The best POV framework I’ve ever seen (steal this)

We would sit in a room and if you didn't know your customer, almost like you were an analyst for that company, start over, get out, let the next person go. I've been trying to figure out what a really good point of view is for 10 years. So when all of a sudden everybody's doing this, it's like, wait a minute, if everybody's going this way, how do we think about still going this way, but maybe making a little turn so that we're doing something a little bit different, right? Or we have to elevate. I treat it more like it's like my profession, right? And being able to like really master your craft as much as you can.

I've been doing these fireside chats for almost three years and I think you just spit more gold in the past 5 minutes than I've ever heard in one chat.

Welcome everyone to our monthly fireside chat. And this month I'm excited to bring in Ron Massie who is a top enterprise seller in the SAS industry and he's really known for closing um very complex large strategic deals. Over his career, he's closed over 45 million in SAS revenue across companies like Terodata and Seismic. He's consistently ranked as a number one or number two performer in all of his companies, hitting between 110 and over 300% of quota. And he's built a reputation um for taking small deals and turning them into pretty massive enterprise wall-to-wall opportunities, including a recent deal that he grew from $3 million to over 25 million.

Um Ron and I share a interesting background in that we both started in the printing industry. I sold the printers and he sold the commercial printing. Um, and we both transitioned into software and he actually went back a couple steps and started as an SDR uh before moving up the chain all the way through through SAS. Um, and he says the way that he's been successful is by building executive level point of views that really resonate with executives. And we're going to dive into that in detail as well as orchestrating very complex deals across large enterprises.

Um Ron after six years at Seismic just recently joined Outreach um to help them dominate the enterprise segment. Uh he lives in Denver with his wife and his two kids and it's uh great to have him here. He he also um is a part-time coach as well um in the enterprise sellers group which my good friend Jamal um Jamal runs Jamal Rhymer and he um so once I knew when Jamal was talking about Ron and kind of hyping up Ron I knew that there was this was this guy was super legit because Ron's uh Jamal is one of the most legit sellers I know. So with that dude uh just want to welcome Ron to the group. It's great to have you in front of our community.

Yeah, thank you very much Ian. I followed you forever. I think we've talked a few times. I actually started working with Jamal way back in 2019 when this kind of group of like Jamal and yourself started saying, "Hey, I think there's a path to help sellers really grow their mindset, grow their deals, like grow their careers." I was at like this inflection point. I needed somebody to help me kind of think in a different way, if you will. And so I hooked up with Jamal in 2019. I've been, you know, kind of on my own journey with him and with all of you kind of either at arms length or together for a while now. So, thanks for bringing me on to this. I've watched a bunch of these interviews. So, it's it's just an honor and a privilege to be part of Untap.

It's a it's a long time coming. Your name is

It feels like it. Yeah.

It's always when I reached out and you said sure, I'm like, let's let's get into it. So, let's start at the beginning. Talk to people who maybe um haven't been in software. You made a big transition from selling printing to going into software. Um, what was that like for you? I know for me that was pretty difficult to transition. I'm curious kind of what your experience was.

Yeah, it was a difficult transition. And I was doing commercial print sales for probably 10 years before that. And what I realized was it was all relationship based. If you had good relationships with people and they liked you, then they would allow you to take quotes. They would um they would give you work. So everything was about having this like dynamic relationship with people and there was no loyalty. There was no agreements. There was no real like contracts >> to an extent. Now if you got as you kind of went up and you got like bigger and bigger clients for example, there was some in place but >> really they were always like a little bit loose. So, it was a lot of kind of work in a way that wasn't like meaningful. At one point in my career, and I said, "Hey, I don't know. I don't know if this is my kind of path." I had just turned into a glorified order taker.

I was just taking orders all the time from from my my uh customers. And um there was no like strategy. I wasn't like selling anything anymore. It was just how fast can we get it in? Like kind of in kind of funny like you sold the the equipment in how fast can we get it off the back of the digital press into the binder cut fold and get it out the door to wherever it's going to go um at the end of the day and I said well if I'm going to move over to SAS which I'd always kind of wanted to do um I need to like really kind of think about what that means for my career and I had a friend that had made the transition he was an outside account executive in printing and he went to go be an SDR I was like oh So he kind of had to go backwards a little bit and so I did. I went to go be an SDR in 2015 for a company called Terod Data. Now SDRing 10 11 years ago now is much much different than it is today. Like we didn't have outreach tools, no pun intended there. It was like kind of a phone book and we had the CRM and email and that was that was it. And like that that's that's just kind of what you thought. I had to go back and like kind of I had to relearn a skill set. I had to kind of bring back some foundational things that I had learned along the way, but then really think about what it means to be in SAS sales and be more strategic. So, I kind of joke with people and say like I'm a really big sports fan. I would listen to all the sports podcasts on my way to work from Colin Coward to whatever fantasy football podcast was going on at the time or whatever. I had to just put all that stuff away and I said, I'm gonna focus on becoming an SDR and build that foundation. And I asked to be in every meeting I could possibly be in >> everything just to be a fly on the wall to to start to learn because I knew I needed I needed that.

How long were you in that role before you got full into the AE role?

Uh probably 14 months.

So 14 months. Took the path, paid your dues, and then yes promoted. Got home. So any anybody that's out there that's thinking about like other transition or is in a transition. I came in with a clear plan. Now it wasn't like perfect or anything. But when I had like a bimonthly review with my manager, it wasn't like, oh, how many SQLs did you do? How many MQLs? It was, yep, that was part of it, but like here's where I'm at in growing so that I can be promoted. Who do I need to start talking to? Who do I need to build relationships with internally? What am I missing? Like our one-on-ones were about about like trajectory and growth and I kind of forced that onto that like we're going to talk about this >> and you guys are going to help me right and that that served me well.

Yeah. You set your intention that you were gonna go >> gonna be because you had been you know you had been carrying a bag for 10 years. So for just across >> in a much different bag as you know like it's one thing to be knocking on doors in big glass buildings versus being a SAS seller right >> I know different world you talked about getting a mentor. You said you got lucky and that mentor completely broke you down and then rebuilt you up. Can you just elaborate on what you learned from the mentor and what you mean when you said you broke broke you down to build you up?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I I lucked out. And I think part of it was because I was I was asking like questions like, "Hey, who can I get aligned with? Who can who can I who's out there in this world that can like help me start to understand what being a SAS seller really is?" And my mentor, a gentleman named Dennis Sorenson, um started running a a geography within Terodata when I was there. And I was there SDR on day one. He never treated me like an SDR. I was more like >> was he an account director? Was he an individual?

He was like a VP of He was like a VP of like five or six account executives and then I was there one SDR the leader of that group.

He was the leader.

Got it.

And he kind of took us all under his his wing and he had a very strategic way that he still to this day thinks, executes and it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. [clears throat]

And because I was I was thirsting for like strategy, right? Like how do you execute? Like how do you think about certain things? Like how do you read annual reports? Like what do you do with 10Ks? And remember this is 2016. So if you wanted to do something like that, like you had to print it out and take it with you and like sit and read and you know, you had to get on the webcast and maybe dig up a a call. It's not as easy, not even close to as easy as it is today with AI or even four or five years ago. But >> one of the things that I that I felt right away was I was like part of the team.

It wasn't like, oh, just let the SDR get us some calls with whoever because he's got to check. He brought me in. So when there was like QBRs and everybody was presenting, I was doing like a global presentation across all the accounts and what we're doing.

He had me do um any type of like business executive call plans and he taught me how to do those. I was like, "Whoa." So, how does executives start to think? And then he would break things down for us in his methodology, which was you think really, really big, like remove all your limits, think as big as you possibly can. There's a whole like method to all of this, and then work backwards on how you're going to go execute and what needs to happen all the way down to like tactical things. And I would thought I thought like, oh, he's going to give us all these sales books to read. He didn't. The first book he ever gave us as like a team and I would highly recommend this and if if you don't like sports or sports analogies um this one's so worth your time. It's a book called um how champions think by Bob >> Rotella.

He was a sports psychologist to all like the biggest athletes at the time in the world and he focused mostly on golf. And so just to and Ian, we we talked about this as mindset kind of being the foundation like to read that as a seller as a as me trying to become like where I wanted to go. Like to see that and to see that these athletes have these different things that they have to juggle in their minds and performance and what it means to practice and plan and prepare. And so he took us and like rebuilt. Um the book was called How Champions Think by it's Robert or Bob Rotella.

Um he's got another book out now about like just around like golf specifically and how they how they think. But he really like took us and said we're going to we're going to kind of take you guys like down to this kind of ground level and then we're going to think about our accounts and our prospects totally different than you ever have before. Right? Like >> it didn't matter that X company only spent a million dollars with us. What's the total potential of that account? So to be able to open up your mind to think, wow, I mean, maybe the total potential is 80 million. If you were to sit down and think it through and really go into the annual reports, listen to what the executives are saying, and like I learned how to map up to strategic objectives.

Um, I learned how to like think through. He would challenge us. Like the challenging was the biggest part. It was we would sit in a room and if you didn't know your customer almost like you were an analyst for that company start over get out let the next person go. You had to know things like that deeply. That's what I meant by it broke us down. It wasn't about Terod Data at the time. Like it was about purely what we could do for that customer in their world.

It's funny how every top earner and top seller kind of says the same thing. You know, however you want to package it. I always just say like act like an employee of the company. Like if you were the chief of staff to the CEO, how would you be thinking about this? And that's literally the mindset is like you work for them. Is that the essence of what what you're talking >> that's really interesting you say that a lot of times on calls that I'm on when I'm before I do like a point of view kind of discussion or something I always tell people my goal is to get as close as I can to you all without having to have a job within your four walls because >> but I want to be as close to what's happening is understand as much as I possibly can about your business about how you execute what you're being asked for and I'll always come with some kind of knowledge might be right, it might be wrong, it might be in the middle somewhere, but we want to have those kind of discussions. So, yes, trying to get in there as much as possible. And I often lead with something like that, too. So, I can earn the right to have the the right conversation.

That's what my next question was is like you're you're talking about really caring, being curious, and being authentic as well. Um, how is that received from the customer when you say, you know, my goal is to, you know, learn as much as I can about you guys without having to be your employee? Like what's the general um response like?

It's usually, you know, it's usually like they just kind of look at me like, okay, this might be a little different, but I know so much already going in, right? Because I've done so much research. I've done so much trying to understand. I'll even go so far as to try and be the customer's customer or as close as I can get. So, I mean, the easiest ones are like retail because we all are kind of the end customer on that or something where maybe you know somebody that's part of of something and you can talk to them about it and like bring this other perspective and if you can kind of lead with I want to get as close as I can. Here's what I know. Here's what I understand. Here's what I've gone through. Here's who I talk to. My, you know, significant other, my mom, my brother, my cousin, my friend, somebody told me this kind of story or I had this type of experience and we were calling on um Walmart, me and my in the past life and my SDR and I were like, "Hey, you go to Walmart and talk to the associate and see if they'll use their AI that they're using. I'm going to go and let's talk about our experiences so when we're on calls with them, we can tell that story." And we had two totally different experiences, but it was really so it earned us some kind of like legitimacy in the conversation because they knew we weren't just coming with our 10 discovery questions. We were coming with like a little bit of a perspective, if you will, on every discussion that we had.

Yeah, it was interesting. I I had Activision Blizzard as an account and Perfect.

I'm not a gamer.

Yeah.

And actually, this wasn't even me. It was a guy named Matt Rule who did this before I took over the account, but he found all the hardcore gamers that played Call of Duty or World of Warcraft or Overwatch. And he had them all like two hours and he like interviewed all of them. Like what's the gameplay? What's the experience? What do you wish Activision knew about you? What's it like? And like literally built out a POV based on like getting closer to the gamers and engaging and meeting them where they are. And like he wasn't a gamer either. So like fundamentally what I did, so he had that perspective going in. was freaking awesome. And then I went to their conferences and and attended the E3 conference as well as the the BlizzCon, the the Blizzard one. And I, you know, a different world than I'm used to, but it was to be immersed there. I got to meet their CEO, CFO, president, CMO. I was up in their suite. Like, it was awesome to be able to be connected with those executives even if I didn't I went to an esports game and met their head of HR. So, it's like that kind of thing is is really it's invaluable >> when you get into their world like that. You bring this other kind of um ideas that they haven't thought about because they're immersed in that world and you're sort of an outsider walking in but trying to understand it. So, you're just looking at it totally different. Kind of a funny story. I called on Allergan for a while and >> um >> the pharma company.

Yes.

That makes that does Botox and like Skin Medica and Latise and all that.

Need some of that, you know?

Yeah. Right. Like we were pretty close like we were drawing straws as to who was going to go to like the bro parties, right? And like we went to all the little um we went to all of the like plastic surgeons office and we just ask questions and >> we would come back with these ideas and we got all the way up to the CEO because we knew things that his customers, if you will, were saying and doing and loyalty and all this stuff that nobody from his organization took up to him for whatever reason. Like it never made its way to the top >> because they're scared. They don't want to >> Oh yeah. mock the nastiness because then they might think they'll lose their job if things are messed up. So if you report up what's messed up, it's like an outside perspective. That's why people pay so much for consulting.

Yeah. And then as you're going on that journey, like we said, like thinking about it, being really curious >> and being curious around kind of other people's ideas within your own organization. So I would seek out like who are the ex Deloitte consultants that now work >> at the company I'm at? Like who's on the other side of the desk that I can talk to and like pull in. I was more worried about like my business acumen, my understanding of customer journey, customer experience, and all these type of things versus, you know, if we plug in this to that cloud to this, then if something bad happens, if you can turn it back on in five minutes, I was like, that's cool, but I'm really trying to understand like this.

Yeah. If they pull you in, you got to go back out. Let your engineers say, you know, I have architects and engineers deal with all that, but really I'm more it's it's a mindset of like I'm here as your director. I run the relationship. My job is to help you hit your goals. I have a team to support me, but like it's really keeping the way you talk is going to influence who talks to you and how they talk to you. So, yeah, >> I see that with you for sure. What would you say, Ron? Um, I want to get into some tactical stuff in a few minutes, but what would you say before I always ask people, what are their superpowers? Right. I don't think what makes someone successful is knowing what to do. I think it's the person. It's their essence. It's, you know, your energy of what you bring to the table. I'm curious kind of what you consider your superpowers that have helped you to have such a consistent and and amazing track record in in SAS.

Yeah, I think there's a couple like we've talked about this and I think I thought about it more after we had our conversation. I think there's kind of like a mix of things, right? Being able to be coached. It's really hard for for for you to not want to be like how great you're doing or things you're doing or kind of come back and forth. I learned that I needed to be coached and that I needed to that I wouldn't always have the answers and I was I'm always like striving for something, right? And as soon as I think I have something figured out, like somebody comes out of nowhere and I'm like, >> man, how do they get to that before me? Like an idea or a thought.

Maybe it's yourself, maybe it's Jamal, maybe it's somebody else in my network or even outside of it. Like, oh man. So, just being able to have like this opened open mindset to to take things in.

Not being attached to what you think needs to happen, what should happen, what your own opinion is.

And that's hard to do, right? Because like even when I'm working with people, sometimes it's hold on, wait, like I'm not saying you're right. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm wrong. But we have to be able to come together and have a safe space where we can collaborate and just go back and forth. At the end of the day, it's you're going to do what you're going to do and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. So being able to have that just kind of big bigger like broader opening to like my mind. But then I learned how to be I don't know if this is a skill you can learn. I feel like I learned it and you kind of hit on it earlier was being curious.

Just being curious with things like how does that work? Tell me more. I used to write these big like long like I was interviewing somebody on the news questions and I had a coach tell me are you crazy? You don't need to ask these crazy these long questions. Maybe your first one like get them going, but then just I don't understand. Like it's okay to not understand. Hold on, let me rephrase that. And maybe I'm a little bit wrong when I rephrase something on purpose because I want more information. So I'm like I'm always trying to like connect dots like in my head. And then I think the other one is being able to build on all of that, but then thinking about how do we actually come with some kind of perspective on something? And everybody's talking about having a point of view, a POV. Everybody on the planet all of a sudden said we have to have one two years ago. I've been trying to figure out what a really good point of view is for 10 years.

So when all of a sudden everybody's doing this, it's like wait a minute. Wait a minute. If everybody's going this way, how do we think about still going this way but maybe making a little turn so that we're doing something a little bit different, right? Or we have to now elevate what we were doing. So like a superpower perspective, like being able to pull all of this stuff together and then orchestrate. Like I don't always have to be the I don't have to be in the front center. I I don't care, right? Good to great. Like I can be in the back if we need to. I can play whatever role like we need to we need to play in order to do what's right for a potential customer.

So let's get into that. Um, everyone now has I mean I I freaking released all my prompts to to the public to get a POV and Jamal has wiser and all there's ask and like >> I'm I I would argue that most people aren't doing it. I think so few people are really committed to growth and are watching my content or going to a community like this. So we're we are giving them the the inside track. I don't think it's out, but I think it's only a matter of time before everyone's POV does sound the same or feel the same as people start to, you know, realize this is the only way to get to that elite level is to really get something that resonates with the C-suite and and be a partner to the C-suite to do large deals. Otherwise, you're in that grind and that transactional hell, which which uh um which we've all been there. So I'm curious kind of what are the ingredients for your POVs that really make them stand out from everyone else given that there is kind of this convergence of tools around the POV?

Yeah, that's a it's a really really good question. I'll say that if you didn't know how to do certain things that are now I think fundamental in being a strategic seller enterprise global like whatever kind of role you're in even maybe even at the mid-market sometimes and I used to tell people in mid-market look you get to talk to the owners of companies or C-suite way more than I do like I will never maybe make it all the way up to the very very top of one of these huge you know fortune one companies so you talked to Sam Walton. You didn't talk to >> Yeah, I didn't talk to Satya. I'm not gonna, you know, it's not going to happen, right? As much as we'd love to. So, in like really like thinking thinking it through, if you don't know how to read the annual report, you didn't know how to understand the 10K before, you didn't know how to kind of do the printing of it out, highlighting quotes, analyst questions, looking at them through like your lens, through their lens, through the customer's lens, through all these other lenses.

AI is just going to speed up your process. And while it might feel good or you might feel like you got something, it's it's going to be detrimental like as you get bigger, as you move through the organization because you're going to kind of understand, well, I really don't know how all this stuff pieced together or came through. So, I think for me like having that like being able to do that and it's it's really hard and it's a lot of work. Is it a lot faster now with the tools that are out there? Absolutely. I still turn on the earnings calls and listen to them. I was just listening to six hours of an analyst day for one of my prospects.

Yeah.

Right. And like you got to get in the stool. You got to do some of the grind.

I I think I think there's something to be said for going through that boring process. I call it boring because I never enjoyed it.

A quick a quick story. I had a a chief customer officer that I found up dug up an interview um with her and I remember it was like an hour long. And I'm like, uh, and I was painting the teak in some outdoor furniture and refinishing it with some teak sealer. And I'm listening to it and I'm like, notes and okay, okay. And I reached out afterwards on the next Monday. This was over the weekend. And I sent, hey, noticed you did X, Y, and Z. Heard your interview. And she responded immediately and put time on my calendar. I hadn't met with her before. So, so it it is there is some reward for putting in the work that I believe the universe or God, whatever you want to call it, like rewards you for actually really not taking shortcuts. I I genuinely believe that um when you're when you're doing the hard things, it pays off in ways that you can't even fathom. So, is that kind of what you're you're still doing now? You're still doing even though you >> we still like and being able to speed some of this stuff up to your point has allowed like some different type of >> um kind of research if you will or deep preparation because I have time to listen to maybe another podcast or another interview or dig into something that before it would take me two weeks to do one.

Do you do that work first or do you go to AI first and then you go and find the the sources and listen to them. What's the kind of the sequence in which you do?

My sequence my sequence is now I have like a whole AI sales flow that I've developed just on my own and I and I use over the last couple of years. So I will first go to the AI and like but I'll go and like get all the investor relations. I'll go get all the conversations that I can. I've got a whole series of probably like four to six prompts that I use to help ground me sort of like yours, right? To help like ground me in like what I'm looking for and like I need to get this big kind of macro view of the accounts and like what's happening in their world, what are they focused on initiatives and the way I have it built it'll break it down into like tables for me because I need to visually see things. That's how I learn right. So I have a whole flow like on how to get it there and then I'll use a couple of other tools a wiser like you had mentioned from from Jamal like >> they help kind of pull in some like some different kind of thought process and a lot of what I do with AI is as a collaboration partner if you will if you want to think about it that way. So I don't go to wiser I don't go to cloud or GBT is like I'm going to enter in all this information and boom whatever it puts out I'm going to go. I think of it as like, wait, I now have somebody to kind of spar with and to go back with and to and to try new things and come up with new ideas. And this kind of again kind of like yours and like I have this level set of prompts that gets me to a point where then I can turn on that switch >> and I bring in different things into that discussion all to form a point of view and we can kind of talk through like how I think and what I what I think about that. I take things into like notebook LM where I bring them to life. If nobody's using Notebook LM, it's super powerful. So I bring it in. I can build visuals. I can build podcasts. I can build and now another thing that's interesting is I'll build a podcast in Notebook LM for example. I'm driving my kids to to school or I'm coming back from dropping them off. I'm listening to that podcast that I built about their business, about their challenges, about what they're doing, about where they're going, about how we can possibly fit in. So there's other ways for me to like consume some of this stuff now >> where in the past I couldn't really do that. Like I have to go to Spotify. I hope somebody was on there. Now like I'm in control.

Yeah. It's it's so fascinating because because Nick Loa, who built Ask Ian, our own uh community, GPT, he said the same thing this weekend. We had him at our mastermind. He said, "Yeah, I just throw it all in there. Listen to podcast." A lot of what you're saying is mirroring what he's saying in terms of like shortcuts and cheats, but you're still >> doing the work. You're just consolidating almost like the the process of getting all that information into a faster rhythm.

I can then then to your point I can listen to the annual report much differently than I was before. Before I would listen to it with the paper and a pen and everything highlighted and I'm looking for things. Now I'm listening to like what was the tone? What was the sentiment? Why did the analyst ask that question? Why did they answer it that way? Is there something maybe hidden in there that I'm not like quite understanding? Um, or that I wouldn't have had time to dig into deeper before because I was so focused on just on on being able to understand just printed out good old paper highlighter highlighters, you know, and tabs and running through stuff. That way. Now I have a whole different like kind of um deep listening skill that I've developed in in doing that where I'm like tuned in to certain things that I wasn't before that have helped me.

I love it, man. It's beautiful example. So what does constitute a POV for you? You said there's some ingredients there. Talk to me about what what a good POV looks like.

I think there's a I think there's a bunch of different ways that people do this, right? And I don't think there's a right or a wrong. I think you have to find what works for you, right? There's great resources out there. Ian, you have an awesome YouTube video. I've stolen a little bit of that in full transparency, right? And I feel like that's why I put it on YouTube.

Yeah. I think yours comes when we have everything almost baked out. So, there's like a place for it where you're trying to do X and missing on Y and here's what we think we know, but here's how we think we can solve. I think yours is kind of like the end. We're at the executive and we're going to show it to them. It's an educational POV. Yeah. It's like here's what you're doing. Here's get what's getting in the way. So, it's more >> I have that tucked away. So, when I get there, I can come like what's my almost like Ian sound bite for how this all works, right?

So, for me, when I think about like putting this together in the beginning and I always try to come into every conversation with some kind of POV, that doesn't mean that I'm putting up 10 slides and asking for a reaction. It could just be a statement. Could be I heard something kind of like what we talked about before to tie it in like I you know I heard your CEO say something about you know customer growth declining how does that impact you do you all even do you even care right and half the time sort of sometimes they don't the higher up the chain you get the more they do the more they're like accountable for these things their teams tend to be responsible for what gets pushed down um and I was in a meeting a long time ago and I was sitting in an office at Disney Studios and Bob Iger had just made just done an interview on CNBC with um with with with those guys David Faber and he was talking about this relationship how they only have relationships when you're at the parks first party they can capitalize on all that but the minute you leave a park the minute you get off a cruise it's all third party there's a big gap and he talked about how needing to kind of close that gap. If you're at the movies, they don't know who's at the movies. They can't see the data. They're not allowed to own movie theaters for legal reasons, right? So, they don't know who's going to the movies. They don't know who's buying their merchandise. They don't know any of this stuff, right? So, he talked about that. So, we knew all of this. So, we walked into this meeting. Instead of it being a pitch, instead of it being about your data and analytics platform, it was about how are they thinking about bringing what Bob Iger was talking about. You were at Terod Data at the time. I'm assuming.

Yeah. So, this is a good couple things here. Like Terod Data. I want to just call two things out that you mentioned. One, one, the AI stuff, use it as a thinking or sparring part partner, not to replace your thinking. I'll say that again.

Use that as a thinking partner, not to replace your thinking. Number two, you can take a boring product, no offense to Terod Data, but software is boring. Um, for many people, I know for me it was boring. Um, coaching is not, but software [laughter] is is for the most part like I always get people asking like how do you get excited or passionate about software and I'm like maybe you do but I didn't. Um, but I was excited about helping clients hit their goals. So you can take the Terod Data which is you know um cloud computing and storage and infrastructure and tie it directly to knowing your customers and filling in that gap to know if I'm buying some merch at a you know Amazon versus you know whether I'm going to a movie for Toy Story 4 and and merge it together with data as the the common link. So I think you you that's a beautiful illustration. I don't want to gloss over it because you can take a boring product and connect it to a very exciting business outcome.

Absolutely. [snorts] And as we did that, see, we came in with this little like a mini perspective and I wasn't even the one that delivered it. It was like the VP of uh customer analytics or something. She was the one sitting across from the SVP of Disney. She was talking about this unknown, known, suspect, prospect, customer. That was her like five words. And that we knew that if we could get her to start telling this story, we could interject the Iger quote and where they were going. So, we came in with this little perspective about this gap and how it all worked. So, we were able to like tile that stuff together, right? So, if you fast forward to Seismic days, right, we're calling on a a a consumption company and we're like, wait a minute, the revenue has to be moving all the time. Like if they stop the meter, they stop the revenue and then the earnings calls don't look. So there's this whole big picture. So we stepped back and said, how does having better content in this case or having, you know, the ability to generate um decks much quicker? Like what does that actually mean? And something that I learned um from Jamal when I started working with him was this blue ocean, red ocean >> and having a unique insight. So, if you're not familiar, like Red Ocean, like you said, we're all swimming around over here, right? And let's be honest, all of our competitors do this. We all do the same thing. I mean, it's almost unbelievable. Your job and what you should be doing and what your customers hiring you to do is whatever your unique insight is. So, whatever uniquely you can do and then drive their initiatives forward is what you're looking for. It might be if two concentric circles are on top of each other, it might just be as simple as like a 5% shift over and that's where everything is. So you're going to swim into your blue ocean, if you will, right? And so focusing on that and being able to tell a much different story around why this stuff is important and what it means to, you know, future growth and future consumption etc. ties all that in. So when we think about like what's our point of view and like how do we think about it? I think about it in like first stage big macro shifts like what is happening with their customers? What is happening in their in their world, right? What does that feel like? Looking for like signals if I can if I can find them and then thinking about if we can find them how do we translate into the business impact within their organization again that's where I'm trying to like kind of kind of get into their walls right and then exposing some kind of risk like okay if they don't figure this out what's the potential risk down the road it might be in six months it might be in five years remember executives think two three four five years out they're not they already figure it out this year and probably next year to an extent They're thinking much much bigger, right? Like they're out. And if you want a really good book to read, read Bob Iger's The Ride of a Lifetime. Watch how he navigated all of the acquisitions that they made. And why all of a sudden internally Disney Plus came around in 2015 internally and they had a plan to bring it to life in 2019. Four years. Why did he acquire all those companies? It was all because of that. So he was like thinking way out, right? It's a really good book if you want to get into the mind of an executive at that level, right? And you can take that to other things too, right? Like other like other execs as well. So they're thinking out. So it doesn't always have to be like, wow, if you don't finish your fiscal year this way. No, like what's three, four, five years out look like for them. And that's that's a dangerous place in where we are now. Not to be overdramatic, but with AI, everything is moving way too fast. So you can tell like some pretty compelling stories if you can kind of start to pinpoint it, right? And then how do we kind of frame up the strategic case um around what we think we can do? So top level like at the beginning I'm just trying to form a sound bite. Right? Here's the company. You're doing this shift. You're going to go from the old state to the new state and it's because of this. Now I'm just trying to fill out like that one sentence. I'll even read it. Company X is undergoing a shift from current or old state to the new state driven by whatever force. That's all I'm trying to do in the beginning is understand what that is, >> right? And then we move through the rest of it and we're talking about how do we think about their KPIs? How do we think about the complexity of their business? What's misaligned? Then my favorite thing is like are there unconsidered risks that I can pull into this? I'm supposed to be the expert in what we sell, right? So if you even think about Challenger Sale like from a long time ago, teach Taylor Taylor take control. There's some elements of it that we like have pulled in and said we could teach some things around and take control around things that they may not be thinking about because your head's down in your business, your initiatives, your challenges, your problems, but if we help you kind of like peak up, >> hey, wait, if we don't do this, look what's happening around the corner. So we call those unconsidered risks or unconsidered things that they should be thinking about. So all of this stuff like pieces together, right? And then at the end of the day, my POV consists of an executive shift, a business impact, what the unconsidered risks are, how we think we can help them, who the winners or the losers are going to be, and then recommended actions if we're going to go go that far. So I think about it in those like five stages is how I think it through. All of that goes back to what we talked about, curiosity, research, understanding their business, understanding their customers, tons of conversations like around the building, right? And what all that means.

I I interview uh I've been doing these fireside chats for almost three years >> and I think you just

spit more gold in the past five minutes than I've ever heard in one in one chat.

"That is fire, man. Really, it's like it feels like it feels like uh Accenture consultant, you know, you pay a million dollars for companies to tell you or for an consultant to tell you where you need to go to mitigate risk, to see around the corners, and you're doing that for your clients. I mean, that's pretty remarkable when you go that approach."

"Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that. That that that means a lot. Um, it's hard. This is why when POVs came bursting onto the scene, I said, "Wait a minute. This is way harder than we're all saying just show up with one, right? Just go. If you show up with one, you can send them an order form after the meeting if it's really good. That's no, this is not how this works. This POV starts one way and is fluid and like Jamal and I always talk about like this kind of transfer of ownership that has to happen as you move through it where eventually this POV just becomes theirs. The POV morphs into the business case. The POV becomes the headline of the business case. The POV becomes Ian your kind of final we're sitting at the seuite or we're talking to to an executive. Here it is in one kind of sound bite. You're trying to build all of that. But for me, I'm trying to work I try to work backwards."

"That was one of the things that my mentor tells, you work backwards, right? Go figure out the three-year strategy, the three-year projection, and go back what all the things that have to happen for you to get there."

"This is where you start, which is today, right?"

"Okay. I want I want to There's a few things I want to do. Um"

"Yeah."

"Questions and followup on this. We're going to go off script a little bit."

"Um."

"How many accounts do you have? Because this feels like maybe you can do it for a couple accounts, but are your do you have only two or three accounts or do you have 10, 15, 20 and you just pick a couple?"

"Yeah. So, I I used to have two or three accounts, which once you kind of go through the match like mechanisms of them, like there's only so many stories you can tell with what I was selling because you're only able to go like one spot. Right now, I have about 15. So, I'll I'll make some big bets. They'll probably be three or four at the most because it's really hard to do and there's a lot of time and effort that's required."

"That's my 8020 rule again."

"Exactly. Right."

"Yeah."

"It's also it's also like you have to bring some of your team member. This is not me by myself by the way. Like I've got team members. I kind of like to I kind of like to tick myself and inject myself in certain people's lives within the organization for lack of a better term and say wait a minute like I said I went and found the people that used to work at Deote or McKenzie or Accenture or used to be a customer and I like will try and get into their mindset as well and and we're trying to do so I'm trying to build like these little stealthy team if you will that's going to go operate on these three or four big big bets that we're going to have."

"Yeah, that was that was what I was thinking too. I mean, I tell people this, you only can do it one few accounts at a time, and it's the truth because you're going deep. You're really learning their business. Um, second question is like I I mean, I I surveyed, we got a big community, 300 people, and and I surveyed people on a couple Zoom calls. How many people want to be in sales? By the time I think I said, "You're 60." And only one person's hand went up. It's a guy who loves sales. Um, but like everyone wanted to get out of sales, but I see you and it seems like you love it. So, I don't know if I'm reading the room wrong or if you're just like because it's not about the product, the service. You seem to love like really getting into the customer and really aligning with what they're trying to do and being this consultant. Can you just elaborate on like because I think that's the key. You got to like love what you do and it seems like you really are passionate about this, Ron."

"Yeah, I I really am like I I treat it more like it's like my profession, right? And"

"Um."

"Being able to like really master your craft as much as you can. Um, and really like think this stuff through. Somebody asked me the other day like what does it feel like when you're executing the way that you're talking about because you know you don't do this on everything like you try like I've had plenty of I do all this think I do all this great research think I've got this amazing stuff and it kind of falls on deaf ears and the deal kind of sputters that's okay right like you learn something from it or you go but they ask me like what does it feel like it feels like you're in like this true like collaboration and when you get to kind of that kind of place um it's a whole different mindset It's a whole different way that you're working with people and like it's so much more elevated in what you're doing and that's both with your customer but then also in internally with people, right? It opens up like these whole other conversations. See, I do I do really love now I don't know if I'm going to do this when I'm 60, but um I do really like enjoy the process. I love the research. Like I love the plan and prepare part in what we're thinking. I probably spend 70 to 80% of my time there. That says a lot versus the prospecting because you don't need to do a lot of prospecting when you have the right point of view. Talk let's let's transition. So we've do all this research and now how do we get it in front of the customer and specifically how do you get this in front of a seuite audience because it is a seauite point of view in every sense of the word. So yeah how do you get in"

"What we're trying to do like in the beginning like I'll follow like the two mountain model that I think you talk about Jamal talks about. There's lots of people that have kind of adopted this two mountain two mountain model. Call it yo-yo selling."

"Yo-yo selling. Yeah. So, for me, like in order to"

"To take that POV framework that I gave you, like we need to bring it to life in their world. So, we'll go around the building and I'll have my SDR, which I really do treat them like a sales associate because that's the way I learned like we're part of a team. We're looking for language. We're looking for initiatives internally. We're looking for like the code names for things. And we're getting on calls with one little like sound bite, if you will."

"Project Rex."

"Yes. Anything that we can do because when that goes up to the seauite from your executive to them and it's about project Rex for example and it's keyed in on their stuff and it's one or two sentences you will get that meeting hands down because you've done all of like your leg work. So if you think about like the two mountains like you still have to kind of set your base camp up. You got to go around the building a little bit. You want to have some conversations. You want to make sure that you're at least close enough to where either you're gonna make this or one of your executives is going to help you drive this because sometimes executive to executive alignment is obviously like very very powerful in certain ways."

"So if you can when you want to do it but you you get one shot usually, right? So when you come in with this idea or you come in with this perspective, it needs to be as on point if you will as you can get it. And that requires some conversations at like different levels within the organization in order to build that properly. That's why I said there has to be like this transfer of ownership."

"Do you do you get one shot? Because I've had a lot of a lot of accounts that you know and I had one or two accounts where I got to a CIO and they were not interested. And then I got to a COO and they said absolutely we're doing this and then another CFO that said we don't care. So I mean, you know, when you only want two you got to take a lot of shots. Has that been your experience or is that more because I worked at Salesforce where we had a lot of different products to sell?"

"I want to say that might be your Salesforce. I could see that happening sometimes at terod data. There's a much different"

"It's data. You could go to HR finance department. You could go to to actually we call everybody but sales. It was kind of funny. You could be anywhere in the or here at when I was at Seismic. Now at outreach kind of if you think about that iceberg methodology kind of only the tip the top of it with all the rest of the complexity of the organization below the surface if you will I don't really have great use cases necessarily for those you can try you can go at it um for me I think like my mindset is we got to make this like"

"We're going to go once here maybe we come back"

"So it's a mindset of we got to nail this if we get the meeting so are you usually going directly to the exe let's just say outreach. I mean outreach you could say CRO would be you know someone really important is it exact or you can say CEO or COO right depending"

"CRO CFO right like around modeling and forecasting and delivering your revenues right but it's more than that like we want to say like wow they've got to go put all this stuff in front of their investors so we start there like how does all that like work its way backwards to making sure that these discussions and things that they're having are going to be consistent and right so yes we would go high Right. And I I'm just of the mindset that we have to do a little bit of diligence kind of at the base of the mountain and kind of go up go up it some and that's always just pay dividends for me because again I'm trying to capture"

"As much as I can. I'm gonna never talk to so and so again. That's okay."

"They gave me like two words that I really like, right? Or they told me something that um we didn't know. And it's generally I have like conversations at that level. I I love I love taking the quotes from like the lower levels or what's really going on and bringing up to the executives I say my team said this you know it's like yeah your team said this I'm not saying it it's from your team so it's the same idea but okay so you get you you have a point of view you validate it lower the mechanics are you looking for people who can introduce you, you know, like the fione playbook or you going direct to the executives what's the the actual channel by which you reach out and say I have something for"

"We're doing both, right? Like it depends. If you can leverage your network, do it. It's like the best thing ever. All the way up from your board, your investors, like all the way through. Anybody that can help you drive that. But again, like you want to make sure that they're driving forward the message or the point of view in this case that you've put together because it's valid and like that's what you want to kind of wrap everybody's arms around. So internally there's even like you know executive whispering and some executive discussions that have to happen to where you have to be in control like you need to know what you're going to have them present. You can't just let them just let them go. Nothing will happen right? How many meetings have we had? Oh yes my CEO is meeting with so- and-so and like nothing happens."

"You need to prepare them. You need to understand it. You have clear crisp asks whether that's like we can kind of talk about the fossone place. Hey I want to come in with this with all this. I'm going to go back and I'm going to come back. You want that to happen."

"Yeah, that's right. That's always the playbook. You get to the execs to validate it. Get their permission to go do deep discovery, build a business case, build a um, you know, actual like implementation plan, give them a custom demo, make sure it works, and then come back up. That that's the that's the play that works for all of this. Is that the play you do too typically?"

"Yeah, that's the play we try to run like on everything, right? Is can we get back can we go in with a clear ask about wanting to sponsor some type of right an executive engagement alignment discussment deep discovery whatever call it"

"Right where we have to where everybody's aligned it goes back down it gets worked on by all of us and then comes back up"

"Right and in this working you develop some really key relationships where if something flies off the rails you're in kind of the back corner like what happened there what are you hearing what am I hearing what are we doing to move to get everything back on"

"On course. So, and then break and then you have that like kind of air coverage to break down a barrier, if you will. Like, wait, we did not talk about that or you said we would do XYZ. So, you need all of that to to like be going in place, but you're the orchestrator of it. Like, you're orchestrating everything. It's not just autopilot anywhere. It's all on you."

"I love it. So, there's three for people listening or for the live audience, there's there's really three ways to get in with execs, right? One is get worked in. If if the board can connect you or your seauite or someone who worked there before that now works at your company, you know, figure out those entry points that are warm. That's the first one, right? The second one is get a bunch of information from the inside. Either way, that can validate it and then go direct right to the exec and say here's what your team is saying. Here's what we're doing. And really, you know, um, take that information to teach them something new. And the third way is to have the champion or your contacts bring you in, which is something I leveraged a lot when I'd be a VP or director. I'm like, who needs to hear this? You you build a POV that's bigger than that person and say, I need to get in front of this this folk and have them sponsor because they want to climb too. They want to be promoted. So, if they can bring this up, I saw a lot of success with like second levels to a CEO or second level to a CRO. Like a lot there."

"You know, I didn't even I didn't even talk about that. That has been like one that I've leveraged and that has been huge if you build it big enough to be able to ask like well who really cares like who's in charge of this who focused on this that person will help you and sometimes that's a one-to-one conversation with somebody you don't need to do this in front of everybody's team members get people one-to-one have the discussions with them like you said that that that play right there is is huge because they get the visibility as well you're almost doing all the work for them too like you want to be the steward of all this as much as you possibly can and be in as much much control of it as possible."

"100%. 100%. And it takes a village. Ron, I cannot believe it's been 53 minutes. I didn't even look at the time, but that was you're just going and I want to keep I want to keep uh extracting as much wisdom as I can from you, but I do want to give our um our Untapp members a chance to ask you anything. So, if we can get some live questions from the audience and from people listening, that's why you're here, to be able to get direct access to folks like Ron. So, um I'd love to take some questions at this at this point. Um to uh to help uh the the people who are listening. I think Emil Emily uh wants question. I don't know if that was you. Chris Torres raised his hand. Just raise your hand first and this way I'll go in order. Go ahead, Chris."

"Hey, thanks guys. Uh appreciate the time. This is awesome and congrats on joining Outreach. I'm in Seattle, so know a lot of people in Outreach."

"Yeah."

"Um, so one of the things I'm thinking about right now, Ron, is um as I reach out to executives and just ripping the band-aid and sending them some point point of point of views and working with Mike, you know, offering like strategic engagements, different things. I work at Salesforce, so we have a lot of resources. I am a new father of a three-year-old and all my accounts are I'm booking a trip to go to Boston to visit some people and most of my accounts are in San Francisco. I I want to be a top performer, but I also am trying to balance my life and not being gone all the time. I don't know if you have kids, but"

"I do."

"Okay. So, all the Oh, yeah. You have two kids."

"I have a 10-year-old and a and a seven-year-old. And I was in your boat, too, holding little man doing research, you know, like"

"Yeah."

"[clears throat]"

"Uh, you know, there there's a I was I was I'm new to the program, so I was going through uh the limiting beliefs video today this morning. And one of the limiting beliefs that somebody brought up that I resonate with is to be a high performer, you have to be in the grind. Like you have to grind all the time. And I want to figure out how you might balance that like as a dad and doing your best to be face to face with these customers and like know as much as you can about them. I also want to have a life with my family and, you know, not be listening to podcasts about my customers all the time. and I want to be successful. So would be curious. It's a big question, but I'd be curious how you think about that."

"What a great question and congratulations. Um, little it's it's it's the best thing in the world. I think you have different stages like I remember somebody told me this like I just had my daughter and then like couple years later I had my son and they were like look it still hard but it changes like as you go."

"Yeah."

"So you just have to kind you have to figure out like what's going to work for you, right? Like how your balance is how you're going to balance all that stuff out. Um, there's times when it's really going to feel like overwhelming and hard and I would say like take a step back and focus on what's important and that's your family and focus on your kids and like be present in those moments. Like I think I've been guilty of not"

"Always being super super present all the time in some of these moments. Um, but like capture like the little ones and when you do like sit down sit down for dinner, right? Like have dinner. I'm guilty of always not doing that. Like have breakfast with your kids. I drive my kids to school. I pick my kids up. That's our time, right? Me and my daughter go to Starbucks together. Me and my son go to the grocery store together because he likes doing that. Um, like take advantage of those little moments and then it makes when you have to be on the grind like that much easier because you're not having that always having that like"

"Push and like pull, right? At least that's how I tried to do it. It was It's really really hard. So I"

"Yeah."

"I totally get it."

"Um."

"Sounds like it's just the practice. Amen."

"Find your find your spot. But"

"Like just focus like at the end of the day. This sounds so cliche."

"It goes fast. You blink. You have little ones, man. Like you blink and they're 10, 11 years old, seven years and it's gone. And um I actually had a prospect I would call and I had lunch with him quite a bit back when I lived in California. And he would always remind me like just be in the moment. Like no matter how hard it is, be in the moment with them. And then that will like help you in like the rest of your journey, right? And what you're trying to do professionally."

"Tough man. Yeah, it's uh it's a lot to balance, but I'm aware of it. So I think that's the first step."

"I think you work on your belief system. You don't have to fail in the family to be successful at work and vice versa. You can"

"Totally. And I was listening to that"

"I was listening to that uh that recording in the mindset today and the guy that brought that up. I was like that's that's exactly how I feel. I just feel like, you know, you got to work so hard and"

"Yeah. I just did a um interview with three 500k winners. Uh I did a webinar and all of them work 9 to 5. There wasn't a single work person who worked after five in our program. So that's what we teach. You just have to make those at work hours count. I mean, you have to work on the right things. And you heard Ron say 70 80% of the time is that research that POV that going through like it's not the grind per se of call call. It's the grind of really learning your customers business, which is interesting if you pick accounts that you actually enjoy and are interesting to you. So, it's less is more. Less is more."

"And now that the travel piece, because I do want to be face to face with people, but that, you know, that that takes"

"There's no way getting around that one. You just got to book flights that don't interfere with your family life. I mean, that's really put your stuff in the calendar first. Put the tea balls, put the, you know, the the the school um open house and then revolve travel around that. That's what I do. It's just like those things don't get compromised. I I revolve my schedule around what's in the family calendar first."

"Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that, guys. Thank you."

"Of course. Good luck."

"Um, we maybe have time for one more. We're almost at the top of the hour, so if anyone has any other questions for Ron, we can um we have one more. Dylan Rogers, let's take it away and then we'll we'll wrap up."

"Sweet. Thanks, Ian. And thanks, Ron. Um, awesome conversation. I'll be brief. You said you've got 15 accounts now, which is up from the two or three you had previously. And you the way you strategically pick them to do this deep research on is is making some big bets. What kind of criteria go into your big bet computations?"

"Great question. Like I'm trying to figure out like where where we win like as a company, right? So a little bit of the ideal customer profile will be like the base like the baseline of it. But then also if I'm thinking about the industry that they're in, where they're going as a company, what macro trends are like involved or in in being kind of worked out if you will, how does all that stuff come together? And it's really nice if you can find them kind of close to like mirroring each other. So maybe the same industry or one sells to the other industry. So you can piece things together like in your mind and it eases some of the burden of having to like jump into totally different categories all the time like in your with the way you're thinking. So I try really hard to like be really thoughtful with it. And I also am not like stuck just because I make a big bet. If if it's not going to work, I'm not just going to keep forcing it. I will pull somebody up from the Maya nurse, right? Like, okay, [laughter] move that one over. Like, this isn't this isn't the right timing because sometimes it's timing. You can have the greatest POV in the world. Well, sometimes it doesn't. It's just like the timing of the accounts, too."

"Yeah, no doubt. Appreciate your input."

"Yeah, awesome stuff, Ron. I I really love your POV framework. I might steal it [laughter] since it's public here. I mean, it's it's beautiful. And And there's not one way to get things done, right? We all have a different we all have a different um approach, but you got to find what's authentic and works for you. What a breath of fresh air. I can feel your energy, your enthusiasm like through through the Zoom. Um if people want to get a hold of you or or interested in um maybe working with you or just learning from you. What's the best way best way to reach you?"

"Just just uh my LinkedIn is usually the easiest um easiest way to get a hold of me. I try and respond to everything. So yeah, definitely please reach out on there and get connected and then um Yep. He just I think um somebody just put it in the chat."

"Yep."

"Yeah, that's the easiest and the best way."

"Cool. All right. Thank you, Ron. Until next time. Appreciate"

"Everything and thanks to everyone uh for joining today and we'll see you next time. Take care."

"Appreciate it."

"All right. Bye bye."