How to Ramp New Sellers Faster - Cracking the Onboarding Code with EJ Easton

🤔 Are you struggling to onboard new hires effectively in your cybersecurity startup?
🤔 Do you want to learn how to ramp up new sales reps quickly and make them productive?
🤔 Are you looking for tips to improve your onboarding process and drive revenue growth?

👉 In this conversation with EJ Easton, we dive into best practices for onboarding in cybersecurity startups. We discuss the advantage of new hires, the importance of asking great questions and setting specific short-term goals for success.

👉 During this episode, we explore:
👉 The importance of being prescriptive in onboarding
👉 Certifying individuals for key tasks in their first meetings
👉 The significance of understanding the buyer during onboarding

About our guest:
EJ Easton is multi-time sales leader at cybersecurity startups.  EJ offers valuable insights on what he has learned in how to accelerate the productivity of new sales reps.

Summary:
In this episode of the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast, EJ Easton shares three key ideas for improving onboarding in cybersecurity startups. From being prescriptive in key areas to understanding the buyer, EJ's expertise will help you optimize your onboarding process and drive revenue growth. Tune in now to gain valuable insights and take your onboarding to the next level!

🔗 Connect with EJ Easton:
LinkedIn: EJ Easton
📅 Book a meeting with Andrew

Transcript

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:00]:

Getting new reps. Ramped up is a critical but often underinvested function, especially at startup. But the cost of a slowly ramped seller or not setting a seller up for success is huge. In this episode, I teamed up with multi-time cybersecurity sales leader E J. Easton, and we both offered three recommendations for anyone who's about to hire some sellers and wants them to ramp quick, quicker. Welcome to the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow revenue faster. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan. Our guest today is EJ Easton. EJ is a multi-time sales leader at multiple cybersecurity companies. EJ, welcome to the podcast.

EJ Easton [00:00:53]:

Thanks, Andrew. Pleasure being here today, and I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate on this topic. I think it's one that's hugely important, particularly for organizations just getting started, and critical to get it right out of the gate.

Andrew Monaghan [00:01:07]:

Yeah, it's interesting. It's something that you and I are both pretty passionate about, though. We're coming to it from completely different angles. But as you're right to mean, I think it's something that a lot of companies are probably wishing they could do a little bit better at. And our job today is to give them some ideas about how to do this better. Well, let's move on to the business side of this, EJ. So we're talking today about bringing new sales reps, and new sellers into a team. And obviously, the goal when someone comes in is we want them to be ramped up and as productive as fast as possible. Right. And you hear stories where you go enterprise lens sales cycles, and it can take many months, quarters, and sometimes over a year for a seller to actually be ramped up and productive. Depending on the state of the company and how you're trying to grow, it can either be a huge accelerant if you do this well, or it can really be a debilitator if you don't do it well. And I've got some experience having built a whole bunch of these programs for companies, and you've got some experience having been someone who has tried to drive having these programs at different companies, and you've learned a few things along the way. So our job today is to offer three ideas or three tips or three recommendations for the audience each that they can kind of wrap their head around and go off and do. What's your kind of general view about onboarding and what its role is?

EJ Easton [00:02:38]:

I think the ability to onboard people and put them in the optimal position for success is critical to every company. Frankly, I think when you hire people, if they're not achieving success, I think you have to turn back and look at what you've done, what you can do differently, and what you can improve upon to help them get to the right result. I don't see people joining companies with the idea of failing. I think they join with the idea of being successful. And so it's incumbent upon us as leaders to put together the right program to help them be as successful as they can possibly be. Certainly, you get into a position where you have to go back and replace people. That cost is exorbitant. And I think every company should put the appropriate level of diligence into this effort because it's critical. It goes straight to your bottom line. Get it right, you'll see the impact. Get it wrong, you'll feel the impact.

Andrew Monaghan [00:03:37]:

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. What I've experienced is that you ask any sales leader is ramping up and onboarding important and 99 out of 100 will say absolutely. But then when you look at what actually happens when someone joins, especially early stage, I get there are resource constraints and everyone's doing the best they can. But if you have 510 15 reps in the team, it's actually really important to the success of the company, never mind the team that these people get ramped up quickly and often. It's not something that's invested in or thought about that.

EJ Easton [00:04:09]:

Well, yeah, I would agree. To me this is a good onboarding generally leads to a level of success that can be the launch point for a new rep having momentum, which to me that's a critical path. Everybody wants to come in the door and contribute. They all want to figure out a way to be relevant to the business, relevant to the results, and relevant to the contribution of building the company. And the onboarding I think is the key piece of that. You got to get it right.

Andrew Monaghan [00:04:40]:

Well, let's get into our ideas then. I'm going to kick you off with your first one. Why don't you lead us off and I'll ask some questions if I need to.

EJ Easton [00:04:49]:

So for me, the number one, I think most companies do sales mentoring. I think equally important to that mentor and fundamental to it being successful is the double comp and quota retirement piece. I don't know a lot of organizations that do this, but I think it's actually critical. It keeps your seasoned rep, your mentoring rep engaged all the way through the process. It also helps them to understand the prioritization of getting somebody in and on board. And for the new rep, you have the opportunity to learn what's worked, why, who to sell to, why to sell, how to sell, et cetera, in terms of the specific company that you're representing. So putting the double comp and the quota piece into this ensures that that mentoring rep has skin in the game from Go. And for as long as you run the program, I think it's incredibly important to keep that mentoring rep engaged to the result that for me is top of the list.

Andrew Monaghan [00:05:52]:

So whenever you say double comp, there's going to be a finance person or an Ops person just quaking in their boots about the cost model of double comping people. So in practicalities, what are we talking is it like for like is it a lower rate? What do you think about that?

EJ Easton [00:06:08]:

I think it's like for like I think the comp program that is established for a new rep is the comp program or comp plan. I think having the new rep on a plan, typically there's some level of ramp, but what you want is them contributing, them driving, and them feeling like they are intricate or integrated into the business. Like they're integral to the result that's created. And the biggest part of this is to help them develop momentum. Momentum tends to feed upon itself. By the way, having the mentoring rep also means that you've got firsthand experience or knowledge relative to coaching. You're able to supply direct feedback relative to what's working, what isn't working, where improvements can be made, and to put that rep in a better position to capitalize on what they bring to the table. It's a win-win for the company. And the alternative to that is having a new rep that needs to move out of the organization. And there's a significant cost that's associated with that. So I'd prefer to put them in a position where they can win and that they can be contributing to the company as quickly as possible.

Andrew Monaghan [00:07:20]:

Yeah, I love that unique take though, of having the comp lined up as well because if you're one of the top reps of the company, they often view it as a bit of a drag on their own activities. If they have to go in their minds baby someone else to bring them in. Some are naturally more helpful and want to do that and some are not, which is fair enough, right? They're there to achieve their main job. So I like the idea of figuring out the comp site as well as just saying there's someone to be your mentee for the first three months or six months of their existence in the company. So I love that unique take. Let me move on to my first point. So I'll tee it up like this is I think that when you're planning for someone to come on board, some sort of conversation happens about, well, what do we need to train them in? Right? And usually in the top one to three things on that list is we need to train them in the product. And then usually nowhere on the list, or if it is anywhere right at the bottom, someone will say, oh yeah, they should probably understand the buyer as well they should understand our ICP. And my recommendation is that that is the wrong way around and I get it right. If you're a product person, you're a CEO and you're building this amazing product, you've got a lot of emotional attachment to how awesome your product is. But then a day your seller's success is going to come from their understanding of the buyer, their fears and frustrations, the problems that they're experiencing how they get promoted, how they get fired, things like that, right? And I have this kind of idea in my mind that if you imagine an onboarding program, at least the first fifth of it should really be all about understanding the buyer, understanding who you go after, why you go after them. What are they looking for? What do they do right now? What's the gap? Things like that. And I think it puts a very different lens. If someone comes into the company, you get a chance to fill their brain with only so much, right? And if you can fill the first part of their brain with a complete understanding of the buyer, then you've got them off on the right foot mentally more than anything else. And especially if you're hiring more junior people, right, if you got the 15-year vet in cybersecurity, then they've probably got a good understanding. They might need a top-up, but you're not going to hugely change their understanding of the buyer. But if you have someone who's a bit more junior, you're hiring SDRs, people like that, this is absolutely your chance to influence the right way and a couple of ideas about how to do that. Because I think it's easy to say go understand the buyer, and often that's what happens, right, is they'll say you need to understand the buyer and then the conversation ends and your rep has to figure out how to go about doing it. So I would offer three different ideas. One is, I bet you inside the company somewhere there are some recordings of interviews with customers or interviews with prospects. Now, I've seen this happen where you have a kickoff and you bring a couple of customers in and they chat for half an hour, 45 minutes, and take some questions. If you have those recordings, any new rep should absolutely be listening to them. If you've got in the founders, when they were doing their customer discovery, oftentimes those calls are recorded. I highly encourage try and dig those out, the archives, wherever they are, and listen to those. That's one way I should go look for actual interviews with customers and prospects. The second one, of course, is we're living in a world of conversation intelligence tools such as gong and chorus and things like that. Now, I think the temptation is that you listen to those to hear what other reps say and do. I think the first pass of that should be, well, what does the actual customer say, what does the prospect say? Let me listen to the first, whatever it is, 15 minutes of a discovery call when we're in the meat of the problems they're facing and understand just that bit right there at the gate. And then the third thing I would do is YouTube is a gold mine of information, right, of these videos with all sorts of different things. One of the things that you'll find is if let's say your target profile is, I don't know, cloud security engineer or it's one of them. I bet you there are videos on YouTube for things like how to be a cloud security engineer, how to get promoted to be a cloud security director, what training you need to be a cloud security, and things like that, right? There's going to be a bunch of interviews in there and you're going to get little nuggets in there about what it is they go through and why they do things in certain ways. So there are these three ideas about how to focus on the buyer.

EJ Easton [00:11:48]:

I actually think that this is a huge point that you're making. It dovetails very nicely with my second point in this. But I really like what you said there in terms of the buyer persona and the understanding and that training that is about what is happening in the field. I think you're right. People turn to the product side of things often. It's my belief that that lacks context. But if you get the customer input, if you get the customer interaction piece of that, then you can start to create the context around the go forward and I think it's a critical point. Andrew well, since you brought up your.

Andrew Monaghan [00:12:30]:

Number two, let's go into what that is. Right?

EJ Easton [00:12:33]:

Thank you. So for me, the second point would be keeping new reps focused on qualification. It's my experience that you hire people and immediately they go through their contacts list of people they've worked with in the past and they spend 90 days and they burn that list without understanding what it is that they're in the market of or market for. So to the point that you've just made, going in, getting that context, being able to do the positioning, all of that takes time. Having reps again with a mentor engaged, I think that your new reps focus on the qualification, and it can be a basic qualification, it could be a more advanced qualification. It depends upon what you're selling, to whom you're selling, et cetera. But focusing on qualification is a critical path and going into the existing pipeline and being able to call down, walk down that pipeline just with a focus on qualification I think is a really good exercise. It would be my recommendation, my strong encouragement that all of those calls should include your mentor relationship. As a part of that effort, you may find yourself in a position where as part of your qualification, the mentor is able to start working in value proposition. Different personas that need to be at the table should be at the table, or the opportunity to pivot to another area of the organization that is a more likely buyer. So a new rep coming in and thinking that they're going to just roll out a value proposition and have their existing customers, those relationships say, yes, I think it's a miss. And I think what ends up happening is those relationships get squandered, they get lost. And when I say lost, I mean it then takes a lot more time to get back in there relative to the company you're representing. So keep it simple. Focus on the qualification, have your mentor engaged, and put them in a position where they can start to extend value beyond and help to develop your talk track, your walk track, and your deeper level of qualification. That would be my two. Andrew.

Andrew Monaghan [00:14:46]:

Yeah, I like that a lot. One of the things that I tell new hires when they come in is their superpower often is they're not mired in product details, right? They don't have two years of head trash about what parts the product did or didn't work two years ago and whether that's a strong or a weak bit or limitations, things like that. But if they've been selling for a while, the one thing they can always fall back on is asking great questions, right? Is it easier for someone on the spot to make a compelling point about a value prop and a use case and a story and things like that? Or is it easier just to ask a question? And I feel like it's always going to be easier to ask a question. Now, to your point, if you have the business awareness of what's going on and you're thinking about business qualification questions, then you're going to have someone in a very powerful spot. I love what you were saying about that. My second point and this is going to sound unbelievably fundamental, but I'll tell you what it's often missed is to figure out what exactly you want someone ramped up on when they come in. And I'll play it out to you like this. I've seen this multiple times. Is it incredibly easy for the head of sales? A couple of the sellers have been on board for a while. If you sit them down for half an hour and say, okay, let's make the list of things that this person needs to know. It's very easy to come up with a list of 50, 70, I don't know what, 100 things that they need to know, right? They need to know about this thing. They need to know about that thing. They need to know how we run Salesforce, they need to do the qualification side. They need to know the features. They need to know the use cases. They need to know some stories. The need to know. The need to know. They need to know, right? It's always a long list of things that come up, right? And I think that's kind of misleading, right? I honestly do. I think the much more interesting thing to say is what is the short-term goal that this person should be given in terms of the success of the company? And by short term, I mean by weeks, right? So if you have the clarity to say that, for example, take your second point at the end of week one or week two or you choose, this person should be able to have a business qualification conversation with a CISO or a VP of Security. Right? Then it becomes a lot clearer to say, well, what do we need to do to enable that to happen? As opposed to loading them up with the 55 things, other things that we think they should probably know at some point. And once you get clarity around that, what's early success it might be, for example, okay, they need to reach out to their network, I don't know, within two weeks, let's say. So what do they need to be able to do to be able to pick up the phone to their network and as you say, not squander the chance? So it's often that precision about what you actually want them to be ramped up on is going to give you the clarity about what you then need to give them or work with them on to have them be successful. And I think oftentimes it's kind of lost in a long, long list of things that it's nice to have to know. A classic example I'll give you is on everyone's list they need to understand pricing. I'm going to bet that at most companies, no rep is going to need to know pricing, at least for the first month, maybe even longer, right? They might need to know, okay, we price this by node or employee or whatever it might be, but they don't need to know all the intricacies and how you are different. SKUs stack up in different ways, right? That's a down-the-line thing. Why would you even cloud their minds right now with pricing stuff when actually the most important thing is probably something completely different?

EJ Easton [00:18:24]:

Andrew, I think this is a really great point. It's amazing how much noise can be injected into an onboarding process and how that really detracts from a new rep coming in and getting to a point of productivity. We used to measure time to productivity on new reps. I've seen twelve months, which is unbelievable. And a big part of all of this, me thinking about onboarding and how to impact change is the recognition that when you're measuring at that length of time, there's a problem, there's a problem. And to the points that you're making, I think this is critical. And actually my next point kind of layers in with that. And that is how many companies go out there and request that a rep put together a 30, 60, 90-day plan? More importantly, how many companies actually deliver to a new rep a 30, 60, 90 plan? And within that, there's an element of setting expectations, there's an element of requirements. And going back to our prior points, pulling them all together to make it sensible, realistic, achievable, but also critical to developing momentum and getting to a point where they are capable of driving things forward. So the requirements piece of it, the expectations piece of it. I think that there's an element of process that comes into this that companies can do a much better job of within that more and more. Today's environment is about team selling. So what's the handoff with pro services? The engagement with finance or sales operations or even the support organization for new reps' contribution can be measured on a lot of different fronts. And while everybody wants it to be about the bottom line, sometimes that is about being able to get a customer in a sport situation resolution quickly. Sometimes it is about Pro Services engaging to deliver value quickly so that the next sale comes into the gun site. So for me, 0.3 would be about understanding all of the support mechanisms that can help a new rep come on board and get to productivity quickly. It's about putting those expectations out into the open. It's about being able to introduce and provide handoffs relative to the various departments that support them. And I find a lot of organizations don't do a good job of that.

Andrew Monaghan [00:21:04]:

Now, would you go as far as you know, for a day or two you have to go and shadow in Pro Services or shadow in the CS organization?

EJ Easton [00:21:13]:

I think that's a great approach. I think that there is a dependency on what people have on the calendar. But I think spreading that across multiple people, if there are multiple people in Pro Services or in finance, what have you, I do think that's really important. I think it also provides some visibility into the day-to-day exercise that those other teams experience. And so when you're calling them and I don't understand why you're not picking up the phone, none of this has to be resolved five minutes ago. Having that visibility and that understanding creates a different dynamic and I think it also fosters a better sense of team.

Andrew Monaghan [00:21:52]:

Yes, you were talking there probably like you, I've been lucky enough to work with some good sales leaders over time. Remember me at a club one time and forget who it was? One of the leaders said as I looked around the room, one of the common things I see amongst the people here is they're very, very good at getting their unfair share of internal resources. When they go and collaborate and work with these other teams because they need them on deals, they get their time. And for many people it's not because they go demand it, right? It's because they actually have taken the time to build the relationships, to understand how are these teams measured, what's important to them, and how can I help them be more successful. As opposed to being the prima donna rep sitting there going it's all about me, give me time, I need stuff from you for me to be successful. And the sellers that I know that are at that level, that's what they go do. They really, truly understand what's important to these teams and make sure that they're doing what they can to help them succeed so that when it comes to having the ask, it's natural for them to go, sure, I'm absolutely here to help you.

EJ Easton [00:22:58]:

100%. It's a team anymore. Selling is not about lone wolf. Selling is about utilizing the resources around you. Frankly, having everybody on the same page, knowing what they're going into, knowing what they're going to be, working with, the people. I mean talk about an opportunity, and too often I think it's an opportunity lost. For me when I look at this as part of Onboarding, I do think it's a critical path because there are so many resources out there that having them on the same page allows you to function better, allows you to create a better result faster. And that's important to all of us. Velocity, momentum. And who doesn't want that?

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:41]:

Yeah, it's so important even at early-stage companies, especially early-stage companies where there's a lot of gray area about, do we even have some of this stuff in place already? You're actually asking people not just to give it to you, but perhaps even create it. So it's really important to have that whole team aspect to what we're doing. EJ, let's learn a little bit more about you. I've got 35 questions here. I'm going to ask you to pick three numbers from one and 35. And I'll read out the question to please.

EJ Easton [00:24:11]:

Two.

Andrew Monaghan [00:24:12]:

IOS or Android?

EJ Easton [00:24:14]:

Ios all day.

Andrew Monaghan [00:24:16]:

Always iOS.

EJ Easton [00:24:17]:

Ios all day.

Andrew Monaghan [00:24:19]:

So we recorded this on September 13, 2023. And yesterday was Apple's big reveal day, but apparently not very much. It's a bit of a bit of a damn scoop, apparently. But they did say they're releasing a new version of iOS. I think it's next week for everyone. So we are keen to see what's in that versus what we have right now. Probably not a huge change, but we see new features, hopefully. Next number, team one in 30 511, please. Eleven is what's? One great hotel you've stayed at in the world?

EJ Easton [00:24:50]:

Mexico Baya Riviera. Awesome hotel. Absolutely awesome.

Andrew Monaghan [00:24:55]:

That's a nice part of the world.

EJ Easton [00:24:56]:

Then there. It can be. It can be very interesting. But I happened to be there for a club trip resort and absolutely amazing. One of the nicest resorts I've ever been to. And frankly, it was a phenomenal club trip. So had a great time.

Andrew Monaghan [00:25:13]:

Good stuff. All right, last number. Team one in 30.

EJ Easton [00:25:16]:

518.

Andrew Monaghan [00:25:16]:

18 is a dive bar or cocktail bar.

EJ Easton [00:25:21]:

Wow. I need to get your list of questions. These are perfect interview questions. Dive bar.

Andrew Monaghan [00:25:27]:

Any favorite ones in your past that you remember?

EJ Easton [00:25:30]:

Actually, there's a place called the Warren Tavern up in Massachusetts, Charleston. I quite like that place. I don't know that people would refer to it as a dive bar, but comparatively speaking, it could fit the bill. But I'll tell you, they have amazing food. It's I think primarily a local establishment and really phenomenal people.

Andrew Monaghan [00:25:51]:

Yeah, it's often the people, the dive bars that set the vibe for the place, right, which can make it a little more fun or more interesting than maybe the cocktail bar.

EJ Easton [00:26:00]:

For some, I think that's exactly it. The people are everything.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:07]:

For my third one, EJ, I'm going to go very specific here and be prescriptive on something that I strongly believe in. And it's kind of following on my second point about being clear about what you actually want to ramp people up in. And when I build programs for people these days, what I tell them is this. I said I think if you think about the success of your people coming in, there are two things they need to be able to do very well as quickly as they possibly can. The first one is to be able to go and do some sort of prospecting, right? So if they pick up the phone with a friendly someone, the network, or a partner that they've known for a while, what do we need to do to get them ready for that? Right? And what I say to people is we should orientate things around so that they are uncomfortably good enough at doing that by the end of the first week. All right? And that's a stretch, right? So they could have walked the door on Monday by Friday, can we get them in a position of confidence and competence to be able to pick up the phone to their old friend at the CISO wherever and say, I joined a new company, we solve these sorts of problems. Let's go have some lunch and see if there's a way I can help you.

EJ Easton [00:27:21]:

Right?

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:22]:

So that's one thing get very prescriptive around that. The second thing I think is, and it's a bit more of a heavy lift, is to say, okay, let's imagine that they then booked that first meeting with that CISO that was their buddy, and let's say their internal mentor couldn't show up and their boss couldn't show up and suddenly they're just sitting there on their own. Can they run that first meeting on their own? Do they know enough? Can we give them enough? Can we train them enough? And then the way I think about it is can we certify them so we're very clear about what it takes to run that first meeting, what they need to know, what they need to demonstrate in terms of knowledge and competence so that we can sit there and go, holy crap, Jimmy's out there on his own. But it's okay because last week I ran a mock first meeting with him and he's got his shit together, right? And I think he's going to be just fine. So I get very prescriptive around those two things and this is going to sound weird to people, but the timeline I shoot for is the prospecting by the end of the first week. Then can they run the second meeting by the end of the second week? And the end of the second week is a huge stretch, and people are very uncomfortable. And I would say that's by design, right? Because it gives you a forcing function. And what I found is that not everyone, in fact, out of probably 50 50, get to the point where they have the confidence and competence for that first meeting, then the second week. But that's okay, because what we've done, it's accelerated their timeline that they might get it done by the end of the third week, let's say, right, in comparison to what I've often seen in programs before, which is they might get to that point after month one or month two where we think that they're ready to go do that. Right. So I say to people, look, everyone's going to be uncomfortable doing this, but if we get the focus around it, you'll see the results in a lot shorter period of time. And most of the time, people trust me and we go with it and we build the program. Some people, they go, I don't know, there's always some reason we're more complicated, we got more products, we got blah, blah, some reason why it's not possible. But I don't always believe them. But there's only so many battles you can win, right? But I think that orientation run be very specific and certify them. So actually go through some exercises to say, does this person know enough? Can do enough. I feel like they could be out there on their own.

EJ Easton [00:29:41]:

I think it's an interesting point, and I think it requires a level of awareness of leadership in the organization relative to what they're selling. I think as well, to a degree, even the ICP piece comes into play, contacts come into play. I do really love the idea, though, of getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. People accelerate their learning and they accelerate the effort. When they embrace that mentality, you push that forward. I think it's interesting, and I think it's worth the investment to figure out how far, and how hard you can push. Obviously, if you can put together the right formula to get to a better result faster, that's a win. All day long, it's a win. And I think consistently turning that process a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further to get to the point where you know exactly what it takes to get somebody into that position a week, two weeks in, a month in. I actually think that's an effort that's worth undertaking. Constant improvement is a huge part of this. And let's not forget that putting new reps in a position where they are developing momentum, where they feel like they are contributing and meaningful to a company and it's going forward, it's a big piece of the puzzle.

Andrew Monaghan [00:31:14]:

Yeah, I think that a couple of thoughts as you were talking there I have this belief that in any sort of training with salespeople, your job is to get them to, I don't know what, 60%, 70%, ready or complete, let's say, whatever the training is. Because if you try and get them to 90 or 100% through training, you'll spend a whole bunch of time trying to get them there when their learning at some point becomes better in the field, as opposed to being on their own in a classroom, behind their screen, whatever it might be. So when I say someone is ready for the first meeting, in reality, they're not, really, right? Because if the conversation goes off on a tangent, they might get lost, right? But we've got them to 60, 70% of the way there and that's going to get them going. And I think just the starting is so important. So I think that's kind of one concept about doing that. The other thing that I find that's a tangential thing that comes out of this is that you often see what someone's like when they're under pressure in those first two weeks like that. And I've had new sellers come in and flat-out tell me that's impossible. I've had some come in and go, great, let me add it, right? And they'll tape the training that we give them and they'll go and do their own stuff. And then they'll demand they go on live calls and they'll start fighting for more resources so they're ready for that second meeting because they don't want to get on a mock call with their VPs and look like an idiot, right? So sometimes in that environment, you see what someone's all about. And I don't mean that in a terrible way. I'm not trying to embarrass them or anything like that, but it's just interesting. You see some people react in different ways to what's possible and what's not possible. And by the way, I find that both are virtual. So all the work I do right now is all virtual new hire and ramp programs. I used to find that when we did things in person, I used to run programs where I was at Tania for a while. We ran like 20 to 30 new hires every two months coming through for over a year. We were in acceleration mode at that point. And I was flat out told by people that you tell me the end of this week, I'm going to sit down with one of the sales leaders and go through a first meeting mock thing with them. They're like, I can do that. So it was just fascinating seeing how some people reacted to it.

EJ Easton [00:33:45]:

It's interesting how all of this comes back together, right? If you look at this in totality, there's a lot to consume here. But I also think that it's easily consumed. And then I think it becomes, how do I fit this to my business, to what I'm selling? Some of these things aren't they're going to play differently when your target is a large enterprise and it is an enterprise solution. It's going to fit differently when it's a single product with maybe one or two buyers within an organization. I think all of those things start to play into this. But the sooner you figure it out, the sooner you start putting forth the effort to get to that result, the better off you're going to be. Constant twist, turn tuning, if you will, to get it into a better place. Huge. Andrew, it's interesting to get this from the other side too, from a sales leader's perspective, thinking about this in terms of how good can well become or what it is to become. It's an interesting perspective. Two weeks, titanium. I think of Tanium as a fairly big solution. I think of it as an enterprise-oriented solution. Two weeks, I think that's aggressive, but I also think in today's day and age, I think you have to be aggressive and I think you've got to constantly tune in to figure out where you can make it more effective. So this has actually been good for me. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Monaghan [00:35:15]:

It's interesting. So let's talk about Tanium. I'm not giving any state secrets here about this, and I think that's a valid point. Tanium is an enterprise solution. I was there. I'm sure it's changed a lot now, but I don't think you took a deal to the deal desk. It was under half a million dollars, right? They were going after big deals at big companies, complicated sales cycles, multiple value props, and things like that, right? But we had these people coming in and we couldn't train them on every single use case. One of the things about Tanium is it's truly a platform and they had lots of small modules that were attached to the platform. And the temptation might be, first of all, let's train them in the modules and what all the modules do, right? And as we talked about, just training in product is not really the right way to go. The second temptation is to say, well, let's train them in the use case for all the modules. And I would say that's a mistake because they're not going to remember it. All right, then the day a new hire is a human being, there's only so much they can take in and then go use. So it all becomes down to focus. So if I remember rightly, the way we actually had an in-person week, so you imagine someone joins, I don't know, let's say they join middle of the month. They might wait two or three weeks before the next actual boot camp happens. But in those two or three weeks, they got some pre-work, they're starting to do some research, things like that, and they show up for that week, right? The culmination of that week on a Friday afternoon, or Friday morning they would get on the phone with one of the VPs of Sales, and the VP was given. You are the CISO at this company and this new rep is going to run a first meeting with you, right? And they either pass or they fail. We gave both sides. Here's the scorecard here's all the things you're going to get marked up on. And our job this week is to prep. You are ready for this mock meeting on Friday, right? So when we did this, if I remember rightly, what we had on Monday was essentially the company day. It's not right. Not company as in here's who we are and what we do much more about the high-level value prop, the big reason, the big why, the wow moment about what Tanium is all about. The things that we do differently as an overall platform. Probably a better way to think about this platform was Monday and then Tuesday and Wednesday were the use case days. Right. So we would have most of Tuesday around one use case and most of Wednesday around the second use case. And that was it. We didn't do all ten. We picked the two that were the ones that are driving the most business that would get the rep in the door at a company. If you go talk to someone who's in a leadership position about this sort of thing, they're more likely to want to say, tell me more. Right. Rather than the esoteric use case number nine, which came out three times in the last year, we won some business on the back of it. Right. They'll learn that, but it's not the focus right now. And it was that concentration to say there's only so much they can take in. Let's make sure it's high-impact things that they take in and take control of that so that they're ready for that Friday to then have the meeting with the VP of Sales.

EJ Easton [00:38:31]:

I think that there's value in that as well. Getting to the point where you really understand what are our top two use cases, what do customers typically buy on, especially as their leading acquisition? Right. Their first buy, what's common across that, you've got 60 customers, 40 of them have bought for this use case. This buyer persona, is beautiful. Rinse, repeat, get to sustainability. I think that's a huge move and I think companies understanding that, being able to support that versus edge use cases, I've seen that as well. The edge case that becomes the dominant play and wait a minute, why? I think it's a point that's well made and worth companies paying attention to as part of their onboarding effort. Nicely done.

Andrew Monaghan [00:39:26]:

Well, let's wrap this up. EJ, you've come to this from the sales leader's perspective. Any final thoughts for a sales leader out there right now? And they're thinking, yeah, headcount is starting to get approved again. We're going to be ramping up in Q four or early Q one. How should I approach this? Any kind of final comments or words of inspiration for them?

EJ Easton [00:39:48]:

I think looking at the six points that we've covered right here, and figuring out how to put them into practice for your organization so that your onboarding is streamlined, it's efficient, it's effective, and creates the right result, I think that's important for me. I think that a critical takeaway for leadership is to figure out how to take some of these things or all of these things maybe it's none, and put them into practice. These are lessons learned, sometimes at great cost. But utilizing them, figuring out how they impact or could impact you, I think that's an effort that's worth undertaking. And certainly the investment in people. People are everything you want to win. Have the right people doing the right things, they'll get there.

Andrew Monaghan [00:40:37]:

Yeah, I think you're right. The real thing to understand is never going to be perfect, right? But the impact of getting this wrong is deep, especially if you're early stage. If you go eight reps and you're adding two more, that's a high impact if it gets right, if you get it right, and also a high impact if you get it wrong, as opposed to adding two more reps to a team of 100. So it's one of these areas that is worth it. I just added to what you were saying, EJ, and say I think that the first step is to be highly intentional about trying to get this right. If we're honest amongst ourselves, sales leaders, and all the rest of it, it's often a third, 4th, 5th, 6th priority thing. And I understand it right. I mean, if you got a board meeting next week and you have five big deals that had to be closed and you got the CS on your back about something, and Finance is saying we need to cut costs here or add people here where it might be, there's a lot of other things going on. But this does have an impact in the medium and long term, so it's worthwhile being very intentional about trying to do it right. But EJ with that. Listen, super excited about the conversation today, and really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us. If someone wants to get in touch with you to talk more, what's the best way to do it?

EJ Easton [00:41:58]:

Hit me on LinkedIn, happy to DM back and forth and set something up. My profile is out there and I'm more than happy to engage and figure out how I can be of assistance. Andrew, same question back to you. I know that you do a lot of this and for me, this is actually really interesting and really good for me as I think about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to build, I think the insights from the other side really quite good. And I would encourage companies to have this conversation with you on one and not as a shameless plug, but just as these little things, they're actually material and they create impact. If you believe that people are everything to a business, being successful or not, make the right investment, and do the right thing. Thank you.

Andrew Monaghan [00:42:50]:

I appreciate you I appreciate you giving me the plug. Yeah. As you can tell by my voice, sometimes when I get into these conversations, I get pretty passionate about this. I don't talk about this too much on the podcast, but I'll mention it right now. I just have a belief that, in general, salespeople at early-stage startups, especially in cybersecurity, are hugely underserved. They're expected to come on board and they give them some help, a little bit here and there, and then they're left to their own devices and some thrive, some don't thrive, some really good people don't thrive. But with just a little bit of help and thought about putting programs together like this, it can make a big difference. So having been in a situation myself where I've been at startups probably two or three times and seeing how things are underserved and seeing the impact of it, I believe this is worth it, which is why I get passionate about it.

EJ Easton [00:43:42]:

Nice job. Well done, Andrew. This is good for me. Thank you. And I really appreciate you inviting me to participate. Thank you.

Andrew Monaghan [00:43:49]:

Love it. All right, talk soon.

EJ Easton [00:43:51]:

Take care.