EPISODE 758: From Family Roots to Public Sector Sales Impact with Kevin Davis and Taylor Davis

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Today’s show featured an interview with Kevin Davis, President of Public Sector at OpenText, and his daughter Taylor Davis, a Federal Account Executive at Snowflake.

IEPS Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi also co-hosted the interview.

Find Kevin on LinkedIn. Find Taylor on LinkedIn.

KEVIN’S TIP: “Everything you do, especially in sales, is a reflection. Be coachable. Protect your brand.”

TAYLOR’S TIP: “I was obsessed with being the best version of myself. The athlete’s drive carries over into sales.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: I’m very excited. A couple weeks ago we posted a show with Anthony Robbins, who is going to be our Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and his daughter Megan, who is a sales professional at Nvidia. Today we’re doing our second show in that series, where we’re going to have Kevin Davis and Taylor Davis come on. We’re excited. Kevin’s been a sales leader in the markets for a long time, and Taylor is beginning her sales career and she’s already had some great success. I’m excited to bring them both on. Gina, what do you say before we get started?

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s pretty exciting. I didn’t realize there were at least two duos in the greater DC area, which leads me to believe that maybe there’s more. We’ll have to go looking for that.

Fred Diamond: I’m sure that there are. By the way, if you’re a parent who’s a sales leader across the globe and you have a child who’s entering sales or has been in sales for a couple years, reach out to us because these shows are a lot of fun.

We have Kevin Davis and Taylor Davis. I’m very excited to have you both on the show. Welcome. Kevin, we’ve had a lot of people who have worked underneath you over the years as guests on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. I’m going to kick things off. I’m going to ask you a question. In the beginning of your answer, feel free to get us introduced to you, tell us what you are. It’s quite interesting. You’ve led public sector sales for some of the top brands in tech, big brands like Oracle, Borland, Splunk, and Databricks. You’re presently running the entire public sector business at OpenText. Give us a little bit of an overview on your journey. How’s the ride been? Looking back, what were some of the key drivers of your success?

Kevin Davis: Thank you so much for having Taylor and I today. I have been a career public sector individual. Started off as a sales rep, was my own SC, my own inside sales rep, where I would plan the meeting, demo the product. I literally did all the jobs from the get go, but always focused on public sector and their mission. The companies that you named, I’m very proud of every one of those stops. Generally, the theme that is really consistent amongst those companies and why I chose them was really two things.

First, just outstanding technology that I knew the public sector customers would really value from. Then second, and probably just as importantly, was the leadership that I could work directly for at those companies. It felt right, they felt like mentors. If you look at my trajectory at every one of those companies, I ended up bringing on more responsibility for myself. Every move, the alignment was right, the technology was right. I had a lot of fun and a lot of mission success as well along the way.

Gina Stracuzzi: I love hearing those kinds of stories where things just fall into place, and it’s not that you didn’t work hard, but the next step was right there for you. Taylor, let’s talk a little bit about that. When you were growing up, did you understand what your dad did for a living and you were just like, “I want to do that” or did you just happen to fall into it?

Taylor Davis: No. We always joke about it now that I’m in the field. Dad would come home or he’d be traveling for the week and he’d be like, “I just spoke in front of 500 people today.” We’re like, “Okay.” We just didn’t understand the gravity of what he would do. Looking back now, it’s amazing how humble my dad was because as his kids, we had no idea. I wouldn’t say I fell into it, I think I definitely, around freshman year of college, I was like, “Okay, dad. I’m starting to get it now.”

I did an internship and at the time I was studying computer science as well, and that was what my degree is in. I really found a passion for helping people, to what my dad said, finding these missions and finding technology that aligns with it. As soon as I got my first job offer, I was like, “Dad, you were definitely onto something. I’m starting to get it now.” It’s been really cool having a leader like my father. Now I can go home and have conversations with him and we can talk about these things. It’s this whole new world of things that we have in common now. It’s been very cool, for sure.

Fred Diamond: Kevin, do you enjoy when Taylor asks you questions about sales and what happened today and how would you interact with something?

Kevin Davis: First, I’ve got to share with you that all three of my kids swore to me that they would never be going into sales, were never going to do what dad did. Even when Taylor got started as a computer science major, I thought, “Okay. She’s going to go her own way.” But there are certain things that sales brings to your life. You’re in charge of your own schedule, as hard as you work, you get it back. I’m not an 8:00 to 6:00 sit in front of a keyboard individual either. Taylor didn’t know that about herself, but I kept telling her, “Taylor, computer science, you’re smart. I’m not sure you’re going to like to be a coder every day.” It’s interesting to me, but not surprising at the end of the day, that she’s in sales.

One of the things, and the kids are probably almost sick of me saying it, but I’ve always talked to them about protecting your brand. Everything that you do, especially in sales, you are front and center. If you’re going to have the extra glass of wine at a networking event, if you’re going to show up late at something, if you’re not going to be prepared to go meet with the colonel, every one of those things is a reflection. It started very young, and I’ve always really hammered that home, of protecting your brand, but also be coachable. All three of my kids are going to be college athletes. Taylor played volleyball. My son’s playing football now. That being coachable part, being part of a team sport, even when I’m interviewing folks for any position, I love to see any level sport, any level of really dedication, and just showing that you can get along with a team, you can grind, and just be a part of something bigger.

Fred Diamond: A lot of young sales professionals at the IES ask me for advice. I just want to follow up on one thing you said. One of the first things I say is, you do not need to drink at a company function. I know you probably enjoy going out on the weekend with your friends, don’t take pictures, but that’s fine. But at company events, I’ve seen people get fired. I’ve seen people say the wrong things after one too many. One of the first bits that I tell young professionals is, you don’t have to drink at these company events. I appreciate that.

Gina Stracuzzi: We’re getting a little lesson here on how to do it. It’s so true because there are things in front of young people today that weren’t there for your dad or Fred or I. You could get away with a little bit more and you didn’t have to worry about a camera or somebody recording anything, and it’s just way too easy to slip up. That’s really great advice.

You studied computer science. Do you think that prepared you for a career in sales? Especially I would think tech sales, we have a lot of people that come to us that went into science or something and they really use that knowledge to be both a salesperson and the voice of knowledge at these sales calls. How does that help you?

Taylor Davis: To my dad’s point too, when he was saying, “You don’t want to be a coder,” and I was like, “I don’t think I want to, either.” I was just so fascinated with, because I went to Colgate, which is a liberal arts school, so it wasn’t so much you’re coding all the time. It was a lot about how these computers and the AI and things that we’re using every day shape the way our society works. I was always very fascinated with the impact.

I would say in terms of selling too, I feel pretty comfortable talking about pretty advanced and technical software. I think I can walk into a meeting with someone who has a pretty technical title and I can hold my own. Of course, I’ll have my engineer there to help, but I think it definitely gave me some confidence in myself that, hey, you studied this for four years. You know it. You are more than capable of being in the room with these people who might know more than you, but you’ve done it, you’ve prepared enough for this moment. You’re allowed to be in this room, type of thing. I would say that’s definitely how that’s shaped where I’m at now with my sales career.

Fred Diamond: Kevin, we talked about athletics before. On the Sales Game Changers Podcast, we’ve had a lot of baseball pitchers, elite basketball coaches. Gina just did an interview with a former Division 1 gymnast, which was fascinating, a sales leader who works at AWS. First of all, with Taylor specifically, were there any activities you encouraged her to do when she was growing up that would prepare her for a career in sales? For a lot of the junior sales professionals that are listening, what are some extracurricular or skill development things you would recommend for them to be more successful at sales?

Kevin Davis: Taylor’s mom and I, Julie and I, it was very much about you just had to stay busy. Didn’t care if you wanted to do the chess club, didn’t care if you wanted to do sports, drama, whatever your calling was, we just wanted you to get involved, stay busy, and really just flourish in ways outside of just school. That was rule number one for us.

The other thing I give Taylor a ton of credit for, and if you think about it, I was very, very excited that she was going into a STEM curriculum. I’m a big believer of recruiting and hiring diversity, and here she is looking around a room of a whole lot of men in her classes there at university. What a great way for her to just continue to, it doesn’t bother her, and to really just be comfortable and lead.

Then the last thing I’ll say just about her major was I saw, especially with my stop at Databricks, how data science was really going to take off. If that was something that she was laying the foundation for, holy smokes, what a great timing to be getting into that. Now we’ve seen AI just absolutely explode. She was right for that as well.

Gina Stracuzzi: You’ve moved up pretty quickly in your career so far, Taylor, which I love hearing. I run all the Women in Sales programs and I really try to drum home the point that you are the CEO of your career. You’ve got to speak up and make your aspirations known. Talk to us a little bit about what motivates you to be really successful in sales and keep going after what you want, even if it’s very quickly.

Taylor Davis: That’s a great question, and thank you. I would say the biggest translation is sports. Since I was young, it was like, “I have to win.” I was always very hard on myself, but I was my biggest critic, but also biggest cheerleader. I just wanted the best for myself. I was just so almost obsessed with being the best version of myself. You’re put on this earth, you get one chance. Why not own it? Why not make it the best possible life you can make it for yourself within your means?

In college I did an internship and I was like, “Okay, this is what I’m doing,” and then I was set on it. Then I was like, “Well, how can I move into the next role and master my role that I’m in now as an intern?” How can I get into SDR? Then I mastered that. How can I get into AE quickly and get into the field? That’s where I’m at now. I would say a lot of it was I was just so driven by winning and success that once I knew what I wanted, there was no stopping me.

I think with my dad’s help and this network that I’ve created for myself, I wasn’t afraid to ask for help, and I wasn’t afraid to ask for advice. I wasn’t afraid to go up to the leaders in the kitchen and be like, “Hey, I’m Taylor. What do you do?” Little coffee chats like that, that at my previous company, I would just hang around the coffee machine when I knew leaders would be in, and I would be like, “Coffee at 4:00 PM,” and joke around, build rapport, and then all of a sudden they’re my new mentor and they’re meeting with me and trying to help me get to the next spot. I think it was a lot of things I’ve learned in sports, but also I had this idea and I was going to get it. No one would be able to stop me kind of thing. I would say that’s how it all went down.

Gina Stracuzzi: I love that. Don’t lose that.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer. We tell people too, as well, in the junior stages of their career, get to know the company. Matter of fact, today we posted a Sales Game Changers Podcast about a senior sales leader who talked about how he built teams and brought in resources from all over the company, not just engineering or development, but finance and documentation, whatever it might be.

Kevin, building relationships is very important, not just in public sector, but in a lot of markets. A lot of people in sales will stay in the same industry for most of their career. We talked about your career ascent in the beginning in public sector. What’s your advice for junior sales professionals like Taylor on building and developing relationships?

Kevin Davis: I say this probably once a week to folks, which is, the beltway is very small. The beltway being the United States, but selling to public sector sales, there’s only so many of us. I take great pride in folks that were my inside sales reps, field reps, that are now leaders around the beltway and at just various different companies. Every time along the way, it’s just be nice to everybody, have that empathy for the customers, for your team. Assume everybody is trying to do the right thing. That’s a real good compass because you don’t know who you’re going to go work for next. You don’t know how to help your kid or someone else’s kid. You’ve got to have that network and groundwork built, and especially during those tough times. How are you during the hardest of times and how did you treat people? That really pays off for you I think in the long run.

The second thing is, and you hear it a lot, but it’s all about the mission. Public sector customers when I’m selling, and the missions are different. I cover education, I cover state and local, even fed civilian versus DOD versus the intelligence community, missions are all different. However, they all wake up every day and they’ve got a problem to solve. How am I going to, and my software, my technology, going to enable them or help them solve that problem, and just rinse and repeat and building that muscle memory around excellence.

Gina Stracuzzi: Taylor, let’s build on that a little bit. You mentioned your professional network. How did you start building that? Did you use your father’s advice or did you just follow what you saw other people doing, and how have you used that so far?

Taylor Davis: That’s a great question. My dad always said to our siblings, too, was, be nice to everyone. He said it a little differently, but be nice to everyone was the mantra that we were always taught. Back to my point, is I think I saw people that I wanted to be like, especially women leaders, and I tried to emulate that. I would reach out to them, I would start having meetings with them, and weekly cadences. But I also, because my dad is who my dad is, and the network is so small, people would see my last name’s Davis and be like, “Are you Kevin Davis’s daughter?” I was like, “Yeah.” Just by that, because he has helped so many people, I would have people say things as big as, “Your dad has changed my life.”

As his daughter who had no idea what this man was doing from 9:00 to 5:00 most days, I was like, “Wait, my dad?” It was really cool having that. But there are people that are willing to sit down with me, call me now, and talk to me about the sales cycle and stuff. It was a lot of on my own and being okay with putting myself out there in front of people that are 10 times higher than me in the company. But I also, to my dad’s point about just being nice to everyone and making these connections and the beltway is small, people want to help me because of how my dad has helped them. It’s been an amazing experience, honestly, and I wouldn’t change it at all.

Fred Diamond: Kevin, I was going to ask you about the public sector marketplace, and you already talked about mission. As a matter of fact, I’ve interviewed maybe a hundred sales leaders from public sector, and I always ask, why have you pursued this marketplace? Besides the fact that it’s Fortune one and the most lucrative marketplace, there is the mission, and a lot of people have history.

I’m just curious, since you already addressed that, what would be two bits of advice you would give to Taylor? Just right now, top of your head, two things you need to tell her, and not just Taylor, but for the rest of the world of junior sales professionals, Kevin Davis’s mantra, or Kevin Davis’s words of advice that you like to spew.

Kevin Davis: First, play the long game. Sales is a long game. I can’t tell you how many times I get asked for coffee, lunch, dinner, and I go out of my way to say yes to all of that. That’s investing in my network, and it’s investing in their network, and I get a little bit, they get a little bit. That’s my first piece of advice.

My second is coming back to investing in that customer. Going to the extra events, going to see the CIO speak. What are her or his top five strategies? That way you literally are that student of the game. When you finally get that meeting with the executive, whether it’s a program manager or the colonel, or a CIO, you’re prepared. You’ve gone, you’ve invested the time, they pick up on that, they get it. It usually pays off in spades. If you’re just there to close a quick deal and move on, public sector sales is not the place for you.

Gina Stracuzzi: Taylor, now that you’re knee-deep in all of this, where do you see the future of sales being? There’s been clearly a lot of changes since the 1st of the year. What do you think is in front of you and what are some of the things that you’re striving for?

Taylor Davis: I would say selling to the public sector, it’s challenging. I think where we’re at currently is even adding some more challenges. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I’m still trying to, as my dad just said, be a student of the game almost every single day, showing up for calls, being prepared, asking questions, trying to learn people’s challenges, and actually listen and not just go into these calls trying to sell your software. It’s like, okay, these people put their pants on in the morning too. They have problems, as my dad said as well. How can I help them? If it’s not going to be a right now thing, how can I help them in a year? Right now I’m just trying to be and learn to be the best seller that I can possibly be in the future.

I would love to be in some leadership capacity. I think I’ve always, from a young age, just naturally found myself in leadership positions. My dad can attest to it. The elementary school teachers would be like, “Taylor is just a leader.” I didn’t really know what that meant until you get to college and you’re the captain of a team and you have people looking at you to make decisions, and I’ve always found myself very comfortable in those positions. One day I think that would be an amazing opportunity, but right now, I’m definitely day by day trying to be the best student of the sales game I can be.

Fred Diamond: Before I ask you both for your final action steps, I do want to ask Taylor a quick question, but Kevin, I just want to go back to what you said. Especially in a marketplace like public sector, you need to know the mission of your customer. Your customer doesn’t care to meet with you unless you’re going to bring the value of where they need to go. It’s not asking silly questions like we used to ask 40 years ago, what keeps you up at night? What are the pains? You need to know those things before the customer’s even going to give you time.

Taylor, I’m just curious. Do you have a lot of friends that are in sales? Not necessarily friends that you’ve met now that you’re in sales, but some of the girls or guys that you grew up with? Have any of them gone into sales and have you formed a network, or what?

Taylor Davis: It’s funny because no. I’m in DC, all of my friends are in New York City doing marketing, investment banking. We’re all in very different stratospheres, honestly, but it’s cool getting to hear different things. I moved back to DC after school and I was like, “I don’t really know anyone. I don’t know anybody on my team,” but quickly I was able to make friends and colleagues that became friends at my previous job. Now I have that network that I’m able to rely on. But it was a very interesting first graduating and I felt like I was going through it alone, but you realize that the network, you start small and all of a sudden they’re introducing you to new people, and your network is suddenly 10 times what you started with a month later.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, Kevin, you’re X number of years into your career. Do you have a lot of friends in sales?

Kevin Davis: I do. It’s almost all my friends, to be honest with you. Back to that networking piece, I went and had some oysters with a buddy the other day, and I’ve been in people’s weddings. It’s pretty incredible if you’re investing the time, you’re spending it, you become great friends with these people. Almost every person that worked for me at Splunk, I’m watching them get married and have kids and getting invited to their events, so absolutely.

Fred Diamond: I want to thank Kevin Davis and Taylor Davis for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. We like to end each show with a specific action step. You’ve both given us a lot of great ideas. Taylor, give us a specific action step listeners should do right now to take their sales career to the next level?

Taylor Davis: I touched on this earlier, but go and message someone on Slack that you look up to and you see around the office, and you think they’re scary, and just Slack them and ask for 10 minutes to grab coffee or just a Zoom call or anything. Most people are more than willing to take 10 minutes out of their day to talk to someone who’s new to their career and wanting to go the same path as them, because you have no idea what that one conversation can turn into. I think that’s my biggest advice, and that helped me a lot to get where I’m at now today.

Fred Diamond: Great advice. Kevin. Give us a final action step.

Kevin Davis: A little bit of a call to action for folks. 30 years of a sales career, and boy, you lose connections with folks. But I will tell you, I still keep in touch with the guy that was my inside sales rep back at Macromedia, and I’ve got to continue to do a good job or a better job of just reconnect with those folks that earlier on in your career were so instrumental, and keep those relationships going. Pick up the phone, text them, email them, and just keep the connections going. We’re a small group, as we’ve mentioned during this podcast, and we just got to keep it going and support one another. I want to thank both of you too. This has been great.

Fred Diamond: Absolutely. Gina, any final thoughts before we wrap up here?

Gina Stracuzzi: I’m just so impressed. Obviously, who’s not impressed with Kevin, but really impressed with Taylor. You’re going to go places and do things and I’m going to reach out to you and get you involved in the Women in Sales leadership conferences coming up. Then you can meet some other young women that are taking the business by storm as well.

Taylor Davis: That’d be great. Thanks, Gina. Thanks, Fred. I really appreciate it. This has been amazing.

Fred Diamond: You’re welcome. Once again, my name is Fred Diamond. That was Gina Stracuzzi and The Davises. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo