74: Let Sellers Sell with Evan Kelsay (Round 2)

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support and the return of our sponsor, Vidyard GoVideo. If you're not already familiar with GoVideo. I'll tell you more about it in a few minutes, or you can cheat and visit top1.fm/v where you can get started for free. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm excited to welcome Evan Kelsay back to the podcast. I've gotten such great feedback on these round 2 interviews that I asked Evan to come back on and join us, mostly because he's had quite the adventure since our first conversation in episode 56 that released last November. I'm actually not going to say much more than that so as not to steal too much of Evan's thunder. But I will remind you that when I originally spoke with Evan, he was the top seller at Seismic and had just closed the largest deal in company history and achieved over 800% of his annual quota. Welcome back to the show, Evan.

1:22 Evan Kelsay: Great to be here, Scott.

1:23 Scott Ingram: Why don't you bring us up to speed? What's been going on since that conversation last year?

1:28 Evan Kelsay: Well, just a few things. So after that deal closed, I was approached by our leadership about an opportunity to move into leadership as we're building out the company. The company's growing 100% plus year on year, and we're expanding teams. And they thought that they wanted to be able to kind of replicate what I do across a team. And I think like, like many salespeople who kind of had a great year and people come to you and you close a big deal, people come to you and kind of ask, well, what's next? I had always thought about going into leadership. It was a something I thought I'd be really good at and be able to impact the company on a broader scale for. And then I actually went through the interview process and at a certain point I thought, well, you know, if this doesn't work out, I can go back to being an IC and continue what I'm doing. But I got the role and started building out a team. And so we moved into leadership, started building out this team and started working accounts with that team, working with cross-functional partners, with our, you know, inside BDR resources. And that continued for, for actually several months until I recently, about 6 weeks ago, made the decision to go back to being an individual contributor. And Scott, you talk about it on your, on your podcast, but it's a conscious choice to be an intentional individual contributor. And I realized after, after doing the job for several months that though I liked doing the job and I felt like I was doing it competently and the team was growing, I just missed hunting. I just missed it. I had instilled a fire in the belly to go, to go pursue deals and work deals and, you know, be, you know, like the Teddy Roosevelt quote, like, be the man in the arena fighting the battles. And so I went to our president, kind of explained this to him, and he was really excellent about understanding. He's a, he's an old sale, you know, grizzled sales expert himself, and he understands the thrill of the pursuit. So, so I know I'm actually back into an individual contributor role on our global account team.

3:39 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. And what's, what's fun here for me is we had conversations kind of at each of those steps along the way. You called me right before you accepted the leadership role and was like, you know what, I, I'm doing the thing that I didn't think I would do. And, and so it was, it was fun to kind of watch you go down that path. And, and then the, the conversation that I really enjoyed is you called me and said, I totally get what you mean now about this intentional individual contributor thing. I've, I've just got to go back in, in the field and, and do this. So really excited to kind of dig into really what you learned through those experiences and how maybe your perspective has broadened. But before we do that, let me talk a little bit about our sponsor, Vidyard GoVideo. Email isn't dead, but it sure can be boring, and sending personal video messages instead to connect, convert, and close with Vidyard GoVideo is definitely the way to go. Vidyard GoVideo helps you easily record, send, and track who is viewing your video in content in 3 simple ways. First, you can capture your screen or tab and add a personal touch by recording yourself on camera true right from your browser. Next, share your video through email, social, or anywhere else with just a few clicks. And then finally, you can see when someone watches your video through browser notifications. GoVideo will let you know who clicked play and how much they watched. Install GoVideo for free by visiting top1.fm/go. And I'll make this offer again. If you want to practice, you can send a video to me at scott@top1.fm, and don't worry about making it perfect, right? Just send me an early take, mistakes and all, and I'll send one back, and I'll send you my first take, mistakes and all. So Evan, let's talk about really the decision at both ends. Start with why did you originally choose to take on that leadership role? Because I know it wasn't your kind of initial expectation. Certainly based on our first conversation.

5:48 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I think I, I took on the role for a few different reasons. Number one, I think as a lot of us sales professionals, you know, who have been reasonably successful, kind of have learned over the years, like people, there's a natural progression in sales from individual contributor at, you know, maybe a more tactical level to a more strategic level and then moving on into leadership. And when you move into leadership, there's, there's obviously continuously a track up through there, up till you kind of start maybe, maybe start running, you know, running your own business, and you're, you're selling, you're selling your business to your investors, you know, the selling doesn't stop, it just changes. And, and I thought, well, the year that I had last year impacted the company at a large level. And I thought, okay, well, how do I, how do I impact the company kind of 10x this level? And that kind of came from a concept that, and former company LinkedIn had, where it was always about, okay, how do you scale? How do you leverage what you do on a broader scale? So it was constantly a refrain internally at LinkedIn where they were asking, how do you 10x what you're doing? And I'm sitting there thinking, how do I 10x what I did last year? And what I could think of was doing this on a more broad kind of in a leadership position where you know, eventually down the road, you're able to have 10x the impact that you had, you know, that I had in 2018. And, you know, I knew that, that in terms of, of, I treat sales like a, like a practice, you know, like a, like a, you know, lawyers, doctors, accountants, what have you, you know, they don't, they don't do jobs, they practice law, they practice medicine, you know, they practice these things. And it's a craft to me. And I felt like you know, though I still had a lot to learn, I still had a ton to learn about enterprise SaaS sales, that it was interesting to me and exciting to me to kind of start this new 10,000-hour project. If you follow Malcolm Gladwell, and it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient at any particular thing. And I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to kind of start that next 10,000-hour project and have a bigger impact on the company I'm working for. And, you know, I'm I'm looking at a… last year I was looking at a big commission check and I thought, well, how do I 10x this? And then, you know, really the best way to do that is, is, you know, through being, you know, a major equity owner in a company that goes public, gets bought, what have you, as you scale. And that's, that's, you know, the only way you're going to do that is to move into a much higher leadership role that has a broader impact on the company. So, you know, all of those things combined Plus the fact that I really love developing, I love developing talent. I love the coaching aspect of any job for the people below you, the people across from you, even the people above you. You know, all those things combined, I thought, well, this seems like a next natural progression.

8:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let me try and sort of cover the broad strokes here and then we can kind of fill in the details as we go. On the other side of that, what drove the decision for you to move back into the field?

9:09 Evan Kelsay: I think it was motivated by pure passion. There's probably a metaphor for it that covers it, but I couldn't… at a certain point, I couldn't deny my true self and kind of what I really loved doing at this particular moment in my career and moment in my life. I had just moved into a company, Seismic, that has a few different things that really make selling for it amazing. You know, the leadership is incredibly supportive of individual contributors and gives them the amazing support to be able to run deals strategically and not kind of tactically. And then on the flip side of it, the technology that we sell actually makes an individual contributor's life way easier. It's sales enablement technology, and it actually takes a lot of the administrative work that sellers everywhere had to have to deal with and takes it off your plate. And so you're able to kind of really spend time thinking deeply about accounts and thinking strategically about accounts and pursuing those, you know, in the right way. And, you know, those 2 factors were always kind of in the back of my mind. But as I made the transition to leadership and I moved into that world and I became, you know, I took my… you're taking yourself off the field as a player and you're becoming a coach. I just constantly felt myself wanting to put a jersey on. And I was hoping that feeling would just kind of dissipate over time as I was getting more into the role. But it actually increased. And every month that I was doing the role, I felt more and more like I'm just denying myself what I truly love to do. And that's, you know, pursue. And we're in a growth mode. So it's pursuing, you know, new business, new logos. And it's just, it was the most… last year was the most fun I've had in my sales career. By, by a wide margin. And I, I kept thinking to myself, you know, why did you, why'd you step away from that? That was, that was incredibly fun, incredibly fulfilling, and it had a major impact on the company.

11:14 Scott Ingram: Well, and I think what's fascinating here also is how quickly you made that decision, right? You didn't let this fester and go on and decide, well, you know, for this to look right on my resume, I should probably, you know, stick this out for, you know, some, some period of time. I mean, you, you acted pretty quickly. And I mean, you alluded before to kind of the conversation with your president, but what made you decide so quickly?

11:39 Evan Kelsay: I've never, I've never been the type of person to, to wait around for, for lingering decisions, both for, you know, for good and for bad in my life. And, and I, I knew, I knew that this, this wasn't… this feeling wasn't just going to go away. It was actually going to get stronger over time. And at some degree, I was trying to cut it off at the pass. Because the passion, you know, the passion I have to go, to go hunt, to go pursue deals and do all the great things that you get to do as an individual contributor. I knew that, that ultimately that was going to be what I was going to be doing. You know, whether I, whether I did the leadership role for, you know, 1 year or 2 years or 3 years, I wasn't going to be doing it for much longer than that. And so I thought to myself, you know, this is… there's no, there's no point. There's no point in continuing on when this is what you really love to do and it's what you're good at and it's what you're, you're passion for is right now. I'm not saying I wouldn't, you know, eventually take on a role like that again because, you know, it's… there's a lot of great things about the role, a lot of things I enjoyed. But I've never, I've never been the type of person to let things linger on and fester, you know. And you, you make the decision, you know. Again, it's sometimes it's getting me… that's gotten me into trouble. But you make the decision that you feel is right at the time. And, and at that moment, you know, this was about 6 weeks ago. It was overwhelming how much I felt like this was the right path.

13:07 Scott Ingram: That's so interesting. One of the things that we've talked about a little bit before on this show is, as you evaluate new opportunities, really how to do that due diligence appropriately, right, to make sure it's a right fit. And typically, I mean, that's, that's in the context of going into a new company, right? This is a little bit differently, but maybe you can kind of add some nuance to the way that you think about that. So knowing Knowing what you know now, how would you suggest that others fairly evaluate these types of opportunities? And maybe again, in the context of a significant change in the type of role?

13:46 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it was, if I kind of look back on my decision-making process, you know, I think the one factor that I didn't really calculate for was passion, like just true passion for what I was doing at that moment, kind of what I'd been doing for the previous 10 years of my life. And I think, you know, when you evaluate that kind of transition from individual contributor to leadership, especially in sales, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of standard factors that you should be evaluating, like, you know, quality of the leadership team, that you should be evaluating, you know, the type of people that you're going to be inheriting on your team, the accounts that you have to go after, the kind of total market opportunity for that, for that territory, not just this year, but kind of, you know, the next year and the year after to really build a pipeline, you know, and, and, and, you know, the thing that then you kind of have to turn around off the, off that surface and ask is, okay, you know, in some, in some ways, it's your passion for coaching, which is the most, I think, fulfilling part of the leadership role as a frontline manager. The most fulfilling part of that role is, is your ability to kind of coach people from one level of their sales acumen to a next level of their sales acumen and beyond that. If, you know, that fulfillment for you is, is overpowering and it's really, you know, that, that's the really, that's the joy part of the job because, you know, every single job in the world has a bit of joy to it and it's got a lot of other things to it. And if that part of the job is, you know, outweighs your, your desire and kind of your, your, you know, your, your joy that you get from pursuing business as an individual contributor, as the one kind of doing the hunt, then, you know, then, then I think then that's, that's the moment when it's right for you. That's kind of how I'm going to be thinking about the next opportunity that comes my way. And when I, when I think about, you know, that moment in time for me, I don't think I calculated as much as, as much as I should have. How much fire in the belly that I had to still, you know, hunt.

15:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's one of the things that I wrote about in the… in one of my stories in the first Sales Success Stories book was this idea on getting clear about what you want, right? So before you go down that path, I think it's useful to just be introspective for a little bit and give some thought to, okay, what are the elements that I enjoy most, that I'm most passionate about? And I took the stance of really kind of more understanding branding, what size of organization do you want to work for, right? What does that culture look like? Who do you want to be selling to? You know, what size of deals? Those types of things. But I think that's a really interesting consideration, right, is, is just what is the day-to-day. And something you said earlier really struck me because I think you and I probably have very, very similar values in this way. You were talking about the impact that you're going to have, and for me, that's one of the very biggest drivers, right? I have to be in a spot where I'm having a big impact in a lot of ways, right? It's, it's not just impacting the company and, and the numbers and the revenue and everything else. Absolutely, that's important because ultimately that impact comes back to me and fills up my bank account. But it's the impact that I'm going to have on my clients and their careers and, and all of those things. And frankly, that's probably why I do this, right? This, this is… it certainly impacts me. These conversations have helped me grow tremendously, but I love the impact that it has had on other people as continue to kind of grow this, this community together. So I think it's being really conscious of all of those things and knowing the better you know yourself and knowing, is this role and this opportunity really going to be the right fit? One of the things I wanted to talk about that was, was just fun for me, frankly, is I think, did you build your entire team from scratch? Did you inherit anybody or did you build the entire thing?

17:55 Evan Kelsay: I inherited a few people and then had to do a lot of, had to do a lot of hiring, or I should say try to do a lot of hiring. Tough market out there.

18:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's, let's talk about that because you and I had an opportunity to kind of work together on, on one of those things because of a situation, and that actually worked out quite well. Why don't, why don't you talk about just that, that recruiting piece, especially in, in a challenging environment? And I'm surprised to hear you see that because I think Seismic is so on it right now. I mean, there's, there's not a lot of companies that are, that are like your size, your culture, that are growing at this kind of a pace. I mean, it's a really incredible opportunity.

18:32 Evan Kelsay: It is. And I'm at the company and kind of how I went about recruiting for the company was kind of this idea that, you know, our whole world is sales enablement, sales technology, you know, marketing support for that. And so if you're a salesperson and you have a passion for selling and a passion for the craft of selling, it's a pretty fun world to be in because your whole, like everything you do every day, everything you talk about every day, you're kind of, you're expected to be a subject matter expert on. Is around how to sell better, how to enable better sellers and selling, you know, selling organizations. And the people that I was looking for, I really wanted to see that spark, that passion for, for just the craft. And I think that, that in particular, you know, carries people through and kind of would, would, you know, will make people and has made people successful at Seismic. But, you know, the, the profile that I was looking for, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't necessarily… it really wasn't necessarily industry or discipline specific. So, you know, I think many companies kind of in this position might really target, like, I need enterprise software as a service salespeople that have, you know, 10+ years of experience in our, you know, our sub-vertical or kind of an adjacent vertical. And I never, you know, I never really thought that was, that was the right way to go. Because if you're really, if you understand how to sell, you can be successful in any type of sale. And so So, you know, the kind of chance, the chance to get some interest from a guy of DeJuan's caliber, and thank you, Scott, it blew me away. I mean, the amount of passion and acumen that he has around the craft of selling, you know, it jumps off the page. It's infectious whenever you talk to him. And, you know, he's got a bright future at Seismic. But, you know, the idea for actually bringing him to my leadership, bringing his resume to my leadership was that we're looking for, you know, for lack of a better phrase, like, you know, 5-tool athletes, sales athletes. We're not necessarily looking for, you know, disciplined specialists. We're not, we're not at that phase in our growth. You know, we're not, we're not in a mature market with, you know, just a, just a couple of competitors and, and it's a budgeted line item for every company. You know, we're in this phase where, you know, we're still, we can still mold talent and they can still, you know, if they're smart and dedicated and passionate, they can, they can learn, they can learn what they need to learn. And by the way, you know, they're sales professionals and we're selling to, you know, we're selling sales technology, you know, it's not a, it's not a hard jump in expertise to make. And so the way I, the way I thought about, you know, who I want to hire on the team really were those people that were passionate for the cause of what we were trying to solve, which is truly, you know, making the lives of, you know, taking, taking this this amount of time that takes about, you know, usually a full day of every seller's week, which is finding and building and personalizing pieces of content to show their clients and just practically eliminating that and giving them their Mondays back. And at the same time, kind of giving a marketer who is at their wit's end trying to support sales actually the intelligence that they need to be able to truly understand what's being used in the field and when and how that impacts business so they can just kind of focus in on, on what, what helps. And so, you know, that motion of just, can you, you know, am I, is who I'm talking to on the other end of the table in terms of a candidate, are they, are they really passionate about solving that issue, then that, that really, to me, was going to be the ultimate driver of you're going to be successful here.

22:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, and let me, let me fill in some, some contextual dots there, because you mentioned DeJuan, but I think it'd be helpful kind of look at the other side of the piece there. So DeJuan reaches out to me. DeJuan, gosh, I, I don't remember which episode he was on. We'll put it in the show notes as always. And you can also almost all of the time get to any specific interview if you go to top1.fm/their first name-dash their last name. Although this time, Evan, I guess I'll have to add a 2 after, after Kelsey this time. But DeJuan was on the podcast quite early, had a great, incredible career with Bloomberg BNA, was probably the star. He was the opener at the, at the first Sales Success Story or the first Sales Success Summit, gave this incredible presentation. And what was interesting just in his career, and it's, it's fascinating, and this is why we're going to talk about this a lot at the Sales Success Summit, because when I look at it broad strokes, right, I've had about 70 of these interviews. The reality is if you look at about the first 50, right, because most of the, most of the last number are fairly recent, there hasn't been a lot of movement. I was curious about How many people have changed, right? How much movement is there among the top performers? And it's not very much, right? The show's been going for about… or I guess we're coming up on 3 years, I think, in October. And about 10% have changed companies and another 10% have moved into leadership, almost always within the same company. DeJuan did both. So, he changed companies, went to work for a startup, moved across the country. So, he was in Virginia, has 6 kids. So, moved the whole crew to the West Coast, worked with the startup for a little bit, and it just wasn't the right thing and mostly not the right thing for his family. Had an opportunity to go back to Bloomberg BNA and moved into a leadership role. So, again, I think his perspective has really grown and broadened. And then, you know, just things changed within the company. Company and their strategy and their approach, and it didn't align with where DeJuan was and what he wanted to be doing and the amount of travel that he wanted to be doing. It was certainly creating additional demands on his time. And so, he reached out to me and is like, Scott, where do I go? What else is out there? I was like, man, if the thing on my radar that is so fascinating just because of, to your point, Evan, our love and passion for sales, I'm I'm like, you've got to look at Seismic. Like, the stuff they're doing is really, really incredible. And you had just moved into that role. I was like, why don't you go talk to Evan? And, you know, one thing led to another and that just worked out. And I know DeJuan is loving that role now and having some good early successes. So, it's kind of fun and it's fascinating to me that yet again, this is a rather small group of folks. That's happened twice now already where, you know, somebody has moved into a leadership position and hired somebody else that's been on the podcast. So David Weiss hired Jacquelyn Nicholson, and she's having a blast now at ADP. So it's, it's really fun to watch that. And we're going to bring a lot of that into a lot of just the conversation that's happening at the Sales Success Summit. The way that I've structured the, the agenda is the first day is really all about the sales process, right? It's, it's about very heavy prospecting on the front end, right? How do we create more opportunities in today's environment? And then how do you effectively manage that sales process and build business cases and build joint action plans and the way that you're working those deals to closure. And then we're going to do some whale hunting conversations. Jamal's going to talk about kind of the inside of the mega deals that he's worked. And then that's going to finish with the first time that Evan will be on stage in really just a big deal panel. So Jamal will be on that panel. Evan will be on that panel if he's able to make it. We're still kind of working out those details. Trong Nguyen will be on that panel. So all the guys who have closed… wait, I have to add up all of the commas and numbers. So call this 8 and 9-figure deals, talking about… I'm basically going to let you guys interview each other and get into what's going on there. And then on the second day is about productivity, mindset. And then really the afternoon of that last day is going to be all about more intentionally managing your sales career. I feel like this is a conversation that's broadly missing. And that's why we've been coming back to this here on the podcast with some of these round 2s around being that intentional individual contributor. And I'm basically going to tackle that across 3 different panels. So we'll have a panel on the intentional individual contributor with folks who have all made this decision, right, who tried the management thing and for whether the company changed or they decided to make the change, went back into that individual contributor path. And Evan, I think that'll be fun because both you and DeJuan will be on that panel along with George Penyak, who was just… he was my first round 2 interview in this process as he went into a national accounts role, really for a different reason though, right? He came back into it thinking about it from the terms of, I want to have a really good, strong, broad resume so that I can climb a little bit higher in my career. And the gap that he felt like he had was just he didn't have a lot of national account experience. Worked regional accounts and did really well in that space, but wanted to kind of broaden his depth in, or breadth of experience and take on that role. So I think that'll be a great conversation. We're going to talk to some of the folks who are still in the sales leadership path and really what they've learned. And the thing that I'm most curious about, because we did, we did a panel last That was this idea, right? I talked to… gosh, we had like 5 people on that panel, and it was all folks who had been in both roles, right? They had been top-performing individual contributors, and they'd also been successful leaders, and just wanted to understand kind of the pros and cons of the different roles. And really what came out of that, and this is what you and I can talk about next, is they all felt like this is something you should do at some point in your career just to understand it, and they felt like it'll make you a better individual contributor if that's ultimately the choice that you make. But it was sort of something that you have to try, and what I want to get from this year's panel is if you're going to go down that path or you have a desire to go down the leadership How do you prepare, right? What are what are the things that you wish you would have done to better get ready to be successful in that in that role? And then we're gonna go on a completely different tangent, and we're gonna talk about alternate paths, right? Those are the most traditional paths. Like I can just keep selling, and I can keep making money, and I can just have a great life. Or I can go and lead teams, and I can coach people, and I can build organizations, and and I can go down that leadership path. Or there's other things you can do too. And so we'll talk about an entrepreneurial path. I'm trying to work out, I think this is going to work out. Jack Wilson, who is at Cinch IT and will also be on stage, they've started franchising their business and they sold a franchise to their number one seller. So I'm actually going to try and bring him here onto the podcast and into that panel because I think that's a really fascinating potential path. That, you know, most people don't even begin to consider. A lot of us think about our, our territory as this is my franchise of my company. Well, you could make that real and actually own that, that franchise. And so Dale Dupree is going to be on that panel as well as he's gone down this path of creating his own training company and, and more of an entrepreneurial path. And I think I'm actually going to be a part of that panel just to talk about kind of the side hustle angle, right? I have no intention of giving up my day job while I, while I continue to do this, but you know, this Sales Success Media continues to grow and, and has started to become financially lucrative for me. So there, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can, you can tackle this. And I'm, again, I, I feel like it's, it's conversations that will be super, super valuable and just putting folks in, in a position to be able to think through all of these opportunities more carefully and do good evaluations and be able to look into the future and think about 5 or 10 years from now, what does this look like? You know, how do I position myself to be successful down the road and not just today?

31:22 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, you touched on a couple of things that I thought, you know, really, really spoke to me. I mean, it's, it's this idea that you are… and Scott, like, you're at the forefront of this… it's that steel sharpens steel and that you're, you're getting best practitioners together and creating a community of best practitioners, which, quite frankly, A lot of other disciplines, a lot of other job types, they do that on a regular basis. And it's just, it's part of the culture. And in sales, we don't, we just don't do it enough. And, you know, whether it's just getting people kind of the basics of selling all the way to, you know, really, really high-level minutiae around what separates really great sellers from, you know, excellent sellers and that type of thing. So you're trying to, you know, essentially turn, you know, best practice knowledge into instinct for these people. You know, I thought that was, you know, it's something I'm really looking forward to, Sales Success Summit in Austin in October. But, you know, what the thing about what I loved about the pod you did with George recently, George Penyak, is that, you know, he's making, you know, I feel like he's making the right decision. And it's something that when you consider if you're an individual contributor, as you consider kind of your career track, it's something that I've witnessed multiple times at multiple companies where if your goal is to, is to move up in the leadership ranks at a certain point, especially in kind of enterprise technology, you know, type of world there, you know, the experience matters as an individual contributor. And the higher, the higher you go as an individual contributor, the more strategic deals, the larger, more complex deals that you work on, the deals that have kind of larger impact on the client, that experience is invaluable when you move into leadership. And I saw it multiple times where somebody would move from kind of a, call it like a commercial or a mid-market individual contributor into a commercial mid-market leadership role. And then they'd start to try to move up from there into more of an enterprise or a global role in leadership. And the candidates, in many cases, that it would be hard for them to move because the candidates they were competing against actually had sold to enterprise accounts and global accounts before. They understood that process. They understood how to coach that process. And so, you know, I think George, George moving from his role kind of, you know, in terms of enterprise mid-market manager into more of a global, global or kind of call it national accounts individual contributor is the right move because that will prepare him for the next, the next time that he wants to go back into leadership. To be able to really, you know, move up in the ranks and have a bigger impact on the company.

34:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you remind me of something, and this is… I want to make sure that I bring this into that conversation. And I think we can kind of touch on it now. I think one of the challenges, probably the biggest challenge in the individual contributor space, is dealing with all of the things that we don't control, right? And and I want to get your perspective on how do you control the things like. The fact that you don't control what your territory looks like or what your compensation plan might look like and what those changes look like. In fact, there's a… I'm not going to call out individuals, but there's somebody that was, you know, has been on the podcast who the only reason they left their role, and they had had a very long, very success… extraordinarily successful track record with their company, their leadership just completely undercut the comp plan where it was basically capped. And this individual had made lots and lots of money because the comp plan wasn't capped and the company had benefited tremendously because of that, but it caused him to leave. And so, you know, I think I always am worried about those things. How do you think about that? And I think you're in some ways kind of in this position. You're building out a brand new territory. This is is an unknown space for you as you get kind of restarted.

35:33 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, I mean, in the kind of all the different types of, you know, companies and situations and markets that you could sell into, the one that… the ones that I've tried to seek out are the ones that where the sales… the individual salesperson actually has a big role in how much revenue that company brings in. And when you think about like how much an individual contributor actually affects something like, you know, the margin of the deal. So a deal could close for… with a, you know, call it, you know, like an average salesperson might close a deal for $500,000, but an expert one, same deal, same opportunity, would close it for, you know, $1.5 million. And, and that, you know, those types of companies where that's the case are more likely to, you know, really value your individual contributors and be able to… and not just value them, but support them properly, like allow them the resources and the, you know, the executive sponsorship to be able to run great deals. And so as a, as a seller, I've always tried to kind of look for companies where they really try to value what you're doing in the field. Actually, they view that as having a pretty major impact on the company's revenue. And it's not just kind of a product that you're putting out that kind of sells itself. And so, you know, as sellers, you know, look, look for companies that are, that believe that, you know, how you sell is as important, if not more important, than what you sell.

37:05 Scott Ingram: So I'm going to play that back sort of the way that, that I heard it, because I, it actually lines up really well with a lot of the things that I see. So the first thing there is, it really has to do a lot with company size, if you, if you will. The percentage of revenue that you can possibly contribute, right? Not, not the actual dollars, but how big of a, of an impact are you having percentage-wise? And I certainly see this in my day-to-day, right? My, my percentage of contribution in my day job is significantly more than what it would be if you just took the number of sellers and divided by total revenue, right? And certainly that was the impact that you had last year. And when you do that and, and the company recognizes what's going on, you're able to… maybe dictate is, is too strong of a word, but certainly have more influence and control and, and the relationships with the executive team to be able to kind of fix those things. Because where I've seen those things come apart, and I'm actually thinking of, of somebody else right now who, again, their comp plan went really sideways and, and And the opportunity is like something like 1/3 what it has been in the past for them. They're huge organizations. Like, they're these global enterprises where… and that's why, and again, I talk about this in that same story in Sales Success Stories about being clear about what you want. I personally, I just can't be a rounding error like that. And, you know, when you're working for the… well, I won't name specific names, but let's just say if you're working at the Fortune 500, level, there's almost nothing that you can do where individually you're not a rounding error and probably a rounding error on a rounding error. And so, you know, at that point you're just kind of a cog. And, you know, those roles can be great. They can be extraordinarily lucrative. A lot of times you've got incredible infrastructure and incredible support, and there's a lot of advantages to being in those situations. But the flip side is you lose that much more control. Right? And the winds blow and organizations change and territories change massively. So it's hard to, you know, really settle in and get established and just like, okay, I've got this franchise within this company that I own because they may change your geography entirely or whatever it is. So I think there's certainly a lot of advantage into it. Just again, coming back to that introspection and being clear about about what fits me, you know, where, where do I work best, what type of organization, and knowing kind of the pros and cons of, of the, the size differential. Because to your point, the role is very different, right? Having… when you're in a very small company, you wear a lot more hats and you're responsible for doing a lot more things than when you're in a big organization and you can just kind of put your head down and crank out your process.

40:08 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, it's, it's kind of specialist versus general, generalist in a lot of ways. And You know, it's very true. And, you know, I think you and I are both… our careers are kind of testaments to seek out, you know, smaller companies to begin with. LinkedIn was… it wasn't as big as it is now when I joined, and Seismic's grown tremendously since I've joined. But your percentage of impact theory is, I think, exactly right. And that allows you a bit more autonomy to be able to do things as you see fit if you kind of have a larger percentage impact on the company's revenue.

40:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's talk about your biggest takeaways. What did you learn from your time in leadership that you're now applying in the field or otherwise might have changed your approach?

40:55 Evan Kelsay: It's funny, my boss last year actually said this quote to me, and it was a little tongue-in-cheek, but he was, he was serious. And as I got into the leadership role, I realized how right that he was. But he said, my philosophy since I was a seller and then ever since I've been in management and leadership was that my whole goal, your whole goal of the year is to make your boss look good. And it's, it's a funny thing to say for a boss to be saying to somebody who they're managing. But, you know, we laughed about it. But the more I thought about it, the more, in fact, I thought it was very, very true. And your quote before about how every great individual contributor should spend some time in leadership just for knowledge, just to understand that world, understand their day-to-day pain, you know, the joy they take away from the job, like how to make… really highlight them and make them look good internally. All great things flow from that. And in reality, you know, the things that I was learning in leadership, I fundamentally believe that I'm probably exponentially better of a seller now that I've had this experience and really understand. And it's not necessarily that I'm, I'm better in front of clients or I'm better at, you know, really thinking through a strategy on a deal. But there's always kind of, of any big deal, there's always kind of 2 sells that you have to do. You have to, you have to sell the, you know, the external client, but there's always, there's pretty much always a major internal sale that needs to happen because, you know, there's usually things that, that are not, that are off, that are not off the shelf, that are, that are kind of out of the box for the company to be able to do. And to understand the kind of internal levers and machinations and power brokers within your own company is incredibly important to be able to, to be, you know, a successful, you know, senior salesperson at a company. And, you know, whether it was, you know, I really fundamentally formed a great respect for my manager's plight in how, like, in how varying a forecast might be, and and how they're responsible for a number, but there's so much influx at the, you know, at the IC level, that it's just really hard to forecast anything. And it's really hard to, you know, you kind of do it in percentages. You know, the empathy that you have to have day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, as a leader is incredible. You have to have an enormous amount of empathy to be able, you know, to be able to kind of inspire, you know, continuously inspire your team to achieve of greatness. And really having, I think, a lot of being exposed to a lot of different types of seller styles, and also other leadership styles was really, really important. And this idea that, you know, I think really successful salespeople might get into a mindset of like, you know, I always do things the way that I have done them, I'm really good at doing them that way. And I'm not really going to be seeking out a lot of other ways to be successful. You know, this, it made me, you know, appreciate the opposite of that even more. And the fact that there were so many, there's so many parts of my sales game that were weak after kind of watching other people very closely perform theirs day to day. And that, you know, it's just, it's a constant, it was constantly humbling in a very good way. Because you, you, you're building, you know, you're, you're understanding and you're building yourself. You're kind of looking, you're looking from, for a future state where you are, if you're a leader, you know, you're looking to a future state as an individual contributor and saying, wow, I'm going to be so much better at my job because I know these things. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating.

44:49 Scott Ingram: And I think that's probably one of the, the most impactful elements is, I mean, and frankly, kind of what we try to do with, with this show and with the summit as well is just expose folks to different styles and different approaches. But it's one thing to have a conversation with somebody for an hour and a half or something like that. It's a whole different thing to really, you know, be leading them and become intimately familiar with the nuance of their process and how they're managing those things. Because I don't think anybody sells exactly the same No, and thank God they don't.

45:28 Evan Kelsay: Yeah, for sure.

45:29 Scott Ingram: What… no, Evan, what did you find to be the most rewarding part of the leadership role? What did you like the best?

45:36 Evan Kelsay: It was, it was definitely the coaching part. The coaching part was, was that, that's, that's where I found an immense amount of joy is watching, watching the reps on my team really kind of work through their thought process on deals. And it's the hardest thing in the world not to give somebody the answer to the test. You just, you really want to do it. And it was really hard for me. And I just, I constantly was catching myself having to say to the rep asking the question, like, you know, I can't give you the answer to this test. Like, you got to work through it. And I probably, you know, that's where I feel like, you know, really masterful leaders understand the leading questions to be able to get somebody's mind to work on the answer instead of you know, asking a question that kind of reveals the answer. There's a real art to that. And from a, from a leadership standpoint, that was the most enjoyable to me, you know, and the kind of inter… watching, watching kind of the internal, you know, direction of the business move was, was really also very fun, kind of be able to kind of have your input into kind of where strategically we should focus, both from like a, you know, go-to-market standpoint, but also from a product standpoint. Standpoint, you know, you have a much bigger voice as a leader. But, you know, for me, at the end of the day, it comes down to the, to the moments you can see light bulbs go on. And those light bulbs, you know, work, you kind of move from those light bulbs going on at the client standpoint, or the prospect standpoint, to those light bulbs, you know, really enjoy finding immense amount of joy in, in the reps on your team and those light bulbs going off for them.

47:16 Scott Ingram: Man, I think you just hit, like literally narrowed down the biggest differences, at least from a coaching perspective, between really good leaders and, well, really just the opposite, right? Like the bad leaders is, is that answers to the test thing. I think it's also, there's a little bit more nuance in there as well. It's about leading them and helping them find their answer, not the answer or your answer, right? I think that there's so, again, going back to just styles and approaches and everything else. There's so many different ways to do this, and it's so much more powerful if you're able to lead somebody to their answer that's going to work for them versus your answer, which may not work for them. And if they get to your answer and it doesn't fit them, you're not going to have that same level of success and outcome.

48:08 Evan Kelsay: Well, and you're not building a thought process within them. And I can't say I wasn't… in fact, I probably wasn't great at asking the right questions to not reveal the answer. And so, you know, that's a part of my game that as an individual contributor, I'm going to start working very hard on. But the idea, you know, the idea is that you can't… you have to be able to get them to their own inception of the answer because that's going to be, you know, it's going to be memorable, first of all, and repeatable for them because they've built those brain synapses to like think through how I got to that answer instead of the, you know, being force-fed.

48:49 Scott Ingram: Well, so you just said that was the thing you were going to work on is what, what was that specifically?

48:54 Evan Kelsay: It's the leading, the leading question without it seeming leading. You know, it's the, it's the ability, the art of the conversation where the person on the other end of the table is trying to solve, you know, a big problem, a little problem, whatever it is. And that you have to have an enormous amount of patience and, you know, skill to be able to, you know, use, use your questions to make… force them… those questions have to be pointed at their thought process and not at the answer to that thought process. And that's… it was the hardest thing day to day for me to do.

49:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So here's, here's what's funny is if you go back to that question that I just asked, the way that I had been thinking about it before I asked it was actually going to be more leading because I thought that what you were referring to was you were going to change the way that you were asking yourself questions. And I was going to include that in my question, right? But I think in some ways there's an opportunity to just make your questions more open, right? And this is something that I'm always thinking about, right? And these interviews give me an opportunity to sort of play with that. But it's… I think there's 2 sides of this, right? It's what are the questions that you're asking yourself? Because I think that's the other role of a great sales leader or sales manager is just asking you about the things that you're maybe not thinking about. And so, what do you need to be questioning about your own process to continue to improve that skill? But then, we're having these conversations all day, every day with our clients inside of our companies. And the more you can lead them through these questions and do it in that really eloquent, artful way that I don't think we ever master, right? That's probably one of the hardest things that we do is How do you ask those questions to lead somebody down a path that brings them to their answers without leading them too far in your question, if that makes sense?

50:51 Evan Kelsay: It totally does. And it's one of the things that, you know, quite frankly, like, drove me back to being an individual contributor is one of the things I love about, you know, what we do is that you can, you can do some deep research on a company to kind of like, it's consequential. Kind of like hypothesis, you know, vetting with, with your, with your prospects, you know, and saying, listen, this is, this is what your executive leadership is, is telling the market as to how you're going to grow. And how, like, just here's, here's my hypothesis on how that's probably affecting you, but you have to tell me, like, how far off the mark I am. And it's kind of leaving, you know, leaving that environment open for, for them to fill it with the right answer. But still, still kind of, you know, the problem is, you know, as you know, Scott, like you can't ask open-ended questions all the time. And especially at the beginning, like the very beginning of relationship, because you have to kind of establish your bona fides with that person at the other end of the table to make sure that they think, well, at least they know, they know something about my business. They're putting an effort to understand and think it through strategically. That way they are worth my time. Time. And that, that's, that's certainly from an IC to, you know, prospect or client relationship. And as I was learning, it was increasingly more as a, you know, leader to seller relationship. They have to think that, you know, you're bought in and you're worth their time for them to really take you, you know, think through their own process.

52:22 Scott Ingram: Totally. And that's such an interesting dance. I had an amazing experience with that yesterday where I was able to establish that level of credibility because I realized that we were both making some assumptions that maybe weren't actually the right approach, right? So it was just sort of confirming like, hey, wait a minute, I, I'm assuming this, is that right? You know, kind of, kind of thing. And it's one of those, it, that's probably the right assumption, but just the fact that we're thinking about that kind of thing and, and to have taken the time to ask about it helps sort of build that level of, of trust and credibility. It was just, again, I, I stumbled upon it at the time. That wasn't really my intent and what I was trying to do. It was really a legit question because it was foundational to, to what we were trying to do in this, in this particular circumstance. But again, I, I sort of was able to take a step back from that conversation as I was in the conversation and just go, holy cows, like I was like, that was really powerful. I need to figure out some ways to do that some more. And again, it caused me to sort of think back to the broader process that I'm working on in this particular instance because it's a big opportunity and think about, okay, what are other questions like that that I can ask that we can incorporate into this kind of continuing discussion part of, or this continuing discovery part of the dialogue? That is going to open up big channels and reveal big things, and at the same time allow us to continue to establish that credibility without being able to have to say, "Well, we're so great at this. We've done this so many times," and all that BS that everybody else is going to say too.

54:11 Evan Kelsay: Well, and you're like that… that's a perfect example of you know you're you're trying to formulate your statements and your questions in a way that. You know, they immediately, they kind of hear them and view you as credible, but it leaves room for them to say no. And it gets back to like something that Chris Voss, who's a great author on the subject of negotiation, he gets to, which is, you know, the real breakthroughs come when you get people on the other end of the table to say no, or get them to say not you're right, but that's right. And, you know, your statements and your questions are continuously trying to get them to a yes, that's actually… it's not going to be that productive. You need to get them to say, no, that's not quite right. Let me explain it to you. You know, here's what you're missing. Or, yeah, that's right. But, you know, here's the other things that made me, you know, that sparked my thinking on these other, you know, these other bullet points of what we're talking about. It's a… you have to create, you have to create the questions that get somebody to a, to a, no, let me, let me correct you. Yeah.

55:21 Scott Ingram: You know, Chris Voss, that's, that's Never Split the Difference, right? That's right. Yeah. So my takeaway from that book, and I haven't done this yet, but it's, it's definitely on my, on my radar, was exactly that. Like, there was so much power in that book about just the questioning and how you're asking questioning. And I'm actually going to go back and re-listen to that book with the frame of how can I incorporate… because it's a book on negotiation, right? And we tend to think that negotiation is something that happens later in the process. But I think if you, if you think about that book in the frame of how can I apply this to my initial conversations and into my discovery process, super game-changing, right?

56:05 Evan Kelsay: And, and so I, I was already sort of seeing that as, as I was giving that first listen, but really decided this is definitely worth a second go-round with that new Yeah, I mean, the way, like, coaching, the act of coaching my reps really kind of doubled down on that concept for me because I now, I now am placing far more emphasis on, on the quality of the questions, the quality of the statements about somebody's business as I'm having initial conversations with them, because it's flat out the difference between, you know, selling a deal, selling a deal for a much lower margin margin and spending the same amount of time on that deal than if you could sell, you know, selling to get to your numbers, selling 10 deals of X amount instead of selling 1 deal of X amount, because the value that you've built in at the beginning of that process is so great that they're, you know, they see, you know, they see the exponential return immediately and they're willing to become catalysts for you, you know, immediately within a deal context. It's, it's so important to be able to get the front of that process right, to be able to actually, you know, maintain margin, but really kind of have a transformational deal for both your company and theirs at the end.

57:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you think about it from the buyer perspective, if you're able to lead those kinds of conversations, like that is so much more, I don't know, just like intellectually rewarding. Like, man, it It was so fun to talk to Evan because it makes me think different. Right. And I have these, these great ideas and, you know, they're going to want to talk to you again versus you having to like chase them and beat them up so that you can tell them some more stuff. Right.

57:49 Evan Kelsay: Yeah. It becomes, you know, kind of the intellectual exercise or like aerobics that you're able to get somebody to do. You know, that, that's where they, they really remember you. They remember you. They feel like you are a trust. That's how you can get into that trusted advisor category with your clients. Clients. And so often, so often it's, you know, it's so easy to just, you know, revert back to, you know, let me just tell you about me, let me tell you about my company, let me tell you about my products, and not kind of qualify my level of acumen about, you know, in reality, in the beginning of the process, it's the acumen about what I know about your business, what I know about the market challenges, what I know about your, you know, how you're addressing those in your department, and with, you know, your folks under you. But at the end of the process, it's, you know, what I… what can I show you that I know about your decision-making process? What can I… what can I show you that I know about your, your end kind of vendor selection on to close process that, you know, keeps those, those mental gymnastics going and keeps, you know, keeps that fire in your internal advocate at the company going? Yeah.

58:58 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. So I want to get back to the leadership role just for one more piece and understand kind of the flip side, right? We talked about what you liked the best about it. What were the most challenging aspects, especially anything that maybe you didn't expect to be challenging going in?

59:17 Evan Kelsay: I did not expect the amount of sheer time throughout the day that I would need to be, quote unquote, present. You know, you're Your, your account… I knew, I knew your, your calendar ceases to be your own once you become a leader. And, and that's a… it's a, it's a very hard transition. It was for me that, you know, you go from a dozen years where your schedule as an individual contributor is relatively your own to day-to-day, week-to-week. Now that's, you know, it's your team schedule or it's your cross-functional partner schedule. It's your leadership schedule now. But the amount of, the amount of time Um, you know, the, the kind of back-to-backness of, of those calls means that, you know, you actually have to be really present in each of those calls for all of those minutes for the most part. And it's a mental durability thing. You have to build up that muscle. And it took, you know, it took a while for me to like get there because you're just, you're used to having more downtime throughout the day to be able to kind of think, think deeply about whatever subject it is. And I started building that into my week so that I can kind of recharge that battery. But the schedule not, not being your own part of it is definitely something that is a pretty massive shift that you, you have to be prepared for and you have to be okay with. And it's something that your family has to be okay with and, and your friends have to be okay with because you're just, you're not as, you're not nearly as flexible. Like, I, I heard this quote about having, having kids that I love, which is, you know, you're, you know, before kids, your life is probably more fun and a little less, you know, not as joyful. And after kids, your life is a little less fun, you know, kind of day to day because it's very structured, but more joyful. And, you know, I would kind of view that transition as a similar thing where because there's more structure to it and your schedule is not your own, you know, you have to find moments of joy every day in what, you know, in what you're doing and your conversations with your reps or your conversations with your cross-functional partners or your leadership that you kind of have to work within the overall structure, you know, the more hardened structure of being a leader. Nice.

1:01:26 Scott Ingram: And I think that the kids' frame of reference is fascinating. Obviously, I don't have the experience on the leadership side, and that's a really good call-out around the schedule because that's so central to me. Like, I control in a lot of ways, I control my life, and it's because I have that, that level of, of control. But at the same time, I can certainly understand I also have 2 kids, and I… there's a lot of impacts of that where, yep, I lose some control, or they get to dictate certain portions of, of my schedule and how that works. Fortunately, it's, it's not all day every day like it would be in that type of role, but that's, that's certainly fascinating.

1:02:09 Evan Kelsay: Yeah. And, you know, and the, the challenging… I, I probably didn't expect hiring to be as challenging as it, you know, as it was kind of day to day and really being able to find, you know, have an idea, first of all, kind of formulate an idea around the types of people that you want to have at the company and bring onto your team that are, you know, not just going to kind of be able to do the job, but grow with the company because, you know, the universal law of startups is that startups grow exponentially and humans grow linearly. So it's, it's really important that you bring on people that have the capacity to grow with the company, you know, but then, you know, formulating that and kind of applying it to the candidates that you're interviewing, and applying that structure to the types of questions that you're asking of your candidates. And, you know, again, you're trying not to be so, so open with your questions that, that they can, you know, they can kind of have a bunch of filler in the conversation. But you're also trying not to be so specific that they kind of take it as kind of not germane to what the job is or the day-to-day aspects of the job or only a very small part of the job. And, you know, it's, it's, it was a really fulfilling process trying to… successful to some degree to hire great talent on the team. But it's, it's, it's a hard, you know, it's a hard process to continuously do and one that you kind of really have to find moments But, you know, moments of joy and just kind of talking to people about their career goals and their career aspirations and what they, you know, and what they want to be doing 5 or 10 years from now. You know, that piece of it was, you know, was the fun part. But there's a lot of challenging aspects to having to hire, especially rapidly, quickly on a, you know, on a fast-growing team and company.

1:03:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Now, I'm really curious about what other ideas you picked up from those on your team that you were working with, right? We talked about the different styles. Styles I'm interested in. What else did you see that you think you'll likely be incorporating into your current role?

1:04:17 Evan Kelsay: Well, frankly, I needed to and will be incorporating better relationships from this idea of force multiplication. So doing your best to actually sell your company and the problems that you solve to the people that are not necessarily your direct clients or prospects, but the people who influence those prospects and clients. And, you know, I'm talking about kind of what we… what normally you'd call like channel partners or impact partners, you know, the people that already have existing relationships with those prospects and really helping them understand how the problems that you solve really fit into the problems that they're trying to solve for their clients and help, you know, help get other people to sell for you, in essence. Got it.

1:05:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, there's a couple of points that I've thought about, and I'll call this out. I don't know that I call it out on this show very much, but I often talk about it when I'm being interviewed. One of the best articles on networking I've ever read, and it goes back… I just looked it up because I had to reference it in another conversation here recently. It's from 2006, but there's a Harvard Business Review article called Better Sales Networks, and I reference it so often. If you go to top1.fm/hbr, it'll drop you right into it. Into that article, and it really just sort of broadens your thinking about, you know, I think traditionally when you think about relationships in sales, we think about who can I open doors with, where can I create opportunities, but this really digs in as like, yeah, that's like one of 4 pieces. And to your point, the other pieces are just how critical, most, probably most importantly, those internal relationships are. And I'm also just finishing up… I almost wish I wasn't finishing because it's a brutal part of the book. I'm finishing Into Thin Air, which is a book about climbing Everest, and, well, in a particularly bad time. It was just a disaster. But the earlier parts of that book are just fascinating to me. And I'm thinking about climbing Everest takes months, mostly because you're acclimating, right? You're trying to get your body to operate in an environment where you basically wouldn't survive if you got dropped in at 26,000 feet or 29,000 feet or anything at that level because there's so little oxygen and it's nearly impossible to move. And also, not just that, but also how much support goes into that. Nobody climbs Everest by themselves, right? There's Sherpas and guides, and you learn from the people before you, and You've got medical professionals and all of these things that surround us. And again, I think there's just so many takeaways from a sales perspective in terms of how do we incorporate all of those things into our process, right? You can't be a lone wolf and have extraordinary levels of success.

1:07:13 Evan Kelsay: It's impossible. You have to… and to that, you know, growing, growing with the company, like you, you have to develop, like continuously envelop the different resources that will help you be successful and actually, you know, multiply your efforts in the, in the, in the short and long term.

1:07:30 Scott Ingram: So let's, let's just wrap things up with this question, unless you of course prompt something else that I want to talk to you about. But what do you appreciate about being an individual contributor now that maybe you didn't before?

1:07:43 Evan Kelsay: I really, I think I generally have a lot more appreciation for for just having really fun, rewarding, great interactions with those prospects, with those clients, and being able to really drive a process through. I think in a lot of ways, you know, I'm still… I still have a ton to learn about, you know, kind of the different, probably, you know, mid and especially kind of late funnel, you know, excellence. And I love selling vision. I love selling art of the possible. I love kind of imparting light bulbs to people so that they can kind of see what's possible. And then, you know, I want to… I need a better… like, this whole experience has gotten me a much better appreciation for, you know, driving, driving from kind of like, you know, agreement or kind of general, general, this, this is something that, that we should be doing onto, you know, we need to do it now. And, and what's the process to be able to kind of, you know, take that, you know, take that urgency and really drive it, drive it to close. And all this, all the, you know, hundreds of steps involved and boxes to be checked along that path, you know, from that moment on, that piece of it is, I think, you know, I'm going to be really focused on it. And it's something that I took away from my experience in leadership that is just going to be invaluable. And, you know, God, I've just, I've been kind of, you know, bouncing around my, you know, my house and the office and in terms of just the joy to be able to just go, you know, hunt again and go talk to prospects and really, you know, put on that jersey and like be in the field with them. And really, you know, I love seeing, I just truly love seeing somebody on the other end of the table that works for one of those prospects or clients understand the transformative nature of our solution, you know, of our platform. And see that go on and see that go on, you know, multiple times, lots of different people and be able to kind of drive that process forward. You know, that, that to me just brings enormous joy because, you know, I've kind of never tried to work for companies that have, you know, incremental, that will make your life incrementally better. I've tried to work for companies that will, you know, what we're, what we're doing and what we're solving actually makes your life exponentially better. Love that. Love that.

1:10:05 Scott Ingram: And I lied about one more question because we always try and make this actionable on the, on the end. Is there a challenge that you can issue to our listener for them to improve themselves and improve their results? Financial literacy.

1:10:19 Evan Kelsay: It probably falls into kind of the basics category of sales. But I was… it was especially kind of when you're younger in your career, like you have to, like you have to, you have to, you have to. My challenge is like just, just fall in love with the investor relations portion of a company's website and, and really dig into, you know, how, how, how that company is telling investors how they're going to grow and why the investors should give them, you know, should invest with them, give them money. It's been, you know, the biggest kind of, I think, probably change from, you know, my life before Seismic to now is really just my embrace… embracement of an open love letter to investor relations and truly really trying to understand the financial levers and drivers of a company and be able to align, you know, it's just allowed to… it's allowed me to truly align what we do to what their leadership wants to do. And if you're talking to the people, you know, if you're talking to the people on the ground who are feeling that pain day to day and you understand what leadership is trying to do, you can, you know, it makes it a lot so much clearer to marry those 2 things with the solution that you provide.

1:11:36 Scott Ingram: All right. That was a golden last question. So Just a couple of points to clarify there. I assume you're speaking mostly about 10-Ks and annual reports and earnings calls and those types of resources, right?

1:11:48 Evan Kelsay: You got it. Yeah. Investor Day presentations are my friend. Got it.

1:11:52 Scott Ingram: Now, can you recommend any resources to help people understand those assets a little bit better, particularly like the 10-K, again, to your point around kind of financial literacy?

1:12:03 Evan Kelsay: Yeah. So I would start with… I would actually start with a podcast called Invest Like the Best by Patrick O'Shaughnessy. I tried to start with kind of just hearing investors talk about companies and talk about industries and talk about, you know, how they, how they evaluate companies. And then, you know, I really tried to move into some just kind of doing some, some Googling research. Unfortunately, Scott, I don't have, I don't have an excellent, you know, financial literacy course for salespeople. Like, I've thought many times over the past 18 months, like, man, I should just, I should start a financial literacy course for salespeople. I'm sure it's probably already out there, but that piece of it has just been the biggest, you know, one of the biggest difference makers in my approach.

1:12:47 Scott Ingram: All right. We're going to talk about that some more. Evan, I will see you here in Austin in a couple of months. Can't wait to see you at the Sales Success Summit, where again, Evan's going to be part of the Bringing in the Biggest Deals panel and that Individual Contributor panel. And most of that agenda now is listed on the top1 summit.com website so you can see all of that. And if you're not already planning to join us, oh my gosh, what are you waiting for? And we'll see you there. We'll see Evan there. We'll see George Penyak there. We'll see just about everybody that we talked about on this, on this interview today. And hopefully we'll see you there as well. Until next time, happy selling. 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.