The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.
This is a Sales Story and a Tip episode! Watch the video of the interview here.
Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!
Read more about the Institute for Excellence in Sales Premier Women in Sales Employer (PWISE) designation and program here.
Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!
Today’s show featured an interview with Oracle Cloud Regional Sales Leader Sara Chen.
Find Sara on LinkedIn.
SARA’S TIP: “The main takeaway from this experience is that even at a large enterprise such as Oracle, that the Oracle type of company will pivot and point resources and strategic alignment to initiatives that is ultimately valuable, even if it’s not an existing focus for the company. If you work for a company that values that innovation, the nature of emerging technology, it should be feasible to shift and take advantage of the brand, network and resources that a large enterprise such as Oracle could provide, but ultimately mobilize quickly in a specific field or area, whether that’s AI or not that the market is trending towards.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: I have Sara Chen with Oracle, and I’m going to ask her to tell us a great sales story. But first, Sara, why don’t you give us a brief introduction?
Sara Chen: My name is Sara Chen. I currently manage one of Oracle Cloud’s field teams for AI and machine learning. What we do is we sell to core AI startups and high-growth companies across North America. Outside of work and what I do now, I’m born and raised in the East Bay Area of California. Since then, I’ve completed my undergrad at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo with a business information systems degree. Since I graduated, I started at Oracle right away in their entry level SDR program back in 2018. From there, I progressed as an SDR, did the whole deal, went to be an account executive covering an SF Silicon Valley territory and have become a manager for that same territory. Most recently, this past year is where I landed managing a team on the Oracle Cloud’s AI side of the business.
Fred Diamond: Want to let people know that Oracle was also an Institute for Excellence in Sales Premier Women in Sales Employer. Sara Chen, tell us a great sales story.
Sara Chen: Let me take you guys back a few years into my career at Oracle. After my time as an SDR and a sales account executive, I became a frontline manager for one of our commercial territories for the San Francisco Northern California Bay Area region. This is back in 2021 or so. If you followed tech in the Silicon Valley the past 5 or 10 years, which I’m pretty confident that you have, Fred, you’ll remember that this was a very interesting time in technology, and specifically AI. It was just at the early tipping point of what traditional AI and machine learning had been for the past one to two decades. That was very research-oriented work where we saw this research from even in 2018, 2017 timeframe, when the Google Brain Team published the Attention is All You Need paper.
That paper alone really revolutionized into how deep learning can be used for natural English processing. It was right around that time, in the late teens and early 2020s, where we saw this shift take place into the world now, seeing the power of large language models, AI, artificial intelligence at large, even in forms like ChatGPT in 2022 really take force and how it can evolve all industries, workers, and world problems at large.
Back in 2021 in my first year of managing my team, I was fortunate to be able to work and onboard the first three or four Oracle Cloud’s flagship AI customers that are now leaders in the market. That was due to a few key factors at the time, such as, one, the timing of this market shift that I just mentioned, and what’s now referred to as the next biggest technology revolution since the dotcom boom. Another factor in terms of us working with them is I was so happening to be already managing and overseeing companies in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley as a territory. Taking those two factors, coupled with Oracle’s already existing unique strength and position in this market, because of our superior infrastructure and technology that we’ve been building on for decades, our enterprise support and resources, and of course the top-notch sellers on my team mixed with some luck and opportunity, that was what really led us to win these early AI deals and customers.
Now, what I learned during those sales cycles when I learned from these companies was that it was very different from working with any other company that I’ve worked with before. A few things there was that these sales cycles moved incredibly fast. These AI startups had very small executive teams that wore multiple business hats, and that we had a seat at the table with them right away, given the nature of them being startups. I also noticed in these early-on cycles that performance and economics were a major driver in terms of them working with a given vendor. This was largely due to the limited supply and high demand of high-performance computing that’s required for these artificial intelligence workloads, such as GPUs for training large language models.
Another takeaway that I had from that alone was that these deals and these use cases for AI, although very complex solutions, at the end of the day, the technology underneath had a more simplified architecture and repeatable use case that led to the growth of this business for Oracle and also contributed to the deals moving very quickly.
Then I think a last really important thing to note was that these core AI companies live in a very small ecosystem as early leaders in the space. The level of support, brand recognition and word of mouth really mattered, which was a refreshing change from maybe other sales cycles I’ve been involved with at Oracle. Working with big traditional SaaS companies that have decades of systems and third-party applications and more complex architectures and commercial restrictions, et cetera.
I want to highlight these stories because these early wins in 2021 were a bit of a wakeup call to Oracle saying, “Whoa, this is just the beginning of where AI is heading,” and that it’s not only a highly lucrative business, but more importantly, it’s a really strategic pursuit that we are already well equipped to grow at exponential levels. At that point in time, in that 2021 phase, I saw Oracle quickly mobilize a specialized engineer and business teams for supporting these AI companies and all other enterprises eager to adopt AI across various aspects of their business.
Now, fast forward to today, there’s over a 40-person AI business and engineering organization at Oracle, a new suite of AI products and solutions across every layer of the full stack that we offer. Oracle has also made key partnerships with leaders in the space, such as NVIDIA and Cohere, and now we have upwards of 50 plus companies working with Oracle for AI machine learning use cases that is now a multi-billion-dollar business. That is the catchall story that I think is really important to highlight.
Fred Diamond: I’m curious, why did you originally go to Oracle to work? You went to San Luis Obispo. I worked at Apple Computer for a number of years, way before you were even born, probably. Actually, a lot of the engineers that we had went to Caltech. This was in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, but I’m just curious, why did you choose to go to Oracle?
Sara Chen: Going back to college days for myself, majored in business information systems. I knew I wanted to be in technology. I think problem solving overall was really exciting to me. It was actually after an internship I did my junior year at Clif Bar & Company, the energy bar company, where I was on the business intelligence team. I was doing coding behind a desk and I was like, “This isn’t for me. I have my people skills. I love relationship building,” but I knew I wanted to stay in technology.
My senior of college, I got connected with Oracle and I heard that they had an entry level sales cloud team that they were hiring for, that seemed to be the sweet spot. I can’t say at the time I knew for sure what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, of course, but I knew at Oracle I would have the foundation of resources and learning and growth opportunities early on that I really cared about. I think that led me to not just go to Oracle, but stick around all these years. As you just heard me say, I’ve taken on multiple different opportunities and roles, which has been awesome to my own development.
Fred Diamond: I mentioned that Oracle is an IES, Institute for Excellence in Sales, Premier Women in Sales Employer. What would be your advice if somebody is considering starting their career in technology sales? What would be your message to them about coming to Oracle?
Sara Chen: My message to them and advice to anyone looking to get into technology, to sales as a career is before deciding which company to go to, whether it’s Oracle or not, is really determine, “Hey, what fulfills me as an individual? What motivates me every day?” Because you’ll spend countless hours throughout your life in this field. If that aligns to skills like relationship building, problem solving at a corporate level, or even just diving deeper into this innovative technology or emerging technology that we’re going to continue to see in the market, then I think Oracle and other key players is a great space to land.
I think as long as you are, wherever it is, Oracle or not, feel like you’re being challenged, feeling that growth and learning opportunity is there, then that’s when you should really stick with it. I have countless friends and colleagues too from other places that say, “Hey, I work for a really great company. Maybe they pay me pretty okay. Just getting bored in my day-to-day role.” Or, “Hey, I’ve been here for five years and it’s been fine, but not sure where I’m going.” I just think as an individual you have your whole life of potential and millions of companies to work with, you want to make sure that you’re focused on your own development and success.
Fred Diamond: That was a great story, Sara. Give us a tip that you took away from some of those stories.
Sara Chen: One takeaway I had from that experience working with some of these early on AI companies at Oracle was that, one, the ability and openness to be agile and confident in a different type of sales motion is really critical. That if and when your goal as a seller is to be at the tip of the spear of innovation, then being willing to pivot how you’ve known how to sell in the past will only continue to make you successful. That’s something I had to learn from not experiencing companies, let alone sales cycles that were similar on the AI side, and just be willing to take a leap of faith and to lead without maybe knowing how to fully solve a problem with always knowing that it’s rooted in the intention of helping a given company or a customer get to their end goal.
That said, I think the main takeaway from this experience is that even at a large enterprise such as Oracle, that the Oracle type of company will pivot and point resources and strategic alignment to initiatives that is ultimately valuable, even if it’s not an existing focus for the company. If you work for a company that values that innovation, the nature of emerging technology, it should be feasible to shift and take advantage of the brand, network and resources that a large enterprise such as Oracle could provide, but ultimately mobilize quickly in a specific field or area, whether that’s AI or not that the market is trending towards. As someone relatively early on in my tech sales career, this was extremely refreshing, reassuring, and ultimately, it’s inspiring. Because it told me that if I have something I’m working on that is exciting, I think has massive potential for growth, and that I really, truly believe in, that I as an individual can have an impact.
Fred Diamond: As I’m listening to this, Oracle’s been around for over 50 years, I guess, and almost every company has invested in Oracle at some level, and a lot of the companies’ data systems are based on Oracle. The sales process in a lot of cases, it’s like you got to make certain moves and then you have to influence a whole bunch of people. Then there’s other organizations. I like the way you said because of this particular custom set, the AI innovators, the new AI companies, you were right at the table with the CXO suite at these companies. Obviously, this is the sales process, of course, but you were right there right away as a partner helping them get products to market that they’re looking to bring to market. It has been a whoosh almost, and many people have said that the new AI revolution is the biggest impact on the technology world since the launch of the internet. I just want to acknowledge you for that.
Sara Chen: I think going to my experience, that was really a major shift too, from being a normal seller, “Hey, let’s get a deal done. Let me just basically procure whatever services that you need,” to actually becoming a true partner to these companies, and to innovating with them and creating new solutions down the road. That’s where I was lucky enough that I’ve worked for a company that’s willing to back that vision, even though I’m one of hundreds of thousands of employees here.
Fred Diamond: It actually gives you the opportunity to really make a difference. Once again, I want to thank Sara Chen. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Story and a Tip Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo