:16 Nate Branscome: So yeah, I had a 4-hour drive home from my fiancée's family yesterday, so I kind of plugged it in. It's definitely, it can be a little slow, but it's just interesting because it's, you know, it's not stuff they teach you in school or anything like that. And I'm like, I didn't even know this stuff exists or this stuff happened. But yeah, it's definitely a long one. I think it's like 15 hours on Audible.

46:34 Scott Ingram: So I'm probably the wrong guy to be complaining about really long things in audio. So Nate, what about, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

46:45 Nate Branscome: Not a particular one. I mean, I think it's really a combination of learnings from them. And I think as time changes, also like how you should sell obviously changes as well. I'd say, I guess the one philosophy that I kind of tailor my sales towards is, you know, customer-centric selling. So essentially like acting as a trusted advisor, you know, solving a problem rather than pitching a product. It's worked really well for me because, you know, I'm actually honored to say that, you know, I have CMOs of these big SaaS companies that I'm pitching to on a call or, you know, that we're having that initial call. And within the first few minutes, you know, they're asking me advice on different marketing strategies and things. You know, that, you know, I'm in sales, they know I'm in sales, but I'm having CMOs ask me, you know, what they should do for their marketing strategy this year, you know, something that's unrelated to Chili Piper even. And actually being able to like provide those valuable responses is great. And then, you know, you're instantly building trust and rapport by being, you know, the trusted advisor in the space. So it's great from a job perspective as well, because I feel like I'm helping people and solving challenges as opposed to, you know, pitching a sale or, you know, some of those more aggressive philosophies where you're essentially just pushing someone to take action. So And I take it a step further once they actually, if they purchase or even if they don't purchase, you know, I try to stay in touch with, with everyone I interact with on LinkedIn, through email, you know, in person, whatever it is, and make sure, you know, if they're a customer, they're having a great experience. If not, you know, just kind of keeping up with them. What's great about sales is you get to build connections and relationships, you know, whether they move forward or not with your, your, your software and maybe it'll help you down the line or you can leverage them down the road. So I think just being very customer-centric and focusing on their needs is, you know, kind of what got me to where I am today.

48:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good stuff. And that brings us back to… in your second point, you talked about providing value, and I said I wanted to circle back on that. I think the challenge with that statement just at face value is it is so open-ended. So for you specifically, what does providing value mean?

48:41 Nate Branscome: So, I mean, like you said, I think it really varies like company by company. But like me, for example, like what I like to do is when I have like some type of messaging is basically think to myself like how I would react to that And that's kind of how I like judge if that messaging is value. So, you know, for initial, you know, say you're sending out an initial email to try to gain someone's interest or whatever it is, but if there's, you know, 5 bullet points and like 3 percentages of how you can improve and, you know, 3 hyperlinks you can click on to different case studies, and this is someone I never even talked to, you know, I'm gonna delete it. So that's, you know, if that's something I write and then I look at it and I'm like, I'm not gonna… I wouldn't answer this, so I'm gonna go ahead and delete it. So I think like All you have to do is kind of think about, you know, they're a regular person you're reaching out to. So what is something they would find valuable? So for example, you know, instead of doing an email with bullet points and links and percentages and all that, you know, you could say, hey, you know, hey John, we're working with, you know, these 3 direct competitors to help this process and this is how we're doing it. They've seen these business results. And then essentially just asking like, hey, would it make sense to talk? And if you provided enough value upfront initially, then does this make sense to talk should be rhetorical because, you know, what leader doesn't want to know what their competitors are doing to better their business if it's actually working too? So I think, like you mentioned, I think it really varies company by company, but just you kind of have to earn that right to even get a response or earn the right to even do discovery by doing your own research and, you know, knowing how you can help that company.

50:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good example. Nate, is there something you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy?

50:15 Nate Branscome: I mean, honestly, I feel like people think I'm crazy all the time because of just how my schedule's arranged, which I know I've talked about already. But one of my hobbies and something I love to do in my spare time, in my personal time, is to snowboard. So for example, if I know there's going to be a big snowstorm coming on Friday, I might work harder and work nights for that full week so that way I can kind of use that as a reward for working my ass off throughout the whole week. So maybe I'll take a half day Friday and go snowboarding. I mean, I get asked all the time, like, how do you have this type of schedule? How are you snowboarding on a Friday? You're in sales. You need to work 24/7. But I think you can always make up, you know, that time by just being more efficient when you're actually working, but also, you know, maybe working nights or weekends so that you can allow that time to be off or allow that time to kind of do what you like to do. So, I mean, I guess I like to use it almost as a reward or a motivation to kind of grind to that point. And a lot of, I guess a lot of people kind of think I'm crazy or think I kind of slack off because, you know, I'm doing things I love in the middle of the day. On a Friday or something like that. So that's something I get, you know, people think I'm crazy, I guess, for.

51:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I suppose I get a lot of the same reaction. In fact, I'm thinking about doing… focusing my presentation this year at the Sales Success Summit on just time management and the way that I'm able… because the biggest question I always get from folks is like, how the heck are you doing all of this? How are you managing a $3+ million quota and hosting this podcast and hosting this event and publishing these books? Like, what… how on earth is that happening? And at the end of the day, it just comes down to priorities and focus. And when you're working, you're working. I think the biggest challenge in general right now is there's just so many distractions. You know, I don't… I disabled my Facebook account years ago because I just found it to be a bottomless pit of distraction. Like, I can't, I can't do that a little bit. So, so it's gone. It's gone. So anyway, what about the other side of that? Is there something that the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

52:13 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, I think the other side of that is, you know, I'd say most sales professionals, I don't want to group everyone together, but there's a belief or culture that, you know, you have to go nonstop or you have to work 24/7. You have to keep grinding, you know, that type of attitude. And obviously this has kind of been, I guess, a common theme of our conversation. But I think you really need to like relax and enjoy time off and, you know, reset. And I'm obviously a huge advocate of that. But I think in the end it makes you honestly more efficient long-term in the long haul. So like if you're, you know, if you're working 24/7, 5 days a week, you're probably not, you know, being super efficient with your time. Like, you're probably a little burnt out. Or, you know, one benefit about working remote is you don't have to be in the office, you know, just wasting time. So if you're, you know, if you're working an 8-hour-a-day job in the office and you're burnt out hour 7, maybe you're just kind of chilling, or someone's walking by your desk and distracts you for an hour or something like that. So I think a benefit of, you know, working remote is you can really remain efficient when you're actually working. But at the same time, you know, be go, go, go when you're working, but at the same time make sure you're, you know, you're taking your time off and, you know, relaxing and resetting and, you know, taking a breather even if it's, you know, 5, 10 minutes during the day.

53:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome. What have been the most important decisions you've made or lessons you've had to learn to get where you are today?

53:29 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, I think we've touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think the, the biggest decision, or I guess the biggest challenge I was facing that led to that decision is I was really trying to balance out too many things at once, and it was having a negative effect on my personal and my professional life. So like back when I was at Xactly, you know, I had a girlfriend, you know, I had a dog to take care of, you know, I was trying to hang out with my friends, I had my MBA classes, I had a quota at work, I'm trying to go to the gym and, you know, eat healthy and cook and all that, and I like watching football, and I like going to happy hour and snowboarding, and, you know, the list was endless. And I ended up on the go 24/7 and I was always stressed out and always had anxiety. And it just got to the point where I was like, there has to be some way around this. This is not sustainable. And I talked about this earlier and it's probably the… I think it's one of the biggest contributors to my success is just being able to prioritize your values. And that's something you just mentioned as well by deactivating Facebook, for example. But it just really allows you to focus on what's important in your life. So now I'm done with my MBA program, obviously that's off my plate. But now I can focus, you know, my number one priority is my fiancée, my family, my friends, and my dogs. Number 2 is my health. So obviously, you know, staying healthy is important to your career as well. Snowboarding, which is my escape, my hobby thing I like to do on my free time. And then, you know, work, which essentially allows me to take care of all the previous things and make sure, you know, I'm in a good position. So just kind of prioritizing your values really allowed me to like focus on those specific areas of my life. And I mean, I'll still go grab beers and watch football. I'm a Redskins fan though, so we're doing… it's a rough, rough season. It's a rough life actually. But by lowering the priority of, you know, watching football and drinking beer compared to, you know, hanging with my fiancée, it's allowed me to really better those areas of my life. And at the end of the day, you know, there's not enough time for everything. So like you mentioned, you deleted Facebook because you find yourself scrolling. If you're using that life on things, if you're using that time on things in your life that, you know, you value and want to improve on, I think that's, you know, kind of the biggest decision I made in regards to just, you know, creating values and focusing your time in life.

55:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's a, that's a great, great tip, especially this time of year, right? I think we're always thinking about… it's January, we're working on the goals, we're working on those priorities, we're thinking about all the things we want to do. I think it's equally important to really look at what are the things we can stop doing? You know, what do we need to deprioritize to free up time on, on the more important things? And I have a debate with myself every fall. I've I'm not fully ever committed to this because I keep thinking I'm just going to stop watching football because that would free up a lot of time.

56:04 Nate Branscome: Yeah, fantasy football kills me.

56:06 Scott Ingram: But here's, here's the hack though. It's hard because I like local teams, right? I like the Longhorns and I like the Cowboys. So it's, I have to try and put myself in a bubble and make sure that I'm not getting notifications and updates, but I record them and you can watch a 3.5-hour football game in an hour and a half if you're skipping commercials and the BS between plays and everything else. And in fact, I heard a stat on… where was this? Maybe it was… it might have been like an NPR quiz question or something like that. And they asked like, how much time in an NFL game is the ball actually in play? And we know, like, the… I think I'm pretty sure the average time to play a game end to end is like 3.5 hours. I don't know the exact right answer. Maybe I'll have to put it into the show notes. So I'm gonna fact-check myself. And if you go to top1.fm, it'll be there. I think it's 13 minutes that the ball is actually in play, that the clock is running. I mean, it was, it was an extraordinary stat. So I've halfway hacked my way to making football a tolerable distraction, especially since the rest of my family isn't into it. So it becomes sort of a very selfish thing every Saturday, every Sunday.

57:15 Nate Branscome: Yeah, well, don't tell the broadcasting companies because then the ads get cut and then, then they're out of business. So yeah, they'll deal. But yeah, no, I agree. And like, you know, fantasy football, you know, the day after, you know, that's the first thing you check even before work sometimes. So it's like, you know, I've debated quitting these fantasy football leagues every year, but at the same time you don't want to be the one guy that drops from the league. So yeah, it's definitely something I'm still working on. But yeah, if you come up with that solution and I could watch a game in 15 minutes, just let me know and maybe that'll help things out a bit.

57:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I don't have it all the way down to 15 minutes, but you know, an hour, hour and a half is, you know, you still get to enjoy it a little bit. And fantasy football is, I mean, that is a can that I can't, I will never open and never have. And it's the same thing for me with gaming. I am so competitive. I cannot start any kind of video game on my phone. We will not buy a console in my house. I mean, we bought a Wii at one point, but that's, that's as close as it's going to get because it's game over. Like I have to win stuff. And so, you know, I just, I can't even start it. It's like that first hit of crack. It's a bad, bad idea.

58:23 Nate Branscome: Yeah, it's, uh, we have one. I'll play it occasionally just to kind of unwind at night sometimes. But yeah, I love playing 2K, which is like a basketball game. But yeah, if I lose, I'm pissed. I'm going to bed angry. It's, yeah, too competitive for that, I think.

58:37 Scott Ingram: Nate, I'm really interested in the advice that you would have for somebody that's just getting started out in their sales career today, especially looking at the last 2 roles that you've held, right? You advanced really quickly through the SDR ranks at Exactly, and you're doing really well in this new AE role at Chili Piper. What advice do you have to somebody else that's just getting started in that type of an opportunity?

58:58 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I mean, I think this applies obviously to people that are like new in the opportunity, but this is still something I push for every day is just increase your overall at-bat. So, you know, a lot of people start in sales and, you know, especially when, even when I started as SDR, I'm like, all right, well, they need, you know, to be an AE, I need 1 to 2 years of experience. And you kind of have that like type of time-constrained BS. Which is not really true. I mean, if you work your ass off and you're hitting, you know, 200% of quota by getting as many at-bats as possible, you're obviously gonna fail at a ton of those, but you're also gonna learn from those at-bats. Eventually you're gonna get to where you need to be. You're gonna hit your high numbers, and then you can use that, you know, those numbers are concrete evidence of your performance. So you can use those numbers to leverage growth within your company. If it's not something your company wants to do, I mean, you can, you can take it elsewhere, you know. People that hear about SDRs that are hitting 2 and 3 times their number are not going to be hesitant about hiring you onto their company or giving you an opportunity there. I think just, you know, increasing those at-bats, and that's something like I did at Chili Piper as well. I mean, I was taking as many calls as possible. They might not even be the most qualified leads, but I wanted to hop on and learn why they weren't qualified and ask questions and, you know, essentially force myself to fail so that way I know, you know, learn from that. And then, you know, I could use the learnings from those failures and continue to improve as fast as possible. So I think the only way to really improve is obviously just getting as many at-bats as possible, doing as many calls, emails, reaching out to as many people as possible. And that'll make you learn as quickly as possible, obviously ramp, and then hit the numbers you need quickly as well.

1:00:27 Scott Ingram: Good stuff. And Nate, I know that you are a fan of the show. You've listened to a lot of these episodes. So what do you want to know? And maybe something that I'm not already asking, what do you want to hear from the top sellers in other organizations?

1:00:40 Nate Branscome: Yeah, huge fan of the show, obviously. It's awesome hearing everyone's kind of tips and tricks that, you know, the other top performers are, are doing so I can incorporate them into my own process or kind of, you know, take my own twist on them. And something I'll do is that, you know, when I first started listening to podcasts, I would just scroll through and be like, hey, this company's kind of like us. And I would listen to that and kind of steal those secrets. But I guess something specific that, you know, isn't touched on very often that I'd be interested in kind of learning more about is essentially like side hustles or maybe investments that, you know, the reps are doing aside from their primary job. I know a ton of reps that are top reps are, you know, they're probably getting decent commission and kind of have some money that they can either play around with or invest or, you know, start something on the side. So I think it's really interesting to kind of hear about that, whether it's, you know, maybe they're investing in real estate or stocks or they have a side company or, you know, like you, you're doing a podcast as well. Or, you know, obviously there's tons of different sales reps that are doing podcasts on their own. So it's just kind of cool to hear about things aside from you know, their general role that they're using to, you know, make money or maybe get their name out there?

1:01:44 Scott Ingram: That's a great question. And one of the things that I'm working on… welcome to 2019… is really driving more engagement and more conversation around the show. So I actually upgraded our comment software on the site on top1.fm. So let's address that question in the comments related to this episode, which I've lost track… I can't count. So if you go to top1.fm/nate That'll take you there. And, you know, share if, if you're working on a particular side hustle, if you've got an investment strategy or, or things that you invest in that are of interest for you, share those things. Let's get a conversation going. I think that'll be a really fun way to address that question. I appreciate you asking it because it, it does come up not directly on the show, but as just a sideline. I, and I get asked about that a lot too. So, great, great, interesting question. I, I don't need to ask more questions on the show and make it longer. So let's, uh, let's take that one offline. To the online, if that makes any sense.

1:02:44 Nate Branscome: Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, for me personally, it's not something I'm hugely… like, I don't have a ton going on on the side, so that's actually why it interests me, because I'm like, you know, how are they balancing their job and doing all these side hustles and blah blah blah? But I know I do… I mean, I invest in stocks. It's really interesting to me. I don't do anything too crazy just because I'm really focused on my role today, that where I don't have a ton of time to just research stocks all day. But I did just, you know, recently buy a house, and, you know, real estate investing is something, you know, I'm interested in. But to be honest, I'm not doing a ton of you know, a ton of side hustles or anything like that right now. So definitely be interested to kind of hear what, you know, what other top performers or any performers are doing to kind of balance, you know, that work, but also, you know, the side hustle as well.

1:03:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome. Good stuff. So top1.fm/nate, join the conversation. Would love to hear what you guys have to say about that. Well, Nate, I think we made it to the end. So before, before we provide our actionable challenge, was there anything that I didn't get to or points that you were hoping that you'd get to make that somehow I just, I didn't ask the right question?

1:03:44 Nate Branscome: Not necessarily. I mean, I had a list of… I had the top 3 things kind of I learned being at Chili Piper. So I don't know if it would help to kind of run through that, but they're pretty actionable as well. Or if you prefer, we kind of jump straight to that last question if we're up on time.

1:03:57 Scott Ingram: You can't tease me with good content and just say, oh no, we're not going to do that. We're going to skip over it. Hit me. What do you got?

1:04:02 Nate Branscome: Yeah. So the top 3 things that kind of stood out to me, and I owe a lot of this to our CEO, Nicholas Vandenberg, who kind of does… we do a lot of like one-on-one coaching. That's who I report to directly. But the top 3 things I kind of took out of, you know, working with him over the past 6 months, the first thing was have the prospect actually experience their pain in their process. So something that I really changed since starting at Chili Piper was instead of just having like the lead talk about their challenges, are you asking them about their process? I mean, you're on a web call, you're probably on a Zoom or something similar. Have them actually like share their screen and show you the process. And what I found from that is not only is obviously experience is going to make them kind of delve in the process and how it can improve. But, you know, you can also find a way to have them experience your solution as well. So for example, at Chili Piper, we'll often ask them to, you know, share their screen on Zoom. We use video for all our calls, which is awesome, really increases engagement and rapport. But this kind of takes it a step further, like, hey, you know, walk through your process on your screen, like, let me see what you guys are doing. And then once we see their process, we actually uncover that, you know, there's a lot more pain than they might not have even brought up, or you might see something that that, you know, they didn't think was a big deal that you can help out on. Or, you know, worst case, maybe their process is awesome and it's, you know, it's not gonna be a good fit and you kind of figure that out. And then from there, we'll actually send a link. We have a demo environment that they can actually experience on their own. So while the screen is shared, they can walk through it, see how their process would change. When they kind of get that night and day difference, as opposed to me telling you how it's gonna work, they can actually experience it. So I think that's kind of, you know, the first point I took out. Second one is a tone that he calls… I don't know if this is a well-known thing, but essentially friendly curiosity. So it's kind of like a toter style you can use at the end of the call, obviously if there's value and rapport is built correctly, but just having like a friendly curiosity in asking like the decision-making process. So, you know, if you build rapport and show value and you've got that, you know, that stakeholder on board, you can just, you know, very nicely say like, oh, you know, well, who needs to be involved in this? And like, you know, even asking what we, you know, what do we need to do to make it happen? You're kind of including you and the prospect. You can kind of get a lot of like questions that you wouldn't think that you could get out just because you already have that rapport and you're, you know, how can we do this or how can we make this happen? Or, you know, what people are gonna be blockers or, you know, how do they receive, you know, when you usually bring them software tools that can help out, like, is this person like usually open to it? And you kind of get a lot more information on, you know, stakeholder management essentially. And then the last thing I think is just how to say no. So we have very transparent pricing and contract terms. So we actually don't do any discounting or any monthly payments. Everything's annual upfront. And I think way too many reps and managers are just automatically saying yes. And, you know, we need a discount if we can get this in, you know, December, can we get 20% off? And just saying yes without really pushing back. So, you know, I've kind of learned to really stand my ground, obviously because I have to, because we don't discount. But it's something I can take with me, you know, throughout my career. And basically being forced to kind of say no and say no in certain ways where you can provide value elsewhere is something I'll definitely, you know, take throughout my career.

1:07:00 Scott Ingram: So I especially love that last point. And a lot of times, you know, we don't necessarily have control over it as an individual contributor, but I love this idea of just the price is the price. I think that there is so much trouble that we have gotten into with the discounting that we do. And frankly, we've trained our customers to just wait until the end of the month or the end of the quarter or the end of the year, because I know like, oh, you're going to drop your pants and you'll do whatever. I need to do that. If you're just consistent, and frankly, it's one, it's one of the things that I'm doing with the Sales Success Summit. Like the price is the price. The earlier you join us, the better your price is. There's no discounts. There's no games. Like it has a ton of value and that's how much it costs. Right. And you don't go into an iPhone store and ask to get an iPhone for $700. You know, it's just not the way it works. And I think when you're able to be consistent about that and hold firm to your value, everybody wins, right? I mean, your margins are good, the sales rep is going to earn a full commission. I just think way, way, way too often are we defaulting to price and discount when oftentimes that's like the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th most important thing when it comes to whatever your client is, is trying to solve for.

1:08:19 Nate Branscome: Yeah, definitely. It's crazy because I'll actually evaluate tools for our sales team. Obviously we wear a lot of hats, but But, you know, before, you know, I'll be going through a piece of software, you know, whatever it is, their solution. And before we even get to the end, like, you know, they haven't even got bought in from me and they're like, hey, we're, you know, we're also running a special where we can discount. And like, I'm not even, I haven't even shown interest yet and they're already kind of, you know, providing that discount. So yeah, it's pretty, I think it's, it's very overused. And I think if you, you know, if you provide the value and they see it and they understand, you know, pricing shouldn't really be an issue. But what I found with the no discount policy is we actually have more people that are upset that they can't get a discount than the actual price. So like, yeah, the price is fine, we can get budget approved, but we always get a discount. So like, there's kind of like that, you know, it's almost their ego, like, you know, we don't want to go with you, you won't even give us a discount when all your competitors will. So it's pretty… yeah, it's something I kind of had to get used to, but I think it's a skill that you can kind of pick up and take with you. So definitely encourage people to kind of stand their ground a little bit more, and at least, you know, if you're gonna use it, at least make sure you have buy-in and, you know, that it's actually gonna get you the action you want. But yeah, it's definitely, definitely an interesting topic.

1:09:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome, awesome. All right, well, let's, let's wrap it up with your actionable challenge like we do at the end of every episode. The interviews are always 2 weeks apart, so I ask for something that the listener can do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results.

1:09:42 Nate Branscome: What would…

1:09:42 Scott Ingram: what is that challenge?

1:09:43 Nate Branscome: Yeah, I think something that's super easy to do is essentially just be concise. So whether you're sending emails or pitching your product or creating messaging, you know, for a call or whatever it is, you know, maybe write out the script or write out the email as you would, but then go through it and try to use literally as little words as possible. If you can get rid of a the or an a or a very or anything like that, just try to take it out and see how short you can actually make that message with the same value and the same messaging. So, and that's something I do consistently. So I'll write an email out, you know, it's not a challenge for me for 2 weeks. That's something I do all the time. But if I write an email out, you know, why waste words on, you know, you'll see very huge, you know, improvement. Like, just make it super short so they can read it easily, get the value, and then they're good to go. Bonus challenge, I would say, if you work through the holidays, make sure you take some time off, relax, see your family. If you're anything like me, you'll come back fully ready to go and more efficient than, you know, if you just truck through it. So I threw a bonus challenge on you, but those are my 2.

1:10:40 Scott Ingram: So Nate, I'm gonna take your challenge right now. Here it goes. Do me a favor, go subscribe to the new Daily Sales Tips podcast right now. Thanks for listening.

1:10:51 Nate Branscome: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast.

1:10:54 Scott Ingram: 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.