HubSpot’s First CRO on Scaling Smarter, Not Faster with Mark Roberge

[music] Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And boy, do we have an awesome one for you today. It's my good friend Mark Rober. And he's actually been on the podcast before, but for those of you who don't know who this gentleman is. He is the [music] founding CRO at HubSpot where he scaled revenue from zero to 100 million and helped [music] take the company public. After that exit, he joined a faculty at Harvard Business School and co-founded Stage 2 Capital, the first VC firm run and backed by go to market leaders. And now he's out with a new book, The Science of Scaling, which lays out a data-driven framework to help founders figure out not just when to scale, but how fast or whether they should at all.

And this was a timely conversation because I've been really thinking about this whole scale thing. And I don't know if it's just because I hit 50 or not, but I've just I'm [ __ ] done. Like I am done chasing [music] scale and all this like like being in the SAS industry. I you just get so caught up with hypergrowth and get to there and I I gotta be I'm just exhausted and I and it it leads to so [music] much FOMO and so much mental health issues which we actually talked about which is all by the way all the proceeds of his book will go to mental health. So all of it. So you got to have to go get this book. It's the science of scaling. If you've ever thought about starting a business or [music] or if you're in a startup you got to pick this up. It's it's a great framework.

So, we talked a lot about scaling and and [music] you know the the place we are right now in the marketplace and how we're in such a transition phase with AI and what that means for [music] you know the old guard and the new guard quite frankly. And so I this was I always love my conversations with Mark. I always learn something new. It's always fun. He's a Boston kid. So am I. So that there's another layer to it. But anyways, [music] um I think you're going to like this one. But uh hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's make it happen.

>> Mark Roar, welcome back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How the hell are you?

>> Great to see you, man. It's been too long. It I'm always blessed when I'm with the best voice in sales, maybe even in any podcast.

>> Man, I'm humbled, but I I don't know what

>> they need. You should sell your rights to 11 Labs and all these AI voice tools.

>> You'll probably make more money than any of the other things we've tried in the history of our career.

>> Well, it's it's interesting you bring that up because I was talking to there was a lawyer um I was out at the 1 billion followers summit in Dubai with all the creators and all that stuff and I found like a creator lawyer and I was like, you know, I'm kind of curious like the musicians, they they kind of package up their, you know, their their thing and then they sell it for millions. I'm like, "Is that for like creators like me? Is that a thing?" She's like, "Oh my god, absolutely it's a thing."

>> And I'm like, "Huh?" So, I have all my videos and audio and everything I've done packaged so that if anybody wants to come around and just drop a, you know, my dollar figure on me to help me get out of this rat race, dude. I'll be like, "Here's my image. You can beat whatever you want." Like, is all my knowledge. Put it in the AI thing.

>> Yeah. I mean, saw the M what Mr. Beast is charging Benny off for the Super Bowl thing.

>> Jesus, dude. You got to get a piece of that

>> [ __ ] I I like he was out there at that conference and I and I think the the the he was the headliner and the rumor was that he it it uh they had to pay him $10 million to his charity for him to even consider it.

>> So it was 10 million for him to come and do a one hour. He was there the whole week, but he only really did one one speech.

>> Yeah. So

>> amazing.

>> Yeah. I'm not there yet. I was on the third side. [laughter] Awesome, [clears throat] man. Well, look,

>> closer than most.

>> Yeah. Right. Um, so you got uh there's some cool stuff that you're working on right now. You got a new book coming out. Is it I forget. Is it out yet or is it is it coming out

>> February 2nd or 3rd? I mean, it's like I've seen people get them now um on Amazon. It's shipping that day, but there's other, you know. So, anyway, yeah, we're on the verge. Please go pre-order it. All the proceeds are being donated to mental health. I'll talk more about that through our journey. We're going to unpack the whole thing. There's a bunch of motivators around it. So,

>> and it's called the science of scaling, right?

>> Yes.

>> Okay, cool. And that's and and that's why, you know, I was really interested to to have the conversation with you because as we were coming on the, you know, doing the prep for this, I've I think whether it's my age, you know, I just hit 50 or whatever, but I've just I'm so sick of chasing scale. I'm so sick of it. I'm [ __ ] exhausted with it. And and I've always had this like, hey, yeah, you got to grow and you and I'm I'm I'm a builder, right? I've I know that about myself. Like I I don't like it when it's just stable. I always like to iterate and innovate and those type of things. But iteration and growth is a lot different than scale. And I'm a professional services or I like I understand scale I guess when it comes to VCs and dumping it into software and go go and get as many users as possible. But I think it's let's tie it to mental health. I think the whole tech industry is is obsessed with scale, which is quite frankly why I think there's such a mental health in issue in our industry.

>> Exactly.

>> Just like that's the the synergy of the opportunity here. It's it's not really that intentional on my part. like I um I'll just give you the the backdrop story which ties to it and connect it to the so I never really ever intend to write a book

>> like the last 15 years of my life I have been very like

>> I don't know what you call Buddhist you know where it's like I don't really have a plan

>> exactly

>> and people approach me with different concepts that I can align with my first principles and they lead to energy and they lead to pull and they create value in society Um, and anyway, like that's kind of what happened with the first book, Sales Acceleration Formula 11 years ago. It was a coffee meeting with Jill Conrath and she was like, "Let's write a book together." And I was like, "Jill, I didn't even break 500 on my SATs for verbal." [laughter] And she's like, "Don't worry, like do a sample." I read a sample chapter. He's like, "This is your own book, blah blah blah." And that led to that one. And then this one was just kind of after HubSpot the IPO, I I took a break. I I joined the faculty at Harvard Business School to build and teach the sales curriculum and that gave space in my life to do what I love which is to help founders scale their business and pursue entrepreneurship. All right. And uh I was very fortunate the phone rang quite a bit from the former backers of HubSpot whether it was Sequoia or General Catalyst or Matrix. And I would they say, "Hey, we just did this series A or SED. Can you come help these folks?" And I didn't want to be one of those guys that's like on 50 advisory boards and does a call a year, you know? I I wanted to like dig in like you do, like you still cold call and it's amazing. that makes you you and why you're so great and authentic and credible. And so I wanted to like I was like I'm going to pick one a quarter to go to the office a day a week. Allows me to like listen to calls, coach, interview reps, really help them build their model. And I did that for like five years and you know probably two dozen companies. There was like an IPO, there was a couple billion dollar valuations. There was a bunk bunch of bankruptcies and that essentially led allowed me to in my first time my career I wasn't like operating full-time. I'm seeing a bunch of these just like you do. You you see pattern recognition across how to build a pipeline across all these different contexts whether you're in Brazil or Japan, you're selling tractors, you're selling software. Like I was kind of seeing similar things. I'm like why? What is causing success like this and failure like that? And so much of it came back to when you choose to scale and how fast. And as you've lived through it and you're frustrated, it's like there's no rigor behind how important that question, especially in a venture context. It's literally like I convinced a VC to give me $8 million and I'm going to hire 15 reps next month. That's the strategy.

>> That's the That's 100%.

>> What's the number? What's the number for next year? I don't know. Let's look at what Data Bricks did in their second year. That's the strategy. And so that led to this pursuit of it. It it actually started as a speech for Lmin on at Saster I think in 2018 around these concepts and it just went viral for a while. I think it was the number one recording in the sash. I don't know if it isn't. And then that led to blog articles and led to an ebook. And then uh it led to founding stage two capital eight years ago to help VCs do to help startups do this. And and then that led like Stanford basically was like hey would you publish this thing like and and what you know that ended up being WY from there a long story in publications but like anyway that that's what led to it. So I fear your pain is like you know there is no science around scale and that's what I set out to debunk that we can I'm happy to like elaborate on as much of it but to your point John the answer surprisingly to so many of these founders and CEOs is not to go raise a ton of venture capital and try to go from 1 to 10 to 100 even though that's the headline. There's more wealth generated outside of venturebacked startups for founders and entrepreneurs than within. It's just one strategy and asset class whether it's PE backed or founder you know like bootstrapped or consulting or family business like that's where more wealth is created and you have to match your scale strategy or growth strategy with the context of your business and your personal desires which I think is what you're going through right now.

>> That's exactly it, right? Cuz and I think, you know, I know more boring ass companies like I know more millionaires who run boring ass companies and have nothing to do with VC, have nothing to do with tech, but like they you know, you know those big I I know a guy who has uh like the big trash um baskets basically, not the big thing, right? But he just drops off like a vinyl trash thing at somebody's house. They fill it up with the, you know, the bricks and whatever the hell they put and he picks it up and millions, millions. and he lives an awesome life and he chills. [ __ ] man. If you want to make money right now, be an electrician for shit's sake. I mean, you'll you'll print money compared and you won't have to deal with this. Uh I've never wanted to take money from somebody cuz I never wanted a boss. That was my fundamental, right? And and and I've always felt like I've I've missed out on the scale, but now I reflect back and I'm like I I'm glad I I I you know, I've gone through the chaos, but now I'm just settling in.

>> dude, you're so good. You know what I mean? Like you, we are at a we at a height of human society on FOMO right now with everything going on and like you when you look at your success holistically from your profession and whatever the wealth that came with it, the impact you've made on society, your family, your health, your your balance, you crushed it. And fine, you could have like swung it way in the other side and done another tech startup and gone on the CRO track and if you hit it lucky, you could have been 10x wealthier. You could have wasted your time and been less wealthy and almost had high blood pressure and overweight and your family hates you. It's like that. It's crazy. Like that's what I kind of tell some of my students now. I don't know how we went from like this revenue conversation around ICP frameworks to like a therapy session, but who cares? I love it. Everyone's I think people are like this important. I love it.

>> But I tell my students, John, go ahead.

>> I use my podcast for an open therapy session nine times out of 10. [laughter] I'm like, I I just need to talk this out, man. I got to have somebody even smarter than me.

>> No, I love it. I I This is I love it, dude. That's why I'm giving this stuff to and I but I've been vocal about my struggles with mental health um for a long time because it's it's it's crazy that a stigma but like that that is one thing that I'm telling my students is I remember when I did business school at MIT 20 years ago. I never forget the number of people they brought in front of us which is so shocking for business school and they were like hey I graduated from business school 25 years ago. I retired young like you know maybe not young but before like you know maybe my early 50s you 15 years ahead of what most people can do. I am one of the best in my career. Um, there's statues of me at this company and I am super depressed and miserable with no life or family. And I was like, they hammered it in into us. And that's not being discussed now. And like that that's fine. Like, you know, I just got actually got back from San Francisco. I do a weekly um I do an I go there all the time obviously but like every January I have a class I teach called disrupting Silicon Valley with AI at Harvard Business School and I bring 50 students out there. It's awesome and we get in front of all the execs at like Nvidia and Open AI and like Perplexi and all those places. It's just such a moment and it's it's crazy these days cuz every year you go by it's like a decade went by out there. Oh my god. Right. And like it's not even 996 anymore. I can't even tell you how many alumni came to like the cocktail hour on Tuesday night at 9:00 and went back to the office. I can't like literally like we walked into so many startups and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, the this is our engineering team. They leave at 3:00 a.m. They all live in this house around the corner and they'll be back at 9." You know what I mean? Like, which is f like, dude, it's a gold rush. Like, like on one hand, it's like I worked my ass off when I was 25. Like, I was inspired. I had no family. I'm like, I just I worked my ass off because this is what I did and it's fine. And that's fine for now. I just hope they're not doing it 20 years later.

>> Well, I think that when you say like when you went to business school, right? I think back then entrepreneurship and all that stuff wasn't as sexy. It was a grind. It wasn't even a like it was a thing, but it was more for the kind of the weirdos out in California, East Coast here. It was like, you know, still grind it. Now it's been so sensationalized, right? I want to be an entrepreneur. It's like I I people tell me all the time that I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm starting I'm I'm joining a startup. I'm like first of all, you do understand that's not an entrepreneur, right? Like that that that's you joining a startup. Like that that you know, an entrepreneur is somebody who actually comes up with the idea, you know, drops everything, mortgages their house, like that's an entrepreneur, but you just joining a startup, that's nice. But like I think there's this get-rich fast and everything's so shortterm right now that I I don't I I fear for the mental health component to it because when people fail that hard and you said the FOMO man right now on LinkedIn I actually I get depressed going on LinkedIn because I think I'm falling behind.

>> Yes.

>> ABC just raised 500 million at a$1 13 billion valuation. They started uh they started three quarters ago. they don't have a product yet and half the executive team just retired. [laughter]

>> Like what the [ __ ] Or just as simple as somebody posting something and getting 500 comments on it and I'm like I what the [ __ ] Like I've been [ __ ] So like my mental health has been affected by the FOMO factor of because LinkedIn is is a cesspool of everybody's awesome. You know what I mean? Like it's like oh my god look at I was the greatest and I got this big funding and I I got to close this biggest deal. I'm like, Can we be real on this [ __ ] platform, please? I did this one time where like a buddy after I lost everything in 2023 and the whole thing. I had a a friend of mine, a colleague called me up and he's like, "Hey, man, how you doing?" And I and he didn't know cuz I didn't really tell too many people. And I just was like, "Yeah, it's been really rough." And he go and literally after I said all like how shitty I the stuff that I'd gone through, he goes, "Oh, thank God." And I go I'm like, "What?" I go, "Dude, I just told you I had the worst six months of my entire career and you just said, "Thank God." I'm like, "What the fuck?" And he goes, "No, no, John, you don't understand.

>> I thought I was the only one.

>> Oh.

>> And I was like, "Wait, what?"

>> And he goes, "Dude, every time I look on LinkedIn, every time I see this, every all my peers, all the sales trainers and consultants are crushing it and they're talking about this client that they just closed." He's like, "And I'm [ __ ] struggling like to to keep the lights on right now." He's like, "So, for me to hear that somebody like you is struggling right now actually makes me feel a lot better. I feel I'm sorry to to say that, but and I and so I was like, "Holy shit." So, I did a very direct video on LinkedIn and I was like, "Hey, for everybody else out there right now, it's okay. I don't know too many people who are actually crushing it right now. Stop looking at this [ __ ] feed and realize that we're all going through some [ __ ] and it's okay to be not okay." And the amount of feedback that I got on that post was off the chart. showed me that there is such a small fraction who who are boasting and bragging and and half of it isn't even true because you know behind the covers it's a nightmare but then the vast majority of people are still just freaking the [ __ ] out with what's happening right now

>> right

>> I totally agree with you like I've had so many moments in line with that I remember I think it was I know where it was it was actually at Halagan's apartment the founder co-founder of uh HubSpot thought cuz after I left I stayed on the advisory board. I still am. And we would get together with the adviserss different places and this happened to be at his house for like a drinks or dinner or something. And I remember like it was pretty heavy in influencers obviously like they've always leaned into like different media folks. And one guy had told me he's like yeah I I had this moment and this was like 10 years ago. He's like, I looked at my feed and I'm like, I realized how much FOMO I was creating and I like I I basically stopped posting. From that moment on, I kind of like scored my post on FOMO creation and minimizing it. And I I I did a 180 on that day. I actually stopped posting about my family to be honest with you. Like I I don't know. It was just kind of like my boys were at a certain age where it's like and like the like we're out the go going on Caribbean trips. Um hey look at this award I did. Hey look at me keynote in this speech. Hey look at me. And I was like I'm still going to be active on social but it's going to be from a a position of service every like people still are like hey Mark like we just invested in this startup. Can you post this advertisement for their product? And I said, "No, I will post something of value, educational value. So, write an article about the problem you're solving and and help people think about it, then I'll post it." So, I totally get you, man. And so, maybe maybe that's something we could like people could think about is like, "Hey, just look at your feed. How much FOMO you're creating versus how much service value are you creating?"

>> It Well, and that's it. Like so that's my hack for people that I tell them on on LinkedIn to who are trying to figure out how to post and what to share. A share your journey. B share what you learn. So so the idea of like consuming content with the with the perspective of learning something first and then sharing what you learn from that content that you'll have endless content to share and you'll kill two birds with one stone.

>> I love that. So in your book you you talk way [laughter]

>> well it it relates to this because the value right it's it's the value that we're trying to create in our businesses it's value we're trying to create to and and I think you know the people that you and I talk to who have the end in mind of like hey I'm starting a business so I could sell it to it's like you what value are you creating for this world in that like so you're almost destined to fail. Yeah, that's actually the criticism of like just to kind of you you mentioned this point and then we'll get to your question. You know, it's just been crazy to watch like Silicon Valley for the last 25 years. I mean, I think my first trip kind of it was bummer that I didn't get to go there in the late 90s when I came out of school. To your point, entrepreneurship wasn't a thing. I tell my students it was like it was something that rich board people did. Like it wasn't until like 2000, if you look at the the size of the venture capital market as a proxy to how much entrepreneurship was happening, it like 10xed in that one year and then it it crashed, but it didn't go back to where it was. It stayed up there. And like and to your point, like when I was at school, it was a joke that was like B2B and B TOC is back to banking and back to consulting. Like you weren't cool if you were doing a startup. And like all my classmates thought I was stupid to join the startup called HubSpot and like whatever. But like um but to your point like when you talk to industry vet or Silicon Valley veterans they're like yeah it's just not the same like in 2000 people came out here to build great product now they come out here to be a billionaire that and that just that just summarizes the culture that and that's that's what's so depressing is that people are doing it it's and it's the same analogy I make for sales reps. Like the number one thing I think you need to be successful in sales is is a belief in what you do. Like that you genuinely believe that what you're doing is making a difference for other people. That to me is when you can be genuinely successful in sales because then it becomes a transfer of enthusiasm. If you're just here to get a paycheck, if you're just here to get your commission check, then you're that douchebag that gives us the rest of us a bad name. And it's the same thing with VCs. It's the same thing with companies who are scaling. And it's like the ones who are doing it because they can because they they got the connections and they'll get that extra whatever it is and they'll just so they can pop and make another billion or whatever it might be like [ __ ] them. But the ones who are creating actual value which I don't even know what looks like these days in the world of AI, those are the ones that like it's it's tough though because it's so much easier to be the douche. It's so much easier to be the [ __ ] it, let's just go and make money. And it's so much harder to do it quote unquote the right way. and we can unpack what the right way is. But that's what I've always struggled with in sales. It's like you can go Grant Cardone and be 10x and and Grant Cardone is 100x me,

>> but I but I don't know like something about the grind here on my side is is is

>> Well, we talked about that like being being holistic. And it's cool that you talked about like bringing this back to salespeople because I know a lot of your audience here and that was a great point and I love when I find with two people that lived in different areas of the ecosystem but have a similar conclusion and I know I probably tend to like overweight on data and science and I know you do too but you bring a lot of mindfulness to it too which I don't do enough of and I think you just brought like a really important point as a seller out there if you're not generally jazzed about what you're selling. It's going to come out in those little things that we can't science and data like in terms of your tone and your energy and all that kind of stuff. And and I will tell you that I have a parallel as well that I teach around the ethics of sales is I I after like we're halfway through the founder selling class and I'm teaching these students have never sold before various tactics around Sandler and spin and your methods and all that kind of stuff and like and I'm like listen these are like you could look at these as tricks they're not they're best practices okay and there's a lot of behavioral science behind it and like the thing is you could use these is for badness. Like there's a saying you could you could sell ice to Eskimos and get a paycheck, but that doesn't create value. And that's where you have I create this ethical framework for folks which aligns with what you just said, which is like, okay, this is the new mental model of sales. You came in this class thinking sales was a presentation about your product. Now you're leaving recognizing that sales is about initially trying to understand your buyer. Understand their context, pains, needs, etc. And their perspective and and then you go to this decision point. Is their perspective aligned with your unique value? Is what they're saying and describing their pain and their ideal solution. Is it what you've delivered in a unique way? If so, go. You're going to close all those folks. That's good business. If it's not, this is where the ethical question comes in. Is if you quit your job in sales and took over their position as a buyer in their business, do you agree with their perspective?

>> Oo, I like that.

>> Do they have it framed right? If they do, walk away. do not sell them because like that's going to but if you don't if you actually think that their perspective is wrong then your journey now is to reframe that perspective and often times that's aligned with your business and that's like if if you believe in your product and you think you're solving a lot of problems then often times that second question is going to be like yeah I don't think there's thinking about this the right way like I can bring this back to HubSpot we had a lot of people were like I'd say hey what are you thinking what are you going to do for demand genen back in the Okay. And they would say, "Oh, we want to buy a list and spam them." And I'd be like, "Okay, that's not align with what we do. If I were in their position as marketer, would I think they should do that versus blogging?" Absolutely not. Now, I just said reframe them. And that was like a practical example of that workflow.

>> What's the What's the line, though, right? Because what I've been trying to wrestle with here is the the end justifying the means. So, I'm I'm I think there's a lot of sales reps who convince themselves or you know, leadership that convince the sales reps that what they're doing is noble. So, let's use the douchiest example here possible. The the um you know uh not Wolf Wall Street, Boiler Room, right? Selling stocks.

>> Yeah. Right. The guy that he took his whole living on the Cole Gall,

>> right? So, so but I I could see that there might have there probably was some reps there. There was the douchebags. [ __ ] them. I don't give a [ __ ] I'm just taking money. But I bet you there was some that like, "No, no, no." Like, "These are stocks. Like, this could really make a difference for this person's life if this stock pops, right?" So, even though they they don't want it, they don't really have the money, he's going to drain his thing. Ultimately, I'm going to push him to do this because I do think that So, where's the line of

>> I think it's clear it's the followup 3 months later. It's like did value and this is this is actually one of the underlying principles of the science of scaling is I do feel like out of the gate this is where things go wrong is people define their first northstar around a revenue goal. People define the end point of a salesunnel as signed contract and payment and it needs to be around value realization by the customer. And so like that's a qualitative statement and I would say the way to quantify that is whatever you're selling whether it was the stock or a set of stocks or a tractor for the farm or a BIP software system somewhere in there there was a promise of value and when you go back and call people was that value received most of the time if it has been you're in a great spot and you should sell enthusiastically if it hasn't you should leave or find a different market or shift your product cuz you don't have product market fit. I just think so many people that is the first step of the science of scaling is product market fit. But when you ask founders what product market fit is, they tell you a revenue number or customer number which I think is just so wrong. It's it's around retention and expansion. That's where the funnel ends. Isn't like one of the biggest metrics that should be especially in this world of AI how fast things are moving is NRR right in the in the like the retention of the revenue because every product market fit in my like that like I go what's product market fit oh a lot of inbound demand oh what's product market fit it's a feeling when like the market's just shifting in your favor what's product market fit a million dollars in revenue no in our world qualitatively and abstract it's it's predictable customer value creation. Okay, in our world of like software, that's best measured by net net revenue retention. Now, that's a that's a key shift, right? And now like the what the frameworks of the science of scaling talks about is in startup speed, which in certain situations, a lot of situations I agree with, you're not going to sign up a cohort of customers this quarter and be able to know what their NR is, right? you you often have to wait a year. We don't have that time. And so that's one of the main principles I talk about is defining the leading indicator of retention, which means if I sign up a customer in January, what can I see within their usage or behavior or outcome in February that will predict like long-term success and value and retention and if it doesn't occur, it will cause churn. This is, you know, in the ecosystem like PLG and consumer. It's been talked about in the aha moment, but a very um famous example of this is Slack in the early days, which is theirs was if 80% of customers send 2,000 team messages every month. That is such a better opening north star.

>> Oh, totally.

>> For for a business get to a million. Yeah. if somebody didn't upload a file to a thing within 2 days, then their conversion ratios or whatever were so initial engagement with somebody, not just signing them, but getting them to do the thing within the first week of them signing up. Facebook kind of invented with like seven friends within like like the the box thing is a really good one and it it raises a sw a slight nuance which is you want to make sure you can define it as ongoing, right? they notice a difference of Slack 2010 messages every month versus Box was like back up your device in 2 days. It's more like you want to do it that that's a good opener in terms of setup, but you want to be able to measure this forever. I mean, drop, you know, HubSpot's like over a billion in revenue. They still measure this because guess what? This is your first glimpse of product market fit. There's I don't think there's ever been a company that got product market fit and didn't lose it,

>> right? you're going to lose it

>> from competition, market shifts, tech advancements, like pricing pressure, whatever. And

>> if you're waiting for your your annual retention to come out,

>> that's a lagging indicator. If you're measuring this leading indicator, you're going to know like three quarters before your competition.

>> So, help me frame this with the the value that they're getting and and kind of umbrella concept here of ROI because I I'm I'm having a hard time with ROI these days because I just don't think that a lot of people believe in ROI is from a sales standpoint. Hey, you know, today's investment, you don't get it because I don't know what's going to happen next week for crying out loud. But what do you So there's leading indicators with PLG which like are they doing certain things and that is a very quantitative thing I can look at but then there's like then there's the the companies who don't know how to buy things and and don't have baseline metrics to measure against and then then once once they come on board now you're kind of handing the reins over to them to try to make sure that this and look sales train is a perfect example right if there isn't somebody internally who is going to be the champion of this and take what I train them and make sure that it gets implemented and coached to on a weekly basis. Training is what it is. You know what I mean? It's a big bump and then see you later. And when people ask me about ROI, I'm like, "Okay, well then what's your current metrics for this, this, this, and this?" They're like, "I don't know." I'm like, "Then shut the [ __ ] up about ROI because I can't give you a number unless you have a baseline to measure against." So, how much of this is on the client side of of of having them have an infrastructure and an ability to track value? very much so. But I I think it's on the salesperson to kind of project management. You know, I think you do a lot of work on this as well. we can we can work on your sales consultant context cuz I always love it when I take these abstract I mean they're working on these frameworks for 10 years and they started mostly in like B2B software not only PLG like but then like now I've pounded them with like you know medical devices in Brazil and like you know tractors and AP pack you know that kind of stuff but um yeah so it's a lot of it is like the salesperson project managing to make sure the clients bought in and I I guess the frame framework in the book that I would rely on with your question is we all know and pretty much every decent professional sales or has a qualifying matrix whether it's bant or medic or something else like spice whatever do you have one that you coach I don't okay cool get I have my give >> your give I love your give I teacher give it's amazing so like you know everyone has like a qualifying matrix and often you start with a bant or a medic and then you you can customize it to your needs And the whole point there is to have a common language around is this person going to buy? Is this company going to buy? Like what's the likelihood? Now to your point, my argument and I've gone through a lot of different startups is you need a sister matrix called the customer success matrix that helps you understand if they're going to see the value and that is a different set of attributes. For example, a very common one is does it know about this project and are they like like if you sell the functional decision maker and like sideswipe it after you're killed in a lot of cases like depend on the political dynamics. So like if you have as part of like is it bought in as the customer success matrix which by the way is going to slow the deal down potentially but it's going to increase the LTV conversion right so like that would be part of my answer John is make sure that you don't just have a uh a a buyer matrix but you also have a customer success matrix and in those attributes are they going to be the things that you discover and qualify on the buyer's context to make sure that they'll see the value. Now, ROI definition, I think, is one of them. Like, you could walk into every client be like, "Hey, I guarantee you I'll triple your sales by July and everyone will buy, but this you're going to be able to do that." So, I I get your pain. It's like, how are we going to measure ROI? Like, there's so it's very hard to do attribution. Could you do velocity, sales cycle? I don't know. Like, that's I think like we can start to get, you know, bands in there. I don't you probably had some success with it like that you could see an outcome but like

>> but when somebody's in it so I think the the point for me is you know is always like if you're if you want to have that conversation I will have that conversation but that is a detailed conversation that is metric oriented that is baseline and so you need to determine how deep you want to go with this because I'll go as deep as you want me to but can we just agree that in some cases you just want to check off a box that says you've you want, you've invested in your team,

>> fine.

>> But that's how they're defining success. And you're in a very political environment where you're being promoted, you're being like measured as if like was this video watched by 80% of the sales team. It's like that's stupid, but like hey, if that's just how your politics work and that's what you're trying to achieve and I'm going to deliver that. Okay. And how much do you coach people on like like if it's not there? if if that I it it if the the success criteria that you're putting on the client um if they're not in a position to really get the value out of it, but they still kind of want it, but they just don't know yet. How much of yours is coaching versus literally just walking away from opportunities that because because the LTV or the NR is not going to be there if you if you sell something?

>> There's a tougher not it's dangerous. I think most people take the deal and buyer beware,

>> you know. So, like I just think it's kind of like it it's kind of back into the it's extremely rare when you don't tell the buyer anything about your product. You simply do great discovery around how they're what problems they're prioritized and how they're thinking about solving the problem and they verbatim tell you everything that you're about to pitch them. Sometimes it happens when you do great, but it's rare. And I think it this continues to your point here, which is like what if they're not defining success, right? I think we have work to do in selling to educate and reframe ideally. And then you just have to like think about it like you know this is these frameworks are like very they seem very like tight but again like listen are we going to take this deal down if there's a little bit of hair on it and it's the last day of the quarter probably will but the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to be sitting with my CS person and be like hey John like this is the deal I'm at 80% right now the company's at like 92. You heard the listen to this recording on 2x for a second. This is how the customer is thinking about. I know it's not perfect and it sounds like it is going to be kind of like terrible on this. Are you cool teaming up and going for it with me? Like those are the discussions that need to happen because that's the reality of like it's not always point you know cut or dry you know.

>> So how do you coach in orgs now like startups and growth right now on like what's I guess what's the new playbook right because my I I did a ke my keynote these days is age of the agile sales or and I position 2010 to 2020 is the golden age of sales and how we [ __ ] everything up and how predictable revenue basically in the segmentation of roles [ __ ] everything up and we turned sales into a into an assembly line and got so far away from the art of selling that we way over scienced it. But yet I still and you have a lot of stuff that you talk about as far as don't hire SDRs too early and all this stuff. I still come into companies who are playing the 20 2015 playbook of predictable revenue. I'm going to start this. I'm going to hire a bunch of SDRs. We're going to hammer the things and we're going to do this and we're going to have AES and like and I'm and I and I cringe and I'm not saying it's wrong across the board. So, but what is what is your thought right now on how, when, and where to scale and quite frankly if you should even scale?

>> Yeah. So, that there's a lot in there and I'm going to do I'll layer it in the answer. Um, the the abstract answer and that's really what the point of this book is is, you know, I am only going to write a book if I do feel like it's timeless. And I've been speaking on this for 8 years and it's still just refrain refrain and like it feels timeless and it's an important time for timelessness because we're about to replace some of this stuff with AI models and you make you have to make sure they're rooted in the right frameworks and so the very abstract answer to your question John is like in the book I outline a go to market system. I think about just like you revenue generation as a system just like

economic systems and finance systems, etc. And just really quickly, the system sits on top of your ideal customer profile. And I talk about like the forever way to calculate that correctly, which sits, you know, above that is how your buyer buys. And above that is how you're going to sell the buyer with your methodology.

The inputs to the system is your hires, your go-to-market hires, and the type of people you hire, and the demand that you create that you do like, some of the best in the world. Your system runs in every day, and the way you coach and pay your people, and it spits out in order sales activities like demos that lead to a forecast that lead to revenue. That's the system, and I put it in there.

And one of the key points is there's not a universal design of each of those components applicable everywhere. It depends on context, and I go a lot into the context of like, I try to define context. Is what are you selling? Paper or jets? Who are you selling to? CMOs or CFOs? And what is it about your business culture? Like, are you a family business or VC-backed? Are you in Japan or are you in Brazil? Are you a pre-seed startup or a pre-IPO? Like, all these things drive the optimal design of each component, and it changes.

And so that's like the abstract, um, the abstract answer to your situation is like, when I get down to a very specific question like, "Should we have SDRs and AEs or full-cycle AEs?" Well, it depends. Like, if we are, um, like, look, extreme examples, McKinsey partners are full-cycle AEs. [laughter] You know what I mean? They really are. And they're CSMs too. Like, you're not going to segment that up. And like, if we're selling like million-dollar enterprise deals, my AEs are probably more full-cycle, full-cycle, and they're probably involved post-sale a lot more because we probably going to capture about 5% of the total value potential of that account in the first sale, and I want them there. Versus if we're selling like $40,000 a year, you know, software that has very little expansion opportunity, then I definitely want to split my AEs and CSMs, and I probably might want an SDR team. But like, I might only want an SDR team if selling like marketers or salespeople, and I might not want an SDR team if I'm selling engineers because they don't have phones, they don't have email, right? So like, all this is contextual.

Now, that's a very abstract answer of like, let's talk about a system. Let's appreciate our context, and then let's look at other context to guide us on the design. Okay, now I sound like I'm freaking Professor Nerd. [laughter] You're like, "Don't punch this guy. Bring this back to reality, damn it. I'm sleeping over here."

All right. Now, here's, here's my more practical answer for right now in this moment. Generally speaking, you're absolutely right. Aaron Ross, our buddy, like, like, like drove through his "Predictable Revenue" book the movement towards specialization, and it's been overimplemented where it shouldn't be. I do think AI is going to move it all back because like the reasons for specialization is usually the advantages are, you don't, you don't, part of it's scale, right? But like, you don't waste a hard-defined skill like doing great discovery and demos, closing on lesser-skill tasks like generating meetings or onboarding customers. That's like one of the core principles. The other thing is, there are some advantages of specialization. There are some people that just like to onboard people. There are some people that like to sell people, right? So like, there's advantage there. But it comes with dramatic cost of coordination, of the risk of local maximums where if you book, if you, if you, if you comp SDRs on meetings, you get a bunch of shitty meetings. But if your reps are booking the meetings, they have to sell, you don't get shitty meetings. And same with when you set, when you comp reps on selling customers, you get some shitty customers. But if a rep has to deal with a customer post-sale, they're not going to sign up a shitty, pain-in-the-ass customer, right? So like, there's these local maximum issues. And also the customer experience sucks. "Hey, I liked Ed. He booked my meeting. Now I'm talking to Frank. Okay, I kind of like Frank. Now I have to work with John." You know, it's like, "Dude, what the hell?"

>> Predictable. Never customer-centric. It was never—

>> Yes. Exactly. But with AI, I believe the first like tangible ROI that go-to-market teams should be obsessed with in 2026 that were very obvious is increasing selling time. Okay, so for those of you that don't know, selling time is the percentage of a week that your rep is with a customer or prospect. If you're good, in 2025, it was like 30%. That's terrible. AI can turn that into 80 or 90%. There are some companies that are doing that. That's the goal of AI. And when it does that, it starts to really reduce the advantages of specialization when booking a meeting can become a little easier with some of the automation the AI, and the onboarding, and like, so I do think that we're going to see a reversal. You're going to see more full-stack, uh, full-cycle folks, and I'm encouraging teams to do that. Believe it or not, outside of our domain, you're seeing on the same stuff happen in R&D. Like, it used to be full-stack engineers. Now you have a designer and a PM and a backend engineer and a front-end engineer and a data scientist and a data analyst. They're over the same problem. They're going to go back too. Like, one of our guests was, uh, on the trip was Dylan Field, and he's in that, in Figma, as the founder CEO. And like, you're talking to the same people over there. So I'm, I'm, I'm saying that like this collapsing of the specialization will reverse. And in a Star Trek moment, I think it will also break down the traditional barriers of finance to R&D to go-to-market too.

Oh yeah, absolutely. That's, and that, I see the same thing, right? I, the, the value of, and this is where I'm, I'm optimistic and pessimistic for sales in, in, at the same time. I'm optimistic for the 20% of the sales reps who have business acumen and who can guide people through and help make decisions and ask the questions. I'm, I'm very pessimistic for the ones who are going through the motions and following a process because the, the idea now, and I keep saying it, like, if reps don't think they're in trouble, all you got to do is right now is go into ChatGPT and pretend like you're a customer. So like, for me, I'd be in there. I'd be like, "Hey, I'm a VP of sales of a 50-person sales team. I did 20 SDRs, 30, right? Tell me what I need to know." And when you realize that experience, compare it to a 22-year-old kid who's going to ask you dumbass bank questions, just wait a week to talk to an AE who's going to ask you the same dumbass bank questions and give you a canned piece of [ __ ] demo, and then wait another week for an SE to ask the same [ __ ] questions and then maybe give you the demo that you're looking for. There's no comparison to that experience. So, it's not about all these automation tools that are coming after sales. To me, it's when the client wakes up and realizes they don't need us anymore. And they, they do, they do need the right type of sales rep who's the problem solver, who knows the questions to ask, who who can coordinate, right? Which is why actually I'd love your perspective on this. I used to think that sales used to be kind of just the generalist and the quarterback, right? Just make sure you pull the right people in place and do the all right. But then AI came out. I was like, "Holy [ __ ] clients can learn about our stuff within seconds. So we need to be product experts." And then I backed off on that again and I said, "Wait a minute. No, actually, we do go need to go back to being the quarterback but using AI because instead of all these tools out there that are like serving up like, like if this was a conversation with a prospect like, there's, "Oh, John, he's, you know, he used to work at HubSpot." Make sure it's like [ __ ] like, and now I'm trying to pretend like I'm not. I think we should learn out loud with the client. I think every single company should have an internal SE GPT. So like, not like, not a configuration one that's going to actually, but but like, can answer all the technical questions so that when I'm sitting on this call with you and you ask me a question, John, "Hey, blah, blah, blah," and it's a technical thing, instead of me being like, "Um, I don't know, let me get back to you," or "Hey, let's schedule a meeting with my SE," like, "You know what, Mark? That's a great question. I'm not 100% sure. I'm going to open up my internal GPT here that has all of our technical information. Let's run a couple of analysis here. Let's ask because you might not know the questions to ask. I do. And let me literally share my screen and let's just start talking to this sucker and see what happens."

>> Totally. I think it's spot on. We have, we have a bet in there called Letter AI that's doing some of that on a platform standpoint. One that we're not in is One Mind that you might have heard of. They had that vision as well, which is cool cuz like, it's cool like—

>> Well, they have the vision to replace all together.

>> Yeah, I know. But she started, Amanda started as like, "Let's start as an SE," because then this is kind of a general rollout of how to like operationalize human in the loop. She put it in my head first. I'll give it credit. You know, for sure, great person. But like, um, if you have the AI on there as the engineer, it's like, "Yeah, this is this is John, my agent, just there in case I can't answer it." And then you, and if it starts talking like Japanese, you're like, "Oh, shut that off." You know, like. So, it's like human loop, and we'll figure that out. We'll figure out why it hallucinates, but eventually, you get it right, and then you can flip where the rep is sort of like the engineer watching, and then we'll see how good it does to run. Um, it's kind of like how the Whimos unleashed in in San Francisco. So, I do, I absolutely agree, uh, with your vision there. Um, it's funny because like, I, I did on my podcast, I had the Chief Business Officer at Perplexity, Demetri, on, and it's always cool like these little nuggets that are just so, just like you said, like, "Just go in and pretend like you're a customer and try to evaluate your product." Like, that's so simple, but no reps do that. And that's everyone's going to be like, "Oh my god." Yeah, I'm sure you've talked about that before. I used to say like, "Hey, figure out like, imagine like your roleplay what you're going to say to a customer and just do the discovery against them in ChatGPT. You'll learn a lot of stuff. It's great." And I was like, "Oh, that was great." And what Demetri says, just what you said now, he can pull it off because it's actually the product he's selling, Perplexity. But he gets on the meeting, he's like, "Hey, do you mind if I just like prompt Perplexity on like, Mark and John are talking, what should we talk about?" That's what he does. Just like you're saying.

>> That's a, see, that's super cool. And to me, I think that that engages the client, that builds trust. That's transparency.

>> Yeah. What do you think about this? Like, it's saying we should talk about ICP definition, pipeline development. Like, what do you think? Actually, yeah. Dive into that pipeline development. What does that mean? Like, now we're getting into this like joint discovery together.

>> Love it, man. So, all right. I want to end with this cuz I think you're one of the better people to ask this question. I've asked it before and I'm hunting for the answer because I don't know it. It, and it's my fear of of what's to come. You and I when we graduated, we did a bunch of [ __ ] work, right? Like we, you know, like literally like knocking on like writing things down, updating stuff, and all this grunt work, right? And all that grunt work, all that [ __ ] that we did early in our careers allowed us to be sitting on this call right now having a very thoughtful conversation with context and business acumen and all that stuff. I don't have to read a script. I don't have a list of questions that I'm going to ask you. We can flow. So for us, this AI [ __ ] is bananas val because it's like, "Oh my god. Like, it's like, tell me like [ __ ] Tell me more. Give me a different perspective. Run this roleplay with me. Give me this scenario. Like, what the [ __ ] I can't believe this. Holy [ __ ] Right." But the kids coming out of school, AI can do all that grunt work way easier and faster than any kid ever could. And and let's add another layer. As society, we actually, as a society, sorry, that's a Billy Madison. Um, but as a, uh, as a society, we tolerated [laughter] um—

>> The dog, the puppy. Is there a niner in there? [clears throat] [laughter]

>> That's army. That's—

>> I know. I know it is.

>> But, uh, but they, we, we tolerated the learning curve, right? We tolerated the fact that I had to talk to a 20-year-old, 22-year-old kid so I could eventually get, we tolerated the fact that I had a $150 lawyer admin so I didn't have to do the $700. But now I don't think we're going to tolerate that anymore. And and AI can do all the the early stuff better. So the question I have is this, or two questions is, a, with that, where do the fundamentals come from? And b, what are the fundamentals anymore?

>> I know. Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I'd argue both sides, and I'm probably more optimistic about the younger generation than most. And most worried, cuz whenever you go through a massive societal shift, I put this on the, like, era of like going from, you know, nomadic to agricultural, going from like feudalism to like, it's a huge change. And those changes come with massive pain. Like, even just like, I've had to study this because I'm like worried about society. And like, when we went from nomadic to agricultural, it was a mess. People were dying from disease because it was the first time we lived in close proximity to animals. They went back, everybody went back to be nomadic for like a century. So, and I, like, I do believe that we have great societal pain ahead of us. Um, and I do think that there, by understanding it as a more intelligent being, we can significantly mitigate it, and we have to. There's a hundred X more effort going into building the stuff than understanding the implication, and we got to change that. But like, but, um, I'm probably more worried about the like, the 20 or 30-year veterans, honestly. Just because this would be my perspective is, whenever I have a, you know, obviously I'm coaching my students all the time, career advice, blah, blah, blah. Anytime there's a massive tech shift, that's an opportunity for the new generation because they're a clean slate. And like, if you've been at sales for 25 years, you're going to be less accepting of the things that are changing. You're going to be less accepting of the skills that are no longer relevant. And you also just don't have energy. Like, you're, the amount of learning when you're starting out, 90% of your week is learning. When you're 25 years in, you're like—

>> "Well, hold on. Let me push back on you because I think AI is is is expediting that because so you, so my training, right? Yes. Great. I train people how to prospect, all the fun stuff, whatever." Half the value I bring to the table now is showing what's possible with AI. And because I do think that that I'm, uh, resistant to change, this [ __ ] AI stuff. But then when I stand up in front of a room, I turn this microphone on. I word vomit into it like the [ __ ] that I am, the state school kid that I was, you know what I mean? And I'm like, uh, I'm thinking about doing this. No, no, I made a mistake. No, I don't want it to do that. I wanted to do this instead. I need you to go do research on this and then come back to me with this and d and then it produces this. Holy [ __ ] What the f? Like, you watch the, the gray beards go, "What? Wait a minute. It's that easy?" And so I think that bridge right there, you're right. Like the internet and all these, "Oh god, I got to learn this [ __ ] Like, [ __ ] a like, "Oh, now I got to go back to school to change what now?" It is as literally as easy as turning the microphone on and being curious.

>> Yeah, I, I hear you. Like, this is a good debate. I think you're, you're in it. You're seeing these people. I will just say that when I get on the horn with a, like, a mature sales team, and I'm like, "What are you doing with AI?" It's like, and when I get on the horn with these 27-year-olds that are starting companies and they're like, "GTM engineer," or something, I don't know, like, they're whatever, but they're like trying to think about revenue generation within their startup. I'm freaking learning so much because it's a clean slate. So, I get it. It's hard on both sides, John. But that, that would be my position on the younger folks. But you're right, like the, dude, like they're getting crushed. The computer science grads, the MBAs, they're not being hired. It's so your, the data is supporting your perspective. And I, my advice to those people would be, your, your advantage is your clean slate. Just like I do believe that the, the biggest challenge that today's incumbent companies are going to have is AI in their business and, and, massive, yeah, massive innovator's dilemmas occur when the, when you start to understand the right answer, and it takes one-tenth the capital and one-tenth the time to just start something from scratch to get there as opposed to move your aircraft carrier. That's when we have these shifts. And that's why the folks who will run the categories that we know today, probably we don't know today because they're going to get started. The same is true for your career. Like, you're a clean slate. You have no biases. And like, it's for you to try to dig in and vent and do not go and like learn, you know, like, yeah, there's some principles you just have to know like how, but like, just lean into the new stuff and play and and don't wait for someone else to teach you it. And I think that's the ultimate because we are in a transition phase right now like I've never seen before. And and we all know that we're all living in a legacy model. We, and we have no idea what this new model is going to be. And so I think that's the rub, right? It's like in this transition phase, like I think if you're thinking of like the new trying to learn the old, I think they're kind of [ __ ] if they, you know, like the old has to learn the new. And the right now, the new should learn a little bit of the old to have some perspective. But whatever, so, but I think there will be that transition where the new is the new. And so, you know, whatever this world is. So to your point of like starting on a clean slate and, and like, I tell my mom, my mom's 82 years old, and she lives with my sister and my nephew, and he's graduating college, and she's, my mom's all nervous about him because he doesn't know what he wants to and he hasn't really, you know, leveraged, and she was paying for the education. She's like, "You know, he's not going to get a—" I go, "Mom, I need to, I need to ask you to stop." And she's like, "What?" I go, "You, it is unfair to put your expectations of what was on him for what is about to be." The idea of us getting going to college, getting a nice degree, getting a job, moving your way up, getting promoted, marrying somebody, buying a house, having a kid. Like, [ __ ] throw that out the window. It is an unfair thing for us to put on these kids into what they're moving into. Similar to my buddy who's a musician, my music, he was lamenting like, "Oh man, my daughter's like all this AI music and she's never going to know the pure essence." I go, "Hold on a second. That is your definition of the pure essence of music. In 30, 40 years, she's going to be having this conversation about the pure essence of this AI music that she grew up with and how it's changed so drastically." So, I think we just have to throw away—

>> I totally agree with that. We forget all that stuff. Like our parents were like, "What is this heavy metal stiff you're listening to? It's ruining. That's not music, right?"

>> That's not the Beatles, right? [laughter] That's our jazz. I roll my eyes to just like you do of like how quickly we forget that this is just the same story over and over again.

>> Awesome, man. Well, let's put a cap on. We could keep talking all sorts of [ __ ] here, but I always love my conversation with you, man. Tell me, uh, tell the audience, um, you know, you got the book coming out. This will be right, right around the time.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's coming out. You can order it now. "Science of Scaling." We, we unpack some of the things in there. It helps you calculate whether you're bringing a new product to market as an as an old company or you're a startup one. It allows you to use your own data to calculate when you're ready to scale revenue and how fast you are ready. Like, just two critical strategies. And like I said, 100% of the proceeds are are donated to mental health, which we talked a lot about, which I love. Um, and so thank you for supporting the book if you do, for, you know, great scaling and thank you for mental health.

>> Yeah. It's just curious, is there like a specific, um, charity that is going to—

>> It's actually MLAN Hospital that you and I know because it's in your backyard. Uh, well, it's both of ours down in Belmont. They, I think they're known as like the international best of, uh, mental health. Um, and so it's particularly going there. Um, but, you know, that I've told other hospitals like, "Oh my god, thank you so much for like MLAN. That's great." Like, cuz they, they do the research and it benefits us. So that's specifically where it's going.

>> Love it. Awesome, man. Well, always love what you're doing. Always love the conversations. Learn something from you every single time, my friend.

>> You too, man. You too, man. Appreciate it.

>> Absolutely. And everybody, hopefully enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I said on all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So, thank you all very much, and I will see you on the other side. [music] Hey, thanks again for listening to the show and for all your support throughout the years. This is one last reminder to check out my training programs at jbarrows.com or leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2 if you've already gone through my training or sign up for my newsletter. Any of those will help ensure I can continue to bring you free content and great conversations like the ones you just heard without having to annoy you with sponsors. Again, let's make it happen in 2026 together.