94: Comfortable Being Uncomfortable with Sharleen Vincent

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. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Sharleen Vincent. Sharleen is the top strategic client executive at Workforce Welcome to the show, Sharleen.

0:33 Sharleen Vincent: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

0:34 Scott Ingram: I'm glad you're here too. I'm really looking forward to digging into this conversation. Let's start like we always do with some immediate value for the listener and talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales.

0:48 Sharleen Vincent: Okay. Well, first, I would say, and I get asked this, what is your secret sauce? Or, but I would say, you know, I just see my potential customers or existing customers as people first. You You know, we're all just out there trying to support our families, make a living. And I really try to connect with my potential customers or my existing customers as people and not just as someone to get a sale from or dollar signs, that sort of thing. And because I do that, I think they feel a sense of sincerity and they feel a sense of trust. I think it builds trust quickly. They can tell that I really am more interested in learning about who they are. And my goal is to be their trusted advisor professionally, and maybe even potentially to be a friend, you know, and colleague that is somebody that can add value to them going forward.

1:46 Scott Ingram: Love that. What's the second thing?

1:48 Sharleen Vincent: The second thing is, you know, I do try to think really strategically. I get told in my organization I think differently than some of the other reps. But one thing I think is setting me apart is I do use my unfair share of resources. We do have a lot of resources, both in people, and that's probably where I mean that the most, and resources such as technology or documents, writings, and those things for me to draw on. But I will use anyone and everyone in my organization as part of my team to structure, win, and sell and engage a customer.

2:28 Scott Ingram: I love that. And I know that one of the resources you use is one of my favorite executive sales leaders of all time, and that is Alex Shootman.

2:36 Sharleen Vincent: Yes, he's our CEO, and I will have to say he's one of my favorite as well. I have a lot of respect for him, and I will engage him when I need to, and he will send me emails going, put me in, coach, you know, I'm here to work for you. So, I use him, and he'll tell you that if you talk to him, he'll tell you I do use him as much as I can. It makes sense.

2:56 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. And it's interesting, I don't think I've ever heard a senior-level executive complain that they're being used too much by the sales team. It's usually the opposite. It's more, I wish you would use me more.

3:09 Sharleen Vincent: And, you know, especially in an organization the size of Workfront, I'm sure that in some larger organizations, it might be a little bit tougher to get a CEO engaged. But within Workfront, we are definitely a family. We're a team. And we work together and he is so open to that. I love that about him. And, you know, he speaks with such credibility. He connects to our customers with such credibility that it's only a positive for me to engage him. So, I do when I need to.

3:39 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. So, what's the third point?

3:41 Sharleen Vincent: So, I think I've really learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think when I say that, it's just like as a salesperson getting used to handling rejection. You know, the more you handle, the more you just get used to it. The more you realize, hey, if I'm not getting rejected, then it's a problem. I'm not really out there stretching and reaching and trying to do more. So it does force you to keep pushing yourself. And that might mean doing something you're uncomfortable, doing something you might make your customer feel uncomfortable, but you've just got to do that. You've just got to learn that, you know, you can't get comfortable in your selling role because that's when you stop growing.

4:23 Scott Ingram: What's a recent example of that where you've felt that discomfort?

4:27 Sharleen Vincent: You know, that's funny that you say that because I am currently in an RFP situation.

4:33 Scott Ingram: Those are always uncomfortable.

4:36 Sharleen Vincent: Being run by sourcing for a large financial institution. And of course, once you go into that, you're not supposed to speak to anyone else in the organization regarding it. And, you know, I was just like, I really want my CEO, Alex, to reach out to 2 key sponsors that are sort of stepping back and letting their team do most of the evaluation. And I felt like that, that was a mistake. And I was in a position where I didn't necessarily feel like I was getting the mindshare that I should have. And so I reached out to Alex, and I said, I want you to reach out to these 2 people. Via email and/or LinkedIn or both. And here's what I want you to say. I'll craft the first, ghost the first email, and then you make it you. And that's a little uncomfortable because I'm taking a risk. I might get my hand slapped or, you know, something like that. But at the end of the day, the business is the customer of the sourcing person. So even if the sourcing person gets upset, I felt like at that level, more than likely that SVP was not going to go tattletale to sourcing that they had heard from our CEO. But it still was a strategy. It was still something I had to think about, and it was still a little uncomfortable. And so far, no hands slapped.

5:57 Scott Ingram: Excellent. That is a great story. I'm glad I asked. Well, let's put all of this in just a bit more perspective. Why don't you tell us about what your role actually is and maybe tell us a bit about Workfront for those who aren't already familiar?

6:10 Sharleen Vincent: Okay, perfect. Well, I'm a Strategic Client Executive. Expand and sell to some of our largest customers like Prudential, Disney, Lowe's Home Improvements, Humana, a couple of other large financial institutions. My job is to expand the footprint that we have within them. And then I have some targeted accounts, just a handful of about 5 accounts that do not do business with us today that I am off to see if I can break in and do business with them. So, I'm kind of a hybrid rep, I guess, in that I am selling to and managing large accounts where I'm supposed to grow them, and then also try to get some new logos in the door. That's just been recently in 2020 that the new logo part of the job has come to me. And Workfront is a modern work management platform, an operational system of record for your Tier 1 asset of work. And so, we help people do their best work. And the software allows visibility for the executives into what's happening, allows them to set goals and strategic initiatives, and make sure that the work is aligned to those goals so that everyone in the organization, from the leadership to the mid-level managers to the, you know, people actually performing the actual task, all have sight on whether or not what they're doing day to day is aligning to the strategic initiatives of the organization.

7:38 Scott Ingram: Excellent. Now, I hope you don't mind, I kind of wanted to call out something that I felt when we spoke in our prep conversation the other day. And that was, I was asking about some of the specifics of your role, and it felt like you got a little bit defensive about the fact that you weren't in a traditional hunting role. And this is… I'm in a very, very similar role where it's a hybrid role, and a large portion of the work that I do is focused on existing accounts. And I feel like in a lot of ways, that role doesn't probably get as much respect as it deserves. And it's certainly one that I probably haven't featured enough on this show. There are a lot of people in that role, but it's not one that we really dig into and talk about at any depth. So with that setup, you want to talk about that just a little bit?

8:28 Sharleen Vincent: Yeah, interesting that you felt defensiveness coming from me. I'll have to reflect on that. I think what I was saying was, in your mind, and maybe in a lot of people's mind, if you are selling to existing accounts, people think it's easier. And sometimes it can be. You maybe get an internal referral. It's a softer referral or something to that respect. So, it's warm, maybe a warm introduction gives you a little bit of momentum that maybe you don't have if really trying to knock on a door and get in somewhere without that warm referral. But my comment back to you was, and I will give you a couple of things here. One is first, when you are working with existing accounts, in the respect that I'm doing that at Workfront, I am actually going out to other parts of the organization, other departments, other subsidiaries, and I am working to expand the footprint there. Generally, I'm going to get an entire department, usually, on my software in a sale. But that might be marketing, and we have certain buying centers like IT PMO, or new product development, or professional services implementation, or HR, those kind of things. So, for me, when I say expand the account, it means I've got marketing, let me go try to now close HR, or let me try to go close new product development. That's still hunting. They really do completely different. They have different workflows, they have different responsibilities as part of the business. So, I believe that it's still hunting, whether you're managing an existing account, you're still out there doing the same things that you would have to do if you were knocking on a door of somebody that didn't use your software. You know, yes, you have someone in here who's already using it, but that can sometimes work to your disadvantage as well. Because if there are problems, if they're having problems with adoption or things like that, You know, maybe it's not as easy to go sell it. And here's a perfect point. I changed solution advisors, which used to be called our sales engineers. It's kind of my technical support person that is with me every step of the way. Several years ago, I had a new one named Steve come on board with me, and he had been supporting net new reps only. And he came over to support me, and so he started going on appointments and meeting face-to-face with me with existing customers. So he would start to hear maybe some of the challenges and start to hear it, hey, it's not quite as easy to paint the picture because they're in there every day. They know what's positive about your software, but they also know what's negative, or they know what feature enhancements they really need that are not there yet. And we left that and he looked at me and he said, your job is so much harder than the net new reps. He said, because they get to just paint the dream. He goes, You have to go make the dream a reality, and that's a harder thing to do.

11:35 Scott Ingram: That is such an interesting call-out because you're right, we do have to contend with the reality of what that situation is and not rely just on, of course, it's perfect, everything works wonderfully all the time, there are never any issues, and things work fine. Yeah, I think the other thing that's interesting about that is just the scale. You know, when you're working with the size of accounts that you and I work on, Some of these divisions are bigger than most, many small companies, right? They're, they're kind of large organizations in and of themselves. So, it's a fascinating thing. Why don't you put your success just in quantified terms for us? What has it taken to be the number 1 Strategic Client Executive at Workfront?

12:17 Sharleen Vincent: Well, so I was number 1 in 2019, and that meant, well, I finished the year at 215% of quota, and I closed the single largest transaction in Workfront's history in 2019 with a large financial institution. And to just give you a perspective, the size of the transaction and the deal was 16 times our average selling price. So, it was a large, very large engagement that we had with this organization. So, to be able to do that, I will tell you, this is my 9th year at Workfront. And some people might hear that and cringe. You know, because in today's world, people feel like maybe you need to be moving around every 2 to 3 years or you're not really growing. You know, I've got some age on me. So, I started out in the world where doing that, moving around a lot, was perceived to be a negative. And for me, in sales, what has been successful for me in my career, because I've had more longer-term, you know, 6 to 9 to 13-year engagements with companies, I think that is what has led to a lot of my success because, you know, when you have 9 years of building pipe and 9 years of experience and 9 years of hearing every objection, needing to be creative about every deal structure that you have, really understanding the core of our solution and where we're going and seeing the change in messaging and seeing the difference between over the last few years where work has gone. You know, our CEO talks about there's a shift, and we're in a category-creating environment right now where we are truly creating a category of modern work management. It's no longer project management; it's work management. And we're really at the forefront of doing that, and that's very exciting. And to me, when you jump around a lot, you might miss some of that evolution that, for me, allows me to really build a strong brand and become that expert and become that person and that mentor that people turn to. And I enjoy that. I like being that person. It gives me the confidence to take the risk, to be uncomfortable and that sort of thing, and know that I'm going to succeed.

14:40 Scott Ingram: That's a really interesting callout. I think, one, as the current environment evolves, I think we're probably likely to start to see more of that longevity. And I've been in my current role for 4 and a half years now, which again, if you're in one of those change every 2 or 3 years types of modes, this is starting to feel like an eternity. But exactly to your point, if you're gonna develop sort of that subject matter expertise and that brand and be known a little bit to some degree, in your industry and certainly within your company. I mean, I think it would be very difficult for somebody brand new at Workfront to maybe leverage the internal resources the way that you are, partially because you just have the relationship. You've built up that kind of credit and social capital and you, A, know who to ask, and B, they're probably willing to do it for you more than others might be in a position to ask for.

15:39 Sharleen Vincent: You know, all that is very, very true. Absolutely. Yep.

15:43 Scott Ingram: So, let's rewind the clock and kind of fill in some of those gaps in a little bit more detail. What is your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

15:52 Sharleen Vincent: You know, it's interesting. I had gone to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majored in business with a concentration of marketing. In my senior year, I was taking an entrepreneurship class, and there was an entrepreneur out of Charlotte, North Carolina named Bernice Jones, and it was a once-a-week class for a couple of hours, and he would bring in an entrepreneur every week to talk about how they started their business, he brought in, I don't know if these names will mean anything to you, but they're very prominent in kind of North Carolina, but he brought in Felix Sabatas and he brought in Joan Zimmerman of Southern Shows and he brought in this gentleman named Erskine Bowles, maybe you're familiar with him, who owned an investment banking firm called Bowles Hollowell Conner and Company. And he was one of the only ones that came in that actually brought a brochure of, you know, his analysts and his partners and And when I looked through it, there were no women. And I went up to him at the end of the class and I said, how come you don't hire women? And he said, well, actually we do have women in kind of administrative roles, but we are actually trying to hire a couple of women analysts. Would you be interested? And I said, sure. And he goes, well, send me your resume. I'll take a look at it and maybe we can interview you. So this had nothing to do with marketing. It was total being a financial analyst. But I looked at everybody and everyone from the organization had been to like Columbia and Harvard. And I thought, you know, I can take everything these guys have to teach me and just run with it. It can't hurt to get smart about finances. So I sent him my resume and he liked what he saw. He requires a certain GPA and I'd done really well in school. And so I went down and I interviewed with him and I got the job. And it was a 2-year position and you go back and after that you go back to get your MBA and become an associate and then you can move up to partner. Well, I did it for a year and Absolutely hated it. I was sitting behind a computer and I was crunching numbers and I was like, this is so not me. I'm such a people person and very social. And I actually went to him and just said, you know, Erskine, I met him at the copier one day and he said, how are things going? And I looked at him and he goes, no, just tell me the truth. And I said, I'm not sure this is a fit for me. And he said, Sharleen, you're such a people person. He said, you really should try doing something like sales. And I had been told that before. And he gave me the opportunity to go and research that sort of on his company's time. And it was a very generous offer of what he did. And so I went and I started interviewing for sales jobs and I got a sales job in telecommunications. And it was several years after divestiture. So I went to work for this little long-distance telephone company out of Charlotte. And the first year, I think I was there maybe a year and a half. In the first year, I was the highest billing rep 7 out of the 12 months. And my paycheck was really getting bigger. And I thought, hmm, I don't think I need to go back and get my MBA to make the kind of money I wanna make. And that was just, I just stayed in sales ever since, you know, and I went from there to going to work for AT&T, which became Lucent Technologies, and then Avaya. And I did that. In call center technology for about 13 years. Then I went over to Verizon and did that for 3 years, kind of in the same thing as a call center subject matter expert with that technology. And then found… at the time we were called AtTask. We had a name change about 6 years ago to Workfront, and it was something completely different than what I had done before. Had a recruiter reach out to me, and I was starting to get a little, just a little unhappy at Verizon. You know, it wasn't a very good… it was Verizon Business, not wireless, and it wasn't a very good culture and atmosphere. So I just decided to start looking around, and this was something different. And I thought, I always will have that call center and technology telecommunications background. This is something new and different. So I made the change after interviewing with a couple of other companies kind of in my older industry. And just made the change, and that's where I've been since. And it really has been a wonderful ride. Our organization has really changed. I've been through 3 CEOs and an interim CEO and a lot of different managers and a lot of different messaging and transformation in the product. So, I feel like I really have grown here because of the just growth in the organization.

20:20 Scott Ingram: That's so fascinating. So, I typically ask, I wanna ask 2 things. First is, is there anything that you would do differently if you were starting over again today, or any point in the course of your career where you wish, you know, I wish I would have gone this way instead of that way?

20:35 Sharleen Vincent: Yes. You know, hindsight is 20/20, and I don't know if I would have known to do this back then. But knowing it now, I think when I was out there looking for a position, instead of just figuring out who would talk to me, I would probably have been a lot more proactive about doing the research about what are the up-and-coming technologies, or who are the up-and-coming companies within the new up-and-coming technologies? Because I was in the tech field, so I probably would have stayed in that. You know, I think sales in tech is probably one of the most lucrative things that you can do, but I probably would have been more specific. Like, if I were to ever leave Workfront, or if I were going to leave Workfront, I would be very specific about where I would go because I would do the homework to go, this one and this one, that's where I want to go. And I didn't know to do that back then. It was sort of like, I'm just gonna throw my resume out and see where it lands and see who's interested in talking with me. Of course, we have a lot of tools today that we didn't have back then, you know, the internet per se, you know. So I'm definitely aging myself. So I'm not a digital native, I'm a digital immigrant. But I would have done that differently. I would have been more targeted on where I put myself and who I went to work for. It still turned out to be this great ride for me and going to work for a solid stable organization like AT&T that did become, you know, other organizations, but I would have probably gone to a little bit more of the smaller startup type of organization had I had the knowledge back then that I have now.

22:13 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. And given that smaller startup environment that you've kind of spent the last 9 years in, you've seen a lot of changes within the organization, multiple CEOs, lots of different managers, lots of things changing, the organization's been growing. How do you best experience that, take advantage of that? How do you think about that part of the experiences that's probably different for most people who haven't been in roles as long as you have?

22:38 Sharleen Vincent: You know, interesting, a lot of people are really uncomfortable with change, you know, and if you're gonna go to work for any company, I think today change is happening so fast, you just have to accept it and embrace it. And engage with it. And, you know, so it just became something that I said, OK, you know, product's going in a different direction, leadership's taking us in a different direction. I would accept it. I would learn the new messaging, you know, and I would embrace it. And then I would just go engage with my customers. And that has paid off for me, you know. And a lot of people, I believe, struggle with that. You know, they get comfortable and then they can't make the shift to something different in the same organization.

23:27 Scott Ingram: That's a really interesting perspective. And are there things that could have happened where you wouldn't have been able to embrace it that might have forced you to think about looking elsewhere?

23:37 Sharleen Vincent: You know, I think there's probably 2 things that could have potentially done that. And one is if I began to have a lack of belief in where the product was going, and then if I had a lack of belief in the leadership that was taking us there, or a bad relationship with my immediate manager or something like that. You know, I did have quite a few different managers over the course of my career here at Workfront, and I would say most of them, maybe one or two, might have been someone that I didn't feel like I could really grow from. And so if I had gotten or had to work long-term with somebody that I felt like was not providing value in some way for me, that would probably spur me to move on.

24:25 Scott Ingram: That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if in those couple of instances where you didn't have kind of the right fit with your manager, did that impact your results in those times?

24:37 Sharleen Vincent: Yes, some. Not completely, because I'm pretty strong and I'm someone that, you know, I know what to do. I've been in sales a long time, so I know what I need to do to go get the job done. Where it would impact me or where it didn't impact me is if I didn't necessarily feel like they were gonna bring value, I wouldn't engage them. And then sometimes they didn't like that, you know, or that sort of thing. But for the most part, fortunately, I've been very successful year after year. At Workfront. So I've earned the right to voice my opinion. I've earned the right to speak a disagreement or to, you know, gather the herd to say, this is the right place for us to go. So in that respect, I think even if a manager that I worked for didn't particularly agree with what strategy I was going to take or what I was going to go do, they still sort of let me do it because I had proven myself, you know, and you definitely have to prove yourself, you know, I mean, you're quiet until your results give you the voice in many cases in the sales world.

25:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. You know, it's interesting. I've had a lot of conversations outside of the podcast and realized that I don't explicitly ask about this enough, but I feel like I don't think that I've talked to anybody on this show who is wildly successful despite their manager. I feel like it's too big of a burden to overcome. Sales is hard enough with, with all of the things that we have to deal with externally to also have to overcome a really challenging direct boss. I feel like most of the time the best sellers all have a great partnering relationship with their managers that really have allowed them to grow. And continue to do more and more over the course of their careers.

26:36 Sharleen Vincent: I would agree. Yeah, unless that manager completely left that person alone, and they established that with someone else. For instance, I had a manager that I tended to work with my manager's vice president, you know, 2 above me, more than my manager. And he was OK with that. And my VP was OK with that. We just connected more, and we were very successful together. And I'm very fortunate that I was in a company that that was okay.

27:06 Scott Ingram: Right, right, right, right. Let's pivot just a little bit. Obviously, the show is called Sales Success Stories, and I love just hearing great stories. Is there a particular sales story, maybe you won a deal, maybe you lost a deal, where you learned something really, really significant from that experience?

27:24 Sharleen Vincent: Do I have to say one where I lost, or can I say where I won?

27:28 Scott Ingram: You can do it however you want.

27:30 Sharleen Vincent: Well, I will tell you, out of all the years I've been selling, I can tell you that this one stands out, but it is one that I lost and then won back. So let me tell you how I did that because it has stood out. And it was years ago when I was working for AT&T. I was selling call center software and a phone system to a company called MTS. And they were looking at me, and then they were looking at a competitor called 3Com at the time. And it was right when the data world was kind of taking over the telephone, you know, voice and data were trying to merge, and data was becoming more of the way to go, and the voice over IP was a huge thing, you know. And somebody that he worked with, the director I was working with, somebody he worked with had used a 3Com system in their history or in their past. So they were looking at us, and I worked for the highest-priced solution provider, and so my price was significantly more than this little brand-new voice over IP solution. And, you know, so he called me up and we had a great relationship, and I could tell he really wanted to do business with me, but he just couldn't justify the price difference. You know, so I had not done, I guess, my job to really explain that, but it was, it was a time, you know, people were kind of confused, you know, can data really, can it really provide the same quality and all that kind of stuff? And he said, look, he goes, it's, it's just a matter of budget. We just, we have to go with 3Com. And I was just so just heartbroken because we had had such a great experience. And so I just was like, this can't happen. I can't let this, they're going to have a nightmare. I know they are. The quality is going to be awful. And so I did something which is very interesting. We had just had a training on selling to the CEO and how you should go out and really look at the, you know, the annual reports and the 10-Ks and things like that and really read them and really understand. And he taught us how to look at the financials to see if a company was healthy and, and really where we needed to go and look at the investor reports and things like that, and really where we needed to go and get information that was important to them. So instead of going to my customer's annual report, I went to my competitor's. And I pulled that up and I looked at their annual report and they had this whole big section about how they were, you know, moving into the voice arena. And the majority of the section was about how they were worried about how they were going to compete in this market because there were providers like AT&T that just had such great quality, and they didn't know if they would be able to get there, and there was risk there, and it was a risk they were taking to be in there, and just all this stuff. And so I crafted this document, and I just said, in their own words, dot, dot, dot. And I sent it over to the gentleman I was working with, and about 2 hours later, he called me. And he said, okay, come back in. And he bought from me. So I had created enough fear because the company he was getting ready to buy from was not sure that they were going to be successful. And pointing that out in their own words turned that no into a yes.

31:03 Scott Ingram: Brilliant.

31:03 Sharleen Vincent: I've just always remembered that. That's just always been one. And it was at that time, it was a very large sale for me. So I was just unwilling to give up. And it paid off.

31:13 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. That is such a great story and such a different angle, right? You took that CEO training, which you would think was, hey, okay, maybe I need to go over this guy's head, which in this particular instance probably wouldn't have done a dang thing. And instead really looked at, okay, well, what can I learn about the inner workings of what's going on with my competitors? And what a great way. I mean, you never want to speak bad of… well, I don't. My stylistically, I'm not one that is really willing to trash my competitors. I think that's a really cheap move and doesn't look good. But man, if you can just point to their own stuff, that's fair game.

31:48 Sharleen Vincent: Right. It was in their words, not mine. Right? You know, I mean, so I felt justified, you know, in saying, look, just from their own annual report, in their own words, this, this, and this. So, are you sure they're going to be committed, you know, to you and to this solution? And it just paid off. I didn't feel like I was doing anything that was trashing my competitor because I was just restating what they were already stating themselves.

32:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so good, so good. So, Charlene, you have had a long track record of a lot of success. What are you most proud of?

32:24 Sharleen Vincent: You know, if I were to say what I'm most proud of, I'll have to tell you I'm a divorced single mom, and when that happened about 12 years ago, I was in a position that I really had to go provide financial security for myself and my daughter. And I had the mentality of, this is something I have to do. There's no choice. And I've been able to do that. And I've been able to really provide financial security for myself. You know, I've got her, her college paid for. I have her wedding planned for and set aside already, you know, and those kinds of things. So I am very proud that. Who I am as a person and how I think has enabled me to be very successful in sales so that I could give my daughter the life, and a nice life, not just an existing life, a nice life, and really provide financial security for myself and her. That's really what I am most proud of, I think.

33:23 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. Well, let me ask this here because I imagine it's probably related. I always like to ask what it is that motivates you?

33:31 Sharleen Vincent: You know, again, it'll go back to just wanting to be able to give my daughter a happy childhood and a nice life and make sure that I could provide for her the advantages that could propel her into being a productive human being. So that motivates me. Plus, you know, hey, I enjoy nice things as well, you know, and helping people is a way to… if I'm helping people, then I get to help myself. And so I do believe that the profession of sales, if you believe that you have knowledge or a solution, a product, a service that someone else needs or an organization needs, and it will make their life better or their balance sheet better or their income statement better, or individually, personally, you know, that person, if that makes their life better because you help them get better at what they do in the organization or emerge a hero in their organization, then you're helping them, then that helps me. And I really enjoy that. I enjoy being kind of a mentor, a trainer, and I've been able to do that at Workfront. I've built a brand here that all across the, the company, whether it's other salespeople, product people, leadership, anybody, they will come to me and ask my opinion on stuff. And I enjoy that. I like strategizing with people about, hey, how can we get better? How can we help this customer? How do we help our customers' customers? If you go toward an organization in a sale going, I don't want to just make my customer happy, I want to make their customers happy. How do we do that? You know, how do we really help them make their customers happy. And it just… that is motivational. I'm actually a certified life and leadership coach, you know, so I really enjoy that. And I enjoy working to try to help people better themselves, whether that be personally, professionally, or whatever.

35:38 Scott Ingram: You know, that is so good. I have found that this show has been so stereotype-smashing in so many different ways. I think what we imagine of top salespeople and what really drives them is very stereotypical and is actually very wrong, right? What you just described, I think, is the most common answer, right? It's this idea that sales is really service, and because we're good at that, that's why we make a lot of good money and get all of the other things that a great sales job provides. It's not the other way around. It's not I'm gonna go and get in sales so that I can make a lot of money, and I'm gonna pull one over on a bunch of people so that I can make a bunch of money. It's totally the opposite.

36:22 Sharleen Vincent: Exactly. You know, because it goes back to that thing where I said I see my potential customers as people first and build trust. And I think the best salespeople out there, their customers and their colleagues, you know, and their partners, you know, their solution advisors, their sales engineers, their team of people trust them. And I think that's what makes people good. And, you know, I'm gonna act on the best benefit of my customer and of my company, but I'm not gonna do anything… I'm gonna be willing to walk away from something with my customer if I don't feel like I'm doing the best thing for them. And I have. I can tell you stories where I have walked away, you know, or I have said to a customer, if that's how you feel about it, I would rather you not do business with me. You know, because it's just not going to work out, you know. So I think that you're right. And I've listened to some of your Sales Casts by the other incredible people that you interview, and it is a common theme, you know, of being of service and just understanding how you can help them help their customers and help them, you know, just be better and do better.

37:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And I probably should have said this almost 40 minutes ago, but I think it speaks to A, the type of people that are a part of this community, but it also speaks to your reputation and brand inside of Workfront because it was Abel Lomas who introduced us. And Abel's been on the show. He was at TrustRadius at the time and is now one of your colleagues there at Workfront.

37:59 Sharleen Vincent: Yes, he is.

38:00 Scott Ingram: So, Abel, thank you. And I want to go in the opposite direction. So, we've talked about accomplishments and motivation and some of the high points. What about some of the low points? What do you find to be the most challenging thing about this role, or, or maybe you even want to take us back to a time where you felt like you were just struggling the most with being in sales?

38:22 Sharleen Vincent: You know, I mean, gosh, sales is such a… it can be such an up and down, you know, profession because you can be consistent, but, you know, you definitely are going to have your highs and lows. But I would tell you, when I was struggling the most is probably right after my divorce when I had a young daughter, and, you know, I needed to find a way to take care of her on my own, you know, and I needed to find a way to do that and still be able to give her the time that she deserved. And, you know, for a while there, that was a struggle, you know, because if you are trying to really do well and, you know, it requires travel, you know, it requires sometimes late nights working. And I think trying to be a single mom and work a high-stress type job such as sales, you know, where you do have travel and there's a lot of coordination of other people and other people's schedules. So sometimes it's crazy. I've done, you know, demos with Shanghai in China, you know, at 10 o'clock at night and those types of things. That's probably been the biggest challenge, especially when she was little. That was the biggest challenge of how do I balance, you know, trying to be the mom, the parent, and not farm all those duties out while still trying to be the successful salesperson. Because I'm driven. It's who I am. I don't do very well when I feel like I'm not giving it my best. And that was a little bit of a challenge. Sometimes I felt like I was not giving work my best, and I was not giving my daughter my best, you know, and it was, it was a real struggle. But I just put my head down and I keep going. And, you know, I got through it and she's great and I've been successful and I feel like I came out on the other side. And Workfront has been a great organization for me to do that with because they were very understanding about family, definitely a family culture. Even in this COVID-19, you know, the messaging here at Workfront is, first of all, take care of your family. We understand that you're home, your kids might be home. You may not be someone who normally works from home, but you have to understand your family is first. So, I've always felt that here. It's probably part of the reason, too, that I'm here as long as I am. The culture is phenomenal.

40:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I know, certainly given Alex's influence on the organization, Alex is, is so culture-centric and so great about culture. In fact, I talked about one of his philosophies around sales and part of the culture that he brought to Eloqua. In one of the stories that I contributed to the first Sales Success Stories books that was taught. The title of that story is Getting It Done and Doing It Right.

41:13 Sharleen Vincent: Yes.

41:13 Scott Ingram: And he recently posted a video that I saw on LinkedIn and it was just so cool. And they're so much bigger than I remember. It's been a few years since I've worked with Alex, but the fact that he shared that kind of family-first message with his family, right, with his wife, with his son, with his 2 daughters. I thought was just, he's so good at leading by example in that way. And I think that that's what drives so much of this. And I can't imagine doing what you did by yourself. I think the struggle with young children is real. And if you're, if you're in that place, it's, it's hard whether or not you have help. Like I said, I can't imagine doing it without help. The good news is they get older and it It's over time, I think it gets a little bit easier. Thank God.

42:00 Sharleen Vincent: It does. It does. She's almost 16. It's definitely gotten easier.

42:04 Scott Ingram: Oh, unreal. Unreal. Although sometimes, I don't know when my oldest daughter is now 14, so it gets easier and then yeah, yeah, I hear you.

42:13 Sharleen Vincent: I know where you're going with challenging.

42:14 Scott Ingram: It's another of my words. I think I think there's power in the word challenge. So we'll leave it at that. So let's get into. Your routines a bit. Walk us through maybe just a day in the life, and I want like the detailed day in the life, right? Alarm clock goes off, what time did that happen? And give us the blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow on a typical day.

42:38 Sharleen Vincent: Okay, so because I do travel, I have a little bit of different days, right? I have days where I travel, I have days where I don't travel, and then I have days that are happening now during COVID-19. So we won't talk about those because that's totally thrown everything off, right? Yeah. So, but generally, fortunately, I don't really need an alarm clock usually to get up. I'm on a pretty good circadian rhythm. So I get up around 6 and I'm up in the mornings, you know, either making my daughter breakfast, making sure that she's getting what she needs to get out the door and ready to go to school. And I get her to the bus stop. And after I get her to the bus stop, depending on if I'm going to an exercise class or if I'm just going to work out in you know, my home gym that I have. I'll get some sort of exercise in, or I'll get outside and go for a walk or whatever. So I get some exercise in. Or some days, around the days that I'm not going to exercise, I do try to have my cup of coffee and just have some quiet time for meditation and just clearing my mind and taking deep breaths and just really thinking through what I've got to do for that day and what I'm going to get done. What's the most important thing? So again, depending on if I'm at an exercise class, but I'm usually by 8:30 in front of my computer if I haven't gotten there before, because sometimes I do get there earlier. I start earlier and that's a day I might have not… I might've said, I don't feel like exercising, or I've got to do this. I just got to skip the class today and I'm just going to go get on, get on top of this, you know? And then I have a lot of conference calls. You know, I try to figure out how to get out of some meetings. Because a lot of conference calls with customers, a lot of internal conference calls, a lot of trainings, a lot of research, prospecting, updating of Salesforce. A lot of that kind of stuff is going on, especially like on Mondays and Fridays. If it's a week that I travel… and usually I'm gonna travel 2, sometimes 3 weeks out of the month… but if I'm traveling, I'm usually trying to leave out on Tuesday morning and come back on Thursday, or I might just do a one-night. Just depends on what that what that schedule looks like. And if I am traveling, then my Fridays are pretty full. I mean, I'm going all day long hard doing catch-up with a little bit of break for maybe lunch or something in between. I am generally at my computer, on a plane, in front of a customer or whatever, and that is a norm, you know. Just if I'm home for a whole week, then I get to catch up, then I'm prospecting more, trying to get more things on the calendar. I'm working on the proposals, that sort of thing. You know, I listened to your… not really sure, I don't remember which one because I listened to quite a few, but it's talking about giving yourself a break sometimes on the plane versus working through it, you know. So I go pick up my daughter from the bus stop, I'm back in the office, and generally in the office till about 6, sometimes 7. Sometimes I'm up fixing her some dinner or making dinner, and then I'm back in my office. It really just depends. There's no it's like this every single day. It really just depends on, you know, the ebb and flow of the work that's happening and the number of deals that I'm working on and whether I'm doing more prospecting or I've got more in the pipe that I'm working right now. Because, you know, that is a challenge to keep that equal, you know. And so sometimes I'm in a building pipe mode and sometimes I'm in a totally working through all of the things that have to go through to close all of these. And ideally you want to be doing both. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way. So last year it was closing, and then Q4, I had pretty much hit 215% of my number by the end of Q3. And so Q4 was about building pipe. You know, it was about building pipe. Right now is about building pipe. And so with this COVID, I'm just really trying to use the tools that the company provides and stuff to continue building pipe and Disney is one of my largest customers and they furloughed 75% of their workforce. That's been a real challenge, but no 2 days are really exactly the same, to be honest with you.

46:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, let's talk about… I want to talk about 2 sides. One is hopefully we're able to get back to this relatively soon. I have such a love-hate relationship with travel like you. I'm probably on the road 30% of the time traditionally, so it's pretty weird that I haven't traveled where maybe we should I should date this a little bit, given the world is changing a lot. So we're having this conversation the first week of May. And so, you know, it's been a month and a half since I went on my last trip, and I certainly miss just kind of the routine being broken up a little bit. But what's your best travel tip? What's the thing that you've picked up over the years that makes travel easier or more productive or somehow better?

47:27 Sharleen Vincent: Well, I can tell you 2 things that I do. On a plane. One is clean out my email because I am one of these that prioritizes the email that comes in. And if I can see it and know that I don't have to read it right away, I don't. So I'll… things might start to fill up. So I'll go through and look at all of my unreads and I'll clean those out. And that is just a time where nobody can interrupt me with a phone call. And it just allows me to just say, that's when I'm gonna do that. The next time I'm on the plane is when I'm gonna do that. The other thing, I try not to work on the plane if it's after the workday. You know, I try to just go, wait, nope. Even if I'm flying back, you know, it's 6 o'clock, 7, 8 o'clock at night, and I know I have a lot to do because I was just in 3, 4, 5 meetings or whatever the last 2 days, but I try to just say, you know what? This time right here, just decompress, you know, gather your thoughts, but don't get on email. Don't be trying to, you know, do all of your proposals or whatever. Watch a movie, read a book, feed your brain, feed your soul, and get to work tomorrow when you get back, you know. So I do tend to try to take something that is going to give me mindless entertainment, like watching a movie, so that I'm just decompressing and Or that's feeding my soul, like reading a book, The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success, or The Power of Intention, or, you know, those are the types of things I like to read. Things that kind of are not really, hey, here's how to be a better salesperson, but hey, here's just how to really understand yourself better, you know, and really work on yourself. So that feeds my soul. So I would say give yourself that space when you're traveling because you can be working, you know, 24/7 when you're traveling, when you get out all your meetings and then you continue to work into the night, it just can get old fast.

49:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually something that I certainly was working on with myself. Just, you know, I either find that I'm able to get into the zone and be super productive, and then that isolated time where you… it's harder to be interrupted and you can really crank and do a lot of meaningful work. But sometimes that's just not there. And rather than trying to push through, it's really that, okay, that's cool. I'm gonna shut the laptop down and I'm gonna dig into a book or to your point, grab a movie or, or something. I do want to talk about, because I think it is a little bit point in time, but I think it might be relevant to just, you know, kind of working at home in general. Is there something that you have picked up here in the last month and a half in the work-at-home environment where we can't travel?

50:07 Sharleen Vincent: That is better or something, something positive in regards to work, or it can be in general anything.

50:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, whether it's a productivity hack or just disconnecting from work like, like you found to be able to do coming home on, on planes. What's working for you right now?

50:25 Sharleen Vincent: Well, you know what's interesting is I am cooking. I've cooked more in the last 45 days than I probably have in the last year. So that's good because that helps you stay in a, you know, being able to be a little bit more healthy in your diet, you know. And it gives… has given my daughter and I more time together to have meals together because, you know, she has, you know, busy school day and then she does karate 3 nights a week. She doesn't do any team sports, but she does some significant… I'm trying to think of how to say katakana… kenbu Tum Pai or something like that. And so she's very into the martial arts, so she's not been doing them. So we have more time in the evenings to really just connect, or even connect in the mornings, like where she can sit with me sometimes when I'm having a cup of coffee and, you know, we can just talk instead of it being rush, rush, rush, rush, rush like it is during a school day or a workday. I'm trying to get out the door to get to the airport. So in that respect That's been really nice, you know, just connecting a little bit more with the family, with her, having a little bit more quiet time to really just talk instead of it being, all right, what are you doing after school? Are you coming home? Do I need to pick you up? You know, just really the chaos of life when you have kids in school and you have a job that you're trying to fly in, get home, who's grabbing you, is dad picking you up, those kind of things.

51:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no, that's, that's fantastic. Are there any other kind of core habits or routines?

51:59 Sharleen Vincent: Well, you mean besides the exercising and the meditation and those kind of things?

52:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm just, I'm wondering if there's anything else that we didn't kind of pick up in the walkthrough.

52:08 Sharleen Vincent: I think, you know, I kind of went through it. I find time to read. Usually that's at night, you know, lying in bed. And I do a gratitude journal, but I'm not a real big journalist. You know, I don't write a lot, but I do do kind of at the end of the day, and I've done this since my daughter was little, you know, we would say our gratitudes, those 3 things you were grateful for today. Instead of having a prayer, I would always do that. Let's end the day on what were 3 things today you were grateful for. So I continue to do that, a little more of a personal thing, not really a work thing, you know, but it sets you going to sleep on a positive note of thinking about what was good today.

52:49 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So, you said you're, you're doing your reading in the evening. You mentioned a couple of books. I'm curious about what the rest of your information diet looks like. What else are you reading and listening to and watching?

53:01 Sharleen Vincent: Well, lately I've been listening to a few of your podcasts, so that's been really good. You know, I have read and been exposed to a lot of different types of sales methodologies and books in my past, I don't pick tons of that stuff up anymore. I'm doing probably more of the things that are feeding my soul from a spiritual perspective. You know, The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success is one that I'm reading right now, or things about relationships. And one thing that I'm really interested in that I've been reading a lot about is called The Color Code. We changed it to The People Code. It's a personality test kind of personality book that, you know, like Myers-Briggs and all those. There's so many of them out there. But this one is about taking a test to find out what your innate motivation is that determines your kind of personality color. And then there's, of course, meaning to those colors. And the part that's very interesting about this is it really says it goes deeper because you answer the questions as you were and remember them as a child. So it's really going back to your innate motivation, you know. So there's 4 colors: red, blue, white, and yellow. Red, your innate motivation is power. You're one of these people, you're results-oriented people, you get things done, you know, you're driven. Somebody wants something getting done, you're gonna go to a red person. Alex is a very high red, by the way. So there's red, innate motivation of power. Blue is your innate motivation is about connection and intimacy. With someone, you're really trying to understand somebody and really connect with them. Yellow is your innate motivation is fun. Everything you do, you're working just to make money so you can go have fun. Everything that you do, you turn into a game. You know, it's like your innate motivation is just how am I gonna have fun? And then white is your innate motivation is peace. Don't rock the boat, avoid conflict at all costs. This has been extremely interesting to me, and I've been diving into it a little bit because you can look at it through your personal relationships with spouses, significant others, and you can also look at it with your children. And then understanding how the 2… most everybody has a primary color and a secondary, but you've got a little bit of all of them generally in you, but you definitely have a primary and a secondary. So understanding that in your immediate family, but I start looking at that and I start thinking, when I meet people, what I think that they are, you know. And so I've really started to read a lot about that, whether it's stuff online or stuff in the book. I have the book, and then assess myself. And what's really interesting, when I took it, the first sentence of my analysis says, congratulations, you have the most complex personality known to man. Of course I do. Of course I do, because I was literally like 50% red and 50% blue, which means an innate motivation of power and intimacy and connection, which can be very you know, opposite spectrums. Because a lot of times people that really crave connection or whatever don't really care about power. They're just caring about the connection to the person. And a lot of times people who, you know, crave power don't really care about the connection to the person. They're just, what can you do to get my job done, right? So that was really interesting to find out about myself. And then how am I reacting with the other personality types and colors? So I've been spending a lot of time on that lately. Because it's fascinating to me.

56:37 Scott Ingram: That's funny. That was exactly the word that I was gonna say is, is that that is super fascinating. And I'm thinking, okay, so we're gonna transition from talking about personality and colors to pure play technology. So what, what is your kind of personal tech stack? What are the tools and apps that you rely on day in, day out? And I like to think about this pretty holistically, right? This isn't isn't just business, but just, you know, also kind of running their life too.

57:06 Sharleen Vincent: Okay, well, I think probably first and foremost, like the rest of the United States or the rest of the world, Google. Okay, so Google's all… if I need to know something, I'm going to Google it, and I take the results with a grain of salt, right, in some scenarios. But that's definitely huge. I definitely Google. But we have tools at Workfront professionally to get stuff done. So there have been a couple that they've introduced recently that are really really exciting and really help. And one is a platform called Gong, which transcribes and records every call that I have, which makes me so much more productive because I don't have to take notes. You know, and Zoom, you could record a call on Zoom, but this is an internal repository. So I can go into my organization and I can search for any kind of call that I want to listen to. And if If there's somebody in the organization that I think, man, he does a really great job at this, I can go search Gong and I can go listen to his calls or her calls with a customer and get tips from it. Then I can provide them. For instance, I had a call with a prospective customer and it was one that on the next call I was engaging Alex. I was able to go, Alex, here's the link to the Gong call. You really need to go listen to this. Read the transcription because he has a high Hungarian accent. So, you really need to, you really need to listen to the call, and that will help prep you for our call. You know, I mean, so learning from it, being able to go back and reference a conversation, you know, you can take notes in Salesforce all day, but when I can link my Gong call to it, and then I can go read those notes, it saves me from taking notes into Salesforce, or it allows me to go back and really listen after the fact to the customer's voice. Because when you're active and on the call and you're not in person, you know, sometimes you might miss the inflection a little bit because you're trying really hard to take the note or that kind of stuff. So here I don't have to do that. I can really listen and then I can go back and see if I missed anything. So that has been huge since we got that. And then the other one that we got really recently that I can see is really going to be helpful for us is a software called Groove. Are you familiar with it?

59:24 Scott Ingram: I don't know Groove.

59:25 Sharleen Vincent: It's an email management thing that for us ties into Salesforce. So it works in, you know, ties into my Gmail so that every email that I type to a customer or prospective customer, somebody that I have in Salesforce, it automatically logs it in Salesforce. It'll automatically pull up on the right-hand side the Salesforce record. It will automatically give me Zoom info on the right side. So I can be looking at that in the middle of the email, in the middle of the conversation, anything that I need to do without having to go to different browsers and systems to do that. So I think that one is really, it's relatively new, but I can see how that's going to help productivity for me so much, you know? So then of course, Salesforce, we have to use it. And so that does make life easier because you can set up tasks, you can go through your open opportunities and you don't forget things. In the personal thing, I have meditation sleep apps that I use. I have exercise, you know, apps, maps, you know, Waze, those kind of things for running around the world. My apps for airlines, my apps for hotel things, those types of things, you know, really.

1:00:42 Scott Ingram: Any standouts that you really like in the sleep and meditation category?

1:00:46 Sharleen Vincent: The latest one I was using was called… and I actually just did not renew that one because I was going to go look up new ones, and now I'm drawing a blank on what it was called Scott.

1:00:57 Scott Ingram: Well, if you're not renewing it, then it's probably not worth it.

1:01:00 Sharleen Vincent: No, it was very good at a time when I was needing it, but I'm not really needing them right now because I'm not traveling. They work really well when I'm traveling because I have a hard time going to sleep the first night in a hotel. I really struggle to go to sleep. One, because my mind is really busy. Two, I'm in a place I'm not comfortable with, right? You know, I mean, it's a new hotel or it's a a new bed or a different bed or that sort of thing. Gosh, I'll have to get back with you on the name of it.

1:01:27 Scott Ingram: Okay, we'll put it in the show notes so you can always go to top1.fm/Charlene-Vincent or top1.fm/whatever this episode number is. But once again, I've lost track of what number this will be. Charleen, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:01:45 Sharleen Vincent: Well, I would say no, I don't, but I will say that Workfront supports MEDDPICC. It used to be called MEDDIC, now it's MEDDPICC because they added procurement, you know, to it. And they really want us, you know, I have to fill out my MEDDPICC in my Salesforce. And I think it's fine. I think it's all the, in my mind, Sales 101 things that you should be gathering and doing to make sure that you're not missing something along the way, make sure you're not missing anything in the process. But the reality of it is, is that, you know, at my age I've been exposed to so many spin selling, med pic, Challenger Sale, you know, Sandler Sales Institute, all the, you know, all the Zig Ziglars and the, you know, those types of things in the world. So I think I've taken a little bit probably from each one and then just done what works for me, you know. But Workfront supports that med pic, so I have to kind of go through that process. As part of my job.

1:02:45 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. Yeah, I know that we've talked about MedPick a lot around the show, particularly with the David Weiss interview. So if anybody wants to dig into that, there are lots of resources for you. I'm curious. I mean, you have you've seen a lot. You've been playing this game for a little while. Is there something you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy?

1:03:10 Sharleen Vincent: Well, I will tell you this. I think you should work on yourself more than you work on your business. And if you're doing the work on yourself, the results are going to show not only in your professional life, but in all aspects of your life. And so if I say that sometimes to salespeople, you know, 73% of the Workfront sales force are millennials. And that's a wide range. They're probably not really interested in hearing that. Maybe some of them that are a little more on the older side might be. The younger ones are more just, tell me what to do, you know, tell me what to do. And in my mind, it's not about telling you so much what to do, it's about telling you how to think, you know, and how to think about yourself and how to make sure that you're working on yourself at least as much as you're working on your business. And so, I think some people probably feel like that might be frou-frou or it doesn't give them enough meat to go after. So, they might think that's a little crazy.

1:04:13 Scott Ingram: Well, I love the idea, but I'd like to… let's try and make it a little bit more meaty. So, if somebody believes that statement or they'd like to explore that statement, how should they do it? Or maybe talk about how do you work on yourself?

1:04:29 Sharleen Vincent: So, first of all is how I'm feeding my soul through reading. You know, those things that I feel like help me get through that. Remember, I'm a certified coach, right? So understanding when things come up for me, understanding why is this coming up, and really taking a step back and going inside and being able to really reflect on why am I angry, why am I uncomfortable, why is this creating stress for me, you know, those kinds of things. Just asking yourselves the questions. I've done different types of training classes that help with that, you know, coaching sessions that help with that. So those are some of the ways that I work on those things myself. And it's never a finished job, right? It's a work in process. But it comes, I think, with, with just a little bit of life, you know. It comes with being a little bit older and having experience and understanding that you've got the power. It's really all about and in you. So what's holding you back? Where's your block, you know, and why? And getting to the root of that and getting through it. I don't know, again, might sound a little foo-foo. So let's get back to a meat thing. How would I tell somebody to work on themselves? Was that the question?

1:05:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:05:46 Sharleen Vincent: A good thing that you can do, and this would be a call to action that I would say to somebody, is go find some people and they can be people that you're close to, and ask for some honest feedback from them, you know, about, hey, we had a disagreement the other day, or we didn't talk, or whatever the scenario is, you know, ask for honest feedback. Or, I reacted this way, or you reacted this way. What was your impression of me? Or, what was your perception of me? And ask for the honest feedback. You know, I do a lot of interviewing when the company's looking to hire people, and I always ask a question that most people say, wow, never been asked that before, that's a really good question. And I asked this question, I said, so if they're sales… so if I were to go to the company that you're working for or that you've worked for in the past, and let's say I'm talking to your client success manager that you work with, what would they tell me that you needed to work on? What was something that they felt like you needed to change or work on that wasn't so great. You know, I mean, and so that's why I'm saying go ask for feedback and ask for honest feedback because, you know, again, it's just feedback. They're not right or wrong. It just gives you something to think about. So that's how they can work on themselves. That's one thing that's meaty that they can go do is just go ask for feedback. And then if they're starting to get similar kind of feedback, then they can start to go, huh, interesting. Let me see if I can figure that out. Why does this common thing trigger me a little bit? You know, I would say that's a pretty good one most people can do if they're comfortable with it. That might be uncomfortable.

1:07:31 Scott Ingram: No, really, really good. And, you know, it's, it's interesting. I mean, I have come away from all of these conversations and I don't talk about it here enough. I too often go on other podcasts and talk about sort of the bigger themes that I see from having had dozens and dozens and dozens of these conversations. But you know, we talked about one. We talked about this idea that kind of services sales and real success comes from that. You also really did a good job of articulating this. You know, just your process and your approach to sales ultimately comes from having seen and experienced and learned a lot about different approaches and different ways, and you experiment with different elements, and over time you kind of acquire and absorb the pieces. That connect the best with who you are and how you operate and how you work. And I also find that the folks like yourself who are very successful have done this type of kind of self-awareness work. I'm intrigued by the tail end of your question because I thought, oh yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. But then you went around kind of the negative piece, right? Like what's the thing you should work on or that kind of an angle? Because I did an experiment on LinkedIn earlier this year. Where I think other people's perception matters a lot, right? You may view yourself one way, but you might be being perceived a different way. And I wanted to kind of validate how do other people think of me and how would they describe my brand and what I'm about. And good news is it lined up really, really well with what I had hoped they, they would say. But now I'm intrigued by this idea of what would they say that I need to work on? That's one I'm… maybe I wouldn't do quite so publicly, but I think all of this stuff is, is important. I wonder if it's also a little bit just based on experience. I think as you're getting into sales, there's so much that you're just trying to figure out and get the fundamentals down and get kind of those core pieces set so that you're not having to think so hard about, okay, now what do I do? Now what do I do? Now what do I do? And I think it's really hard to truly work on yourself when you don't yet have those kind of that core process to go to and just sort of innately know this is what happens next. This is, this is what you have the ability to kind of elevate to that next level.

1:09:56 Sharleen Vincent: I would totally agree with that. I mean, I wouldn't have had those same answers to these questions 25 years ago, right? You know, when I was just getting started in my career, you know, I mean, it would have probably been Oh well, you know, I've got to go talk to 50 people because if I talk to 50 people, then I'll get, you know, 10 appointments. And out of those 10 appointments, I'll probably do 3 proposals. And out of those 3 proposals, I'll win one. You know, I mean, that's like just the pipeline building prospecting things that you learn very early in your career depending on the type of sales job that you have, right? But I wouldn't answer that like that today because the building pipeline, yes, you still have to do that activity, but I don't necessarily know that those numbers are what makes me successful. I would say it's probably fewer numbers and a lot more quality and just smarter about understanding people and going back to understanding that they're just not, you know, a, they're just not a sale. You know, it's a person with a personal agenda or maybe something going on in their life that may or may not be good. Or they may be stressed because they're working toward a proposal or working toward a promotion. And they're frustrated because they think they're going to hire from the outside. I mean, there's so much going on now that if you can just tap into understanding the humanity part of it, I think it's trite. And the Challenger Sale talks about it not being important as much anymore, a personal relationship. And I do believe that you can have personal relationships, but if you still don't know how to, you know, bring the complex deal together, you still don't know and you aren't learning about what the leadership is doing in their business, you won't be successful. But I do still think that if you can have some awareness, not just of yourself, which you gotta have a lot, but if you also have awareness of who the people are, because after all, a company is just a set of people. Moving toward a same goal, you know. So you've really got to be able to understand the people that you're working with, you know. And again, I think that's a huge difference that, that helped me change through my career is just the, you know, the work that, that I decided to do and the spiritual piece of it that I decided to go explore built so much awareness and empathy and compassion, you know, for the people that I'm working with. I do all my homework professionally. I do the research. I'm prepared. But you put that together with the self-awareness, the awareness of other people, the empathy and compassion, and I think that's the winning combination. And a lot of people just don't have the energy or the time or the desire to do that. But remember, I'm 50% blue, connection and intimacy. So that's the part that I love. You know, that's the part that works for me. That's the part that gets me where I want to go.

1:13:04 Scott Ingram: So if we look deeper into this idea of kind of the quality when it comes to prospecting, and we look at the humanity side of things and your own evolution, is there a way that you could have gotten to where you are quicker without having done some of the quantity type of work? How much of that just came from the fact that you've probably had thousands of conversations over the years?

1:13:32 Sharleen Vincent: You know, I'm sure a lot of it because I just have experience in selling. So I've made the mistakes, right? You know, I've just focused on, you're just a number, you're just a number, you're just a number. And you know what? It is a numbers game. A lot of things in life are a numbers game. It's just about, do you need more numbers or can you make it happen with fewer? Because you're targeting, you're focusing, you're really understanding, you're researching, you're doing the homework, you're being strategic, you know, and you're engaging the right people. And that's really more of a, of a strategic and enterprise-type sale, you know, than a transactional, just numbers-type sale.

1:14:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah, to your point, I mean, they're different, and I think that it's maybe a little bit hard to parse because I came up through that same kind of environment where when I was earlier in my career, it was a higher volume game because I was in more of an SMB space, and and maybe you're not able to be quite as thoughtful, or it doesn't make sense to be quite as thoughtful because the transactions are smaller, and and when you get to the enterprise scale. But what's interesting about that is I think that evolution makes perfect sense. I don't think that when you're in your early 20s, you're even capable of having a true executive-level conversation with a Fortune 500 executive. It's right, you just have to do the work, and there's a lot that you have to learn. To your point, you got to fall on your face a whole ton of times before you can develop that executive presence and feel comfortable enough and not just scared out of your wits to have that conversation and know that you're going to be able to add value and have that confidence?

1:15:21 Sharleen Vincent: Well, you know, I didn't know anything about… when I first started, I didn't really know anything about businesses. You know, I was being taught, here's the product, here's the feature, here's the benefit, sell the sizzle. Not the steak, you know, that kind of thing. I really wasn't being taught about the business. It was just I was being taught how to go sell my product and what pains it solved. Make someone sicker than they are so that you can heal them, you know, those kind of things. But I really wasn't being taught about business. That really probably started for me when I had that training on you know, a CEO coming in and educating us on looking at an annual report, you know, and at that point, you know, you couldn't get all of the information at your fingertips like you can now. But, you know, just really going and learning about business, you know, at 22, right out of college in a sales job, you probably don't know a whole lot about it. They don't teach a whole lot about it in college. At least they didn't when I went, you know, I mean, So, unless you've gone on and gotten your MBA, you start to, I think, probably get more experience. For me, it was just life experience with that too, is starting to understand, you know, something happened in their business or is happening in their business, which is driving why my product may or may not be a fit. And then leveraging that and understanding that and understanding why that's going to be important to that executive. Because it's… you understand his business. You know, I listened to, to Trong. He said you've got to know their business better than they almost know it. That's probably, I think, the hardest thing about being an enterprise or strategic account rep. You know, it's really going in there and saying, how can I get in here and how can I learn this so that I bring value? Because most of them only want to meet with you If you're there to, one, tell them something that they didn't know, you know, I mean, you got to find that. What is it that they don't know? You know, they'll pay consultants, which we all want to be, right? We want to be consultative salespeople. When you can provide an offer and tell them something that they don't know or give them something they didn't know they needed, or maybe they knew they needed it, but they didn't have the powerful why about, you know, the benefit or the impact or the outcome that was going to give them. And that's important. And, you know, now it's more about you're driving toward the outcome. You're not saying, you know, well, what pain are you in? Or what's the challenges? It's my first question with people is generally, why are you meeting with me? What's the outcome that you're looking for? What is driving down from your C-level? Because I might not be in front of the C-level. What's driving down? What are they trying to accomplish? Because, you know, there's really pretty much 3 main things a company's trying to do. They're trying to increase revenue, reduce costs, and maybe improve customer satisfaction. So generally everything they're doing is to do one of those 3 things, you know. So you got to try to figure out where that is and then figure out what are their initiatives they've put in place and what are they trying to accomplish. What's the outcome? You know, are they trying to increase revenue by $200 billion or $200 million or $200,000? You know, or are they trying to make a process much more efficient so they can reduce costs? It's all about one of those 3 things generally, or they're trying to improve their brand customer sat. You know, so you've got to figure that out and find out what's the outcome and then deliver the outcome as opposed to a feature or benefit or solve the pain. Solving the pain comes with delivering the outcome generally.

1:19:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and I think right now in particular, as the environment, the landscape, the business landscape, the consumer landscape, the market is changed massively. So what does that mean for companies? And right, if you can understand the business and understand what that likely means or what that could mean, you know, I've got a conversation happening right now where, you know, one of my clients, I put myself in a position And to be that consultant, you know, they took their gigantic flagship event that's coming up in a month and a half, and of course it's it's now a virtual event.

1:19:47 Sharleen Vincent: Yeah.

1:19:47 Scott Ingram: And how do we do all of the communications around that? And how do we drive that experiment? Well, just so happens I know a thing or two about events. Maybe even wrote a book called Making Rain with Events that I was in a position. To share with them and can add a ton of value because they're, they don't have those answers, right? And so to be able to go in and have that conversation, add some value, and then connect the dots and start to understand, okay, what are we ultimately trying to drive? What's the experience and the result that we're trying to deliver? And then how do we, how do we connect those dots? How do we get from here to there? And fortunately, I've got some great consultants that can probably help deliver some of those services.

1:20:30 Sharleen Vincent: But it's all about the result, right? You know, that's it.

1:20:33 Scott Ingram: That's it.

1:20:34 Sharleen Vincent: It's always about the result or the outcome. They're not buying technology. They're not buying solutions. They're not buying… so they're buying an outcome or a result.

1:20:41 Scott Ingram: Exactly. And to your point, there's a real human impact here, right? I mean, these folks, like, there's a lot of visibility. Their executives are looking at what are we doing with this? How are we going to make this great? There's a ton of visibility, a ton of pressure, a ton of career implications at play here. So, it's not, it's not just the business impact, but it's also that human personal, you know, what kind of pressure are you under to deliver this thing?

1:21:09 Sharleen Vincent: Yeah, absolutely.

1:21:10 Scott Ingram: So, I want to make sure that we make this relevant for the younger listeners as well. What advice would you give to somebody that's just getting started in their sales career today, right? They're 22, they're 23, they're 24, you know, and they're just embarking upon this journey. Suggest to them?

1:21:26 Sharleen Vincent: First, I would say just be a great listener. You know, just be a great listener. Know what questions you need to ask about the results and the outcomes, and be a great listener. You know, and don't feel like you have to have all the answers. And see people as people and understand that they are a person, and know that there's probably something bigger going on than just the fact that they need your product or they need your service. You know, so understand that they're people and then try to take a real human empathetic interest in them. And then I think probably thirdly, just hustle. Just hustle. You know, I mean, whether hustle means being a digital guru, you know, go digital, make yourself digital, have a brand, whatever, or it means, you know, get on a plane or get in your car, get in front of people, whatever that sales job is that you have at age 23, you know, and then, you know, just don't be afraid to be uncomfortable, you know, just go stretch.

1:22:36 Scott Ingram: Love it. What about somebody that's further in? So, they've, they've been playing the game for a while. And actually, let's, let's talk about it this way. Let's say that. You talked about sort of adapting to the changes that have happened within the evolution of Workfront. Everything's changing right now. It always has been, but it's probably changing a little bit more these days. What if they're stuck and they're finding that they're not making it through that change? What advice do you have for them?

1:23:01 Sharleen Vincent: Well, that might be where I would say, go work on yourself. I guess I would have to know a little bit more information about that, Scott. Would it be they're stuck just having a bad month, or why are they stuck? I would go for the, you know, this is the coach coming out of me. Why are they stuck? But I would just be…

1:23:21 Scott Ingram: well, I mean, let's apply sort of a broad stroke, right? So the idea here is to be helpful to somebody on the call. And, you know, maybe it's one of the things that… what's crazy is I was already really committed to this topic before all of this, and I feel like it's even more important as just all of the mental health in sales. Like, this is just a hard gig. It is mentally taxing under normal circumstances. It is probably even more mentally taxing now. So, you know, somebody that is just at a point of struggle right now, what can they do? What would you suggest that they do to kind of break through that? Obviously, you can't know the specifics.

1:23:57 Sharleen Vincent: I would say, first of all, take the mental break that you might need. Understand that 5 years from now, none of this that you're in right now is gonna matter anyway. And just understand that you just have to keep plugging along because you will break through it. I mean, but you have to take action. You know, you can't go crawl in a hole. Give yourself a mental break, whatever that is. Take a day and go do a lot of exercise or go to the beach or whatever you need to do. And then just get back to it because it will break through. I mean, I've had those scenarios where I've been like, oh my gosh, I'm just stuck. Is this, you know, is this where I want to be? Is this what I'm going to do? And I do always try to go, you know what, stop being so stressed out about this, Charlene, because 5 years from now, none of this is going to matter anyway. So just keep going. So I would just tell them, you know, keep going. We all get there. We all go through it. So whatever it is that frees your mind that allows you to feel creative. You know, if you've got a creative outlet, go do it. Go play the guitar, go play the piano, go do whatever you do. Go talk to your mentor, go talk to your coach, and then take action. You know, because you definitely won't break through it by doing nothing. So take action, whether that's you need to go find another job or you need to go find a new prospect. You know, go consult with somebody about how to get creative if there's an account you really want to break into, or, you know, that sort of thing. Take action. Give yourself the time to go recreate, you know, rest, recreate, and then take action.

1:25:38 Scott Ingram: Excellent, excellent. And, you know, I'll add an evergreen comment here that I don't care when it is that you end up listening to this, your situation right now is not permanent. So I promise it's going to change, whatever the heck it is. Might be good, might be bad, but it'll probably change. And I think that 5-year time horizon, it could change quite dramatically. Hopefully for the better.

1:25:59 Sharleen Vincent: Yeah, but when you look back on it five years from now, you won't even like probably remember right. You know where you're? I mean, we might because of COVID right? We probably everybody remembers 9/11. So most people remember that this is an impactful thing. But in general, you know, I mean, I look back and go, what was I doing five years ago? You know, it's just I was probably stressing out over a deal that I was trying to win or something, or I lost, and now I don't even remember.

1:26:24 Scott Ingram: You know, so absolutely. Yeah, because I can't remember where I was working five years ago. Let me see.

1:26:29 Sharleen Vincent: I do know that.

1:26:30 Scott Ingram: One.

1:26:33 Sharleen Vincent: Felt like a completely different company though.

1:26:35 Scott Ingram: Right, right. Had a different name, right?

1:26:38 Sharleen Vincent: Yes.

1:26:38 Scott Ingram: Almost anyway. Oh, too funny. Well, there's one last thing I wanted to touch on, and, and maybe there's even a little bit more, just that we didn't get into any of the depths really around the strategic account management side of things. But one thing that came up for you and I, we were talking about, I kind of shared the impact impact of the executive memo process that Brandon Fluharty talked about in his episode and some of the impacts that was making in the way that I was running my process. And you talked about a… was it a champion's playbook? What was that thing?

1:27:10 Sharleen Vincent: Yes. So, you know, it's interesting. So, at Workfront, we have a sales playbook. Most organizations probably do, you know, where we list our buying centers and the different personas of the people that buy and, you know, of what's keeping the executive up, what their pains are, what they want to know, how do they buy, what research have they done, all this kind of stuff that allows you to understand your market, your champions, your detractors, all those types of things that really gives… it's phenomenal. It's one thing I will have to say about Workfront, that playbook is amazing. If I'd have had that in the beginning at this job, I would have loved it. But, we were sitting in a meeting and I said, you know, we really need something like this for our customers because we are in a land and expand type model. So, we can grow, we grow organically. Very rarely do we walk into a large enterprise and we implement our software across every department, you know, in the entire organization. We generally go into a group or department, again, whether that's marketing, new product development, an IT PMO, you know, L&D. We usually land in a department, and then we expand from there. And most every time, you want to develop a champion, right? And the champion generally is going to be really excited about what you're doing. If they interact with other parts of the organization, they have this great productivity, you know, people are liking it, they've got great reports. They'll have another part of the organization either come to them, or they'll get excited and hear somebody on some kind of all-hands call or a team call or, you know, interdepartment call, having some challenges, and they'll say, wow, you know, we had that too when we used Workfront. But they don't always have the information to really give to the other potential people in the organization. Ideally, I want them to come to me. That's my job. I go out there. But we all know that there are times, unfortunately, where our internal champion really has to do the selling. And they have to do the selling up, generally. We can generally get peer-type selling, but, and sometimes we can get the appointments, you know, with their leaders. But in other departments, sometimes they've got to do the selling. So we have put together a site that enables them with some, you know, really good case studies, with some messaging, with some metrics, which is generally really important for, you know, C-levels. It's a lot of times about the metrics. What am I, what results again, what outcomes am I going to see? So we've put that together for our champions. And we get together and we kind of educate them on it. And it's a site; it's not a book anymore, or, you know, it's a portal, basically, where they can log into and they can pull all of the stuff that we've put out there for them with all of the instruction and direction on what to do. And generally, I can walk them through it, you know, and I could say, you know, if they start having questions here, really see if you can get a conversation with me, a demo with me, a presentation meeting with me, or whatever. But this is some good stuff to give you, to arm you with that ammunition and arm you with the things that make a difference in how we've helped other customers so that we have the opportunity to expand. It's really understanding that, you know, a lot of times that happens, that they're going to need to do the selling for you. And ultimately, to be honest with you, that's what I want. I want my departmental champions being able to sell internally for me, you know, and then I come in with the more complex things that we need to talk about, but I want them selling for me in their organization because that's my job, it's to expand, you know, so I need to arm them with the right information and the tools so that they can do a good job of that.

1:31:14 Scott Ingram: Such a great idea, and all of that reminded me that you also happen to work with one of my favorite CMOs in Heidi Millen.

1:31:21 Sharleen Vincent: Heidi, Heidi, yeah.

1:31:23 Scott Ingram: Like, there's pieces of that that I recognize. This sounds like some great work that I have seen seen before, so I'm sure she probably had a hand in, in some pieces of that.

1:31:32 Sharleen Vincent: Yes, she's awesome.

1:31:32 Scott Ingram: Is there anything else from a, again, just a strategic account management and growth perspective that you have found to be really, really helpful that we haven't really had an opportunity to touch on?

1:31:47 Sharleen Vincent: Well, I will tell you something that helps me, and probably a lot of people have a different perspective of I trust the people that I work with. I coach them. I mentor them, talking about like my solution advisor, my client success manager. So in my… think about it again, in my world, land and expand. So once I land a particular part of an organization, my job is to go get the next one. I have a client success manager whose job you know, after implementation is to really maintain, make sure we maintain that business, make sure that users are adopting, make sure that they're getting access to the resources that they need. And I find that a lot of strategic account managers can get really pulled into more of the management and maybe, you know, the issues that should be done by a different role sometimes in many cases. Instead of the expanding and understanding, you know, really how to leverage where I'm supposed to go in the organization. So what I see is I find the good client success manager and I give them the coaching. I work with them in the beginning, and then I let them go do their job while I go off and continue to do mine. And I know that that, for me, has helped me be successful because I don't always have to get into the minutiae of the management. Now, I'll get pulled in if I need to, and customers will pull me in when they feel like things need to go higher because they know I have the ability to go higher in our organization to get stuff done, and I have the influence that way. But I trust and train and coach my resources. And if you're not somebody that I can trust to have an intelligent conversation with my customer and go do your part of the job, then I'm going to go ask for a different one. You know, so I think that's really important for my particular job. I don't necessarily know that all roles are set up that way, but if my job is to bring new revenue and expand our footprint, I've got to make sure I have a team that can maintain the footprint I've already got. And I don't have to be a total control freak and be on every single call and be involved in the minutiae of everything. I really work to trust and train and coach my team so that I can go do my job and they can do theirs.

1:34:17 Scott Ingram: So good. So glad I asked. All right. We have been at this long enough, Charlene. I always try and end on something actionable. And so, what would you challenge the listener to do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and their results?

1:34:35 Sharleen Vincent: I would challenge them to go ask feedback from people, go get some feedback, whether it's from your coworkers on you know, somebody listening to your call. You know, if you're talking to a customer, ask not necessarily your manager… maybe they should be doing that anyway… ask somebody that you respect in the organization to listen to you do something. Listen to your call, go with you on a presentation, watch you conduct a Zoom presentation, and provide feedback. And not just professional feedback. Ask them, how did you interact with the customer, did they make the same… like, did they get from the customer the same thing you did? Did you hear the same thing? Talk back and forth about that. You know, I would always say, always be asking for feedback. But think about it, isn't that something that you can do? You can go get feedback from somebody that you respect, that you think is doing a great job, and ask them to critique you. You know, and that's something you could do every day. It's something that you could do in the next 1 or 2 weeks. You know, so find somebody you really respect, you think does a great job, and ask them to listen to you, to watch you, to join you, whatever, and get the feedback.

1:35:45 Scott Ingram: Charlene, this has been amazing, and I know that we're going to turn off the recording, and then I have a feeling that we might be asking each other for some feedback. So thank you for taking the time for a great conversation. I have really enjoyed this, and I learned a lot. And I look forward to talking a little bit more.

1:36:05 Sharleen Vincent: I do as well. Look forward to your conference, hopefully in October too.

1:36:09 Scott Ingram: Excellent. We will see you there.

1:36:10 Sharleen Vincent: Thank you, Scott.

1:36:13 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.