On today's episode of The Goats of Growth, I have Michaela Dempsey, Chief Marketing Officer at Levelpath, an AI-powered procurement platform, to explore the concept of “delightful procurement” and how AI is transforming the procurement process.

Michaela dives into how AI can streamline procurement and marketing, boosting efficiency and enhancing the user experience. She also shares her views on the essentials of marketing fundamentals, the impact of LinkedIn in B2B growth, and why balancing short-term wins with long-term strategy is key.

Tune in to discover Michaela's insights on:

Delightful Procurement: How AI can make procurement processes smoother and more enjoyable for users.

Retargeting and Visibility: The power of retargeting ads in boosting brand awareness.

Facing Challenges with Confidence: The importance of confidence and resilience in marketing leadership.

Iteration in Marketing: Balancing data-driven insights with gut instincts for effective decision-making.

Long-Term Vision and Sales Alignment: Why aligning marketing and sales with a clear vision drives growth.

Join us for this episode packed with actionable advice on AI, marketing strategy, and leadership from a top industry CMO!

Michaelas Linkedin Profile

LevePath Website

Chapters

On today's episode I sit down with Jamie Walker, CMO of KeyFactor, to explore the strategic marketing initiatives that fueled the company’s growth from $15 million to $100 million in ARR.

Jamie shares her insights on the importance of predictable marketing strategies and how balancing short-term wins with long-term goals can drive success. She also dives into the significance of cross-functional collaboration and building a high-performing marketing team that adapts to the evolving needs of the business. Tune in to hear Jamie's perspective on:

KeyFactor's Growth: How the company leveraged a strong product-market fit to scale rapidly.
Marketing Predictability: The role of SEO and forecasting in generating a predictable pipeline.
Cultural Integration in M&A: How to navigate and blend different company cultures during mergers and acquisitions.
Data-Driven Decisions: How data guides product focus and growth strategy.
Investing in People: Why employee satisfaction and strategic planning are key for future success.

Join us for this episode filled with valuable lessons on scaling, leadership, and marketing strategy from one of the industry's top CMOs!

Jamies Linkedin Profile

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to KeyFactor and Jamie Walker
03:02 Strategic Priorities for Growth
05:47 The Importance of Predictability in Marketing
08:53 Long-Term vs Short-Term Wins
11:49 Cross-Functional Collaboration and Trust
15:09 Building a High-Performing Marketing Team
30:33 Radical Candor and Accountability in Growth
32:49 Blending Cultures: Education and Training
34:41 Reshaping Company Values and Messaging
38:35 The Long-Term Impact of Culture on Growth
42:44 Strategic Planning for Future Growth
46:20 Motivation and Goal Setting
48:43 Learning from Success and Failure
51:34 Balancing Work and Family Life
55:23 Trust as a Key Quality in Leadership

In this episode of The Goats of Growth, I interviewed Bobby Touran, Co-Founder of Rainbow, an insuretech company focusing on the restauant industry. 

One of the biggest questions I had for Bobby was about the keys to raising money in 2024, given that it;s much more difficult than it was just a few years ago.

Enjoy the episode!

Bobbys Linkedin Profile

Timestamps

I didn't interview a guest for this episode. Instead, I give a summary of my recent trip to San Francisco at the SaaStr event where 10,000 people got together to network, learn and have fun.

It was worth all the time and eevry day. 

I also give a quick update on The GOATS of Growth, which is a book I'm working. on.

Rob Stevens is one of the people that I consider to be on my personal Board of Directors, who’s made some fantastic introductions and opened up others doors along the way–including helping me with getting guests for this podcast. 

We met on the heels of his successful 7 year run at Kiva Systems, which culminated in a $775M acquisition by Amazon Robotics back in 2012. He then led sales, marketing and business development at 2 more successful start-ups (both acquired) and is now advising other early-stage Founders on their go-to-market strategies. 

Something I found particularly interesting is how he navigated his way to leading 4 major functions within 5 start-ups, including sales, marketing, product, and professional services.  In this episode, we cover how he developed that breadth of skill and what he learned along the way that he is now sharing with his clients.

In this episode you will hear me highlight the 10 most cited traits, mentioned by my guests this year, that are present in top salespeople they've managed. I was reluctant to do it in order of most cited to least cited, because they are all paramount to the success of top sales reps, but I did it anyways to make it more interesting. 

Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com. 

If you’re a Founder or an early-stage Sales Leader, you’ll appreciate and recognize many of the topics covered in my latest podcast interview with Brian Benedict, Global Vice President of Sales at Narrator. 

If you aspire to be, on the precipice of, or have just started your journey as an expeditionary sales leader, you’ll appreciate learning about the mechanics of what it takes to get the flywheel moving. 

And, if you’re an individual contributor aspiring to, or are currently working for an early-stage start-up, you’ll get a sense of what it takes to succeed and the expectations of you in such an environment. 

Some of the topics we discussed include:

GTM Strategy
Should you go up market or down market and why?
Pricing structure
What should you be focused on from day one
Securing the right meeting with the right people
How he had 5 meeting set before his first day at one company
What should your tech stack include?
Creating processes and systems
What goes in the playbook?
When to iterate or not
Who to hire first and why?
The challenges founders could experience if they hire for the wrong position first
What kind of experience should the first members of the sales team have?Which traits and core competencies should you screen for?
How do you assign quota (or not) in the absence of precedent and much data?
How to build a repeatable motion
When should you scale and how

Enjoy the episode.

Teaching and coaching enterprise sales reps to become HIGH-PERFORMING enterprise sales reps is difficult–to say the least. There are many variables to reaching greatness that sales leaders and coaches need to navigate.

Is a rep struggling because she doesn’t understand the value proposition well enough? Is a rep struggling because he’s in a new territory and simply hasn’t generated enough activity? Is your go-to-market strategy flawed? The potential roadblocks that can prevent success are overwhelming and endless.

With all the various reasons and possible impediments to success, wouldn’t it be nice if someone were to distill the complexity of true enterprise sales down to just a few pillars that can be coached and repeated—regardless of which sales methodology you’re using? Well, that’s what my latest podcast guest, Douglas Cole, Enterprise Sales Leader at LinkedIn, achieved in his new book, The Sales MBA–How to Influence Corporate Buyers.

In this episode you’ll not only hear when and how to incorporate these core pillars of successful enterprise sales, but you’ll also hear him talk about the mental shift CRUCIAL to mastering it all. 

Here is the link to buy the book on Amazon

(Republished from June 2020.)

I recently interviewed Samuel Clemens, Partner at Accomplice VC & Founder of Reprise, which helps customer facing teams capture, edit, and assemble the perfect demo every time. 

We discussed the 3 types of sales leaders critical to early stage start-up success. The first type is simply founder-led sales because they know the product best and should be able to close the first handful of sales on passion--as long as their is market fit.  The second type of sales leader is what he calls the expeditionary sales leader who can help create and define a repeatable playbook. The third type of sales leader is someone that is process based and can take that playbook, refine it, and then scale the sales team. 

Additionally, he shared the critical attributes needed in each sales leader, the one thing that he thinks really defines an organization's culture, the 3 big mistakes he's made in the past when scaling a sales organization, what sales leaders should NOT do during their Board meetings, and much more.

Whether I’m interviewing a GTM leader on my podcast or confidentially for a retained search, I tend to geek out over the “how” of how success was achieved by my guest.

It’s like when we first learned long division. It wasn’t enough to give the right answer, we had to show the teacher “our work”. How we got there, so they know it wasn’t simply luck, memory, or a hidden calculator.

From onboarding to strategic planning, to compensation models, to playbooks, I could do on and on but how success was achieved—or not, if I’m screening for a client.

But sometimes, what we’re capable of accomplishing simply comes down to "why" and the traits we have or the traits you don’t have.  In the case of my most recent guest on Over Quota, Ramsey Al Ramahi, 3 traits that came to my mind as I was analyzing the why behind his accomplishments were, curiosity, desire, and a bias towards action.

In this episode, you’ll hear how he went from selling Bakluvit (a family recipe) to a tech sales leader in less than 5 years.

Yes, we dug into strategy and execution, but those 3 traits, curiosity, desire and a bias for action were the hallmarks, from my assessment, as to why he just accepted a CRO role--achieving yet another professional goal.

Graham Collins has given more than 400 compensation consultations over last 2 years, so I couldn’t think of a better guest to have on to learn all the ins and outs of how comp plans and quotas are established.

Whether you're a Founder trying to get your arms around hiring your first sales rep, an established sales leader, or a quota carrying AE, you’ll learn something from this episode, including:

• The right ways and wrong ways to structure comp plans

• Why 50/50 comp plans exist and the underlying math

• The right and wrong ways to establish quota

• How to deliver new comp plans and keep your best reps

• The most common mistake leaders make when building comp plans

• Why companies don't want all their reps to be at 100% of quota

And more!

In this episode you’ll hear Brian Kirk's journey from Submarine Warfare Officer, where he was leading as many as 70 Sailors, to MIT, where he got his MBA, to entrepreneur–and all that he learned from that experience–and then into technology sales where he went from BDR to sales leadership in just 6 months! That’s the journey. 

Tactically, you’ll hear him discuss why he’s made the choices he’s made,  his new way of communicating since moving into civilian leadership, how he went from BDR to sales leadership so quickly, and the strategies and processes he implements to inspire his teams to achieve more together.   

To say Jill Rowley has vision, which, by one definition, is the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom, is an understatement.First, early on her career, she saw sales as an avenue to control her own income and destiny. Second, she saw that Salesforce.com would be a great place to launch her sales career when it was just a little-known start-up. Third, she chose to join Eloqua in its infancy (Jill was employee #13) because she saw the power of marketing automation before most did. Then, she saw “social selling” as a powerful go-to-market strategy well before social selling was part of the lexicon. That’s vision.  

So, what does she see next?  Ecosystems. She sees ecosystems as the next big shift in the way SaaS companies will win, and playbooks should start to include them--immediately.  True, many companies use partnerships as part of their go-to-market strategy, but few look at prospective partnerships as part of an ecosystem to authentically delight and over deliver value for their customers.  

In this episode I interviewed Michelle Benfer, Senior Vice President of the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable Product Lines for BILL.

I asked Michelle about a post she shared on LinkedIn that caught my eye about the Rule of 40 and how focusing on the right roles and the right intelligence in RevOps makes you less reliant on sales headcount.

Listen to the episode to find out more, including:

Balancing Profitability and Growth: Understanding the rule of 40 and its significance for public SaaS companies.

Driving Productivity: The critical role of RevOps and how to effectively align bonuses with productivity benchmarks.

Sales Enablement: Strategies for boosting productivity and disseminating best practices across the sales team.

Effective Sales Management: Tips for hiring well, coaching effectively, and focusing on pipeline management, performance, and culture.

Navigating 2024: Insights into the challenges of running a sales team and the importance of investing in the right resources. This episode is packed with actionable advice for sales leaders aiming to achieve a balanced and productive sales organization!

Tune in and let us know your key takeaway.

Michelles Linkedin Profile

Timestamps

Patrick Lynch, a technology sales leader with experience building high-performing teams, says that we have a tendency, as an industry, to overcomplicate things. At the end of the day, it's about discipline, rigor, grit, and focus.  As a leader, do you have the team that can help you get the customers you don't have. Simply put, "hire good people and get the hell out of the way". 

This episode features Paul Fifield, CEO and Co-Founder of Sales Impact Academy. You'll hear Paul talk about his own journey and the, somewhat painful, experience he had as a revenue leader scaling two previous companies that lead to SIA. You'll also hear why most companies don't make it, and how to properly instrument an organization from the beginning which includes one key hire needed IF you want to scale.  

I spoke with the Area VP of Sales at Sky Hive, Janet Rosenthal. After taking a decade off to take care of her family, she struggled to find the perfect fit professionally until she found SkyHive where she leads a team of Enterprise Sales Reps. SkyHive’s mission of upskilling talent aligns with Janet personally. Janet also discusses what to look for in hiring the right person, being coachable, and general goal setting to be successful in sales.

In this episode I speak with the VP of Business Development at Video Elephant, K.C. McLeod. K.C. discusses Vyer Films, a company he once founded,  what encouraged him to launch it, and the go-to-market strategy used to bring it to life. At Video Elephant, he started with a small team and faced high uncertainty as he took on the 1st business development position. KC discusses learning and developing his personal leadership skills to help build the perfect team through data and research.

Today’s episode was sponsored by Allego.  Allego allows you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback. Allego gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible to help improve sales performance.

In this episode Cherilynn Castleman talks about the painful experiences she had as a business leader that inspired her to start CGI Executive Coaching, how to build high performing teams that are united around one vision, a framework for post-pandemic selling, and how a little inspiration can get people to do extraordinary things.

Brian Cotter, SVP of Global Sales Engineering at Seismic, spoke to me about the critical role Sales Engineers play in the enterprise sales process. An Engineer, by definition, is someone who designs and builds.  Brian and his team design and build but not in the way one might assume. In this  episode you’ll be captivated by what he says are the most critical elements to sell more,  more quickly, and with less friction

This week, I was delighted to have Dwight Lawson on Over Quota to discuss some of his daily practices and his position as Head of Sales at Ethena, a startup providing compliance training for modern teams. Dwight’s career journey features him within the first 100 people of most of the companies he’s worked for. He goes into detail about the impact that can be made in the beginning hiring rounds of a startup and what to expect being in those roles. He also talks about how the importance of authenticity in the workplace and how it’s led to success. Play close attention to his time analysis method and the simple way to examine where you are mismanaging your time.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more about Allego

In this week's episode, I brought on a dynamic sales leader with an engineering past, Bershu Nkwawir. We talk about Bershu’s journey from being a technical Engineer to VP of Sales and why he switched. He details the parallels that made it a natural switch while also shedding light on the difficulties he faced approaching sales like an engineer. Since he had a nontraditional path to Sales, he talks about what he learned to onboard other engineers in the Sales space. We also talk about general hiring practices and team-building lessons he learned over time. Bershu expands on the four characteristics he looks for in a sales candidate he believes can't be taught. He then explains the two things managers should do to not own every problem the team has and help grow their team's abilities.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more about Allego

Today I had the opportunity to talk to Marcus Knight, a seasoned Go-to-Market Strategist and Founder of Cultured Perspective, a black-owned revenue growth consultancy. We deep dive into the reasoning why nontraditional sales candidates are being overlooked, addressing the companies' and candidates' fears. Marcus talks about his growth revenue consultancy and how they use equity strategies and a diverse talent pool to set themselves and their clients apart from the crowd. He gives tactical strategies to manage big initiatives and expectations with a client, and describes what types of problems his consultancy helps resolve for businesses. Marcus also discusses strategies for creating a healthy workplace within his own life, his company, and his client’s companies. In addition to giving back to overlooked candidates, he and his son are Co-Founders of a clothing company, Kid Kulture, where he nurtures his son’s creativity while educating him on the business side too.

In this episode, Steve Travaglini, the CRO that led LinkSquares from $500K to an astounding $50M in ARR in just 5 years, shares his entire journey. 

Struggling with startup setbacks and doubt? Steve resilience, drive, and bias towards action, will inspire you in a way that could set you on path to the same kind of success. Of course, you'll have to do it without Steve.  

Tune in to discover Steve's insights on:

Uncovering Success: The journey from setbacks to triumph, and the lessons learned along the way.

Building a Sales Culture: Hiring for grit and optimism to create an unshakable team.

Driving Revenue: The pivotal role of a game-changing product in the sales landscape.

The Blueprint for Growth: Strategies for forging an unbreakable sales culture and fostering explosive growth. This episode is packed with actionable advice for entrepreneurs and sales leaders aiming to achieve extraordinary success!

Tune in and let us know your key takeaway.

Steves Linkedin Profile

In this episode I interviewed Brent Keltner, Founder and President of Winalytics, a consultancy which helps clients achieve top growth potential by consistently positioning and qualifying buyers at each phase of their journey. 

Brent emphasizes the importance of playbooks, practice, and team-based learning, which, he says, are the 3 pillars needed for growth acceleration. Listen to the full episode to hear which playbooks growth minded teams should be using, the plays they should be running within each playbook, and the one play that everyone should master to accelerate deal velocity and expand deeper into existing accounts. 

To go much deeper into this subject and to learn more from Brent, his new book "Revenue Acceleration Playbook" is now available on Amazon. Click here to learn more.

You can also reach him directly at bkeltner@winalytics.com or here on LinkedIn.

Thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more about Allego

In this episode, Jon Hawkins, CRO of Augmedix, shares the lessons he learned from a company he once Co-Founded, and then eventually sold, how he takes a data-driven approach to sales, how data can help build certainty and confidence throughout his team, and why he doesn’t think hiring salespeople with industry expertise is  the best approach.

To connect with Jon, you can email him at jon@augmedix.com

Thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more about Allego

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Scott Sambucci to discover the key components of his success as a sales coach, public speaker, best-selling author, and endurance athlete. Having raced in three Ironman Marathons among other events, Scott has adopted a disciplined and regimented lifestyle that he applies to his work mindset, enabling everyday to be well structured with “no wasted miles”. With 25 years of enterprise sales experience and assisting startups, Scott has incredible insight into the problems and solutions for individual and company-wide growth, rooted in an attitude of dedication and perseverance. With every question I pose, from hiring strategies to professional roadblocks, Scott has answers and advice that not only benefits your workplace productivity but your approach to accomplishing simple everyday tasks.

Want to hear more from Scott Sambucci? Read his book “Stop Hustling, Start Scaling” on salesqualia.com, or reach out to him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsambucci/.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more about Allego

For today’s episode I invited Deric Peterson, Vice President of Commercial Line Sales at Verisk, whose strong character and willingness to learn helped build a foundation for success, personally and as a sales leader. His advice begins with a look inward, as he promotes what he learned from a mentor who said the best way to reach your full potential is by betting on yourself. Not only does this support self-advocating, but the idea of living presently, to earn your current role rather than worry prematurely about the next steps or the higher position. By instilling this mindset throughout an entire team, you enable a group of sales athletes who play the game without fear of losing and celebrate victories no matter how small. In addition to this already powerful dynamic, incorporate a data-driven core and you have the recipe for an unbeatable company culture ready for anything.

Verisk is hiring! Reach out to Deric  through LinkedIn, at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deric-peterson/.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Click here to find out more

Culture is a major component in differentiating your company -- what better way to support culture than employee perks? My guest today, Amy Spurling, talks with me about the challenges companies face trying to satisfy employees with unpersonalized benefits and offers a solution for HR and sales teams alike. As Co-Founder and CEO of Compt, Amy is determined to alleviate the pain HR experiences and restructure company compensation for fairness and sensibility's sake. Charismatic and thoughtful, Amy Spurling empowers businesses to craft a culture that cherishes their diversity and rewards the uniqueness of each employee.

Have any questions for Amy Spurling? Visit her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyspurling.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Email me, webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone on Allego’s team who will take great care of you.

My guest for today’s episode, Mandy Cole, Founder of Rise Accelerator, answers the valuable questions about evolving companies and constructing the right teams for every step. When to hire is as vital as who to hire for start-ups working to actively avoid risks and bring in the team members with skill sets and experiences that best align with the company’s needs. Is there enough market opportunity, consistent revenue production, and customer retention to start hiring? Does your company need to hire flexible leaders or structured workers? There isn’t a stage in a company's growth that Mandy doesn’t have the key to, and with her expertise, she sure makes scaling seem simple.

Have any questions for Mandy Cole? Reach out to her on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandyhcole/ or through email, at mandy@riseaccelerator.com. You can also hear more of her at Sales Impact Academy, salesimpact.io.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Email me, webb@thejdavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone on Allego’s team who will take great care of you.

My guest today is Meghann Misiak, founder of The Path to President’s Club, a company built for people like herself who constantly seek the best approach to sales. With an emphasis on mindset, Meghann shares her experience  through the difficulties and achievements that lead her to found her company and embrace mindfulness. Whether it be strengthening self-awareness, overcoming insecurities, or pursuing mental clarity, Meghann has all the tricks to avoiding burnout and balancing your cup.

Interested in reaching out to Meghann Misiak? Find her on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghannmisiak/ or book a free geek out session with her through her website pathtopresidentsclub.com.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Email me, webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone on Allego’s team who will take great care of you.

In the words of my guest today, longevity and success in sales is rooted in your passion for the product, the issues it resolves, and the group it helps. Trina Hymes, Global Vice President of Sales at Talenya, embodies what it means to be a successful sales professional, rooting for her company and believing in its solutions. Profoundly organized and motivated by relationships with people, Trina excels at building teams and challenging recruiters to diversify their team. With her playbook at her side, she is able to document, adjust, and share the methods of effective leadership and scaling a company.

Talenya is hiring! Reach out to Trina Hymes for questions about the job or to thank her for joining me today at trina.hymes@talenya.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinahymes/.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Email me, webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone on Allego’s team who will take great care of you.

My guest for today’s episode, Simon Tecle, has an insight into sales at companies both small and large, with experience ranging from Telemarketer to VP of Sales and all the roles in between. In any position he’s holding, one priority remains the same for Simon: company culture. Whether you're looking for a job or hiring new members for your team, compatibility and strong work relationships are vital factors to achieve company and personal success. At his current role as Vice President of Sales for SyncroMSP, Simon invests his leadership towards establishing and elevating company culture, and shares with me other keys to growth like data driven decisions and the inexhaustible rewards to asking “why”.

And YES! They are hiring. Contact Simon Tecle at simon@syncromsp.com or link with him through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/teclesimon.

A big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode! Does improving your overall sales performance for everyone, new hires and leaders alike, sound appealing? Not only does Allego allow you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, but it gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible. Email me, webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone on Allego’s team who will take great care of you.

I estimate that I've conducted  12,000 to 13,000 candidate interviews in my career, and I have a very strong  opinion as to why so many people struggle with basic first round interviews. That's what this episode is about. No guest. Just me and my thoughts. 

And I’d like to give a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Interested in recording your best content and organizing it in one place to help improve sales performance for everyone? Allego can do this and much more. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone at Allego who will take great care of you.

Over Quota is also sponsored by the j. David Group, a software sales recruiting firm. If you're looking to hire a sales leader or individual contributor, click here. to schedule a call. On the other hand, if you're an overachieving sales leader or sales rep, click here to discuss potential opportunities that would be a good fit for you.

On today's episode of The Goats of Growth, we have Tracy Sestili, Chief Revenue Officer of Intellimize!

Struggling to bridge the CMO-to-CRO gap? Tracy, a former CMO herself, reveals how marketing expertise can supercharge your CRO role. Can a marketing background be the secret weapon for CRO success? Tune in to discover Tracy's insights on:

• Unlocking Growth: Collaboration, data-driven decisions, and the power of a user-friendly product.
• Scaling Revenue: Pricing, ICP, and the challenges (and rewards) of new market expansion.
• Product-Led Growth: Dominating your niche, lowering barriers to entry, and building brand advocacy.
• The Future of Sales: Adapting to change and the ever-evolving sales landscape.

This episode is packed with actionable advice for marketing and sales leaders looking to drive explosive growth!

Tracys Linkedin Profile

Occasionally, I'll interview someone and I'll feel like I didn't quite do as full of an interview as I could have. That's how I felt after my first interview with DeJuan Brown. (EP: 62).  As luck would have it, DeJuan felt the same way, so we agreed to do a second interview.

This episode is less about sales tactics, strategy, and execution much more about DeJuan's life experiences and what our shared perspectives and pressures we sometimes feel as black men. 

Want to connect with him? Find him on LinkedIn here. 

And I’d like to give a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Interested in recording your best content and organizing it in one place to help improve sales performance for everyone? Allego can do this and much more. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone at Allego who will take great care of you.

Over Quota is also sponsored by the j. David Group, a software sales recruiting firm. If you're looking to hire a sales leader or individual contributor, click here. to schedule a call. On the other hand, if you're an overachieving sales leader or sales rep, click here to discuss potential opportunities that would be a good fit for you.

His mom once told him, “you can say anything in the world to me as long as you frame it properly”. Since then, DeJuan Brown has crafted that wisdom into his greatest tool in navigating challenge, community, and leadership. Now, as the Senior Director of Global Sales at Seismic and an active member of Sales for the Culture, DeJuan strives to empower others with the skills to communicate the attributes from life experiences on a resume and utilize storytelling to convey a message effectively. The clarity and emotional influence following a good story is powerful in any room.

Want to link with DeJuan Brown? Find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dejuanbrown, and don't forget to revisit episode one to hear from Ed Calnan, Seismic's Co-Founder and CRO.

And I’d like to give a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Interested in recording your best content and organizing it in one place to help improve sales performance for everyone? Allego can do this and much more. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone at Allego who will take great care of you.

Over Quota is also sponsored by the j. David Group, a software sales recruiting firm. If you're looking to hire a sales leader or individual contributor, click here. to schedule a call. On the other hand, if you're an overachieving sales leader or sales rep, click here to discuss potential opportunities that would be a good fit for you.

CEO, sales expert, and LinkedIn thought leader, Jake Dunlap, Founder & CEO of Skaled Consulting joins me for today’s episode to talk about a wide range of topics, including how sales leaders and reps can reduce stress. His advice is to "eat the frog", which means to tackle the biggest and toughest challenges in chunks.  Seeing that his stress used to come from chaos, Jake became a master of planning and started adhering to an 80/15/5 rule for optimizing productivity.  He also highlights that part of a sales leader's job is to minimize the stress for their team as well.  All that and more in this episode.

Join his many followers and connect with Jacob Dunlap on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/. You can also find him on YouTube at Jake Dunlap and Instagram at @jake_dunlap_.

And I’d like to give a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Interested in recording your best content and organizing it in one place to help improve sales performance for everyone? Allego can do this and much more. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone at Allego who will take great care of you.

Over Quota is also sponsored by the j. David Group, a software sales recruiting firm. If you're looking to hire a sales leader or individual contributor, click here. to schedule a call. On the other hand, if you're an overachieving sales leader or sales rep, click here to discuss potential opportunities that would be a good fit for you.

This episode, I welcome back a guest who knows how to lead a start-up to unicorn, Ryan Burke.  As my guest in episode 19, we scratched the surface of his experience scaling early-stage companies, and today we dive back into the discussion, revisiting his time at InVisionApp and how he's using the same playbook as CRO of Qatalog. Ryan has constructed a framework that relies on three “F”’s to guide the early stages: the “first five”, the "foundation", and the "future". In the process of exploring each of Ryan’s F”’s, we uncover the key elements of structured feedback, effective strategies for managing fully distributed teams, and the ingenious move of hiring your company’s target persona. And if you haven’t already, check out his first appearance in episode 19 to hear more from Ryan Burke!

Impressed with Qatalog and Ryan Burke? You're in luck -- they are hiring! Contact Ryan Burke through email at ryan@qatalog.com, on twitter at @ryansburke, or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansburke/ to get involved.

And I’d like to give a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Interested in recording your best content and organizing it in one place to help improve sales performance for everyone? Allego can do this and much more. Email me at webb@thejdavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone at Allego who will take great care of you.

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

Today’s episode, I welcome one of my best candidates from 9 years ago, Zachary Rego, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Unstack and host of the podcast “Zero to a Million”. Supported by stories of remarkable victories and impactful learning experiences, Zach walks me through the path of his career leading to his work at Unstack. Here, Zach’s talent is put to work building teams, expanding the company’s visibility through creative platforms like blogs, and finding unique ways to engage with prospects in ways that are mutually beneficial. By the end of the interview, we discuss the common challenges start-ups face, ways of assessing your business’s stage of growth for hiring, and the exciting business plans Zach has in store.

Find Zach on Linked in at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachrego/ and check out his podcast “Zero to a Million”!

And a big thanks to Allego for sponsoring this episode. Have you or one of you sales reps nailed a presentation that you wish was recorded to show team-members and new-hires? With Allego, not only can you record your content but you can organize all your best content in one place that’s easily accessible. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone there who will take great care of you.

Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com. 

My guest this episode is Josh Allen, well established business leader and CRO of Owl Labs. Having held many sales leadership positions throughout his career, Josh knows how to read the signs and pave a path towards scaling a company by hiring the right people and navigating the growth with a keen eye. Josh emphasizes the importance of refining your job description when scouting for team members and the responsibilities of coaching them with the attention of a caring leader over a transactional manager. As any company expands, they learn that the devil is in the detail, but a team crafted with Josh's passion and skill is any company’s best counter to error.

Like what you heard of Owl Labs and interested in joining the team? Reach out to Josh Allen on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-a/.

And as always, thank you to Allego for sponsoring this episode. With Allego, you can record your best content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, all while organizing it neatly in one place to improve sales performance. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone who will take great care of you.

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

You’ve heard me talk about the visual-learning powerhouse that is Allego, but today we get to hear from the man himself, Allego’s President and Cofounder, Mark Magnacca. On a mission to help sales leader’s refine their skills and achieve excellence, Mark utilizes visual aid and virtual access to engage with the world of sales. Through his public speaking and a New York Times best selling book ("So What"?) he promotes a form of coaching that values clear and concise feedback and prefers orchestration over “winging it”. 

Want to know more? Find Mark Magnacca on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmagnacca/ and visit Allego’s webpage at Allego.com.

This episode, especially, I’d like to thank Allego for being a sponsor. Interested in organizing all your best virtual content for practice, collaboration, and feedback? Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, and I will personally introduce you to someone from Allego who will take great care of you.

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

This episode, I welcome the embodiment of positive energy and Director of Collegiate Sales at Teamworks, Larry Long Jr. Truly a pleasure to talk with, Larry embraces life as with two feet on the ground, an unbreakable optimism, and a readiness to choose happiness with every stride. As a sales director for athletes, he offers a wealth of advice to lead with a bright and active energy, to build a sales team of match-makers not “me-monsters”. What motivates Larry the most is his impact on others, making his schedule piled high of positive engagement with those around him, whether it be regular acts of kindness towards his social sphere, or on larger platforms like his YouTube channel, podcasts, or public speaking. It’s hard not to smile when hearing from Larry Long Jr., and even harder to leave feeling anything less than empowered to follow his lead and choose happiness.

Want a weekly dose of Larry Long Jr’s positivity? Find him on YouTube at Larry Long Jr. He can also be found on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/longjr7/ or Twitter @LarryLongJr.

And a big thanks to our sponsor, Allego. Want to know how to onboard, coach, and arm your sales team with the right information at the right time? Check out Allego, the market leader for virtual learning and enablement solutions. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone who will take great care of you at Allego.

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

My guest for today’s episode is Rob Brewster, the CEO of GoFormz. His introduction into the world of sales is an incredible story, beginning as he waited tables and ending when his regular customer, a VP of Sales, asked Rob to join his team. Talking with him now, after years of experience in various companies beyond the restaurant scene, Rob applies all he’s learned to propel the success of GoFormz. Rob focuses on the company’s culture, it’s close-knit people and their overall impact, considering transparency, integrity, and frugality as foundational components of their success. As he hires new people, he looks for smart and motivated, saying these qualities, and his ability to place them in a position to succeed, is the winning move.

Looking to reach out to Rob Brewster? Find him on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertvbrewster.

Wanting to onboard, coach, and arm your sales team with the right information at the right time? Do it with Allego, the sponsor of this episode. Email me at web@thejaydavidgroup.com so I can personally introduce you to someone who will take great care of you. And of course, a big thanks to Allego, for being a sponsor.

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

Joining me for today’s episode is Devin Golden, an experienced sales leader and generous friend of mine. Devin spent over 6 years as the Senior Vice President of Sales at Dun & Bradstreet and has recently joined Motus as a Sales Leader to build and develop top sales teams. Excelling at the task of spear-heading the growth of a new business, Devin discussed with me his methods of leadership that involve investing in your team and building relationships on transparency and respect. He’s the guy when told “we’ve tried that” to dive deeper, asking what worked through the attempt and what didn’t, to find areas of growth in every nook and cranny. With a restless curiosity and an eye for strategy, Devin reveals his means of success and habits for constant improvement that could help any salesperson achieve greatness.

A big thanks to Allego, the market leader for virtual learning and enablement solutions, for sponsoring this episode. Email me at webb@thejdavidgroup to learn more about how you can transform your organization with the mobile platform built for today’s distributed teams. I will make sure you get special attention from their team. 

And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

In this episode of The Goats of Growth, we're joined by Solomon Kahn, the CEO behind Delivery Layer. We discuss his data industry journey and the inception of his brainchild, unveiling the niche market's potential as well as Delivery Layer's mission: furnishing robust tools for seamless data sharing—a sector long overlooked.

From the exhilaration of securing the inaugural client to navigating the complexities of missed opportunities, Solomon shares candid anecdotes. Tune in as he unveils his LinkedIn playbook, deciphering how strategic audience cultivation fuels outreach and cultivates promising leads.

Solomons Linkedin Profile

Sales leader Doug Bleszinski joins me for today’s episode to talk about his company, the pioneer for livestream ecommerce, Bambuser. As the Vice President of North American Sales, Doug enthuses over the company’s explosive and continuous growth, while sharing his passion for innovative work and the tools he relies on for success. He advises the use of honest and authentic networking, encouraging inward and outward vulnerability, and promotes the qualities of diversity and momentum that Bambuser exhibits. As Doug continues to build his team, he looks for members who are comfortable being uncomfortable, evaluating their emotional quotient, industry knowledge, and ability to drive revenue -- and above all, he hopes to find people who truly understand the company and are equally as thrilled to see it grow.

Interested in applying to be a member of Doug’s team at Bambuser? Get in touch with Doug Bleszinski through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougbleszinski/, Twitter at Doug Bleszinski, or email using dbleszinksi@gmail.com


Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

In this episode you will hear me highlight the 10 most cited traits, mentioned by my guests this year, that are present in top salespeople they've managed. I was reluctant to do it in order of most cited to least cited, because they are all paramount to the success of top sales reps, but I did it anyways to make it more interesting. 

Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com. 

For today’s episode, I interviewed Karen Weeks, Senior Vice President of People at Ordergroove. As a testament to her many accomplishments, Karen was recognized this year as one of the 2020 most Notable Women in Talent by Crain’s New York Business, who call her a maestro of human resources. Truly a master of her craft, Karen shares with me her strategies in leadership at Ordergroove by giving insight into the company’s adjustment to COVID-19, the benefits of managing through communication, and the structure of their hiring process. From her clever team building approach -- like book clubs, trivia nights, cooking classes, or even contests for the most unique at-home work space -- to a detailed look at her favorite interview questions, Karen demonstrates all the impressive qualities of her new and well-earned title as a Notable Woman.

Yes, Ordergroove is hiring! Check out their career page at Ordergroove.com/careers, or reach out to Karen Weeks on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-d-weeks-sphr-ms-5965775/ and tell her you heard her on Over Quota. Also, check out Karen’s Podcast “Getting off the Hamster Wheel” to hear more about people shifting in their career journeys.