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Today’s show featured AWS Public Sector Partner Sales Leaders Ash Thankey and Andrew Christian.
Find Ash on LinkedIn. Find Andrew on LinkedIn.
ASH’S TIP: “We don’t want stagnation at AWS. We want to make sure that people are hydrating themselves with knowledge and are learning and advancing themselves. Keep learning and keep being curious.”
ANDREW’S TIP: “Learn as much as you can continually. What we do takes practice. There’s a lot to continue to learn with the technology landscape. Everything is changing day to day. In addition to just being better with the foundations as a salesperson, you also have to understand the context that customers are trying to make sense of these new changes as well. Learning as much as you can is really the only way that you’re going to keep up with that.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We’re interviewing Ash Thankey and Andrew Christian from Amazon Web Services. I’m excited for today’s topic. Andrew, you came from the military, and I’m looking forward to talking about the concept of moving from the military into sales. Before we get to some specific questions, why don’t you guys briefly introduce yourselves? Ash, give us a little bit of an introduction.
Ash Thankey: I’ve been with Amazon Web Services for seven years and currently lead our US National Security Team. This has been probably one of the most interesting roles I’ve had. Get to work with real mission customers solving mission challenges and really working with them on some very, very cool technology.
Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in September of 2024. For people who know, we do a lot of interviews with sales leaders. We’re towards the end of the federal government fiscal year. There’s a lot of activity happening with companies that provide sales and services to the federal government. Andrew, why don’t you give us a brief introduction as well?
Andrew Christian: Thanks for having us today, Fred. I’ve been at Amazon over five years now. I lead one of the sales teams that supports the National Security customer. Prior to being at AWS, I was a submarine officer in the Navy for seven years, first onboard a submarine, and then as an analyst over at ONI. After transitioning out of the Navy, first took a sales role at a small startup, then another IT company, before coming to AWS about five years ago.
Fred Diamond: First off, thanks for your service. You mentioned you’ve been at AWS for five years now. You were successful in going from the military into professional sales. What are some of the things that aided you in being successful? It’s hard being in professional business to business or business to government sales for anybody. Not every veteran, for instance, who made the leap were successful. Give us some of the things that help you be successful.
Andrew Christian: Something that I would recommend to anybody who’s transitioning out of the military is just as you’re getting closer to that time, have as many conversations as you can with both people that you know that have already transitioned out, or just others that you see in different roles that you might potentially be interested in. You’d be surprised at how many people that you’d reach out to that are happy to take some time to speak with you and give you more insight into their industry.
A lot of times people are quick to be like, “How can I get a referral somewhere, or jump in, or my resume looked at?” I’d say, before you even think about that, really back up and talk to people to understand what is their day-to-day like, is the type of role that they’re doing something that you’d be interested in? Having those conversations is how I narrowed it down to wanting to do sales, and specifically technical sales, just based on people that I’ve spoken with and said, “Hey, I think that’s something that not only I’m interested in, but aligns with some things that I think I could do well in the long term.”
The other piece of advice is as you start out, be willing to course correct and try new things. You’re going to be doing something that is different from what you’ve gotten really good at in the military. That means you’re going to have to train up to the point that you’re now an expert in something new. You’re going to skin your knee and you’re going to make some mistakes along the way and that’s how you’re going to improve, and not to get discouraged about that. Sometimes I think with sales especially, you can see people start out, and when it’s hard, which it will be, because it’s always going to be hard, but at first you don’t really have that skillset foundation.
Some people, without expecting that necessarily be the case, because they feel so confident in what they’ve done in the military, they say, “You know what? Sales just isn’t for me. I’m going to do something else.” At least I went into it with the mindset of I’m going to at least make a commitment to make sure that I’m pushing through some of the more challenging things as I’m trying to build a new skillset up, and I think that helped me. Because if I had just looked at my success in this industry based on the first six months that I did it, I would’ve left immediately. I almost cringe at how I approached some conversations with customers when I was first starting out. Just because you don’t know until you really practice that.
Another recommendation point I’d have for folks transitioning out of the military is to not focus on what your rank may have been in the military, or what you may have done before. I think there’s a lot that you can build on. I’ll probably talk more about this as our conversation goes on, from things that you were good at in the military, but your rank and how many people you led, and that sort of thing, is less relevant to a company. I think coming into it with a humble mindset of saying, “Hey, I am starting out new. I need some help from other people. I’m proud of what I did in the military, but I know here it’s going to be a little bit different for me. I might be an individual contributor for a long time, even though I was a company commander or a platoon commander,” or whatever where you came from in the military. I think that goes a long way to helping build a connection with the people around you at the new company that you join.
Fred Diamond: Ash, you’ve hired veterans. When hiring a veteran to make the career transition into sales, what are some of the qualities you’re looking for in them?
Ash Thankey: I have a saying that I can teach somebody the customer, I can teach somebody the technology. I can’t teach passion. I can’t teach curiosity. I can’t teach the quest to always gain knowledge. Because I think learning is a lifelong skill. When I do find people, and I’ve often had people who have approached me who are looking to transition from the military, a lot of them have said, “Ash, I really don’t know if I can do this because I don’t know if I have the skills.” I said, “Well, I can teach you a lot of those skills. What I can’t teach you is that passion and curiosity.”
Generally, when people are transitioning, I look at whether they can do the job. I think here at Amazon, we have a very, very good philosophy. Number one, we really take pride in hiring our vets. But the other thing that we really do is making sure that people who are transitioning are successful, and pairing them up with teammates that have gone through that journey. Because while not every journey is the same, there are similarities that we can draw from it. It can be quite helpful to folks that have come in from the military and who are transitioning.
Fred Diamond: A lot of times we like to talk about people who move into sales, know the industry. Coming from military, does it help to understand the Department of Defense and the various agencies and how they operate, and processes, and requirements, and language? Is that something that you see can be helpful? Or is that something that’s completely foreign in many cases?
Ash Thankey: I think it can absolutely be helpful. But I think Andrew made a very good point about making sure that as people transition from a military career to a private sector career, that you don’t wear your rank on your sleeve. There are norms and customs and processes that are different now that you’re in the private sector. While I think it’s an absolute advantage on having that innate knowledge, and I would say that hallway file, I think that it has to be used in a very discerning way.
Fred Diamond: Andrew, you started to touch on this, but give us some more of your advice for a former military or government professional who wants to move into sales.
Andrew Christian: The best advice I have is for folks to build off of the character and drive that made you successful in the military. I think that there’s a lot to be said for the challenging situations that you found yourself throughout the course of your military career and the type of tenacity that it takes to get through that and scrappiness and the camaraderie that you build with others. Those are the kinds of traits that are going to make you successful in your new sales career as you’re transitioning to that. There’s a lot of other things that you’re going to have to learn, but the one superpower that you should have is a lot of experience in pushing through some challenging situations. As you get into those situations, being able to say, “You know what? No matter how bad things get here today, nobody’s life is in danger from the situation I’m about to approach.” It’s good to be able to put some things in context.
The other advice I would have from how should your mentality be for approaching sales, is really try to put yourself in other people’s shoes to the maximum extent that you can. Maybe that’s something that a lot of people have done throughout their careers. In some cases, for people that might be new to sales, it might be a new muscle that you’ve got to work out. But really trying to constantly be thinking, “How does this other person that I’m about to interact think? How do I think they feel that day?” Then being able to adjust your conversation with them and your approach to them accordingly.
It’s good to practice that both with your own colleagues within your company, because there’s a lot of work that you’re going to need to do horizontally, but also with your customer. I think as salespeople, we always need to understand, why might my customer be trying to solve this particular problem, or why might they feel this particular way about other things that are happening within their world? Unless we can understand that, we really can’t communicate with them. That’s going to be different for people within different positions across the customer, especially when you’re looking at more enterprise type sale, like we are with the kinds of IT technology that we’re selling at AWS.
Then as you get to know more people, you can go into these conversations with, “Maybe I can make some assumptions based on what I understand other people in this role or other people in this organization have been feeling.” Then test those based on the questions that you ask customers and how you’re listening closely to them.
Fred Diamond: Ash, I want to ask you a question about leadership. The concept of sponsorship versus mentorship, and we talk about that a lot on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. What is the difference, and do you think both of them are important? If so, why?
Ash Thankey: I think absolutely both of them are important. I would say sponsorship from a career mobility thing perspective is actually more important. Here’s the reason why. I think that many of us, and many people can go for years without having a mentor, but I think it’s absolutely important to have a sponsor. I’m a big fan of Carla Harris, who is the vice chair of Morgan Stanley. She talks about how you need somebody to carry your paper into that room. There are three qualities that you need to look for in a perspective sponsor. Because you realize that as you are in an organization, you earn reputational currency and you earn professional currency, and your reputational and professional currency are there to help you make advancements in your career.
I think if you are a sponsor, however, you need to make sure that you spend your reputational and performance currency in helping others get to where they need to get to. The way she actually phrases this is the best way to increase your power is to give it away. I absolutely love that. I think that it’s absolutely critical that people, if they have the ability to help others advance, you should absolutely do so. That’s why I think, number one, why sponsors are more critical than mentors. From a mentorship perspective, I have been very lucky to mentor several people. I have found that while it can be helpful and you provide diverse perspectives, you don’t necessarily always need it to succeed. I think that having more sponsorship with a little bit of mentorship makes a huge difference.
Fred Diamond: Andrew, let’s talk specifically about what skills are needed to be successful selling for a company such as AWS. It’s a challenging sale. It’s a complex sale, it’s an important sale. One thing we talk a lot about with public sector sales leaders on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, what the customers are doing is pretty important stuff. We’re talking about safety of the citizens, we’re talking about infrastructure, health and human services, the markets they all serve are quite intricate and quite sensitive. What are some of the skills that are needed to be successful in selling for a company like AWS?
Andrew Christian: I think it’s a good point, Fred, just how the complexity increases when you have a company as large as AWS with as many different types of solutions that we’re able to provide customers, and then also how complex our customer is that we’re serving, and the types of goals that they have. I think at Amazon we have some things that help guide us through that ambiguity and challenges. One of the tools in our toolbox are what we call the leadership principles, which if folks are familiar with Amazon, we have the set of 16 leadership principles. They’re different things like deliver results and think big and things like that, that have little descriptions. These are things that Jeff Bezos laid out way back at the start of Amazon. But it really does help guide our thinking.
To answer your question, I’d call two of those leadership principles in particular. The first is ownership. Because there’s so many different groups within Amazon that you’re going to be working with and within the customer, that when you see a problem or when you’re trying to solve a solution, in a lot of cases, you’re going to have to be the person, even on the sales side, that is coming up with the map and the plan and the execution of how that thing is going to get done. Yes, there’s lots of people that are going to help you along the way, but you can’t expect to just drop off your problem at their door and they’re going to solve it for you because they’re also solving a hundred other problems.
You really have to help guide people to, “This is what I’m trying to do, is this something that you can help?” and make sure that you’ve also done your due diligence to do the legwork to make sure that what you’re proposing is going to actually solve the problem. I think from a early career perspective, just whether it’s Amazon or somewhere else, using that leadership principle can really pay dividends for your career growth. Because whenever you join an organization, there’s probably problems that you might witness or other people might bring up like, “There’s this issue that we have, but it’s a hard problem.” Nobody really wants to tackle that because it’s outside of the normal day job. But to the extent that you can help your leadership get after those hard problems, it really helps you be noticed and have more ability to influence your organization.
When I look back over just the short time I’ve been in sales, that really helped me at the company I was at before this, and moving from initially an inside sales startup to a field seller, and just doing a little bit extra and taking ownership to act like I was the field seller and what kind of things would I do?
Then I think the second leadership principle I call is earned trust. You can imagine with our customer, that’s step one, is people need to be able to trust that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, and that you’re there to help them. I think part of earning trust is being yourself and authentic. I think there’s this idea that as a salesperson, maybe you should be a certain way or this big extrovert. There’s a lot of stereotypes that come along with that, but I think that if you are authentically yourself, but also focused on how others are thinking and feeling and in trying to connect with them that way, you can go a long way into earning trust so that you can really get things done because people will want to work with you and want to help you with the problem that you’re trying to solve.
Fred Diamond: Ash, what should those embarking on a career in sales be thinking about and doing? What are some of the habits that you like to suggest that they develop to achieve this success?
Ash Thankey: To Andrew’s point, I think every professional who embarks in sales is bespoke, is unique. I don’t think there is an idyllic sales professional. I do think there are passionate individuals who care about doing the right thing for our customers, and for their customers. I think that when you center the customer around the heart of what you are trying to achieve, generally the inputs and outputs that you’ve put in are going to be the right ones. I have seen the most successful professionals employ those tactics and be customer obsessed and have really, really done well in their career because they have resolutely put their customer first ahead of anything else.
I have also seen the flip when the customer isn’t put at the heart of things and sellers deviate from that, where they lose trust. As Andrew put it so well, trust is at the heart of not only in the national security community, but I think in all of commerce. I think even with if you have commercial customers. I think putting those two elements, the trust and the customer at the heart of everything, is absolutely critical for success.
Fred Diamond: We talked before about the concept of sponsorship and mentorship, but what is some of your advice? You’re a leader at AWS public sector. What is your advice for sales leaders, for helping the sales professionals succeed in their career? Maybe the new people who are moving in from the military, if you will, what do you want to tell leaders to be conscious of?
Ash Thankey: I would say look to disconfirm your biases and what you think is idyllic. Because what you may think is idyllic may not necessarily be that. I would also encourage leaders to know that markets change, workforces change, and they change year after year, decade after decade. Those of us who have been in this industry and have been in the workforce, know that the way we approached professionals 10 years ago is not the same way we approach professionals today. Because the way that the workforce is evolving has to be taken into account.
Going on that sponsorship thread, it’s absolutely critical that if your company has entrusted you and put you in a position of influence and authority, that you use it to help other builders and help other professionals get ahead. I think it’s absolutely correct. To my point, the best way to increase your power. When I use the word power, your influence will be known as somebody who has helped and mentored people, is to give away that professional currency and reputational currency that you have earned over the years to help those people get a leg up.
Fred Diamond: I want to thank Ash Thankey and Andrew Christian from AWS, Amazon Web Services, for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. Gentlemen, you’ve given us some great ideas. I want to ask you for your final action step. What should people do right now after listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast to take their sales career to the next level?
Andrew Christian: I’m going to repeat something that Ash said towards the beginning, but I think some of the best advice is just to learn as much as you can continually. It’s something that I try to both remind myself and the rest of my team, what we do takes practice. If you want to be world-class at something, even Tom Brady was out there still practicing no matter how many years he played football. There’s a lot to continue to learn with the technology landscape. Everything is changing day to day, and to be able to be relevant with our customers. In addition to just being better with the foundations as a salesperson, you also have to understand the context that they’re trying to make sense of these new changes as well. Learning as much as you can is really the only way that you’re going to keep up with that.
Fred Diamond: Ash, why don’t you bring us home?
Ash Thankey: I’ll put a plug in for Amazon. Go to amazon.jobs and look around for jobs on Amazon, because it’s absolutely a fantastic place to build your career. I think the second thing I will say is that for those of you who are out there that are wondering whether, “Can I get a job in a place like Amazon?” I think we at Amazon have a very different philosophy, which is we hire for the person, not necessarily for the job. We have this saying that we are peculiar, we encourage people to come and apply. I will say that everything that Andrew said about learning and that professional development aspect is absolutely critical. Those are the skills that we value here. I think that’s skills that all employers value. We don’t want stagnation. We want to make sure that people are hydrating themselves with knowledge and are learning and advancing themselves. If I was to give any advice, I’d say keep learning and keep being curious.
Fred Diamond: Those are two words that come up frequently. We like to say #continuouslearning, and obviously be curious. Once again, I want to thank Ash Thankey and Andrew Christian for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo