Transcription
[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.
Now, before I get into today's guest, I want to be transparent on this one. Apollo is a sponsor of JB Sales. And if you've been following me for any amount of time, you know I only work with sponsors whose products [music] I actually use. I use Apollo for my own prospecting. So, when I tell you this is a platform I believe in, that is coming from real experience, not because I'm just reading it off the card.
[music] Now, today I'm joined by their CRO, Adam Carr, and he has one of the more interesting career arcs in B2B sales leadership. Every single company he's picked follows the same pattern arc. He looks at product-led growth companies that needed to layer on enterprise sales. He was at FiveStars in loyalty and payments, then Classy.org in nonprofit fundraising, then Box during their high-growth enterprise push, and the biggest chapter before Apollo was Miro, [music] where he served as their SVP of global sales and helped scale their business from a small sales team to 12 global offices, growing high-touch revenue from single digits to hundreds of millions in ARR. Miro hit a $17.5 billion valuation during his time there.
Now, he's at Apollo, which serves over 4 million users and 600,000 businesses, [music] running one of the most widely adopted AI-native go-to-market platforms in the world. We are going to talk about the state of outbound, what AI-native actually means versus AI-bolted on, what happens when everyone has the same tool, and what the future of GTM looks like when the machines start talking to each other. Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen.
Adam Carr, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing today?
Doing well. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, this is going to be an interesting conversation, man. So, we've been working together for a while. We worked over at Miro. A lot of things have changed since then, and this is going to be the PLG focus here on what it's doing to sales and sales reps and how that evolution hits, but um before we get into that, as my audience always knows, I love the origin story here, Adam. So, talk to me about growing up, family, kid, you know, like where did you get your influences? Where did all that stuff come from? And then we'll kind of walk through your college decisions and then all the PLG companies that you've been a part of and then figure out where we're coming from here. So, walk us through that that road map there, my friend.
>> [snorts] >> Yeah, uh born born and raised in Tempe, Arizona. Nice. Uh grew up uh my dad was uh in sales. He still is today, 45-plus years Nice. as an individual contributor, 100% commission role. Nice. So, pretty pretty fascinating when I'd say like one of my biggest motivations in doing ride-alongs with him growing up. Uh and then my mom was a school teacher. And so, uh that embodied a lot around like my growth mindset and uh always learning perspective. And then I grew up playing sports. So, I think that's that competitive edge. Uh I was I was never the biggest person out there like when it came to uh my size, but I was I always got I was always able to get myself the right playing time and even on varsity sports because I knew the plays and I was quick. And uh that was something that was a differentiator for me uh as I grew up uh playing competitive sports.
Well, so I've talked to your dad, 45 years, 100% commission rep. Like that his risk profile Talk to me about kind of risk profile on that, right? Cuz I and I bring I bring this up because you know, a lot of reps are are very terrified of of full commission, right? Because it's like uh and I know I was like when I was growing up it was like, "Hey, I need at least something just in case it doesn't hit, right?" But then when I got fired from one of my jobs after we you know, sold our company to Staples and all the fun Well, I got offered another position, whatever. That's a different story. But um now now all of a sudden I'm a I'm running my own business. And I and it dawned on me that I was 100% commission rep at this point. And I'm a pretty self-motivated guy, but man, if you need some motivation to get up in the morning, realize that if you don't get up, you ain't getting paid regardless. So, what Is your dad like a risk-taker, or does What's his view on why he is like This is This is what gets me out of bed every morning. You might get an invite to the podcast. But, you know, you know, honestly, like I think he stumbled into it. It and it's it's He's a in a chemical manufacturing type of sales job where he sells his primary customer is automotive shops. And he sells It's like every every week he's going to these customers and they they repurchase the chemicals from him. And so, he he found a real interesting niche where it's like it's the human element. They want to buy from people. And he's built these relationships. And they're all they're all small mom-and-pop type of or like, you know, local businesses in a way. You know, there's some larger ones like Discount Tire, which is much more national, but like Yeah, [clears throat] I think for him is no He's not He's not a high-risk type of person, but I think he's found this interesting vertical that he was able to have a ton of success in over the years and build these relationships. And for him is like people love him. Like people light up when they see him. And they trust him. And they they And that comes back to like even this new world we all live in, right? Of like people buy from people. I really believe that.
element is so important. And it's shifting. And it's evolving really quickly um in this in this new world we live in today. Just give a head a little bit cuz you know, a lot of people say that, you know, relationships and human element and all this other stuff. But, I've always said that yes ands, right? Relationships matter. People like to buy from people. But, value matters in the relationship, right? Because you got these people who have in in a lot of ways built their careers on being a really nice guy, like being able to, you know, super likable. But, you know, and taking out steak dinners and golf and all those things. And And back in the day, steak dinners and golf, that was valuable in some way, shape, or form, right? But But now, value is is taking a whole different turn. So, what's that balance from your standpoint of of the relationship likable guy, but making sure that you're constantly adding value and not just relying too much on the relationship cuz I think people get lazy on the relationships in a lot of ways, and they stop paying attention to the value that they're bringing.
My I'll bring it back to my dad cuz I just think this is fascinating. I never even thought about it this way, but like he knows his customer and the way that they work as and his product better than anybody. And he knows how to position his product differently, even though it's a commoditized world, especially in the chemical world, of like why they would pick this one type versus another type. And I think that he's good enough to be able to articulate that. And I think that's where the value comes in in his own world. And they trust him because they he can relate to who they are in their day-to-day. And I think that that's the difference maker when you think about value. It's not about taking people out for dinners or golf or whatever. He doesn't do any of that. Like my dad was someone that went to work at 6:00 a.m. in the morning and was picking us up at school every single day. And I you know, and then those are things that I think about now in my you know, in my life and how I want to raise my kids to make sure that I can give, you know, that time back to them, too, and be present and be engaged. And so, but a lot of it's cuz he was smart. He was really smart with how he worked and how he worked with his customers. Nice.
Yeah, cuz I you know, everybody says people buy from people they like. I'm like, "No. No. They they buy from people they trust." They trust.
>> And I think that's the definite That's the thing I'm still holding on to with the whole AI stuff is like, do I trust AI? You know, do I get value out of AI? Sure. Do I trust it 100%? No. Obviously, it lies. Um but the human on the other hand, yeah, I like talking to humans, but there's a trust factor there. There's a value factor there, as well. So, paying attention to those two things, I think the dynamics of that as we scale through this is going to be really interesting.
Um so, all right. So, you went to accounting. Was that just because you didn't know what the hell you wanted to be when you grew up or do you were actually had a affinity for, you know, accounting?
>> [laughter] >> I have a I I I think it's just how I was wired. Like, I I actually changed my degree because I took the first course of accounting and it just came so natural to To me. So, it's a little bit probably like some sort of weird sickness going on there. The numbers just made sense and uh and I was convinced my mom who's the teacher was like, "Hey, accounting gives you more breath like than finance." Cuz I was finance degree. And And so, yeah, I went down that path. And so, uh it was it honestly I I I look back on it best decision because like I I'm much more of an operational type of leader. I think in numbers and I I think it helps me make the right decisions. Um but it's like that mix cuz I was an entrepreneur in college. So, like I have that mix between that Okay. discipline and then entrepreneurial spirit. Uh like and and that's what led me out of college was doing my own thing for for multiple years.
I was going to say cuz cuz that's odd, right? To be in sales but also be, you know, a finance that that dynamic usually isn't there, right? It's either, "Hey, I'm really good and I'm the numbers are the numbers, whatever." Um but that it's kind of for me I grew up my dad was an electrical engineer and my mom was an artist. And so, I have the kind of the science and the art background. And so, from that standpoint when you say you were an entrepreneur through college, with the Golden Sky Media, did you like so, did you find found that in college or was it uh you you Was it you you Greek row? You Greek row, yeah. What what's what was that? Was So, that was in college? Yeah, so in college like I would just be doing some like I'll give you an example. Like, I I owned a vending machine business where I had more more vending machines uh at different sororities and fraternities on campus. Nice. And they're all credit card based. We were stocking them. Like, that was just a like a a a little initiative. And then I ran um a large like I I had a large event planning um as well that we did across across the university, and then that led me to uh the U Greek Row, which is we built a website for um it was centered around sororities and fraternities. It was a niche, like I was very involved, and I felt like there was just like really tight-knit group of of organizations that think about it like LinkedIn and Facebook and some sort of like chapter management came together in one platform. I still think it would work today, to be totally honest. I don't think there's anything out there today. Yeah. And and so that part led me into running a um that didn't work out, and we failed, and we, you know, a lot a lot of great lessons learned, raised money, didn't work out, and then I went to um built a minor league system for up-and-coming musicians. So uh we put musicians out on the road. They played against across the country, college campuses, 20 to 25 shows a month. We were sponsored by Oakley, um um Muscle Milk, Vans. Nice. And it was like a minor league system. We took these up-and-coming artists from these record labels that couldn't get their name out there. We put them in front of that influential market, which is the college demographic, to play and sell merchandise. Uh and that was that was really cool and really fun, because I was much more on the business side of it. Yeah. And um and and then I and then, you know, the economy tanked, and I was like, "What what what am I doing right now?" And so that's when I went back to corporate America, and I was like, "Okay, I can go either accounting or I can, you know, try something else." And I I fell into sales, and that's where I went to the AT&T program in Atlanta, Georgia. Where it was a 6-month program. Um you were wearing a suit and tie every day. Uh it was incredible. Um and I graduated that program in actually 4 months, because I I already I barely made the cut, because it was like a 3-year cutoff from graduating uh college. So barely made it, and then um that's where I that's where I got things started.
So it's funny you bring that up, because I I had the same experience at Xerox, right? It was the it was the Xerox Sales Academy, right? And and I look back at that and I almost and I think we need to get back to that from a developmental standpoint because when I'm I don't know the details of the AT&T, but with Xerox it was you don't you weren't just learning about sales, you were learning about the business, you were learning about how, you know, the marketing side, the you know, the customer support side, the technical side. Then you became an apprentice and then like you weren't full cycle sales you weren't in your territory until 6 months into your development, right? Whereas now, alright, 30 days onboarding, good luck, get out of there. And I think that's really done sales reps a disservice from a from a developmental standpoint because there's you know, almost any GTM role, if you think of sales, marketing, and and CS, or or I'm sorry, RevOps, right? None of those are real anything you truly learn in college at this point, right? And marketing, that was my degree, but everything I learned in school as soon as I got out of the real world was irrelevant. So it's I almost want to create this like, you know, GTM generalist role for everybody for a year where you just sit and you learn all those roles within an organization become like the support structure for like the full-time sales cycle person, and then you pick your lane.
So how are let's let's bring this to Apollo or some of the organizations that that you that you've developed here? How do you look at onboarding and empowering the kids with more than just the sales process, you know, with the business acumen that they need to have a real conversation with somebody once they get put into territory?
Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. Like that that that 6-month period was foundational in so many ways. And you know, Toastmasters, like public speaking. I was in a Toastmaster lunch group uh multiple times a week, and you just don't get that time back. And it that's where like you're focused, you're there, you're surrounded by folks that are very much in the same situation you are, so you could be vulnerable and you can put yourself outside your comfort zone. I don't It doesn't exist today in the same way. That's true because those are expensive to fund, right? The largest organizations can fund those properly and and but I would say like right now the way that I think about it and like onboarding and how we ramp individuals is like we we do spend time giving business context. We help our folks understand like in our world today I'll equate it like how do customers run go-to-market today? There are customers that are in this legacy world that are still managing via like spreadsheets and very manual ways. And there's more of the modern type of of org that are that are leveraging some of the latest technology. And then there's more of the let's call it the agentic world where they're like AI native and they're doing things around the cutting edge. Those are three different types of organizations, three different types of personas, maturity levels, and you have to understand where they're at to meet them where they are. Because if I go talk to somebody right now that's doing legacy way of doing things, which most companies are today, they're they're not going to relate to this agentic world. It's going to be over their head. Like a lot of it is just slowing down and making sure that we're able to help our teams understand who are you speaking to? Where are they at? And I think that goes back to like how do you build trust? How do you actually you speak the same language?
See, my contention is is that it actually isn't expensive for small businesses to do this. Because if you look at the macro of the fact that less than 50% of SDRs actually the stats are the average SDR only stays in their company, not their role, company for 15 months, 15 to 16 months. So the the promise of the SDR becoming your AE, right? And even those who do stay less than 50% become AEs, most of them go into ops or something else or more than 50% go into ops and everything else. And so and so retention I I think if we focus double down on what was and slow down to your point, I think retention goes up, I think empathy goes up because you get them exposed to customers. So now if suddenly the customer experience is better, so all of a sudden retention of clients becomes better. So, my thesis is if we did slow down to speed up and actually treated it as a an ecosystem of education for the first year of anybody's role in anybody any company, that the macro would actually save money, save cost as opposed to cost too much because only the big boys can do it.
Yeah, I I It's an interesting point to make. I I agree with you on that and I think that there's also this external factor where like you're an SDR and you're like how fast do I get out of this? Like it's like the worst but best job you'll ever have and but it's that mindset too of like how quickly can I can I move? And I think that like you know, we we are spending a lot of time. We're building our SDR org right now. So, like we're building those the foundations today around what does it take? How do you How do we make sure these folks are getting developed in the right ways? We're not moving too fast. That's the thing that keeps me up at night, especially with folks earlier in their careers, is that we promote too early and they fail. And I've done that. Honestly, like I made that mistake multiple times cuz you're like the business needs more head. So, hey, let's promote the folks that are doing the SDR work now, but like they're nowhere near ready. And so, it's an interesting question and actually good timing reflect on as well as we're building out that that that program because we're bringing in folks folks that have some experience and folks coming straight out of college, which is was one of my favorite areas for us to hire from.
>> Yeah. And I And that's actually what gives me a little bit of hope here is that because sales is the least educated profession, at least you know, from a university standpoint, we're starting to see schools build their sales orgs. And I mean, I'm I'm part of you know, I do a lot of these sales national sales competitions for these colleges at Bentley and all these different places and man, I'll tell you right now, kids coming out of those schools, like they have a I'd hire half of them who are in school right now over half of the reps that I see because their abilities and they they get the education. And so, cuz I think start like sales being the default profession anymore, I don't know if that's going to be a thing because you know, going to school with whatever degree and be like, "Ah, that doesn't work. Let me get into sales cuz no barrier to entry. I didn't even know this and I'll figure it out." That that floor is going to raise so high because the expectations that if you're not coming in with some some experience or at least perspective on sales, you're not going to be hired at all.
Yeah, I I I wish there was more of that sales curriculum uh when I went to school. I You are seeing it now and like there's there's a lot of colleges that have built really great programs. Um absolutely. You
So, well, you did this though. You intentionally [clears throat] Didn't Miro, didn't you intentionally slow down uh your hiring even though you're on a rocket ship to to make sure that that process was was locked in?
Yeah, I mean, 100%. Like I And I learned a lot of this from um Zhenya, who was the CRO at the time of like the importance around hiring. And uh yes, like even at at Miro, we were very intentional about we hired. Uh at Follow, I I I explicitly said we're going to miss hiring targets and goals because I'd rather hire I joined and there was like 20-something sales reps and the goal was to get this to over 100. Uh and we did that, but we did it in the right time period. And part of that is like, what's the interview guide? What are the questions? What does good look like? What are the must-haves? How are we thinking about the the the ways we're asking these questions because a lot of times it's hypotheticals and like, no, like let's get true proof points of things. And so, our We're not perfect by any means, but like hiring is the most important thing that we can do and bringing in the right talent.
I I wasn't going to ask this. I'm curious though, um because the hiring market right now is so brutal. Like if I was a I would be freaking out right now if I was, you know, looking for a job because I I look at it as companies use AI to write a job description. Rep then uses AI to optimize their resume to match the perfect job description. The company then uses AI to evaluate that resume to very and that and a so I guess the intangibles, right? There's the process of the resume and everything else, but what do you look for? Like who's what stands out right now? Even from I think the obvious of like, "Hey, here's my resume, call me back." is is kind of a fool's errand and if you're hiring for sales and that's what you're doing right now, I'm not going to hire you cuz you have to get creative for this and you have to you know, get thoughtful, but which ones are the ones that are standing out for you that make it to through to a human?
Yeah, I I it's a One of my one of my favorite things is looking for actual art of like proof. Proof of what you've done. So not hypotheticals. And I'll go back to this. One of my one of my favorite things is actually doing a prompt exercise. That's walk me through what you have done. Walk me through how and this is much like we do a lot of we we always do a prompt exercise, but like to your point, I want that prompt exercise to be AI proof. And what I mean by that is I don't want you to be able to go to chat GPT, Gemini, Claude and be able to pull it all together just because of that. So like that's the part that I'm thinking about now is how do I get you how do I get you to think? How do I understand how you think? How do you operate? You know, how do you learn? How do you ask questions? Like those are the things I'm thinking about and we test that through each of the interviews. And yes, success prior successes an important factor, but honestly sometimes folks folks are just a victim of their own environment. Like they were successful because the company was doing really really well versus what did you do that drove that success? And that's the level of detail that I'm looking for when I when we have conversations. And then in leadership and above, my favorite is the the panel prompt is like walk me through it. Show me how you run your cadence. Show me how you run a pipeline review. Show me how you run a forecast call. Show me how you do coaching. And so that forces them to actually what did you do? So you can't just speak in hypotheticals or theories.
Yeah, it's it's like the next evolution of the situational based question versus the hypothetical question, right? So, I always say, you know, kids who are hired, I'm like, never ask me a hypothetical question, right? It cuz I'll be the best interview you've ever seen in your life. Well, well, John, you know, if you were to get in an argument with your boss, like, what what would you do, right? Well, I'd take my time. I'd really think through what the ar- I'd take off site, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you'd be like, oh my god, this Hey, John, last time you got in an argument with your boss, what what happened? So, I have to give you an example of the last time I got in an argument, and that's hard to lie about, right? So, those are like the proof points, if you will.
Um but you mentioned something that I'm that I'm curious your perspective on, like, how you think, right? You say like you we want to learn how you think. AI is making it really easy not to think right now, man. And it's making it really easy to make it look like I thought. So, how do you how do you extract how someone thinks when it's so easy and and IQ is you know, kind of a commodity at this point?
It's the questions I mean, when you're in an interview and you're I'm asking you a question and then [clears throat] it might actually spawn a question from you. Hey, that's an interesting question you asked me. But then reverting it back to me and and and almost like a double tap into that question.
>> Yeah. And so, I think that's where I'm like, you're actually thinking. You're actually taking what I'm asking you that you're digesting it and then you're actually using it and applying it in a different way. And actually, that's a good signal for discovery, right? Are you actively listening?
Yeah, exactly.
>> So, I think that's that's one thing that I'm looking for. And then honestly, like, so you see it you see it you see it through the dialogue. The other part around it is how quick are you on your feet of like when I ask a question, you know, how how thoughtful you are the structure as well. Like, how do you break down an answer? Or and and the last piece I would say would be around the questions you ask. When I always give time, I say, hey, what questions do you have for me? Yeah, yeah. And that one is really, really telling. The boiler plate questions, right? What are your what are your biggest strategies for the next 12 months? Like, like, it's those are not high intellectually sound type of questions. Like, I want folks to go real much more deeper. Hey, I did a lot of research. Hey, I listened to three or four of your podcasts and I that you're on recently, I noticed X, Y, and Z. I'm really curious the impact of those decisions have been having inside the business right now. Like, that's just shows that there's there's more there.
And that's like, I mean, I couldn't be more spot-on with the the issue today. I I'd say right now that the most insulting things you can say to anybody when you get time on their calendar for especially prospect, you know, like a prospect is tell me about your business, what keeps you up at night, and tell me about your priorities. Cuz I can figure that out real quick. I literally just go into chat to be or whatever and say what would keep somebody like Adam up at night. What are somebody like his priorities? Do some deep research on this. But then to your point, asking clarifying questions about that, being like, "Hey, I saw this and I'm kind of curious about that." And that to me is discovery. Uh that's curiosity. And I And that's the challenge that I that I keep bumping up against is, you know, how do you teach curiosity? How do I mean, I know that I personally think that genuine curiosity is a uh a nature not nurture thing, but I think you can become curious. Um how do you facilitate or or or support or develop curiosity with your teams?
You know what's good? I think it's all about the why. Okay.
>> Like And so, what the what the asking why. Like, why is it that way? Okay. And I think that's the only way you get people to think. Mhm. And so, um for me is just asking whys a lot. And And um but I think that like to your to your point, you can't you you there is a part of just you who you are of like and to also that growth mindset, too. Are you someone that wants to learn? So, I think the learners are they ones that are are seeking out information? Like I'm constantly trying to look at like reading articles, listening to podcasts. Like I'm I'm waking up in the morning when I'm on the way to the gym listening. Listening to different podcasts because I just want to hear from other people. How are they thinking? How are they doing things? And just gets my mind going like, "Wow, why are we not doing it that way? Or how would we if we leverage that insight, how would that work in our own world?" Uh So that's that's how I think and I think that we know there's there's probably more ways to help pull that out of folks, but I think that inherently the people are I think born with it in a lot of ways and they're they're a victim of their environments, too, that they're they're they're part of.
Yeah, and that's what that's kind of the the problem is is it's kind of the 80/20 rate Pareto's rule is like I don't think most people are curious. I heard some stat the other day that like something that this can't be true, but you know, whatever the internet. It's like less than, you know, 30% of people out there don't have an inner monologue. Like that like when they don't talk or when they don't think they're literally just sitting there and their mind's blank. I'm like, "That can't be true." I'm like, "Cuz cuz when I'm not talking, my brain's like a million miles an hour thinking of a billion different things." I'm like, "I cannot imagine a large part of our population is literally just sitting there like green screen." You know what I mean? Like I'm like, "Come on." So but
>> [laughter] >> I get my best thinking done at a Barry's Bootcamp like every day. Like I am the one thing I I come out there with like all my my greatest ideas. And people are like, "You're crazy. How do you not just zone out?" It's like, "I don't know. I get my best thinking done when I'm working out." Mine's actually my hot tub. I I literally sit in my hot tub at the end of the day just to relax a little bit and I that is where the vast majority of my like good ideas come from cuz I'm just reflecting. I'm staring into the woods and I'm just kind of in a different zone than working all the time cuz I can't get, you know, real good decisions out of this.
So let's talk about um the PLG stuff, right? Cuz you've lived your life in PLG. Um and it's always been crazy to me. You know, I it's funny. You always see PLG founders specifically so at some point or or especially early in the business, they all stand up and proudly profess we don't need sales reps. Right. Our product sells itself, right? I go Slack, Dropbox, Tableau, you know, all of them, right? And guess who guess what? I've trained Slack, Tableau, code Dropbox, but I've trained all of them. So, how do you walk me through the difference of kind of original PLG that was like, okay, it's like almost like a freemium model, let's go. And how it's evolved with AI. And and then I want to talk about the sales reps um value in that chain, but I just want I'm curious right now has PLG changed with the advent of AI or is it just a continued evolution of the same philosophy?
Yeah. Um I love this topic and I I uh you know, I I think about it in a few ways. One, there's the PLG, which is the the let's call product led growth, which is like self-serve sign-ups. And you have the different plan types. Then you have product led sales, uh which is like PLS, which is like, great, now I have the product, how do I actually bring sales in to aid that motion? And that can be like, okay, there's some usage already, how do I now go tops down? Yeah. Then there's sales led growth, which is like in theory that is more of there is no product and you're just going more tops down selling, Yeah. right? And so I think those worlds are are colliding and and like that's what that's what gets me excited. It's how do you there's an evolution. Yeah. Like for even at Apollo, like I joined Apollo was over 100 million in ARR coming from a product PLG perspective. Mhm. And they were starting to layer in PL you know, product led sales. Mhm. And same with Miro, very similar type of environment. I'd say that like the the the the key here is that the decisions and be able to go all the wall and be able to create value and be able to articulate why to go all in on a product and scale all the wall, you have to be able to have that business level discussion. And so you're leveraging that that inertia, but you have to go scale it. I I think that AI is is is allowing all the signals. The problem with product-led growth is you're getting all this noisiness from all these different end users and their type of usage and the product signals that are happening and even third-party signaling that you see, too. Like how do you know that like there's these ICs or individuals or teams using this, but then what are the executives looking for? What are their priorities? And so with AI you now can take all the context, all the different signals that are happening and you can actually create better relevance of who to reach out to with what message at one time. And I think that's going to bridge this this world, especially in our in our way of how do I actually accelerate the sales-led growth within these within the PLG environment. And um it's it's hard though because of of all the data that you see in this world we live in is like I think in a lot of cases it actually it it it it creates complic- it complicates things because as a rep, like if I didn't have this PLG motion, it's really simple what I have to go do. When I have this PLG, I get caught up talking to all these people that are already using my product that that aren't actually helping me move the move the sale forward.
What are the signals you look for in the PLG mode? Cuz I remember like Box when I was working with them, the it it was if somebody downloaded Box and and uploaded a file within 24 or 48 hours or something like that, whatever the number was, their their conversion was through the roof, right? But if it was like the 48-hour mark, if they hadn't uploaded a a folder, a file, or something like that, the pretty much conversion ratios dropped. So that was the thing where they got them in like, "Hey, have you have you done this? Have you done this?" But then it was like the trigger of when does the sales rep get involved? So let's let's just use Apollo. What are the kind of the ones that are through all the noise, the ones that make the phone call" or this one needs to be elevated to this. Is there something that you look for specifically out of that noise?
So you know, part of it is like you want to part of like the PLG motion is value should be realized before you monetize it and you know, we have a great acquisition model. Um we have a great leader that's running that business that is like, you know, from like how do I get folks into the free? How does free convert to paid? And then ultimately what like the sales team is how do I get them to drive towards the organizational plan which think about that is like org-wide. How do I think about now that this should be an org-wide initiative? And for us, we look at like product qualified accounts and then we also think about product qualified leads and leads are more contacts. So, we we have signals and scoring that helps us like we're we're still not fine-tuning it to be honest. Like it's not perfect here. I think that's also one thing is like every company is different in how we think about the scoring of it all. But ultimately we want the signal the signal within these product qualified accounts and these signals from these product qualified leads to convert the right rates. And and for us we see a lot of signal around like the usage of you know, not just being a data-only provider but data and sequencing as an example. Okay. Uh but from a lot of cases for us, the the the platform itself because of product led it's teams are signing up for it. So, for us, we need to go get the director plus personas to actually understand that hey, your teams are going rogue. It's the classic like your teams are going rogue situation but less of being a security play which is kind of like the Dropbox and Box type of you know, motion which I'm very you know, used to in the past. It's more of how do I actually unlock more value of scaling this across your organization. So, even the basic usage for us is a strong enough signal for us to know that there's something there and we need to go have a much more strategic discussion around how do we scale this? How do we unlock the value across the organization?
So, how do you then look at the like the freemium [snorts] approach to this versus the actual value approach to this cuz I think there there has been this shift where you say like I need to see value up front and a lot of times the free version of whatever it was was so dog that I was just like, all right, whatever. So, I guess like unlocking everything so people can get the all the value out of the gate versus, you know, gating this and saying you have to get to this level. What's has that evolved? And And how do you How do you look at that?
That's a constant I you know, being part of a product led growth company, there's always the battle of or like plan differentiation. And the sales team is always going to say there's not enough. We need more differentiation cuz typically it's much more tailored around IT or or or governance and compliance versus and it's much more of the back end users versus the front end users. And so, for us like, you know, you want to create that flywheel. And I think we're we're in a highly experimentation type of culture where we're constantly testing. What What are the the right gates? Because we give away a lot for free, a lot. And that's intentional because we want to. So, I would argue that our freemium product that we have is the flywheel. Is a reason why we have, you know, 3 million plus users that are using this product. And it's growing at a you know, accelerating rates is because it's easy to get in, it's easy to get value, and we have that that that paid acquisition model really dialed in. So, we know right now where there's enough uh features and functionality to to you know, to feature gate the next step into the into the the buying motion.
You said you test a lot. Um how does that trickle down to the organization? So, what's the alignment there from a agility standpoint? Because a lot of times there's the dev you know, dev team will test a lot obviously, right? Marketing test messaging a lot, but then sales reps like my experience is like when you get sales rep like without some structure to it and you keep kind of throwing it Well, what about this? What about this? Like sales reps aren't really good at Oh, Like what are we doing this week? Okay, this is different. Like I need my lane here. So, how do you think about testing and being agile and then how does that disseminate down to the floor for those reps so that they're not just book of the month club every single week and you're just testing stuff and and it and they're the ones who are being held accountable for the results of a test and if it doesn't go bad, so how does that work from your stand from like a CRO perspective? How do you implement that throughout the organization?
>> the human testing is really tough, right? Cuz you're dealing with the the management of people emotions and we're not in that like we do [clears throat] a lot of product testing and experimentation on that side of things right now. I we once we mature, we're in this like maturing process which we're laying a lot of the foundations right now. So we're not in that that experimentation phase of the oh let's go out on the sales side of things yet. We'll get there. When we at Miro we were there and we would carve out teams. So we would carve out entire teams to isolate them entirely. We would make sure compensation was taken care of so that wasn't influencing the wrong type of behaviors and then we'd have proper AB tests. We say cool, this team like let's let's just call it pricing. So we did a ton of pricing tests. We would pull out the team, we'd say cool, you're only going to go sell this variant of pricing for a quarter. And so we made sure compensation was fully adjusted for so that they would actually go sell with the right intent. And after we saw the best the best results is we were able to see did this work or did it not work? So for me it's carving it out. You got to make sure that the incentives are aligned, they have the right level of focus because if not it's to your point it's just the new flavor of the week and you just never really know is it actually working.
Yeah, it's [snorts] kind of like it's a when I see companies go from like the S the inbound SDR model to the outbound, right? And I always ask them I'm like are you are you going to segment the team for like an outbound motion versus and they're like no no no, we're going to have inbound do also some outbound. I'm like that is the absolute worst decision you could possibly make cuz a an inbound rep will chase the shittiest email lead they'll ever see in their life before they make one outbound call. So you have to segment out team, get the hand raisers, the people that want to be in there, treat them as a SWAT team, compensate them accordingly, and and test. And and so you can prove it and then bring it to the rest of the team to show like this is why we're we're doing this. And without that, well, you're just throwing everybody at everything. Like it it ends up being a disaster.
>> [snorts] >> I think you need to fund those tests. I think that's another part of going back to like even we mentioned before like how do you start funding these more like development programs? It's the same thing with this is like you have to fund a team. In a new world you have maybe
three three folks that are fully just experimentation. They're the ones hacking new things, new pitches, new ways to position different products, maybe new pricing or new bundles. And we're not there yet as an organization, but that that's a that's the goal that I want to get to here soon.
All right, let's finish up on the one that I'm probably most concerned about um is is not guys like you and me. Um I don't know I've I don't you're about my I'm I just turned 50. You're younger than me, but um you know, we've both been around the block a little bit. We got some experience. We got some business acumen. We got some contacts. So all this AI man, is fantastic cuz it's like, oh, I know exactly what and why I should be automating certain things. I have the context to have a conversation with you so I can look at all this information I get put so you and I can have this conversation without even really trying. I don't have a script. I don't have you know, questions.
Um the So that's that's us. Great. Uh the buyer now has more access to information than they've ever had before in their life. They come like people always say, "Oh, by the time somebody comes to us they're 60 to 70%." Fine. That was always for inbounds. Now it's even for outbound cuz if I if you catch my attention or something and I'm like, "Okay, I got to call coming up with a sales rep on this thing." 5 minutes before that meeting I can jump into ChatGPT and be like, "Tell me everything I need to know about this, right?" And so if I get a 22-year-old kid who's going to start asking me bad questions and and not give me any insights into the platform and those type of things and not have a business value conversation with me. I have zero interest in that or tolerance for that conversation. It used to be tolerated because it was what it was. This is the only way I could go through the process to buy something. Now it is not. So how are you, outside of the hiring profile, how are you giving these kids a chance? Like what skills, what what fundamentals, what are fundamentals anymore to have a high-value conversation with somebody who's already really educated and has a tool now that can answer at pretty much every question that I could probably give them. So what's that value of the sales rep in this equation?
Yeah, I'll break it down in our world right now. And I'd say there's there's three things that we're doing. The first one is like, what is your what is your proficiency in go-to-market workflows? So internally here is like, you need to be more of an architect, like a system thinker. But I need but to be successful now in this day and age, you have to be an expert in the domain. And what does that mean? It means in our domain, you're an expert in data, data enrichment, data orchestration, outbound, inbound, how the funnel works all the way to a stage two. >> Mhm. If [clears throat] if you don't understand that, you're not going to create value because your buyers are more educated than ever before. The second thing is, how do you map the systems of our product to those solutions? How do you map the our other products in the category to those those workflows? And then the third piece of this is the value creation. So how do you ask questions? How do you articulate the value tied to those first two categories? That's the differentiation. And that's what's going to allow you to create trust as well as for your customer to see, "Wow, I actually want to go partner because they're not just trying to sell me something. They're they're actually they want to partner with how how I go to market. How do I make my go-to-market more efficient?" And we're seeing that shift happen here. We're spending a lot of time in those areas. We have a long ways to go, but a lot of that is going back to your point on hiring, but also we we hire folks that need to be much more of this like architect of revenue or you know, a good to market engineers that that buzzword that's out in the market today, but it's actually true. That is what's needed in this new world to be able to have the right conversations cuz if not you should just you can do everything via you know ChatGPT or Claude today.
Yeah. That's why I think you know Salesforce it was funny when I was training them all those years back. Um I was like you guys don't understand what you're say as a sales rep for Salesforce. You don't understand what your competitive advantage is. And they're like what are you talking about? I'm like did any of you have Salesforce before you worked here as a CRM? Most of them didn't. I'm like is your job better working as a sales rep using Salesforce than it was before you had that platform? Yeah. Tell that story. Like there's your competitive advantage. So like I look at Apollo as the same thing. It's like like if you're selling to me as an executive or whatever it is, well you're my rep. You know what I mean? Like you're you represent the rep that I need to do this thing with. >> We should show you how we do our day-to-day in the product. And the best conversations I have are the ones even when I get on the phone with other executives, show me how you do it today Right. on your side. Yeah. And and and and so being eating our own dog food and and being experts, that's that's mission critical for us because and we should show that to our customers. That's the best way for us to sell is just walk them through how you use it today.
Exactly. Last point cuz I cuz this was the unlock for me with Apollo, right? I mean look I you know I was early days at SalesLoft. I knew Kyle really really well. You know I worked with Outreach all these say you know these cadence tools and I've always you know appreciated them if they were used the right way. But the reason I never personally used them very much at all was because they I could they were just such a pain in the ass to get set up the way I wanted them to get set up, right? Um guys came knocking, right? I was like all right cool, let's work together. I like the vibe what you guys are doing here. And I'm like okay, I got to figure this out. I got to figure out Apollo, right? And it was it was ironic because it was timing is everything. I had just made the switch from from ChatGPT to Claude. And then I jumped into Claude co-work, and I was like, holy what is this? And on my list of to-dos was, all right, I got to figure out Apollo as this separate thing. I got to set some time aside. But then you guys came out with your MCP connector, and I was like, huh. I connected it. I didn't even go into Apollo. I literally just turned my microphone on and said, now that Claude knows everything about me, all my messaging, all my positioning, all my ICP stuff, could you please go into Apollo and set it up so I get five tier one accounts personalized in my inbox every single day that I can approve so it doesn't go out automatically cuz I still want to do the last mile stuff, whatever it is. And holy it worked.
So, where are you on this headless set like platform, if you will, because I think that is the future where we're going. Like, if you think of Salesforce as, okay, system of record, right? Salesforce wanted everybody living in Salesforce. Then Salesloft and Outreach came out and said, no, no, no, we're the layer on top of You don't have to go It's a system of record, but you want to live in Salesloft because we have the full cycle. Now we're looking at Claude, OpenAI, everything else, and just being like, I'm just going to look into this and I'm going to tell all these things where to go. So, as a SaaS company, um which, you know, everybody's talking SaaS is dead and all this other stuff. I don't necessarily know, and I think your moat is obviously your data in a lot of ways. Um but how do you look at this as the evolution of SaaS? And and and are we moving towards a headless where it's pick your big AI platform, and that's where we're going to live, or are we still going to live in different systems um as we go?
I think it'll be headless, for sure. I totally agree with that. We see our you know, you pick the interface. Is your interface ChatGPT? Is it Claude? Is it Slack? Like, where is the interface that you want to live? And where we see that our our value is is around the intelligence layer. So, the way that think about that is like intelligence all the way to pipeline as an example. So, the data that we own, the proprietary data, the first-party data, second, third-party, that is what is uniquely differentiated in this market. And when you start to bringing in the context between that, that's the intelligence. And the intelligence also gets smarter when you think about the infrastructure that everything was built upon. Right. You think about the infrastructure that it's built upon is like the sequencing. Like, think about the you know, email warm-up, deliverability. Like, there's a lot of foundational architectural type of infrastructure set up that allows this to work seamlessly. So, now we're okay being the intelligence layer powering Clod, Co-work as an example for go-to-market. So, you think about like the advanced skills that are needed to be able to be really impactful using those different interfaces. So, we are fully investing in that and making that happen. So, we want you to be able to do the work where where it makes the most sense. And we believe it's multifaceted in this new world. And we're seeing a ton of traction with that using the the AI within Apollo being able to power through other interfaces.
Yeah. Yeah, I like I said, it was like a oh, thank god. You know, as soon as it hap- like as soon as that connector came, I was like, now I can get it to do exactly what I want. And I just have to tell it. I don't have to figure out where to click this and do that and set up this. It just did it. And it was it was definitely okay. I see where this is all going.
So, last topic, uh last question. What what's next? Like, where where where do you see this going for Apollo? Um and you know, what's the next kind of evolution, if you will, as you as you evolve here?
I I I go back to the conversation we had a little bit earlier we talked about there's three different categories that the that companies are around. The legacy world where they're trying just [clears throat] to modernize, and you have the modernized world they're trying to go more agentic. And I don't believe there's a winner yet in this go-to-market arena when it comes to the technology that's owning the space. I think that's There's there's the players out there, but no one's really owning the AI go-to-market motion. And I believe that we're uniquely positioned, when you think about it, to own that pipeline. Everything up to a stage two, we will be best in class at it. And why is that? It's because the data the data powering the Nএছ action via the intelligence. And that contextual element is huge. And so I'm super bullish on the opportunity ahead. And AI is just simplifying our world right now. And I think that's honestly go-to-market is so complex. There's so many things you have to do right to be able to make the system work. And we're here to democratize it. And and all we're doing is is making it easier for every company out there to do world-class go-to-market. And so I'm super bullish. We're just getting started in so many ways. And we're powering some of the best companies in the world in their go-to-market motions. And so So yeah, it's exciting times ahead.
Love it, man. Awesome. Well, anything we miss that you that you want to highlight before you take off?
No, it's great. I appreciate these conversations. I I definitely like my my you know just just just thinking out loud here the the comment around this whole like sales development world. Like it is something that I actually you know really believe in. And it's something that I actually think we can iterate on now. I've been even thinking through our conversation today. So no, this is great. Thank you so much. And we got to get you to do some enablement training on our side here soon.
Anytime, my friend. Anytime. Where can people find out more about you about what you're working on over at Apollo and all that? What do you want to send people here?
Just LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. You know, I I'm I'm being I'm actually being more and more intentional about publishing content on LinkedIn to be able to help, you know, the category understand how to think in this especially this modern world of not just AI cuz I think there's a lot of buzz on that, but there's also like leadership. How do you build teams? How do you think about the selling motion? And what's this next world of sellers? And even customer success, we didn't talk about that at all really, but like we fundamentally shifted our motion. We don't have CSMs anymore. We are all go-to-market engineers on the back end that are highly mechanized via proactive interventions. So like we know when a customer is off track, it creates a signal and then we have a human that's actually proactively reaching out at the right time, at the right place, with the right message. And so we're rethinking what is what are the right blueprints for for building world-class go-to-market. >> Love that.
Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on. I'll I'll be We should do this again in a few months here just to kind of see how things have changed cuz man, it just seems like things are changing every day, every week at this point. So.
Yeah, likewise. [snorts] Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. >> Absolutely. And everybody, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today cuz no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile, 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 [music] with sponsors. Again, let's make it happen in 2026 together.